Episode #784 - Balancing Beauty, Business, And Belonging Across Continents with Cameron Herold

Foreign.

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

Now, Lake Garda, kind of same latitude more or less as Lake Como, I guess the other side of Naples. Yeah. And what appeal to you, you know, because that's, that's another thing, as much travel and exposure as you, you've had to places in the world that you could live. Obviously north, the northern end of Norway is not going to be one of the top contenders. Even though you love the northern lights.

We are actually going to come back to. We're going to come back to northern Norway in the summer. I don't know what summer it'll be some summer. We're going to come back here to do some hiking. It's extraordinarily beautiful. It's really, really ridiculously beautiful. Like probably like Swiss beautiful. It's like the Swiss Alps. It's just everywhere you turn. I wish I could show you the view right now, but it's been dark here for like six hours. It's just crazy beautiful. So we want to come back up here and see it when we've got all day, you know, when sunlight is 24 hours a day, and come hiking and hang out. So we'll come back. But yeah, northern Italy appeals to us. The food is good. You're really Central Europe, very close to Milan. So I'm close to any international flights. We love the culture. We love the Dolomites for skiing and for hiking. And we like Lake Garda versus Lake Como because Lake Como is kind of too trendy and Lake Garda is just beautiful and more Italian in a way for us. Dubai. Have you been to Dubai?

I've not been to Dubai, but I've been taught. We've been talking about it this week and what I had one of my guests who lives in Abu Dhabi say the two of those are like living in Las Vegas without the drinking well.

And without the tackiness. It's like Dubai. So I think there's four entrepreneurial hotbeds on the planet right now. Dubai, Portugal, Austin, Texas, and Bali. And those four places tend to be this magnet. It's like a vortex of entrepreneurship. There is so much money there. There is so much entrepreneurship there. There is. It's so safe. It's so clean, it's so friendly. Women are treated extraordinarily well. You can go to the busiest street on a Friday night on A sidewalk cafe and put your laptop, your phone, your wallet, your keys, your watch, put it on a coffee table, go for a walk for an hour, come back and pick your stuff up off the coffee table and go home. No one will ever touch it because the threat of a crime is so strong there that you're either kicked out of the country or you get your hand cut off. So people just don't do anything. You never hear sirens. And then it's also really close to the rest of the world for like Asia and the Middle east and North Africa and even kind of Eastern Europe. You know, you're three hours to Turkey, you're three hours to Georgia, you're so it's kind of a really cool hub.

Which part of Portugal stands out to you?

Porto. Portugal is a very close runner for if. If it's not going to be Lake Garda in northern Italy, it might be Porto as our second hub. Do you like Portugal?

I've not been to Portugal. I've not been in Spain much or Portugal at all. But I've been, you know, I lived in Italy for three years and France for a year. Germany for a year.

Oh, wow. Where did you live in Italy?

Terrania. It's a little bit north of Laborno, about a couple hundred miles north of Rome on the Mediterranean side.

Okay, so you get it. You understand why we like Italy then?

Yeah, yeah, very much. It feels like home. In fact, I've got all of the pictures inside. My townhouse and condo is of Tuscany, you know, so it's like, that feels like home.

We did a six day cycling trip through Tuscany, Tuscany by the sea, about a year and a half ago, two years ago now, with 10 other couples. And it was magic.

What towns?

Oh, gosh, I don't remember the original.

And things like that.

My wife would kill me for not knowing. I'm sorry.

There's a big world out there. And what would you say to yourself, you know, evaluating yourself, what has this done for you other than because you would have probably gone to the conferences anyway if you were still in Arizona and a lot of that stuff. What has it done for you, this traveling you at this stage of your life? What has it given you?

