Only 3% Of People SHOULD Be Entrepreneurs (Are YOU one of them?) w/ Cameron Herold

Summary

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Episode Overview

In this episode of the Action Academy podcast, host Brian Luebben invites renowned entrepreneurial coach and former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, Cameron Herold, to discuss a provocative idea: “Only 3% of people should be entrepreneurs.” Their candid, humorous, and wisdom-packed conversation explores what sets real entrepreneurs apart from “wantrepreneurs,” the essential DNA and skills required for leadership, how to handle the emotional rollercoaster of running a business, and why enjoying the journey matters more than money or grind.

If you’re wrestling with your corporate role, pondering entrepreneurship, or simply seeking a fresh perspective on business and life, this episode delivers hard-won truths, practical frameworks, and memorable moments to help you find clarity and—most of all—permission to play.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Who Should (and Should Not) Be an Entrepreneur?

• Only a small minority are true entrepreneurs
  • “97% of people should never be an entrepreneur. They don’t understand the risks and they don’t necessarily have the skills to do it or they think it’s going to happen too quickly.”
    — Cameron Herold [00:00]
• Being entrepreneurial vs. being an entrepreneur
  • Many can have entrepreneurial traits, but launching and growing a business, hiring people, taking on debt and risk, and sometimes not paying yourself is a calling for a very specific type of person, not just for those who want flexibility or money.
    [01:49]
• The myth of overnight success
  • Cameron and Brian discuss that it takes a long time and a “roller coaster” journey before you see the fruits or get to the proverbial “overnight success.”
    • “They forget or they don’t even understand. It takes a long time to get to the night before you become the overnight success…”
      — Cameron Herold [01:49]

The Entrepreneur’s DNA: Traits & Skills

• Must-have traits:
  • Sales ability: “If you’re not good at sales, you’ll never be good as an entrepreneur.” [03:05]
  • Leadership: Early leadership behavior often reveals future entrepreneurs
    • “Most entrepreneurs were leading people when they were kids... that’s leadership.” [03:44]
• Skills can be learned or hired:
  • Financial, planning, priority management, AI, marketing, etc. are not innate and can be learned or delegated.
    [04:40]
  • “You can hire the skills, but you can’t hire the traits.” — Cameron Herold [04:40]
• Nature vs. nurture
  • Essential entrepreneurial traits are often hardwired; cultivation helps, but DNA plays a huge role.
    [05:00]

Leadership: Art, Science, & Frameworks

• Supporting vs. commanding
  • True leadership flips the org chart: leaders support those “above” them (customers/fronlines), not command from the top.
  • “Leadership is not telling people what to do. It’s showing them where you’re going. It’s inspiring them with your future... and then your job is to support them.” — Cameron Herold [06:11]
• Situational leadership (4-point system):
  • Leaders gauge each person’s skill and commitment for every task and adapt management style accordingly:
    • 0 points: Delegate elsewhere
    • 1 point: Micromanage step-by-step
    • 2 points: Show the plan and explain why
    • 3 points: Coach, develop, and cheer on
    • 4 points: Complete independence
      [06:11–09:37]
• Passive income myth
  • Real “passivity” comes from people, process, and profits, not just investments.
    • “Your ability to be passive isn’t in correlation to how well you can invest. It’s in how well you can lead the team.” — Brian Luebben [11:08]

Education, Childhood, and Developing Leaders

• Traditional schooling often suppresses entrepreneurial traits
  • “Schools are trying to breed us to become workers, not to become entrepreneurial.” — Cameron Herold [16:26]
  • Public education system can emotionally wound nonconforming or ADHD kids, labeling innate difference as “problems.” [16:26–21:01]
  • Both speakers advocate for alternative schooling (Montessori, international, homeschooling, or AI-based schools).
• Focus on developing and recognizing children’s unique talents, not forcing everyone into the same mold.

