169: How to Achieve Exponential Growth with the CEO Whisperer Cameron Herold

Hi, I'm Natalie. Jill, Fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. Cameron Herald is known around the world as the CEO Whisperer. He's the mastermind behind hundreds of companies exponential growth. He was an entrepreneur from day one and views his ADHD and bipolar as a gift. At age 21, he had 14 employees. By age 35, he'd help build his first first two $100 million companies. And by the age of 42, Cameron engineered 1-800-got junk. He engineered that spectacular growth from 2 million to 106 million in revenue and at 3,100 employees. And he did that in just six years. His companies landed over 5,200 media placements in the same six years, including coverage on Oprah. Now, not only does Cameron know how to grow business, but delivery from the stage is second to none. The current publisher of Forbes magazine stated Cameron Herold is the best speaker he's ever heard. When Cameron steps off the stage, he doesn't stop teaching. He's the author of the global best selling business book Double Double in its eighth printing and in multiple translations around the world. He's also the author of the top selling books Meeting Suck, Vivid Vision, Miracle Mornings for Entrepreneurs and Free pr. I had so many questions for Cameron. So join in today and learn exactly how Cameron Harrell leveled up and continually creates everything from nothing. Cameron, I am so excited to chat with you today. You've had so many successes. I have so many questions for you and thanks for being here today with me.

Oh, you're welcome. Thanks, Natalie. Looking forward to it.

So I don't even know where to start because you have so many successes, but I'm assuming you weren't just born with a golden spoon in your mouth that you didn't you know you were joking. Before we started the interview, you said, yeah, your dad was an Olympic athlete and your mom was a supermodel. You were joking, obviously, but take us back. Like, who were you as a kid?

Wow. Yeah, I grew up in a very middle class family at times, probably even lower middle class. Not poor, but certainly middle class. My father was an entrepreneur and a bit of a hustler. Kind of entrepreneur. Always trying to find something and sell something, but didn't really make it as an entrepreneur until I was in grade nine, I would say. Prior to that it was just a very normal, average, middle class life. I was groomed, though, to be an entrepreneur. My father was an entrepreneur and both my grandfathers were entrepreneurs. So they raised us to be entrepreneurial. So my childhood was. And I always had that entrepreneurial DNA. I was always finding things and selling them or being given something to go out and sell or creating something and marketing it and just doing lots of those little business ventures. I actually did a TED Talk that's On the main Ted.com website about 10 years ago about raising kids as entrepreneurs.

Oh, wow. Okay, I'm gonna link that.

I talked about probably 16 different little entrepreneurial ventures I had as a child. So I was very entrepreneurial and also very into sports.

Very into sports too. Let me ask you about the entrepreneurial cake because a lot of people listening have kids that are creative. How do you groom someone to be an entrepreneur? I know you have a whole TED Talk on it, but like, what are, what are the things you said you were groomed be an entrepreneur. Like what were some things that your parents or your grandparents were doing that made you decide you're going to monetize these things or actually go out and sell, not just create?

Yeah, well. And when I grew up, it wasn't cool to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship's only been cool for the last 20 years. It really only started to be cool around 1998, 99, the first rise of the dot com era. So when I was being groomed, it was really kind of. We were materialistic and greedy and profit centric. And even people in my family thought it was not cool that I was doing all these entrepreneurial things. So it was very different. So my father, I think probably less wanted us to be entrepreneurs and more wanted us to be entrepreneurial.

Okay.

And I think that's a real distinction because I think 97% of people should never be an entrepreneur. They're not cut for it. They don't have the DNA for it. They don't have the tenacity for it. They don't have the leadership for it. But maybe they can be more entrepreneurial instead of waiting for things to be handed to them. But the things that they did for us were give us the confidence to speak in front of others, give us the confidence to sell and handle rejection. You know, going door to door, running little businesses like newspaper routes and cutting grass for neighbors. And shoveling snow for neighbors and they would encourage us. But they didn't try to make it into some like big venture that the parents were over involved in. And I think nowadays parents are really over involved in their kids little activities. You know, if your kids. Running a lemonade stand, which I did, lots of my parents never walked out the door. They were inside doing all the shit they had to do. They didn't come out and hover around my lemonade. I made my little sign, it looked like shit. I sat at the table, I waved at cars. I'd come in after a half hour going, nobody's stopping. And they would tell me what to do and I'd go back out. But nowadays the parent goes out and waves down their neighbors or phones their neighbors and like the kid's not learning anything. Run your own lemonade stand, mom. Or run your own lemonade stand.

Wow. Yeah, that's a really important decision because you're right. You see a lot like parents think, oh, my kid has to be entrepreneur. But they're doing it for them, doing it for them.

And then they buy this lemonade stand set up and then they market it and it's like your kid hasn't learned a thing and you didn't. So my mom charged me for the sugar and she didn't charge me to rent the table, but she explained what renting a table would be. So if I sold lemonade and made $3, I had to pay her 50 cents for the sugar. And I was always pissed off that it cost so much. And then she explained to me and we'd go to the grocery store and I'd buy my own sugar. It was less than having to pay her. So she taught us that stuff and my dad taught us that stuff. When I went door to door for a newspaper route and would come home crying because I knocked on 30 doors and no one hired me, he would coach me on how to go back and do it again, but he wouldn't go with me, he'd send me back. So I learned from the failure, I learned from the struggle. I learned from the tenacity. I learned from asking for help. I think today we really are over parenting our kids where we're not getting them to ask for help.