Let's say what's amazing is that we have these very rich experiences, rich in terms of, like, fulfilling and exciting and cool and different every few days, like, incredible experiences. Back in Arizona, in. In early December for an event, and I was talking to a friend of mine and I was like, what's up? How was your year? Like, I don't know. Same old, same old. I'm like, what, what have you been doing? He goes, well, like golfing. And like going anywhere to golf? Because, no, like just Phoenix Country Club. I'm like, okay, like golf. Look what else is going on. He goes, dad, not much. Like, seen a couple good movies. I'm like, dude, it's been a freaking year. Like, you got same old, same old golfing at the same country club. Like, like that's like for. I, I don't know. I, I couldn't do it anymore. Like I did. I did 24 years in Vancouver and 10 years in Arizona. And I love it, but I just want to keep seeing the world right now. And it's not all, it's not all easy either. Like, there's some really hard parts about being on the road, right? Like travel is hard.

Vacationing even is hard. You know, travel is, you know, there's new things to deal with.

Well, here's one that was interesting today. So I just found out today that I need to go send a FedEx. The closest FedEx is a 20 hour drive. Not kidding. So there's a DHL office that I'll go to tomorrow, but the closest gym today was a 22 minute drive. I'm like, I'm not going to drive 22 minutes to the gym to work out, to do 22 minutes home. So my wife and I did like a workout here in our Airbnb and I figured this is what we got to do for the next week is do workouts here. Okay, we'll figure that out. But the next place we go, we got to find a new gym and a new yoga studio and a new coffee shop. Yesterday we found a grocery store. Like, you know, if I said to you, here's a grocery list of 30 things, you can visualize where each of those things are in your local store. We're walking around a grocery store, we can't even read the labels because it's all in Norwegian. We don't even know. I'm like, this looks like chicken.

I was wondering how you're speaking as you speak in all these countries. Is English universal enough to where you, you can get by with speaking in English?

Yeah. The only places where it has been harder. I did four cities in Mexico. I did Mexico City, Monterrey, Queretaro, and then, oh, Guatemala City. So it wasn't in Mexico. So in Monterrey or Caretaro they had me on a lavalier and they had anyone who only spoke Mexican in the audience listening to a translator. And that was hard because the timing was off. And when you're speaking, there's a little bit of like comedic timing or timing of your pausing. And I remember saying something about when you're looking for employees, you can't have the shotgun approach. You need to use more of a rifle approach. You need to use a search firm. Well, the translator said when you're looking for employees, you don't use a shotgun, you shoot them with a rifle. The whole now this. And there's a, there's a five second delay. So I'm like moving and the whole audience like, and I'm like, no, no, I didn't mean to shoot them with a rifle. And then like, like. So I've had that twice. And then it was. Another one was a small town in India that I spoke at because I've done 14 cities in India where I've spoken on a YPO speaking tour and they had a translator there. But for the most part, yeah, I mean, they're not going to book an English only speaker unless the audience can speak English too, right? So for the most part, yes.

But now when you go into these countries, you have different cultures and you know, they have different things, you know, though their own, they're unique to their culture. How do you connect, you know, you're not going in and telling the same, you know, a joke that would go over the United States. You know, the jokes have to be understood. Seems like that's a good way to get in trouble. How do you connect, how to keep it entertaining? What, what do you do to allow yourself to be successful in all these different environments?

One is, I don't tell jokes on my. It's just not my style to. So I don't do that. But the one I think is to really try to understand the culture a little bit so that I can say, you know, in Canada we did this, and here I think it might work like this. So I don't. Like an example would be, you know, the cost of having the wrong person in Your company is 15 times their annual salary. So if you know you've got the wrong person, you gotta fire them instant. But I'm not sure how that entirely works in India. I know that you've got a different process here, so you might, you know, so it's more being empathetic to this is what we do. And I'm not quite sure, but I think it might. And then it's just recognizing that like I'm just giving an idea, right? It's not, I'm not, I'm not There as, like, the. The expert. I'm just sharing my experiences.

Let me ask you this. We're all successful. You know, when you write a book, there's one main idea. When you write a blog, you know, the theme of a podcast, it allows you to remember things. You know, when you can put it. Put it in a nutshell. But when you speak, when you walk off the stage, they think back to, they had you there. What do you want them to remember or associate with that talk?