Systems over People & Accountability

• Blame systems, not people
  • “People don’t fail. Systems fail.” — Cameron Herold, quoting Michael Gerber [21:01]
  • When something goes wrong, look for systemic issues before blaming or firing individuals.
• Extreme Ownership mantra:
  • “If you point your finger at somebody and say Kelly didn’t do a good job, there’s three fingers pointing back at you.” — Cameron Herold [22:23]
  • Ownership applies at work and in personal life.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Entrepreneurship

• The “season of suck” is normal—and cyclical
  • Cameron introduces the rollercoaster metaphor:
    1. Uninformed optimism – Excitement, naive energy
    2. Informed pessimism – Worry as reality sets in
    3. Crisis of meaning/Valley of despair – Feeling stuck, hopeless
    4. Hopeful realization – “I think I can”
    5. Informed optimism – Confidence/competency returns
       [24:59–29:12]
  • “The rollercoaster never ends for entrepreneurs. When you get on a rollercoaster at the theme park, you go around once and get off. When you’re an entrepreneur, it’s a never-ending rollercoaster.” — Cameron Herold [33:02]
• Don’t try to work through crisis—unplug!
  • “No one is ever going to praise you for working hard and no one will actually criticize you for taking a break.” — Cameron Herold [34:03]
  • Take real breaks—your team needs a rested leader.

Reframing Problems, Celebrating Wins

• Problems never go away; level up your relationship with them
  • “Entrepreneurship is problems. You should want to chase the problems. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.” — Brian Luebben [49:49]
  • Visual/mental exercises: Lower the emotional charge of the problem; remember it’s not a tiger about to eat you [51:12]
  • “If you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t know what the one big problem facing your business is this week, you’re the problem.” — Elon Musk, quoted by Cameron [53:02]
• Celebrate wins as much as you set goals.
  • “Every time you set three new goals for your business, find three goals that you just accomplished and celebrate those.” — Cameron Herold [56:37]

Longevity & Enjoying the Journey

• Pace yourself for the long run:
  • “We should enjoy the journey... the finish line is we die.” — Cameron Herold [41:52]
  • Delegate early, grow people, set boundaries on work time.
• Life is for living, not mere achievement
  • “No one’s going to praise you for working hard. No one’s going to criticize you for taking a break.” [41:08]
  • “Entrepreneurs who say that business is their hobby are really fucking boring.” [40:00]
  • Leading by example: Creating a life story that includes hobbies and passions beyond business. [63:02]
• Practical hacks:
  • Weekly prioritizing: Make a list of needed projects, delegate 80%, limit yourself to your zone of genius. [44:51]
  • Develop and train your leaders continuously.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Enjoy the journey, man." — Cameron Herold [00:27, 62:32]
• “You need to have the traits and the skills, and you can hire the skills but you can’t hire the traits.” — Cameron Herold [04:40]
• “Leadership is not telling people what to do. It’s showing them where you’re going... your job is to support them, remove obstacles, to grow them.” — Cameron Herold [06:11]
• “If you point your finger at somebody... there’s three fingers pointing back at you.” — Cameron Herold [22:23]
• “People don’t fail. Systems fail.” — Michael Gerber, cited by Cameron Herold [21:01]
• “The finish line is we die.” — Cameron Herold [41:52]
• “Entrepreneurs who say that business is my hobby are really fucking boring.” — Cameron Herold [40:00]
• “No one is ever going to praise you for working hard and no one will actually criticize you for taking a break.” — Cameron Herold [34:03]
• "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, everyone will believe they're stupid." — Albert Einstein, referenced by Brian [19:15]
• “Every time you set three new goals… find three goals you just accomplished and celebrate those.” — Cameron Herold [56:37]
• Rule Number Six: "Don’t take yourself so fucking seriously. There aren’t any other rules." — Cameron Herold [54:03]
• “If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, water your own grass.” — Cameron Herold [23:38]
• “Delegate everything except genius.” — Cameron Herold [42:31]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00] - Only 3% should be entrepreneurs: The DNA and myth of entrepreneurship
• [03:05–04:40] - The non-negotiable traits and learnable skills for entrepreneurial success
• [06:11–12:13] - Situational leadership and the inverted org chart
• [16:26–21:01] - The failure of traditional education for entrepreneurial kids; alternatives
• [22:23–23:38] - Systems vs. people; Extreme ownership in business and life
• [24:59–33:02] - Entrepreneur’s Emotional Rollercoaster (uninformed optimism, crisis, hopeful realization)
• [34:03–36:24] - The right way to cope: prioritize rest, unplugging, and self-compassion
• [41:08–42:31] - “The finish line is we die”; why doing less can yield more
• [44:51] - Weekly prioritization & delegation hack
• [53:02–54:03] - Problem-solving frameworks; “Rule #6: Don’t take yourself so seriously”
• [56:37] - Celebrating wins with the same fervor as setting goals
• [58:21–62:42] - Final advice for sustainable entrepreneurship and living fully