We're doing it for yeah. Gosh, that's powerful. I'm thinking on my, I have a 12 year old and I think that something that comes up for parents and it is selfish in a lot of ways, but a lot of moms especially deal with this, with that people pleasing aspect so they want to keep their kid happy. So they're thinking, I'll do it for them, I'll help them. But we're hurting them by doing that.

You're not teaching them a thing. And so what are you going to do when they're 23 years old and they're struggling at work? Are you going to go into their office and talk to their boss about how to treat them nicer?

Some moms do.

It's starting to happen right now. I actually heard from a client the other day. I coach real companies with typically 50 to 500 employees. And one of my CEOs said that one of the parents showed up at work to talk to a manager. I'm like, are you fucking kidding? Like, I would have died if my parents ever told.

Yeah, that's funny. I've heard of that happening. That's funny.

I think I really cut my teeth on. And again, I could give you 15 off the top of my head. Specific things that I did that were entrepreneurial little ventures by the time I was 16 years old.

That's amazing. How did you.

Some were only one day, right? They didn't have to be a three month thing. I didn't have to create a bloody website. Some were just, you know, go door to door, collect coat hangers. Then my mom would drive me to dry cleaners and they would pay me recycling fees.

So that's amazing. And these were all your ideas or did they brainstorm ideas with you?

Most of them were mine, the ones. And funny enough, I think the ones that were mine were the ones that were bigger successes. The ones that were my dad like selling license plate protectors door to door. I didn't want to do it and it was a product of his that he couldn't sell. And I kind of knew that because I was nine. Whereas me going and diving in the ponds at the golf course and collecting all the golf balls from the ponds and washing them all and selling them to golfers was mine. And I was excited and I was keen. So I think when I had my idea and they encouraged me to do it, it was more successful than they giving me the idea.

That makes sense. How did you not get resentful on the money part? I'm thinking through that because some kids would hear, oh, I have to go make money. My parents are asking me to money. Was that a thing that was coming up for you at all or was it driving money or what was the drive?

I got to go buy stuff. So if I wanted cool things, I was also Groomed at a very young age that even though my parents started to have money when I was in high school, I was going to be paying for all my own university. So I paid every cent of university and I graduated with no debt and I bought a house the year after I graduated. But I was groomed to not expect a handout to and they would help me. You know, I started a house painting business when I was in second year university, hired 12 kids to paint houses and my mom handwrote my phone number on 5000 flyers because the flyers got printed without my phone number. So they would help. Yeah, the expectation was I was, I was doing it, you know, they would encourage me, but the expectation was that I was going to be. So even at a young age, if I made, you know, $6 selling comic books, I did comic book arbitrage. Right. By comics from kids. And I'd go to the rich area and I'd sell them. I'd set up a little T and sell them and make two to three times what I was buying. I would then take all that money and I'd go buy candy.

Yeah, it was your money, so they let you do what you wanted with it. How were your grades with all this? Was school important? Did you.

No, it was terrible. I struggled in school. I'm very ADD. I have 17 of the 18 signs of attention deficit disorder. My ex wife said if I was paying attention, I would have scored 18 of the 18. Yep, I'm bipolar, so I'm on the spectrum for bipolar disorder, mania and depression. I struggled in school because it was too slow and there was no point. And I understood there was no point. I understood in grade six why we're studying native Indians or a war that happened 200 years ago when I was excited about business. So I would spend my time reading about mysteries that I could solve or business ideas that I could think about. But going to class and trying to memorize stuff didn't matter to me. I liked math because I realized that it was about money. In my mind, math was all about money. So I, you know, in grade 10 I started investing in the stock market. Grade 10 or grade 10. And I would call my stock broker from a pay phone because we didn't have cell phones. I would phone and I was day trading as a 60.

Wow. Wow.

So I was interested in that. So I got 62% in high school and then I went to the only university that accepted me and I got again a 62% average there.

Did you. How were your parents around your grades like, do they? Do they? And I'm thinking of that too.

Like they wanted me to work harder, but they also understood that school didn't matter. I mean, I think today all these parents that are pushing for A grades, no one's ever looked at your transcript ever. Yeah, no one's looked at yours. No one's looked at mine. No one will look at Jackson Jill's. No one will ever care about your kids transcript. Yeah, but what they'll care about is were you in clubs, were you in societies, were you in sports, were you in organizations? So, you know, in high school I played shit. I was on the tennis team, the golf team, volleyball team, track and field and cross country running. In grade 13. We had grade 13 in our high school in our province, five sports. And I was on the student council, I was on the executive of the student council and I was on the sports council and I was like working.

So I know for parents, a lot of parents do get that the push for straight A's and B's aren't okay. But what about a kid that's like failing out of school? Like, especially when you list these things, the ADD and the bipolar, which I was add. I am ADD as well. And I was a struggling student and I had Ds through school as a kid. How do you reckon? What do you advise? Or what would you say looking back with what you know now, parents that have Those kids getting Ds, I'm not talking about forcing for straight A's, but the D's are failing out of school. What would you say to that?

