Cameron Herold Has Grown 3 Companies To Over $100 Million Using ADD As A Superpower

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All right, welcome back to the most memorable name in podcasting. That's right, Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo, your host and if this is your first time listening to the show, let you know a little bit about what you can expect in general. And today I am a business consultant. I'm also an entrepreneur. I have a couple businesses that I run personally, but I also help business owners and entrepreneurs and coaches and consultants really understand how to market their business better and get more clients, get more leads and find hidden profit centers in their business through a lot of creative ways. This podcast is my outlet to reach out to some of the top experts in all of business and life in general and pick their brains clean, as clean as I can for very selfish reasons and let you eavesdrop on what I'm doing. I'm very strategic about the questions I ask. This is not a typical podcast episode where I just simply line up some really easy questions, tell me about your life history, etc. I want to know actionable advice because if I'm going to be spending my time talking to people, I want to take something out of it and I know that your time is valuable. So when you're listening to this episode, I actually want you to be upset if you don't have a notepad and pen out to take some great notes. With that being said, today's episode is going to follow in the steps of some recent episodes as far as its theme goes. So if you listen to the other recent ones, both with with Mark Winters, the author of Rocket Fuel, with Alex Charfen, with Dale Hensel and some of the other folks, I'm going to be talking to a guy named Cameron Herold and I'll explain who Cameron is in a second. But we're going to be talking about that integral relationship, really between the entrepreneur and the visionary and the, you know, the guy who is or the girl who is almost ADD and crazy and full of ideas and needs somebody to help implement. So Cameron is one of the most qualified people on the planet to talk about this because not only is he an entrepreneur, but he has also been on the other side as the number two the chief operating officer of the world's largest residential junk removal company called 1-800-GOT junk. He grew revenues from 2 million to 106 million in just six years. And he has built three $100 million plus companies in his career. He's the author of best selling books Double Double, which I highly recommend, and Meetings Suck, which I have not yet read but I will after this show. And he's also founded something called the COO Alumni, which we'll talk about on the show. He's one of the few Canadians, I think he said in the interview, which we've already done, who's given a TED Talk. And he is going to talk to you a lot about the mindset necessary to operate at a very high level and to work with your number two and get things actually done. I cannot wait to bring him on. Let's go ahead and switch over to the interview. As I said, we've already done it. And I'll see you on the other side.

All right, Cameron, welcome to the show. How are you?

Good, Brad, how are you doing? Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no, it's a real pleasure. Read your book. I'm excited to read your next book and you've come highly recommended. As I mentioned offline one of my recent interviews, Tucker Max was talking about as his business book in a box was growing and he was on a hunt for.

The right business and executive coach, somebody to help him get over the growing pains. Early on he's like, man, I read like 20 or 30 different books. Really? Everybody out there who, who offers this, hands down. When I read Double Double and I met Cameron Herald, I knew he was the one to help me grow my book. And our mutual friend Sean Stevenson recommended the book to me. He forced me to read it six months ago. So your name has kept on coming up. So it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

That's cool. Yeah, I'm actually an advisor to Tucker and I've got a small equity stake in this company as well. Great business.

Well, I just sent him a client, so I guess I sent you guys both a client.

Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Working on two more books with them now as well. Are you really? Yeah.

You said one of them is Meetings Suck.

Well, Meeting Suck actually just came out and then I'm working on one related to vision and then I'm also co authoring the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs with Hal Elrod.

I love. Yeah, Hal's a past guest of the show. I read that book about a year ago. And put that into practice. I have not been as faithful as I need to be on it, but I love that book Miracle Morning.

So we're doing one that's just Miracle Morning for entrepreneurs now and it'll come out in November.

That's great. I can't wait to read it. Such a. Hal's such a great guy and that book was really critical. And for a guy like me who's self professed and proud of my ADD and that kind of that visionary entrepreneur style, if I don't have rituals and if I don't have things that kind of keep me grounded and focused as much as possible, I can get really off the rails. And I'm sure you've probably seen a lot of that in your business and working with clients as well, because you're kind of the opposite of that. Right. You've had to reign in some of the.

No.

Actually like me.

Well, no, I think. Well, yes, I actually have. Playing a second in command role, CEO role. A number of times I've had to rein in the entrepreneur. But then I realized that the entrepreneur is exactly who they're supposed to be. Most entrepreneurs have attention deficit disorder. Most of the traits of bipolar disorder. They're often on the spectrum for Tourette's, which is thinking out loud.