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Takeaways for Aspiring (or Current) Entrepreneurs

• Not everyone is meant for entrepreneurship—and that’s okay. Examine your motivations, your skills, and your deep-seated traits before leaping.
• Sales and leadership are the critical DNA. Skills and knowledge can be acquired, but hunger for leading and selling must be innate or deliberately cultivated.
• Study leadership as much as you study marketing and sales. Adopt situational frameworks, delegate, and truly support your team.
• Your emotional health is inseparable from business health. Seasons of “suck” happen; take breaks, celebrate, and never be ashamed to recharge.
• Process and people create true freedom—not passive-labeled investments or automation hype.
• Enjoy your life now. Don’t put happiness on layaway until your exit, millions, or retirement.
• Don’t take yourself so fking seriously. Remember Rule #6!

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If you’re on the entrepreneurial path, this episode will challenge your assumptions, offer real tools for the journey, and—maybe most importantly—give you permission to play.

Transcript

[Cameron Herold]

97% of people should never be an entrepreneur. They don't understand the risks and they don't necessarily have the skills to do it or they think it's going to happen too quickly.

[Harold]

So now that you say all of that, is leadership, more of an art or a science?

[Cameron Herold]

It's a bit of both. You need to be really good at sales. If you're not good at sales, you'll never be good as an entrepreneur. I remember when Jillian Boxer came up to me in 2007 and she said, cameron, you're fucking boring. And I went, what? She goes, all you talk about is work. So I learned to then have hobbies and festivals and bucket lists and travel and the stuff I'm doing to have fun as I'm building that business. The reason you're staying in shape is to be able to enjoy the body that you've got to play and have fun along the journey. If you're just living longer in a healthy body, to work harder to buy stuff that you don't need to impress people you don't like. Enjoy the journey, man.

[Harold]

Cameron, Harold, welcome back. Round two, round three. What round is this at this point?

[Cameron Herold]

I don't know, man, but it's good to see you again.

[Harold]

Good to see you again as well, my friend. So for people that are tuning in, watching, listening for the first time, why should they stick around and listen to you about entrepreneurship for the next hour and a half?

[Cameron Herold]

Well, I've been doing it my entire life, 40 years. I'm not going to talk from hyperbole or from theory. I'm just going to give you my gut wrenchingly honest lessons of how to navigate the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, what really works, what doesn't work. And it'll work for anybody, any size company as well.

[Harold]

You and I spoke last time on this podcast and this topic generated millions of views across platforms. And so I want to bring it up again and go a little bit more in depth about who should actually be an entrepreneur. What are the traits, what are the qualities where you know that you're going to crush it as an entrepreneur versus somebody else that's watching this that maybe wants to be an entrepreneur. They're a wantrepreneur, but they would actually be best suited for just working a job.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, to start 97% of people should never be an entrepreneur. They could be entrepreneurial. But to go out and actually hire people, build a business, take on risk, take on debt, maybe not pay yourself so you can hire other people takes a very Very different type of individual. And I think entrepreneurship has gotten too trendy where too many people want to go out and build an entrepreneur, but they don't understand the roller coaster. They don't understand the risks and they don't necessarily have the skills to do it or they think it's going to happen too quickly. Right. They forget or they don't even understand. It takes a long time to get to the night before you become the overnight success of living on the beach. And here I am with my view and doing all the work. Right. You got to grind that stuff out. In fact, you sent me a photo of you this morning where here I am with my great view, doing my email. But it's taken you years to get to the point that you're sitting with that great view, cranking out the emails. Do you know what I mean?