If your kids have been diagnosed with a learning difference, it's not a disorder, they learn differently. So there's, you know, visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. And the school system doesn't really tailor itself to those types of learners. So kids may need a smaller classroom. Get them out of the school and put them into one. Not necessarily a private school, but move the kids somewhere so that they can get that better education or an education that's more like them, and then also let the kid know that it's about working hard and trying your best. It's not about getting A's, because what happens when you're a D student or a C student like you and I were, is every day we're getting beat up. Every day our insecurities are getting built because of it. Every day we're being told we're stupid and we're not good enough. Whereas intuitively we look around the room, we're like, I know, I'M as smart as those people, but my grades aren't showing it. Yeah, all the kids in high school were buying stuff from me and yet they were the A students. And I was running around going, just made 23 bucks off.

Yeah.

Like so I knew I was smart. And to this day I look back at all those superstar students. I probably make more than all of them combined.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah.

But emotionally it played a role or played a task for me or whatever the word is, because I was beat up every single day. I think it's about giving your kid the confidence that they're okay, that they're not supposed to be great in school. Giving them role models of people that never finished school and giving them other activities to channel themselves to finding out what but get them interested in things.

That makes sense. So when was your first, you started all these little businesses, which was cool. You're already monetizing in grade school, basically. What was your first, like real business? I know by age 21 you had some successes. Was that when it started?

Yeah, 20 years old. I started my house painting company and when I was 20 or 21 years old, I had 12 full time employees.

Wow.

I ran that for three years while I was in university. I think my first summer I made 15 or $16,000 in profit. And that was in 1986. Yeah, made about 30,000 each of the next two summers. And back in the mid-80s, to pay for a university in Canada was easy. So you just paid all that off? But yeah, I was doing operations, marketing, sales, production, time management, hiring, interviewing, selection, firing, everything back when I was in my early 20s.

And did you have a vision at that time like what you wanted to create or what did you know you'd be doing now, what you're doing?

No, no idea. And I don't think anybody knows what. I think we got to take a little bit of the pressure off kids today too, that they're supposed to know what they're doing. There's no way, like none of the parents know what they're doing right now in our 40s and 50s, let alone did we know in our 20s. I think that's way too much pressure to put on kids to say that they need to know what their career is going to be when they're 20 years old. Yeah, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and being an entrepreneur for me wasn't about the money. My dad took me to a golf course when I was about 16 years old and we looked at all the people coming in at 12 o'. Clock. It was a Wednesday and it was a guy who owned the car dealership and a guy owned an accounting company and a guy owned a clothing store and a guy owned a construction company. They were all playing golf. And then we played golf. And like four hours later we're sitting on the balcony and it's five o' clock and I'm eating my fries and gravy and drinking my cherry Coke. My dad's showing me all the people walking in. And this person was a teacher and this one was a doctor and this one was an accountant and this one was a lawyer. And this guy worked at this company. He said, do you know the difference? And I said, yeah, People who run their own company get to golf in the middle of the day. And my dad said, you're right. People who run their own company control their time. And being an entrepreneur is about free time, not about money. So for me, I set up my businesses and my life to give me the time to have to myself versus being all about money. And the money becomes a byproduct.

That's powerful right there. Because it is about time. You're right. And everyone's so focused on money when they want to become an entrepreneur. That's the theme that we hear. Wow. So talk to me about the 1-800-got junk. How did that come about? And because that obviously you created a huge success out of that, how did, did that even come into your life? Did you have a vision for that?

It's funny that you just mentioned 1, 800 Got Junk because when we were on the Oprah show in 2003, she did a large piece on 1, 800, Got Junk. When she finished her episode about us, she said it's about time because we were cleaning up people's life and giving them their free time back. And yeah, we were giving them anyway. So I got involved in wanting Tender Got Junk. My best friend had started the company 10 years before. He was up to about 2 million in sales after 10 years. 11 years. And there were 14 employees at the head office. We had 12 franchises. And I came in to basically teach him how to be a franchisor and how to scale and build a franchise company. And when I left six and a half years later, we were on a 126 million dollar run rate. We had 3100 employees system wide.

Wow.

330 franchisees in four countries and we ranked as the number two company in Canada to work for.

It's incredible. I mean, just to you say it's so nonchalant. Like, it just kind of happened. But it got so amazing to so many people. Did you. How did you figure out, like, how to do that? Like, you obviously had the experience entrepreneurial, but were you always hyper focused on systems? Like, what made you unique at figuring things out that other people, like your friend, might have stayed at the 2 million, maybe 3 million for years?

Yeah. In fact, we were texting each other last night, said I couldn't have done it without you. And I said, you probably would have, but it was more fun being able to do it together. I left the company 13 years ago, so I was hyper focused on three things. And I'll walk you through that. But I also, I see the obvious where it's like, in school, the answers were in the back of the textbook. So why read the whole textbook? Just study the last chapter or talk to the teaching assistant and they'll give you a copy of the exam and study the exam. Like, I saw the cheat sheets, I saw the shortcuts. And in business, everyone overcomplicates it. They're all like flies trying to get out a window where they're going to bang their head on the window and try harder, try harder to get that window. And there's a door just over to the right. Just turn and go out the door. It's open. So for me in business, I saw the shortcuts, I saw the obvious, and I would always work towards those shortcuts and those simple little systems. So the three things that I obsessed about that got our flywheel turning, the first one was that we had to take our business and make it a little bit more than a business, a little bit less than a religion. We had to get into the zone of a cult. And that's where culture comes from. So culture is by design. It's not the massages and free lunch. So I worked really, really hard at turning the company into a cult. And that's why we became the number two company in Canada to work for. It's why we twice ranked number one in BC to work for. It's why we got so much of the press.