Oh my God, totally.

They're often a little bit OCD as well, where they really kind of obsess about certain things, which is often tied to add. So if the medical community got a hold of entrepreneurs, they'd say, we're disasters and you want to medicate the hell out of us. But the reality is we're exactly who we're supposed to be. Our ADD allows us to see everything and not get too bogged down in the details. It allows us to start a whole bunch of things and then get bored and delegate. Do it for us. And then mania. Part of bipolar is why people get excited and follow us. It's our natural energy. And the burnout is simply the crash and depression after. So we're exactly who we're supposed to be.

You know, it's funny when you said, what was it like? We talk out loud or we think out loud?

Yeah, thinking out loud.

Yeah.

So I've said this so many times, it's funny. You're the first person I've heard say that as it relates to like that spectrum of like ADD, Tourette's, etc. I. It is so important for me, like I will. I will burn some of my friends out because I'll just call them or Skype them up. Because I am typically working from home office and it's. I call it the bat cave quite a bit. And I was like, I have an idea. I cannot think of it on my own. I'll go crazy. But I just have to get on the phone. I'm like, I don't even need your advice. Just be there and let me bounce these words off of you and I'll get it.

Funny about the whole Tourette's component is we actually will meander through all of our thoughts. They keep coming out of our head. And when we finish our kind of diatribe or finish our thinking out loud, we'll end up at the final point and we'll often forget all of the points along the way that we've even said, oh, yeah, right, we kind of ended the fun. But that's just a good thing to know about entrepreneurs is let them be that way. Don't try to change them. Let them be exactly who they are and then let them surround themselves with people who aren't like them so that you can build a really strong, unique ability team.

Right? It's kind of funny. Just the rabbit trail. This is connecting some dots too, because throughout my. Not so much anymore as I've been an adult, but throughout most of my young life and Even into my 20s, I had these minor little facial tics, like whether it was blinking my eyes or crunching my nose or just doing just like, they looked like nervous tics. And as I started to read more and more throughout the years that this is totally unofficially or unclinically diagnosed, that is probably a very mild case of Tourette's.

It's Tourette's. And I actually. So I met a very high profile, I won't name him, but a very high profile CEO of one of the top hundred companies in the US by revenues, probably the top 75 household name. Very, very much a household name. Every listener would know the name of the company. CEO and I were sitting on a plane together and we were talking and he actually built and sold his first company for about a billion dollars. And I diagnosed him on the plane as having add, being bipolar and having all these nervous tics with Tourette's. And he started laughing, saying, my wife thinks I'm a fucking disaster. You to meet with her and tell her I'm just an entrepreneur. So my wife and I ended up meeting with he and his wife and having dinner. We've become very close friends and I actually coach him and his second in command. But he is exactly who he's supposed to be. And when he was a kid, the medical community kept saying that he had problems. He knew he didn't have problems. He knew he just wasn't like everyone else. Well, he's not supposed to be like everyone else.

Yeah. And that's one of the problems I think probably is that now the general consensus or society says these kids are wrong. Let's medicate them into being just like everybody else. And let's tell them, stop doing this. Stop acting like this. You're broken. And it probably breaks a lot of people by telling them that by trying.

To fix them, the school system destroys kids. Actually, I'm one of only about seven Canadians who's done a TED Talk. I have a Talk that's on Ted.com about raising kids as entrepreneurs instead of lawyers.

I love that. I can't wait to.

And in my whole TED Talk, I talked about the fact that I was picked on in the school system and I was told to sit still and pay attention and be like everyone else, and I was told to kind of conform. And why couldn't I just control my emotions? And why did I have to be so scattered? Well, the reality is I'm not supposed to be like a teacher. I'm supposed to be like an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurs and teachers are almost like HR professionals and salespeople. We're just different. So instead of saying that we have to be more like engineers and doctors and lawyers, why don't you say, wow, you guys are exactly who you're supposed to be. Maybe the system isn't meant for you.

Yeah, I love that there's a. Do you know who Alex Charfen is?

Of course.

Yeah.