[Harold]

And the irony is that we give advice to those in level one, day one of entrepreneurship when we're on day thousand or three thousand or ten thousand and we forget. And we forget.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. Like the advice that I should really give an entrepreneur. Yeah. Is the stuff that I was doing 19ish years ago, but I ran my first real company 40 years ago. I had 12 full time employees when I was 20. Well, there's a math number for you. I just turned 60 a few months ago. So let me talk about who should be or what are the skills. If you have these core skills, you'll know you should be an entrepreneur. You need to be really good at sales because you're selling yourself, you're selling others, you're selling your bankers and investing, you're selling people on quitting your job and coming to work for you. You're selling your employees and working harder and working smarter and working longer and getting more done. You're constantly in sales mode and you're selling prospects on buying from you. Right? So if you're not good at sales, you'll never be good as an entrepreneur. Second thing is you have to be good at leading people because you have to lead yourself, you have to lead others, you have to grow them, you have to get results through people. So you have to have good leadership traits. And most entrepreneurs were leading people when they were kids. They were the kid in class who was acting out and getting other people to be distracted and follow them. That's leadership. They were the kid that were rallying the groups of kids together to play baseball. They were the kid that was selling to other kids in class. That was leadership. They were the top cub or top scout or they were on student council. They that's leadership. If you have those DNA traits and you were doing them at a young age, it's probably a good prediction that you're going to be strong as a entrepreneur later. The others are skills that you can learn, but those are traits that you probably have deeply wired within you. You can learn to be better at sales, but you're either hardwired to be a salesperson or you're not. Does that make sense?

[Harold]

That does make sense.

[Cameron Herold]

And then you can learn financial skills, right? You can learn planning skills, you can learn priority management skills, you can learn AI skills, you can learn marketing skills. Those aren't traits. So you need to have the traits and the skills and you can hire the skills, but you can't hire the traits.

[Harold]

It's a little bit of nature versus nurture, Correct?

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah.

[Harold]

Yeah. So when you take a macro concept like leadership, because there's, I think, more business books on leadership and more YouTube videos, and Simon Sinek somewhere is just jacking off to the idea of it.

[Cameron Herold]

Simon was on our board of advisors five years before he wrote his book Start with why.

[Harold]

So it's this concept that everyone talks about, but very few can articulate, articulate and define it. Right? So it's like, what are the micro skills that make up the macro trade of leadership? Because I came into business and when I started as an entrepreneur, I came in as an individual contributor from corporate America. So I was in a sales role. So I was like, I eat what I kill. I don't want to work with other people or manage other people. God for forbid, I'm a sales manager because then my income's dependent on somebody else and their success. And so a lot of people that are individual contributors, especially in sales, they are good at sales. But when you give them a team to run and to hire, inspire, motivate, and train, they're like, dude, I don't want to. I don't want to do that. And it took me a long time to build those skill sets, those micro skill sets of leading a team today and having tough conversations and also driving revenue through others. So what are the micro skill sets that make up, like, the macro concept of leadership?

[Cameron Herold]