How did you figure that out, though? Like, how did that come to you? Because that's like you just saying that is lots of light bulb moments for me. I'm. All of a sudden, I'm just thinking of all types of things.

My R and D stands for rip off and duplicate.

Okay.

I take the best systems that the best companies are doing and I just do that. What drives me crazy about Most people is they read a book, they read a book, they read a book, they read a book, they don't do anything. I mean, if you want to create raving fans, read books about creating raving fans and do what they tell you. So for me, and this is what I coach all these companies on globally now, is creating world class company cultures. I've coached four companies in four different countries that rank number one in their country. I coached the current number two and number 12 to work for in the US on Glassdoor. So culture starts with alignment, with vision. And it's around getting rid of all the assholes and hiring really great culture people. So you work with other A players. Most people think they've got an A level team. At best, you're a B or C team. So it's putting in place the right recruiting and interviewing and selection systems to hire. Then it's around giving people the support on their skills and on their confidence. So really growing, kind of like getting them up two sides of a ladder. The confidence up, skills, confidence up, skills up. So you move them up. So coaching them on that and then giving them really good open communication where you're there to listen, you're there to talk. That's really where culture comes from.

So I'm listening to you and I'm noticing something that you're doing that everybody I've interviewed that's an ADD, or myself included, I see that we do this, but I don't do it to the level that I've created $100 million company. So now I'm really curious here. What you're doing is you're taking something that feels complicated to others and you make it so simple. Like you listed off these bullets, like matter of fact, like, anyone can do this. Anyone can do this. I'm wondering where that confidence level comes from because I would say I take complicated things and simplify them, but I haven't been as successful as you.

Yeah, the confidence comes from, you know, like people. The world is littered with coaches right now. I'm a real coach who. I've coached real companies. So I've coached five or six companies that have had $100 million exits. I coached a monarchy in the Middle East. I coached the CEO and the COO at Sprint. Like I've worked behind the scenes coaching real CEOs of real businesses. Yeah, confidence comes from teaching them stuff and then watching them do it. Like, I could list you company after company. One of my clients, Info Trust, just ranked number one to work for in the United States by Ad Age magazine a week ago. Like I could go through, you know, grasshopper.com icon, tax, media temple. I could give you company after company after company and show you when I started coaching them and then watch the results on culture. So the confidence comes from. I've been doing it for 13 years.

So I believe that. And I also believe that you had a confidence before you even ventured into those because I think most people would talk themselves out of even working with those companies.

Yeah, like 1,800got junk was the fourth company that I built.

Okay.

You know, I hired, I hired Elon Musk's brother Kimball in 1993 to be a franchisee for me at College Pro Painters. That same summer, I hired his cousin Peter Reeve, who was the COO at SolarCity to be a franchisee. So I've been doing. I'd coached 120 entrepreneurs by the time I was 28 years old.

Wow.

When I left College Pro as a franchisee, I then coached 120 of their franchisees for four years. So I had a very, very young age before coaching was even popular. I coached 120 entrepreneurs.

Cameron, did you ever have that, you know, we talk about that voice in your head that telling you you can't or you're not good enough. Did you ever deal with that?

And how even today, even today I deal with that negative self talk and the insecurity of like, well, I'm just a guy and maybe I got lucky and well, there were other people at 1, 800 got junk. There were other people on the team that were, you know, maybe it was just we were on a trend or maybe it was the uprise, like. Yeah, all the time.

What do you do when you have that voice? Like how do you, what do you do? Because so many people listen to that and you're not. So I want to know what's the secret?

It's one of the core things that entrepreneurs have to do is protect their confidence. So a few things. One is to practice gratitude. Second one is to every time I set a goal to praise myself for a goal I just got accomplished. So if I write down three things I want to do today, I cross off three things I just got done yesterday.

Got it.

Set a goal of the next two things I'm going to do this month, I praise myself for two things I got done last month. And another one is to get yourself into mastermind groups and communities where you surround yourself with like minded people to realize you're not the crazy one. We're all crazy.

Yeah.

But the Entrepreneurial journey is tough. Life is tough. So you got to protect your own confidence.

So I hear that when you're in Masterminds, because another thing that could happen with people is they go to comparison mode. So they're hearing what you're saying right now. Like I am surrounding myself, I'm doing these things, but gosh, these people are so much farther ahead of me. Did that ever come up for you? That someone that was better than you or comparison?

Yeah, it comes up. So again, I'm playing at a fairly elite level now where if I go, you know, I go to work War Room or Genius Network or Maverick Mastermind talks Baby Bathwater. I mean, all those groups I just came back from abundance360. The ones that I really feel like, whoa, I am still fucking figuring this out is I go to the Maine TED conference. I've been going to the main ted conference for 10 years. I walk into that room, I'm like, I don't even have any business being here because Bill Gates is in the audience and Steve Johnson is in the audience and Al Gore is in the audience. Like the, the 1800 attendees are the best of the best of the best. That's the one that really hits me on my confidence. The other ones I've slowly over the years started to realize, like I've got some stuff where I can really hang with these people and I can really learn from these people, but I no longer compare against. I'm just working on worrying about me. So as long as I'm growing and I'm getting better and I'm learning and I'm protecting, that's good enough. Because there's always going to be someone who's better than me at something like everything, right? There's going to be a better speaker or a better interview guest or a better coach or a better athlete or a better looking or better hung, whatever. Like somebody's bigger and better at everything.