I interviewed Alex recently, and his. By the time your episode comes out, this will be live as well. And we talked about a lot of the very similar concepts there. About, like, how he always felt like he was broken and he was like, no, I'm just different. And, you know, I think it's the entrepreneurs who realize that they're. That they're different but not broken and understand how to kind of capitalize that on that. They're the ones who succeed. There's another book that this makes me think about. Have you heard of a book by Garrett Le Porto, the da Vinci. The da Vinci Nut Code, the Da Vinci Method?

I almost want to say yes, but I'm not sure.

You probably love it if you. I mean, if this is kind of like on your. As we're talking about this, because that was the very first book that I read where I Thought the marketing of it was genius. Because he's like, do you have these traits? You're not add. You're a Da Vinci. People like Da Vinci and these other people had these exact same traits. And it was kind of a really cool reframe of how to use that as a superpower.

I think Alex Sharpton actually mentioned it to me when he interviewed me for his podcast about a year ago.

Oh, nice. Yeah, Alex and I talked about that on the show, I think.

That's right. We hear about it. Alex and I are part of the Genius Network together. Joe Polish's program.

Yep. And I just interviewed Dan Kishel yesterday.

There you go.

Very small.

Very, very small world. Absolutely.

So.

What hope is there for us? Bipolar torreted ADD written Visionary Entrepreneurs to succeed in this life when all we want to do is have ideas come out of our head and happen without us having to actually do anything?

There's a bit of a power that comes in realizing that we're not broken. The system is broken, that the medical community and the school system actually failed us. And maybe we're actually way smarter than they gave us credit for, because we all know that we are. So as soon as you embrace that and realize, wait a second. ADD is not a disfiguring disease. It's actually what gives. It's my superpower. All of a sudden, you go, wow, maybe I'm actually the smart one. So I went back to my high school 25th high school reunion a few years ago and realized that I made more than all of my high school teachers combined. And then I kind of went, holy shit. Maybe I wasn't broken off.

So did you go through that, too.

As a child, where this was. This is in your genes as well?

I. My entire TED Talk was about that. That I literally felt, you know, through all of my grade school activities, being told to sit still and pay attention and be like everyone else and stop selling everything. And I'm like, I actually am so bored in class. That's the reason I'm sitting at the back playing just by myself, is because you're boring me and you're taking too long. And I. And then I. So, yeah, But I also went through school thinking I was stupid, because every report card told me that I was a 64% student. Until all of a sudden, I realized that maybe the shortcuts and the answers in the back of the textbook were the way it's supposed to be. Nowadays, I think school system should be completely changed. Where the test is a group test. You work together in teams, you all collaborate. Everyone gets an A. And it's only about researching stuff that you want to, pitching what you want to, talking about what you want to, and then everybody be completely engaged. Instead, the school system right now only rewards the A student and it tells everyone else they're stupid. It's a completely broken system.

I could not agree more. I don't actually have children right now. Married, haven't had one yet. But for some reason I've always had a big passion and opinion about this. And it's 100% in line with everything that you're saying because I went through the same thing too. Every report card I ever had, like in grade school was cannot demonstrate self control.

Yeah. So I've been a co founder or a COO to a number of CEOs and three companies that I'm known for building. One is an example is 1-800-GETJUNK. Yep. The chief operating officer took them from 14 employees at the head office to 3100 when I left system wide. And the CEO had dropped out of high school multiple times, talked his way into college and dropped out of college. You know, so classic, classic entrepreneur. Maybe we shouldn't have told him he was stupid. So my partner in the autobody chain only finished grade 12. My partner in the private currency company only finished grade 12. There's so many entrepreneurs that can't work within the system and we just had to finally do it for ourselves. And it's our innate stubbornness and tenacity that we're never going to give up. And it's kind of a bit of a fuck you to the rest of the world that makes us successful. And it's always because we told we couldn't do it that we're trying to prove to people we can. And the reality was if they told us all along we could do it, we'd probably be happier.

Yeah, absolutely right.

Explain this then. In your career you have been like the COO and really focused on being that number two who gets things implemented and executed and working with the CEOs. But are you saying that you share those exact same traits with the same people? So how did you make that jump? Because usually I would think that the COO role and that skill set and mindset needed is totally opposite. How did you make that jump?