I'm going to say it's less of the micro skills and it's where you start with leadership. So the way you start with leadership is your job is to help that person grow in their career, right? Help their job get easier, help them get more results. Because at the end of the day, you're almost flipping the org chart upside down, the leader is below supporting the person, giving them the confidence, the skills and the connections. Leadership is not telling people what to do. It's showing them where you're going. It's inspiring them with your future, your vivid vision, your core purpose, your bhag. So you're inspiring and then your job is to support them, remove obstacles, to grow them. So when I was coaching people that were working for me, that was leadership. When I was using situational leadership, that was leadership. When I was running one on one meetings, that's leadership. I'm classroom teaching, that's leadership. But I'm always showing people how. I'm not telling them what to do, I'm helping them out in their career. So I would try to say how much money do you want to make this year or what's your goal inside of the organization or would you like to move up in the organization? I try to find some little spark or twinkle in their eye and then I show them that I can help them get to that goal and that's leadership. I can help them have a better life. So they're not spending 70 hours a week trying to work on getting 40 hours worth of work done. I can give them shortcuts, I can show them how to optimize and that's kind of leadership. The micro skill is probably looking at every project that's on a person's plate and identifying what's their skill related to that project. Do they have no skill, some skill or high skill? And then what's their commitment to that specific project at that time? If they're overwhelmed, their commitment could be very low. So do they have no commitment? Are they not into working on it? Do they have some commitment? Are they kind of into it or do they have high commitment? They're like they're really excited about working on that project. If you identify their skill and commitment on every individual project, then you understand how to apply your leadership skill to help them on that one. So what I do is I sign a point value 01 or 2 for skill, 01 or 2 for commitment. And then I add up the points. If somebody's project, like let's say I was coaching you on building a franchise company which you've never done. You're a very strong business person, really strong marketing, really strong community, but you've never done franchising. So you have no skill on. On franchising makes sense. So you have zero points on skill. Now let's say that you wanted to franchise your business so your commitment is pretty darn High. But you're a little bit kind of varying on your commitment because you're overwhelmed. You got a lot of other projects, you're not quite sure it's going to work. So I'm going to give you one point for commitment. Make sense? I add up your points. Zero plus one, you have a total of one. If you have a total of zero points, I'm going to give it to somebody else. I'm not even going to coach you. I'm just going to take it off your plate. I'll get someone else on your team to execute the franchise program. If you have one point, I'm going to micromanage you. I'm going to give you the step by step exactly what to do without even explaining it, because it's what you need at that time. If you have a total of two points, I'm going to show you the plan and I'm going to explain why we do it that way. I'm going to ask what you think. If I have a total of three points, I'm going to get you to come up with the plan and I'll coach you and develop you and cheer you on along the way. If you have a total of 4 points, I'll just let you run with it and I won't even cheer you on. So understanding situational leadership is a very tactical and strategic thing that leaders need to be good at.

[Harold]

That is huge.

[Cameron Herold]

There's a lot there.

[Harold]

Yeah, there's a lot there. But I mean, that was an excellent framework.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, I tried to simplify. That's. That's probably like years. That's years of my work around what a concept called situational leadership that I tried to net it out to an entrepreneurial system.

[Harold]

Yeah. We. We run, can't do, won't do or obstacle on the way. Okay, so it's. One would be what you're talking about is the skill level. So can't do. Like, are you actually physically or mentally capable of doing this task today? Won't do. Is. Is it an urgency issue or is it a lack of, like, you just won't do it, which is an organizational issue.

[Cameron Herold]

It could be time. I'm just so overwhelmed that I won't do it.

[Harold]

And that could be obstacle in the way, which is I have nine other projects that I'm working on. I've got these different priorities or I just don't have the bandwidth, or actually I need something from you or another team member to be able to knock this out.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah.

[Harold]

And so I think it's Actually funny, when we're sharing all these leadership frameworks for somebody that's listening to us right now, that's in corporate America, the buzzword over the last 15 years has been passive income. And the irony is that people think the passive income comes from investment. And I used to think that too, because that's what we were sold through. Real estate investing is you buy asset, asset yields income. You. You hang out on a beach somewhere in Hawaii, right? But now, as more seasoned, I realize that the passivity comes from processes, profits, and people. So it's how do you generate active cash flow? And it's your leadership ability and it's your ability to manage others that actually yields more passivity for you. Y and so nobody talked about that.

[Cameron Herold]

And that's what grows your company.

[Harold]

Nobody talked about that before. Was I like. There was just this connect for me where I was like, oh, my ability to be passive here isn't in correlation to how well I can invest. It's in how well I can lead the team so that people are doing stuff. So even for real estate, it's like you have to have a really good property manager for you to be able to have passivity on that property.