Yeah, yeah.

But there's also enough stuff that I'm good at that I keep remembering that too.

So you clearly have the confidence and you have the experience to back all of that. Do you do anything? Talk to me a little bit about your own personal development on that. Do you do any things? Do you meditate? Have you done hypnosis? Have you done anything to work on core beliefs to figure this out? Or is this just what you've practiced.

A lot of mine? Yes, I have. Only in the last couple of years have I ever done any real kind of work with Shaman and work with therapists and Work on. On myself that way. And it was because I went through a really rough divorce two and a half years ago. So only because of that that I do a lot of the self work. Where my growth has come from is by truly being vulnerable. And I don't mean like going on Facebook and putting up. Yeah, I'm being vulnerable.

I hate that. I hate that.

It's such bullshit. What I mean is actually being vulnerable where I go and I'm like, I don't know how to do this. Can you help me?

Yeah.

So when I go to a Genius network event and I maybe I've just come off stage speaking at it, but then later in the afternoon, I'm like, by the way, I suck at this and I don't know how to do this. Can anybody help me? And people come over to help and they're like, oh, I'm glad you said that, because I suck at this. It's given me confidence to say I don't know how to do something versus being worried that I didn't know how to do something.

Yeah, that's great.

I used to be really, really insecure going to any small groups, like going to any masterminds or going to a cocktail party. Even like if you invited me, you know, to your home for a dinner with 12 people that I didn't know, I would drive around the block eight times before I came in.

Yeah.

But now that I tell people that and I realize everybody else is too, I'm like, oh, fuck it. I'll just go in the door.

Yeah. It's funny. People assume that people that are successful are total extroverts, but really, they're usually introverts. They're just social or really good at what they do with that. That's what I find. Okay, I want to talk about setbacks and failures. Have you had any?

Yeah, I'll give you one big one that hit me. So this was October of October of 2000. So going back 20 years, I was the second in command at a private currency company, similar to what Bitcoin is doing today. We were doing 10 years ago where we had Starwood Hotels, Avis Rent a car budget using our digital currency instead of the US dollar. We were growing very, very rapid. We'd sold the company about six months before for a lot of money, but the stock market crashed, so the 64 million that we sold for was now worth 3 million. And I was stressed out of my mind. And a guy in the elevator tapped me on the shoulder and said, are you okay? And I Turned around to say yes, and I collapsed and started shaking and crying, like, sobbing. And I was having a bit nervous breakdown and then, you know, picked myself up, went to lunch, had dinner that night, whatever. But a week later, I went to the doctor for a physical. It was because I was buying a house and I needed to get insurance and needed, you know, life insurance or needed medical to get my insurance set up, whatever it was. So the doctor said, how's it going? I'm like, well, you know, a little stressed. I got this metallic taste at the back of my neck, almost like a. I was chewing on tin foil, aluminum foil kind of taste at the back of my neck. And he said, that's weird. He said, what's going on? I said, well, my mom's got cancer and is terminal. She'll probably dying this year. And my wife is pregnant with our first child. We just got married four months ago. The company that we'd sold seven months ago collapsed just after the sale, and the $64 million valuation is now worth 3. So I've pretty much lost what I had made. And I'm going back and forth to Seattle, to Vancouver every week. And I got my first mortgage, just bought a house. My wife's quit her job, and I'm quitting my job to move back to Canada. Other than that, everything's good. And he looked at me, he's like, what do you mean, other than that, everything's good? He gave me this checklist. I had to check off all these items on the list of things that were happening to me. And I think it was like, if you got 50 points, you had a 50% chance of a heart attack. If you got 150 points, you had a 90% chance. I had 435 points. Whoa. I was clinically redlining, and I had something like seven of the top 10 most stressful events happening simultaneously.

Oh, my gosh.

So I thought I was fine, but the metallic taste at the back of my neck was a chemical secretion being caused by stress.

Bad.

And I thought I was okay. So I was written up in the Wall Street Journal that October as someone whose career went really, really fast flamed out with stress. And that's when I decided to kind of start to turn my life around and, you know, get my shit together. So, Karen, cognizant. I started to think about the signs that I was feeling.

When you were in that before you knew, before you went to the doctor for the metallic test and figured this out, were you. What was. I want to know what Your mindset was around that. Like, you said, you had $35 million loss. You had all these things going on. Were you thinking then, like, I failed? Were you thinking, I'm figuring this out, like, what was the mindset there and I want to talk about?

I wasn't even. I was. I went to get just a normal physical. I wasn't even going to get the metallic taste checked out. I was oblivious. I was oblivious to the fact that I was stressed because I would just work harder. I was the fly trying to get out the window.

Were you worried? Did you think, like, was I. Were you worried that you had to figure this out or.

No, I was just worried. I was just working harder. And then drinking at night to kill the pain.

Got it.

You know, we'd go out and have a really nice steak dinner and I'd drink red wine and I finished with Grand Marnier and I'd get up in the morning and do it again. I lived across the street from the office, so I'd walk over. I wasn't drinking coffee all morning because I was tired from drinking wine the night before.