Because I'm OCD as well. So I see and I see everything in the reverse. So when you tell me where you're going, I can show you how to get there. I understand if you tell me what your goals are. I can break them down backwards to show you how to build it. If you show me a design, I can show you how to build the foundation. So I'm kind of like the guy who is very entrepreneurial, but I can see all the blueprints and then my entrepreneurial trades. And I was also groomed as an entrepreneur, which I talk about in my TED Talk. You know, I have so many of these entrepreneurial traits and skills that I just learned how to do it. I also learned how to operationalize it at a company called College Pro Painters. And we were really groomed to be entrepreneurs in that organization.

Oh, nice. So you early on had some. Had some good connection there.

I had 12 full time employees when I was in second year university.

Oh, wow, that's awesome. I love it. Yeah, because that's always been an issue for me. I'm definitely not ocd. Well, I don't know. I think there's probably some OCD in there. My wife would say I'm not OCD enough. Around the house cleaning.

You organize your clothes where you hang your clothes?

No, not at all. No. They're all over the place.

You're not quite. I have. Mine are awesome. From the left to right, color coding. Awesome.

That's great.

Yeah.

No, no, I'm the opposite there. That's probably what's one of the things keeping me back. But I've always been fascinated by this especially, I mean, the people that I mastermind with, the people that I get around. I mean, we're all kind of the exact same personality. So we all think we're normal. That's why I think also entrepreneurs love masterminds and getting together because we get to play with people just like us.

Right. It's our tribe. And then all of a sudden we realize maybe we didn't have the disease after all. Maybe the disease was the school system in the medical community.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. So as far as. And there's several things I want to jump into and for my listener's sake, we're going to. I want to talk about something you're doing here in a moment called the COO alliance. Because I just think that's. That's really fascinating and really, really needed, but I want to dive down into a little bit more of the. Because I believe that most of my listeners are probably in.

Owning or running businesses doing like the $5 million and down mark just from some surveys that I've done. And that's that.

Anywhere from half a million to 500 to 5 million that's that point where you know you're in that you kind of got one foot in, one foot out. Yet you know that you need somebody to help you integrate and execute and do this and keep you on track because you can only do so much yourself. But maybe you're not at that point where you can necessarily afford a really well paid high end expert and pay them, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars a year salary necessarily. But you need somebody who's more advanced than just a, like a virtual assistant or whatnot. So you're kind of in that middle road.

Is there any advice you would give to somebody there to start setting it, setting themselves up for success?

For sure. So at the end of the day most people start talking about geez, if I could only hire a coo, I could really grow my business. I could only hire these senior people, I could really grow my business. First thing you need to look at is if you don't have an assistant, you are one. So you really need to get an executive assistant, even a virtual or a part time executive assistant to start getting a lot of the admin work off your place first. That will at least give you enough extra time to grow your business typically to the revenue point that you can get your first really full time people in place. I start focusing on revenue generating activities because really revenue and gross margin solve all the problems, right? Right. Better system, not a better website, not a better tool, but not a better product but more paying clients that drip gross margin to, to the P and L, that's really what's going to solve problems. So start driving and hiring people that will drive revenue first. I also look for any opportunities to hire fractional people. If you can hire part time or virtual using Upwork or Odesk or hire my mom or Elan anywhere that you can get part time people or people that are paid fully on commission, whether it be full time salespeople or marketing people that are all on commission. Those are all activities to start spending your time on. So that's where I would start.

No, I love that. And that's like I've got a virtual assistant that's, you know, that's really good. And although I may need to find somebody else like with another, hopefully she's not listening to this but another skill set like to level up there because I'm not quite at that point where I need the, where I can afford or need the big CEO in those cases.

Here's a great resource for our listeners. Company called lessdoists and it's Ari Mizel's company.

Yeah, I know Ari.

And Ari does an amazing job where he actually manages teams and teams of virtual assistants. So once a week they do a call with you to find out everything that's on your plate and they take a bunch of stuff off your plate and they then allocate those tasks to groups of assistants who will do it for you. So basically you get somebody who's project managing a bunch of stuff to a bunch of little experts that you don't even know who they are and they get it done for you. And a really powerful way to go as well. Look, this stuff didn't exist 15 years ago. So if our listeners don't know of it, it's because really prior to Google and prior to the advent of really having access to the Internet, all you had was the classified ads in a newspaper. So you couldn't run businesses this way. But the way of running businesses has changed.