No, it's easy. We had this as a saying on the wall of our main meeting room at 1-800-got-JUNK. And then it said, it's all about people. And I have argued with people in cultures where they don't care about the people as much. And they have to, because at the end of the day, if your employees truly know that you care about them, they're going to care about your company more. And that's hard for cultures where, like India, as an example, where they just throw bodies at a problem. You know, like in the United States, we're struggling with something. Should we hire someone? Can we hire somebody? In India, a person is $4,000 a year. So they just hire 10 and they put 10 people on it. Like, so. So people are this disposable resource to them, and I think that's horrible. And. And I don't. I won't allow them to leave the room without shaking them a little bit and shaking their humanity to realize that they can still care about people even though they're only four grand a year. Right. They can't, like, and I mean, really care. And then I. So it's those stories, you know, I talk about the guy in Kenya who I coached for a couple years. 400 employee company in Kenza, Tanzania. And on every Thursday on payday, he sends the person home with a bag of grain and rice and beans and powdered milk to give to his wife. I'm like, why do you do that? And he said, it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And if I don't take care of the basic level of needs, they're going to go somewhere else. They're not going to feel compelled to care. But I'm like, but just pay them more. He goes, no, if I pay them more, they drink. I'm like, wow, you actually care about the family to that level. So then I'm driving around in Kenya on our honeymoon, and I see this security guard company. I'm like, I want to go in there. And we pull up to go, that's the guy's company, it's called Securex. And this, this security guard greets me and he's like super happy and he's friendly and I'm like, do you know Tony Santa, the CEO? He goes, tony, Tony's incredible. I'm like, this is just like a guard at a grocery store who like thinks the CEO of a 500 person company is amazing. So I tell those stories in these other countries, you know, where it matters. Core values. Like obsessing, like actually caring about core values, not having them up on your wall, but like firing people who break the core values, only hiring people who live the core values. I had a big fundamental discussion with the royal family in Qatar about it to the point that I didn't want to work with them after my first engagement because I didn't feel like they actually cared about people enough.

And you knew you weren't going to go anywhere with, with your engagement if that was a break point.

And I also didn't want him having me as a badge of honor. Like I was this North American coach, which was a big thing for them to say they have. Right. And I didn't want my name on the labor camps.

Right. There you go. Well, thanks so much, Cameron. We could talk for hours. I knew this was going to go well. It's been a lot of fun and appreciate you showing the the photos from the northern lights. We can at least see it secondhand. And congratulations on your journey. I think it's a dream for a lot of people. You probably inspired a lot of people to start thinking about their future. Where I'd like to go through a phase like that because like you say you could always go back to Arizona, check in. You know, you could always rebuy the house and the stuff. But you know, you know, creating a quality timeout like this is something I think is a dream for a lot of people. So thanks for getting behind the scenes and sharing those things and we'll look forward to seeing how it goes. Now, when you said they could find you on the you posted. Is it on Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever where they can follow the trip?

Yeah. Well, my wife has a YouTube channel. It's called Ever Wander Travel and she does a video of every journey that we've had all over the world. So Ever wander travel on YouTube is hermane and then my Instagram is Cameron Herald COO alliance, all of our links and my information is@cameronherald.com and it's H E R-O-L D dot com.

Fantastic. Thanks. So much. Cameron, let me ask you this. Do you have. I like to give our guests one last word, parting takeaway. And usually there is one. Even after we've talked around the world three or four times. Usually there's, there's one dangling thought in there. If there is, I want to give you the chance to leave it with. With us.

There is. And I was going to ask if I could share something and then it was like, no, I won't, because I know he's wrapping up. But there is. I think you'll appreciate that none of this matters. None of this stuff matters that we do day to day because it's just what we do to make money. At the end of the day, I can guarantee you with 100%, like, I know something about everyone listening and watching. One thing for sure is we're all going to die and so are all of our employees. And we need to have fun along the journey. We need to care about people because this is just what they're doing to make money. It's just what we're doing to make money. But if you can enjoy the journey and have some fun along the way, I think that makes it just a better experience for everybody.

Absolutely fantastic wrap up to the call. Thanks so much. Look forward to doing this again down the road.

Love to. Thanks, Larry. Appreciate the time.

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