So you're head down trying to figure it out and then numbing out at night to go to sleep and not worry about it.

I was oblivious that there was a problem.

Really? Okay, okay, so. But that's interesting right there. And that was important because I think, I know that's not ideal for your health, but I'm thinking some people, they're so stuck in the problem that that's the failure, they then stop. You were never acknowledging the problem. You were so focused on the vision. So now the question is, how do you do that and not have the health problem happen?

I've become aware to the signals now that my body's sending me. Whether it's my breath is showing me that I'm manic or the speed of my voice is showing me that I'm manic, or if I'm cutting people off in discussion, showing me that I'm manic, or if I get to the end of the day and I haven't eaten, it's showing me that I'm in a period of mania or high stress or taking breaks. So now I've noticed signals. I notice myself. And then what I do is I start putting things into my calendar to break up my day and break up my week and break up my month. So I pre plan vacations. Last year, I took 10 weeks off. I went to Europe for five weeks, and then two months later, I went back to Europe for two weeks. So I take frequent breaks, I take frequent time off. I control my own schedule. I put my kids stuff into my calendar. I put physical activity into the calendar. My assistant book stuff like my guitar lesson or my workouts with a trainer. So I force myself to do the things that aren't natural for me.

Wow. I feel like I need to talk to you for like seven days.

I know. I never work nights. I also never work nights and I never work weekends now.

Okay, so you just shut it down even it doesn't matter what's happening.

Yeah. Because you're never gonna catch up. That's a lie. Whenever people are saying I'm gonna catch up. Bullshit. You're avoiding your wife, you're avoiding your kids, you're avoiding stress, you're avoiding something because you'll never catch up. As soon as you get your list done, you're gonna add to your list.

So true.

You're gonna set more goals. So I really allow myself one night, a quarter to actually catch up and maybe one weekend, a quarter, one weekend day, a quarter to actually catch up on something.

Just to make you feel good about that. You think you've caught up. But like you said, like there might.

Be something, but otherwise it's like bullshit. You're just. You're go work out, go for a bike ride.

Yeah. Enjoy your life. Do you. What about, I'm curious, your thoughts on medication. Like you said, two very serious things. I mean ADHD and bipolar. Did you ever do medication? Are you a fan of it? Not a fan of it.

I did medication for four months for depression and I got off of it soon after because I didn't want to be on it. And I did it. The divorce stuff where it really. I was crying constantly and I was really in a bad place where I needed something to get me back to level. In addition to the yoga and running. I was doing okay. But no, I actually don't believe in it. What I believe in is really eating more nutritiously. I'm actually moving towards being more plant based right now and getting rid of dairy. Just really looking at your health and getting some fitness and hanging out with friends and practicing gratitude and doing a five minute journal and like really practicing self care. Which is tough when you're, you know, a parent too. Right.

Do you see any of this in your kids?

My one son is. Definitely has depression or struggles with some of that. So I'm pushing him now to recognize it and to get exercise. And he's. He also is like with the add. I think both my Kids have a little bit of the add. I would never medicate them because it's a superpower.

Yeah, I agree with that.

It's not a disorder. It allows you to see everything. I'm hyper aware of time and the economy and the market and my customers, the schedule and what's. But I don't get too bogged down in the details that I lose track of what's really important. So I delegate faster.

I agree with you. At one point I was on ADD medicine, and I'll tell you, it took away all my creativity and it had me hyper focusing on the wrong things. All of a sudden I could do spreadsheets, but who cares? It wasn't like big picture.

Right. It's not the right stuff at all.

Yeah, I'm with you. And then what about the bipolar, though? Because I know a lot of clinicians, a lot of people listening, either a kid or themselves are medicated on that. You believe that also can be fixed with or managed with nutrition and exercise?

Well managed. But also recognizing that it's not actually a problem. So the mania is the excitement that people follow.

Okay.

It's the energy, it's the enthusiasm, it's the quick start, it's the idea to execution really quickly. That's. That's very entrepreneurial. That's a need. Like, have you ever found an accountant that inspires you?

Heck no.

Or an engineer who inspires you? Or a teacher? Like, they're all fucking boring and flat. But entrepreneurs have that manic. Yes, manic edge.

The good one. Sale. The good one.

Why people quit their job to follow us. It's why people invest in the company. It's why. It's because of that mania. The stress and depression is simply us course correcting or adrenal burnout where we actually need to give ourselves a break. And if we recognize that the stress and depression is simply us needing to plug our fucking selves in and not up about it. What happens though, is entrepreneurs try to run at mania all the time and then they feel like they're depressed and it's a problem. No, it's like your phone is dead. Plug it in.

Gosh, that's so good. It's so funny because as you're saying that some light bulb moments that, like, if you look at the norm or what people accept as the status quo, the norm is trying to take people that have these gifts and say, oh, that's broken. Let's put you into the norm. But what you're saying makes sense.

Yeah. Only 3% of the population is truly bipolar and only 3% of the population are entrepreneurs. Maybe the correlation is get people that are bipolar and make them run companies and give them the skills to do that. I do that. Tim Ferriss did a blog post about me called the highs and lows of CEOs or the emotional roller coaster. I used the roller coaster of CEOs 10 years ago on this whole concept of bipolar. He and I had been talking at Burning man and I was walking through all this concept and he loved it.