[Cameron Herold]

And that's why I flipped every org chart upside down. So if I draw an org chart for a company, I have the CEO at the bottom supporting the leadership team who are supporting the managers, who are supporting the frontline staff who are supporting the customers. It's like an inverted pyramid. And if everyone can see the vivid vision of where we're going, and you build the company inside your core purpose and your core values, you succeed. But when a leader is showing up, managing people, holding them accountable, I was asked in 2003 by Fortune magazine, how do you hold your employees accountable? I said, I don't. I hire accountable people. I show them where we're going. And then my job is remove their obstacles, give them the skills, give them the confidence, coach them problem solve, cheer them on whatever they need situationally.

[Harold]

Right?

[Cameron Herold]

When my youngest son is now 22, and when he was 2 years old and was pouring orange juice, I micromanaged him, right? I showed him exactly how to do it step by step. I didn't even explain him. I watched him very carefully pour it. And then when he started getting better at pouring his own orange juice, I would cheer him on a little bit. Good job. You're doing great. Well, great. Building his confidence up. Now, my same child today, when he's pouring orange juice, do I lead him the same way? Hell no. I Don't micromanage him on pouring orange juice.

[Harold]

Pour the hell out of the orange juice. Now.

[Cameron Herold]

He's doing a good job pouring orange juice. Now. If I cheered him on, on pouring orange juice, he'd be like, dude, what the fuck? Or like, you've really lost it, right? So I don't even cheer him on. I've moved into an S4 leadership style where, because I would be almost patronizing to cheer him on, right? So your style changes with the same person and as their skill and their confidence or their skill and their commitment changes. So one of the biggest strengths of a leader is to understand how to lead, right? Understanding situational leadership, understanding coaching, understanding that you are that more kind of supportive leader. And a lot of entrepreneurs never study this stuff. They study marketing, they study paid traffic, they study sales. But the art of leadership and the science of leadership, you have it in you. And you can really work on those skills too. One of the best books ever written on leadership still to this day, was written 50 years ago. It's called the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard. Ken Blanchard wrote the One Minute manager combined with Dr. Paul Hersey, who created what is known as situational leadership used by all the top companies on the planet. And AI can't replace that. That's a soft skill that as humans, we need to be good at.

[Harold]

So now that you say all of that, is leadership more of an art or a science?

[Cameron Herold]

It's a bit of both. You have the DNA trait. It's an energy you show up with. It's a drive you show up with. I think some of it's some of the mania of bipolar that many entrepreneurs have. Do you know that only 3% of the population is clinically bipolar? And only 3% of the population are entrepreneurs? There's actually a direct correlation checks out. Most entrepreneurs are attention deficit disorder, which is not a disorder. We just can't be teachers and engineers and doctors.

[Harold]

No.

[Cameron Herold]

ADD allows us to see everything, which is a superpower for an entrepreneur. Right? So the checkout is there. The DNA of a leader is. We were kids leading others. I was the disruptive kid in class. If you look at all my report cards, he's disrupting the class.

[Harold]

Restless.

[Cameron Herold]

He's restless. He's talking. That's leadership. But because the teacher wanted to be the leader, I was disrupting them. They didn't say, oh, my gosh, that kid is a leader. Let's put him into a leadership role. When I got into a leadership role was like, I was the student council Rep in grade nine, I was on a student council executive. In grade 11, I was on the board of our student council. In grade 13, I did a university student council role. I was president of my fraternity. So all of these leadership roles were very present as a kid. Right. That's DNA. But then you can start studying how to be a better leader, how to do a one on one coaching session, how to apply situational leadership, how to be a more authentic leader, how to be a more vulnerable leader. Those are things you study.

[Harold]

I want to take a quick pivot and go down this rabbit hole quickly because this is something I ran into and now that I have a long time girlfriend who eventually I think will be the mother of my kids.

[Cameron Herold]

Congrats.