Yeah, it really is. And because we are really at the forefront, anybody doing it now, this is because it's never been done like this. We're all kind of cutting our teeth and figuring it out and evolving as we go. And there's no real best practices for using Global or the Geo Arbitrage and all this other stuff because it hasn't been done for too long.

There's a great saying that I saw recently as well. If the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, you're out of business.

And the reality is business is changing. People need to be able to adapt and adopt these ideas and systems quickly. It's really what I covered in my first book, Double Double is the systems that are easy to put in place, easy to execute on. You don't take a bunch of MBAs needed to grow your company right now.

That makes a ton of sense. And as I've told several people that as an entrepreneur, as I've evolved and realize the things that I need, I've got. I'm one of the most like not to brag here, but I'm very tactically skilled. I have a lot of skill sets when it comes, especially when it comes to marketing and knowledge. And I can do a lot. But I realize that focusing on those, the things that have gotten me to the level where I'm at, which is improving those skills, will keep me there. If I don't focus on a couple things, which is recruiting and developing team members and taking this off of my plate and letting go of my.

I.

Guess sometimes I'll get a Death grip on my business. Just like everybody does. Right. It's kind of hard, but letting go of that and really trying to focus on what an entrepreneur really does, which is organizes people, systems, resources, capital in order to achieve a goal. So that's why this is such a hot button.

I was coaching a CEO this morning and he said, I need to do xyz. And I said, no, you don't need to do it. You need to get it done. Yeah.

So we have to start letting go a little bit of this. Thought of, like, I need to have my toilet cleaned. It doesn't mean I need to clean the toilet. I need to have my grass cut, but doesn't mean I need to cut my grass. You'd be amazed at the amount of things personally that I've outsourced now so that I don't have to spend any time on that. I don't outsource my kids. But there's almost nothing that I do around our home ever, like, to the point of even cooking.

And, you know, it's funny, growing up, that makes me think because my dad and I, although we get along very well, we're total opposites, polar opposites in our, you know, in our personality makeup. And he's the type. I mean, he actually tried to instill this in me. I mean, he was mowing his own lawn even though we, you know, middle class. He could afford to hire somebody to do it. But it was, I'm doing it. Why do it? I'm sorry, why hire somebody to do it if I can do it myself? Which is the exact opposite of what we're talking about, which is, why do it yourself if you can hire somebody?

Because at the end of the day, look, you really. And this is what I would get all of your listeners to do as well, pretend that someone followed you around with a movie camera for a month and pretend that they videoed you doing everything in your life and business. And then write down everything that you do. Open emails, reply to emails, book meetings, write down everything that you do, and then categorize all of those things in one of four ways, either I for incompetent, C for competent, E for excellent, and U for unique ability. So the incompetent is I suck at it. The competent is I'm okay at it. The excellent is I'm really, really good at it, but I don't love doing it. And the U for unique ability is I'm really good at it. I love doing it. I get energized when I do it. People Love watching me do it. Hell, I would do it for free, except my kids have to work or have to eat.

So you want to be operating in the excellent and unique ability ranges, I guess.

Well, first step is you want to be operating in the excellent, unique ability, but when your business really goes to the moon is when you delegate everything except unique ability, when you have everything off your plate except your unique ability areas. So the stuff that I'm really good at, I love doing these kinds of podcasts, I love doing speaking events and I love coaching. Outside of that, I'm good at it, I'm excellent at it, but I don't freaking love it. So more and more I'm getting all of that off my plate so that my days are either my free time or me working in my unique ability area, which means I finish every day feeling better than I did when I started.

Yeah, that's the definition of success, by the way. I said almost those exact same words to people, like, it's not really money, it's like, how do you feel at the end of the day, like, compared to how you started it? That's awesome that you said that. So you've got employees, teams. Do you have both employees and outsourced teams that you work with to help offload some of this stuff for yourself?

I do. And I actually am moving more and more and more towards never having full time employees because the reality is the world doesn't need them. And 70% of a full time employee's time is typically spent on being reply all or cc'd or going to meetings they don't need to be at.

And you know that meetings suck, by the way.

Meetings don't suck. We suck at running meetings. There you go. My book, Meetings Suck is exactly about that. It's trying to teach people how to actually run highly effective meetings. But my point on people is that when you hire people who are fractional, who are just working in the unique ability for a few hours a week or a few hours a day, they're only doing the stuff that they love and that they're great at, and you don't pay them to do all the stuff that they don't love.