So good. You're making me feel better about myself right now. I'll tell you that right now we're normal.

The school system tells us we're fucked up. Well, you know what? I don't want to be like the teachers. I went Back to my 25th high school reunion and you take all my high school teachers and pull them together and I make more money than all of them.

Yep.

Why did I want to be like them? Because I didn't fit in and I couldn't study and I couldn't memorize stuff like do I still don't care about the War of 1812?

Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.

The only thing I remember is it was in 1812.

Yeah, yeah, I'm completely with you. And as a parent, I get stuck and torn because I have the school system talking about my daughter. You know, I get all that. But I can see how I've thrived for the same reasons that you're saying. And I was not a good student at all. Wow. Okay. So how did you wanting to hudger got junk. You've got all these great successes behind you. What led you to not ultimately wanting to run your own thing, but coach others and help others build?

I do. I run my own company today. I've got a team of employees and I've got outsourced contractors and I've got freelancers that do work. So I run a group called the COO Alliance. I run the only network of its kind in the world for the second in command. It's kind of like a genius network for COOs.

Okay.

You need a minimum of 5 million in revenue for your second in command to join. So I have that organization and then I've got my five books that I've written and I've got my speaking events. So I have a company today. I just don't want to sit in a business and have to go to an office and be around employees constantly. So my team, like one of my team is over in Portugal for three months. One of my other teams in Scottsdale. One of my other ones is up in northern Canada.

So what's interesting about what you just said, I hope people pick this up. It's you do extreme focus on things, but it's not that you had to focus on one thing. Like you can be creative and do manage, work with, be in part of different things and put your attention in those. That's what I'm hearing. Like you have a lot of different interests.

I see how they all fit together. Like, my core purpose is helping entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. So if me helping entrepreneurs make their dreams happen is what I do, the way I do it, how I do that is by writing books. I've written five books that are on Amazon, Audible and itunes. I've got a Second in Command podcast that we only interview COOs that helps entrepreneurial companies. I do speaking events, teaching people how to have the shortcuts to grow their companies. I coach CEOs and their executive teams and I've got the CEO alliance which grows second command. So all of that helps entrepreneurs make their dreams happen.

Yeah, I love it. So good, so good. Talk to me about a little bit about when you had a personal setback. Like you mentioned you had a divorce. It took a lot on you. How did that impact to business, your vision, all of those things being having a personal setback like that, that was.

Probably the hardest time of my life in terms of a real, real setback. I mean, it was hard when my mom died 18 years ago, but I'd say the second divorce that I went through was even worse than anything I've gone through in terms of personal pain and ripping my heart out from someone I was madly in love with. It took a lot of time of me working with a therapist to talk through it. Working with a shaman. I did nine or 10 sessions with a shaman, 52 sessions with a very, very high end marriage counselor.

When you say a shaman, were you doing plant based medicine with it or just shamanic?

Just shamanic healing and talking. I've done plant based medicine as well for years. But no, it wasn't. And I got into yoga. I was doing yoga three days a week. I was running three days a week. I was doing a five minute journal, like a gratitude journal every day.

Did you pause business stuff when you were dealing with this and managing that or was it still working simultaneously?

Kind of. I didn't want to, but I had to. So yes, some stuff just kind of went off onto the side a little bit.

So what happened when. What did you learn from all that experience, like here, you had a huge personal setback. You had to separate work, put your life, actually your personal stuff as a priority. What did you learn from all that?

The big one I learned and I've actually done an exercise now at every single COO alliance event for the last two years. We do five events a year. The big one was that everyone, regardless of the position they're in, is really deeply struggling with something today. They're struggling with something in their health or their relationship or their fitness level or a marriage or kids or finances. But every single person is really, really deeply struggling with something. And it kind of gave me the perspective that I needed to remember that instead of being so hyper focused, always on the goal or driving towards something or something going wrong. Because I think as entrepreneurs we often notice all the things that are going wrong. For me, it was just being cognizant the fact that people were always doing their best, they were trying their best, but sometimes there was some shit going on that was really impacting your ability to think or perform or show up, et cetera.

So good. So good. You said something at the beginning of this interview that I want to circle back to because a lot of people think they want to be an entrepreneur and you said there's a difference between being entrepreneurial and being an entrepreneur. And only 3% really are cut out to be an entrepreneur. Can you just talk a little bit about that and when people should know, like, hey, I should stick in this or I shouldn't stick in this.

Yeah, strangely I actually covered in my TEDx talk as well about these raising entrepreneurial kids was I talk about thing one and thing two that it's kind of. You need two things to be entrepreneur. Okay, need to have the entrepreneurial DNA. We talked about bipolar as the mania of people following you. That energy is something that you need. I think people that are so flat on energy can't be because they can't attract suppliers, can't attract customers, can't attract employees. So you need that kind of mania side of you. Second thing is you need to be a strong leader. You need to build the lead yourself, lead others, lead suppliers, etc. You need to be very tenacious, the drive to overcome and succeed. And you need to be very goal oriented and driving towards goals, having a preference to set goals and crossing them off. You need to be able to think on your feet and problem solve and to notice trends and opportunities and to rip off and duplicate. All of those are entrepreneurial DNA traits that you can't, you can Learn them. But I think in a lot of ways you either have them or you don't.

So that first thing you mentioned, the entrepreneurial DNA, the. I think it sounds like also that could work if you have, like if you're talking about the integrator and a visionary, that could also work if you have a strong integrator that is the strong leader and goal oriented and the problem solver, I'm assuming.

Or do you feel the CEO still has to be able to lead people? They have to be able to attract people, they have to be able, again, lead themselves, lead suppliers. So the entrepreneur needs to have those traits. What they don't need to be good at is planning. You don't need to be good at financials, you can hire for that. You don't need to be good at marketing, you can hire for that. The business skills you can hire for. But the entrepreneurial DNA traits you need. It's why Again, most entrepreneurial CEOs or most entrepreneurs have ADD. It wires us to notice trends, notice opportunities, notice our schedule, notice stuff that needs to be done to see everything that's happening and not get too obsessed with something. Engineers don't have add. Engineers are very focused. They can linear, right? So I think there's a DNA that makes an entrepreneur and then you have the entrepreneurial skills. You know, speaking skills, problem solving skills. Those can all be taught.

So good. So good.

So I think that the key is that parents need to identify or people need to identify. Do I have the DNA to be an entrepreneur? If I do, what are the entrepreneurial skills? I can also learn. But if you don't have entrepreneurial DNA, stop it. Like, you shouldn't be trying.

Yeah, I'm with you. That's good. And it's funny because I can think of a lot of people really pushing to be an entrepreneur, but they don't have any of that in them. And they keep, they're applying it the way they approach math in school. Like, if I just practice it, if I just do more of it, it's no different.

It's exactly the same, by the way, that you either have the, you either have an artistic DNA that you're artistic or you don't. There's kids that were artistic when they were young. That's an artistic DNA. I sucked as an artist. I still suck. I could practice it. I would always suck at it. You could be music, musical. There's kids who are very musical. They're always singing or they understand I, that ain't me. I can't carry to save my life. I can't read music. I can't focus on it. I don't understand that. I never listen to the words when I hear songs. I like it. But I could learn how to play guitar, but I'll never be Eric Clapton. Yeah, right, so. Or there's people that are very analytical that might be good in engineering or math. So I think it's really dangerous to try to take someone who doesn't have the DNA and make them that.

Yeah. So good.

It's just trendy. Unfortunately now being an entrepreneur is trendy.

Yeah. It's the thing. You're right. Because I grew up in the 80s too. I was born in 71, so the same thing. I remember entrepreneurship was weird and now it's like the normal thing.

Especially ever in one book, only in one book prior to 1998 was the Entrepreneur ever considered cool. It was in Atlas Shrugged. Good degree. Or in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Yeah.

Other than that, the entrepreneur was never the hero.

Yeah. So there's a question I typically ask guests, but I'm going to change it for you. I always, I usually ask if you're in your own personal rock bottom, what are the things you would need to do to level up and create everything from nothing? But I want to ask you a different question based on this. If you're in a business, if you're an entrepreneur and you're in a business that's not doing well, like you've been doing this for five years, 10 years, it is not doing well, what would you tell that person?

I tell them to come up with a vivid vision of what your business looks and feels like in three years. Okay, so a real description of your entire company three years out. Describe every aspect of it. What it looks like, what it acts like, what it feels. Describe marketing, describe operations, describe sales, describe what your customer is saying. Really come up with a four page written description of your company three years from now. Surround yourself by some really smart, trusted people to come up with a plan to make that come true. And then really ask those people to tell you the God awful truth of if there's a real business there, if you feel there is looking at that plan, then you'll be able to make that happen. But sometimes that entrepreneurial DNA has to kick in that even if seven people are telling you no, if you can see the vision and you get the plan, you'll be able to execute it. Yeah, sometimes it's just that. But you need to see the plan to make your own vision come True.

So good. So good. And I can tell you from the conversations I've had, many have not done this. So that is gold advice.

Or they have a vision in their mind, but it's never been articulated in a way that others can fact check it with you or help you with it.

That's amazing. You know, it's funny, Karen, coming from the space of fat loss and nutrition and all that, I would say it's the same thing with that. Like people that are struggling to change their health or their body, they have to have that vision of what that three year plan looks like as well. I feel like it's the same with all things.

Well, the first part is the three year vision of what you look like in three years. So what's your health look like? What's your fitness level look like? What's your diet look like? And then it's how the fuck do I make that happen? I know where I am today. How do I reverse engineer that? Other smart people can help you put that plan in place where you're going, but if they don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

Totally. Oh, so good. Camera. Where can people find you? Obviously you've got books. People can find your books anywhere. And then how can people work with you, get in touch with you, learn from you?

Yeah, definitely. Check out the COO alliance if you're running a company of 5 million or greater. And then they should take a look and subscribe to the Second in Command podcast because we only interview the second in commands of amazing companies.

Okay.

And then all the information and all my books are on Amazon.

Amazing.

And CameronHerald.com would be my main website.

And if you're not making $5 million a year, you can learn from your books. Is that where you would tell people to start?

Yeah. For now just absorb all the content that's in the books. And I really give it all away in there too. So I've written so good. I co authored the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs with Hal Elrod. I wrote Double Double Meetings Suck Vivid Vision. And then my newest one is called Free Prime.

I'm getting all those books today. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks so much. Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review, I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable and come interact with me over on Instagram @nataliejillfit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.