So it's really. How do you find more and more of these freelance people to be hiring to do things?

Right? I love that. There's another podcast that I did, it's actually releasing this next week with a former business partner of mine named Dale Hensel, and it's really amazing. I'll send it to you too, because you might really Enjoy it. But Dale has taken a company public. He's done a lot of really cool, big, big things. Huge thinker. He's one of us. But he's migrated and evolved his business now to where when people even say, what do you do for a living? He's like, I groom CEOs, I build CEOs. He goes, I'm a king maker. That makes people go, what? What do you mean? He's like, I make CEOs. He realized that when he was doing a lot of business coaching and he was coaching people on either how to get into business or they've. A lot of times you may know this too. Like when people seek out business coaching, they're in a moment of transition. Like they either have their ass handed to them or and failed. Or they've got like, Tucker, like, hey, we're having growing pains if we don't hire somebody to come in. But he says he would end up realizing, I'm coaching these people to be really good CEOs and business people as it is, I'm going to create them for my own businesses. So I'm going to bring them in and groom them to run all of my ideas. Not treating them as coos because he's like, I don't even want to be the CEO.

So this has been a very recurring theme.

Well, I think the people who you look at a high performing athlete, they're in their absolute unique ability in their sport and everything else around them is noise.

That's true.

You look at someone who is like the Phantom of the Opera, who's on stage performing. There's hundreds of people backstage doing lighting and costumes and grip and marketing and sales and tickets and selling popcorn and all the stuff that needs to happen for the show to go on. But he doesn't have to do that and they need him. So you just have to find people have to find what they're really good at and start delegating everything. Except genius.

Yeah. What would you tell somebody who is just starting off on their entrepreneurial journey? I'm going to make up this avatar. They're 30 years old, young entrepreneur, 30 years old, early 30s. And they've been working, but they've realized, okay, this is a square peg and a round hole. I've got some ideas, I've got some skills. I'm going to set out and do this on my own. I have limited budgets, but I needed start off the right way so that I don't get in this trap that a lot of people fall into, which is realizing this having these epiphanies after many, many failures. Would you recommend that early on they start off with get the assistant? Even if you don't know.

The first thing I would do is really think about what your business looks and feels like three years out. I call it the Vivid vision. I cover it in detail in chapter one of Double Double. The idea is make a description of what your company looks and feels like as if you've already built it three years from now. Describe every aspect of it in vivid detail, and then start working backwards from there. The second thing is make sure that you get really strong financial advice to someone to dig into your business idea and your business model to make sure that it makes enough money to cover all of your overhead and your expenses so there's enough money left. In the end. So many business people screw that up that they work hard, they work hard, they build something, and there's not enough profit gross margin left over to cover your expenses and your overhead. At the end of the day, you bought yourself a job and they don't wake up until two or three years later to realize that, you know, it's, it's almost painful.

Go ahead.

Here's a very good basic system for all of our listeners to think about. 35% of your time will be billable time. 35% of your time will be admin pain in the ass work that you have to get done that you can't afford to hire someone for. And about 30% of your time will be marketing, trying to find new clients. So if you want to make $200,000 a year, you have to make that in only 17 hours a week.

Yeah, because by the way, those, that 100% of time you gave was of waking, waking and working hours.

Like so in those working hours, if you're only working 17 hours a week and you have to be making $100 an hour to make the 200, well, that means you have to be doing it in 30. So you need to charge $300 an hour to make enough money over the course of the year to have the 200. And then anyway, so you just need to do the basic math and most people don't do it.

I actually haven't seen it laid out like that. It's so forehead slapping simple. Like, you're right, but that's profound. As I wrote, I wrote it down as you were saying that.

I was like, so that's how I see everything backwards is all of a sudden I'm like, well, wait a second, you're gonna spend all your time running your company, what are you doing? Well, you gotta do admin. Well, nobody's paying you. You gotta do all the marketing. Nobody's paying you. So what I did, even in my business today, the way I do all of my marketing is people pay me. Other than the people that are interviewing me on podcasts. I'm not paying for that, but I will do speaking events and people pay me to come and speak.

Yeah, that's.

I built my entire business around the fact that if I'm going to get out of bed, I'm not doing it for free.

That's something that I've been trying to integrate more in my life. And it's funny, kind of going back to one of the things you said about two of the mistakes. Or not two of the mistakes, but two of the suggestions, which is visualize your business three years from now and then get the solid financial advice on the financial model. So, as I mentioned, offline. So my business and my life is comprised primarily right now of two things. I've got my consulting business where I help business owners not only grow their business, but build and optimize marketing funnels, etc. And really get that dialed in. But then there's also the Stiletto coffee business. For any new listeners who haven't heard me talk about this, if you go to stiletto coffee.com, you'll see what I'm talking about. My wife and I launched a coffee brand back earlier this year, so we're still in that very early stage. And one of the things I could kind of, although I didn't do this, like write it down like a three year vision, I'm going to do it again. Because as I reread your book, but prior to the interview, I remember you saying that I was like, yeah, I need to do that. Especially because I'm not sure how that looks.

Let me give you the analogy as to why everyone needs it. You would never build a house or renovate a kitchen without knowing what the finished product was going to look like, right? Never call in a whole bunch of contractors and say, here's a bunch of money, I'll come and see in 12 months. Build me a house. I hope it looks like I want it to fuck. No pictures and sketches and drawings. And you would get all these ideas and you'd say, here's what I want the house to look like. Here's how much money I have, here's how much time I have. Let's draw the plans up or the blueprints. To make my vision come true. Then I'll go away and you can tell your workers to work off the blueprints and they'll make my vision happen.

Yeah.

So why would you build your business any differently? What's your vivid vision of what your company looks like three years from now? Get it so detail oriented that you can then reverse engineer that into a plan and then start executing building from the foundation up. Like you build a house. Yeah, it just makes sense.

It makes so much sense. And then on the financial side, so I. When my wife, it was originally her idea, and I was like, yeah, okay, I think we can do this. I looked at some of the basic finances, and I'm very much a quick start. Who just says, this sounds like a lot of fun. Let's jump in and do it. We'll figure out the money part later. I'm sure we'll make money. Right? And we've gotten to the point now, you know, we're about five, six months into actual operations and starting to look at the unit economics and all of this. It kind of makes me go, shit, what'd I get myself into? Like, this is a really low margin, like, as a per product unit margin business. And luckily, it's a very wide volume that we can do. But as I started to kind of tack on and get serious about the financial numbers, look at it. It's very sobering.

And again, no one starts with the end in mind. I have a friend who did the exact opposite. He was starting his company about 20 years ago, and he said, you know, I don't ever want to have a big factory. Those seem like a pain in the ass. I don't want to have big, expensive, heavy products because it seems like a pain in the ass. I don't want to ever sell $6 products because it seems like a pain in the ass. I want to have a very simple business to run, But I wanted to grow really, really big. So what's. Products that are really expensive, that are really small. And, you know, clearly he couldn't do, like, stuff that's illegal. So he didn't do the drug thing. He. He decided to sell diamonds.

I was just going to say, did he do diamonds?

Hundreds of millions of dollars a year of diamonds to the movie stars and actors and actresses. Guys like, except for my wife. And what he did is he realized that he could buy a really cool, expensive office and 20 years later have the same office because all of the diamonds would be in one safe. So he thought with the end in mind and grew into that. Most people don't. They start and they work hard and they work hard and they build and they work hard and they build hard and they REINVEST. And then 10 years later, they've taken no money out of their business and they think they built something. And I'm like, wow. So if you sell it for 5 million bucks and you pay 2 million in taxes, you net 3, and you owe some investors 1, so you net 2. So really you made 2 million bucks. But that's.

Right.

Divided over how many years, you didn't make any money. You could have been a VP of the company. So anyway, I beg people to not be the fly trying to get out the window. We've all seen the fly banging your hip. Why don't you just turn to the right and fly out the door that's open. It's just easier.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's brilliant.

I have it. I have a hard stop in about 11 minutes. I've got a CEO that I'm coaching that just raised $250 million from Warburg Pincus.

So I. Yeah, well, there's a little bit of priority there. I don't blame you. So let's. Let's talk about COO alliance, because I'm really interested and I think the other people would be in that. Like, what is COO Alliance?

Sure. So at the end of the day, there's almost an inordinate amount of groups for entrepreneurs to learn from each other. You know, we've got, you know, masterminds and EO and YPO and vistage and Genius Network and all these amazing organizations. Mastermind talks where you can go and spend time with entrepreneurs. And there's groups for marketers, there's associations for marketers and IT professionals and engineers. But there was this one role that was almost forgotten, and it's the second in command. No one had ever created a mastermind or a group or an alliance or the second in command to really learn from each other. And I know the role better than almost anyone on the planet because I've been coaching entrepreneurs and CEOs for nine years. But I also was actively a second in command of companies like 1,800 Got Junk. And I started to recognize that if we could pull together that group where they could learn from each other on how to become better in their roles, how to effectively build the yin yang relationship with the CEO, we'd really be on to something. So I did a couple of tests back in May. They took off. 18 of the 20 people signed up for an annual program that we launched together and We've now got 32 members of the annual program and we're doing another test drive in September.

That's great. So your ideal person, if they're interested in COO alliance.

Sure, yeah. Most of the members run. The youngest one is 27. The oldest is 62. The smallest company is around two and a half million. The largest is around 400 million. The smallest employee counts around 24. And the largest is around 3,035% women, 75 or 65% guys. And the way that it works is we have four events a year here in Scottsdale and people select three of the four to attend and they work together. Lots of breakout sessions, lots of confidentiality around basically helping each other to become much more successful in our roles. And then I've always believed that your network is your net worth, it's who you're hanging out with that's really going to help you in your roles.

I couldn't agree more. And I think that's, I mean, man, talk about developing that pool talent of COOs who not only are good at implementing and executing, but understand the framework of how to better work with their CEOs and the entrepreneur. That's so valuable because that's. I know one of the other problems is, you know, I could hire somebody who's just, you know, good at getting things done, but if they let me run rough shot over them, then I will like, unless. That was one of the things I got out of Mark Winter's book Rocket Fuel, which was the first book I really read about. This relationship between the number one and the number two was that ultimately it's this chief operating officer who should get the final say to say, yeah, Mr. Entrepreneur visionary guy with a million ideas. Those sound great. We're going to table those for right now because we don't have the resources and the entrepreneur has to kind of say, okay, okay.

It's a really strong skill to actually learn how to manage the CEO and how to keep them iconic and how to allow them to bring out all the good news and you bring out the bad. I think that's one of the things that I've also noticed about all conferences that we tend to go to is people listen to so many speakers or read so many books, but what they really want is, is the one on one time to be able to talk to other people and mastermind and learn from each other. And that's really what we've built into the CLO alliance, is a lot of these breakout Groups and time for them to spend time with each other and share and learn from each other as they go.

Absolutely. Well, I love that. So if people want to get more information then, Cameron, on you and your programs and your books, do you have a place for them to go?

Check out more. The COO alliance is the COOAlliance.com books. Both double Double and also Meeting Suck are available on Amazon. Double Double is also available on Audible and itunes as well. And then cameronherold.com and it's H E R O L D. But cameronherald.com there's all my videos of all my speaking events and lots of resources and worksheets for people as well.

Nice. And all those links guys are going to be in the show notes here, whether you're on the Apple itunes podcast app or if you're listening on the blog. But man, Cameron, I can't thank you enough for this. This has been really just refreshing and it's good to hear and it's good to confirm that, yes, my ADD bipolar Tourette's personality is one of the things that's been responsible for my success. And I will go back and tell.

My parents, yeah, you're exactly who you're supposed to be, dude. When you sent me the note asking to interview me for your podcast and I saw Bacon Wrapped, I was like, I'm all.

That'S great. Yeah, that was, that was the kind of the reason behind it. It was like, this is going to be the most irresistible podcast. Some people like, oh, I got to do it.

It's wrapped in bacon.

Well, Cameron, I appreciate your time today. For all my listeners, if you have really enjoyed this, the best ways that you can pay us back, obviously visit Cameron's website, read the stuff that he's put out. But what you know, you're not paying for this and hopefully you've gotten information that's very valuable and worth paying for. The way you pay me back. Share this show on social media, share it on Twitter and Facebook and tag me in it. Tag Cameron in it. Tell us what you liked about it and tell us what you'd like to hear more of. It's the best way to pay us back for doing the show for you. And if you have any questions, you can always hit me up personally@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com and I'm more than happy to give you a second opinion on your strategies, what's working, and see if there's a way that I can help you out. Until next time, Cameron. Thank you very much. And, guys, keep listening and subscribing and reviewing on itunes. Always love to hear those. Talk to you next week.