[Harold]

Fingers crossed. Yeah, it's like we're thinking about a lot of things and we're having conversations about like what? How do we want to raise our kids in the future? And like, do we want to put them through a Montessori system? Sure as hell not putting them through the public education system. So can you talk a little bit about your experience with the public education system in particular? We'll, we'll make it, we'll go down this rabbit hole and then we'll come back out of it. But from the context of you are very entrepreneurial and you want to put your kids in a, in a system that doesn't, isn't designed to kind of tamper it out. And I feel like the US education system is literally physically designed to remove any entrepreneurship from any child and just conform them into a box. So I'm curious about, as a parent that is an entrepreneur, how do you think about that when you're raising your kids?

[Cameron Herold]

I'll talk about a couple points on this. A fun story is in 1993 I hired Kimbal Musk, Elon's younger brother, out of university. He worked for me at college propainters. So did his cousin, Peter Reeb. I hired peter, who built SolarCity. Kimball in that summer when I was coaching him, said to me that he was in third year at Queen's University in Canada. He said that his business school professor said, well, we're grooming you, the class to be middle managers of corporations. And Kimball said, I almost puked when I heard that. He said, I didn't want to be a middle manager in a corporation. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now, thankfully, entrepreneurship's become a lot more cool, but for the most part, yeah, schools are trying to breed us to become workers, not to become entrepreneurial. Where I was abused by the school System. Now, I wasn't physically abused. I felt like I was emotionally abused by the school system. And let me explain. My grades were c minuses. My GPA was a 2.6 GPA. So every time a teacher walked around the class and said, dave, C minus. Kelly, A. David, A, Cameron, C minus, I felt hurt. I tried my best, but I was never getting more than a C minus, more than a 62, 64. And then I was told on my universe or on my. My high school report cards, on my grade school report cards. Cameron needs to try harder. Cameron needs to focus more. If Cameron would just apply himself, he would do better. Cameron was distracted. Cameron was bored in class. Cameron didn't like the teacher because they were idiots. Cameron was. Was already running a business and was being told to stop doing that. So I felt like I was emotionally abused and I was told that I was bad at school. Bad at School. For 18 years, you take a kid from the time they're in kindergarten until the end of university and tell them they're stupid or not trying hard enough or that with all the effort they're putting in, they're not getting more than 65%. That has an emotional toll on people. I wouldn't put your kid in that class. Yeah, I would put them into a class that says there's no grades. Everybody gets A's. Try your best and study what you want to study. I was obsessed with ski racing. If they'd said, study the history of ski racing, study the science of ski racing, study the math related to ski racing, study the marketing of ski racing, I would have loved to have learned more about ski racing and I would have learned while I was in school. So, yeah, I think the Montessori school, I think the international schools, I think homeschooling. I think there's like an AI school right now that's actually being run out of Boston. I would plug your kids into that kind of an environment, but I certainly wouldn't put your kids into the traditional system these days. Especially these days.

[Harold]

Oh, yeah, I love the Albert Einstein quote where it's, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, everyone will believe they're stupid. And so I think everyone does have an inherent genius in them. And then the tragedy is being convinced that your genius is actually a weakness for the most first 18, most formative years of your life. And that was my story as well. I was always the one that was adhd. I got punished. I remember in second grade, I always wanted to be first. I wanted to be the first one to finish. And I remember I wrote the. I wrote every single essay, did every single test. I wanted to be first. And then the teacher reprimanded me for always trying to turn it in fast. And then she thought I was cheating even though I was getting the answers correct. And then so she one time told me, no, you have to redo it. And she crumpled up and threw it away. And that was something that impacted you.

[Cameron Herold]

And it hurts you as a child.

[Harold]

Yeah. And so you're just like, what the hell? Like. And then you feel so different. You feel so alienated. But then it's. In reality, it's the differences that are what actually make you the business owner and make you the success later on. And so I thought it was. I thought it was a worthwhile rabbit hole to go down. But let's.

[Cameron Herold]

I also think it's really. I. I want to give credit to teachers. It's impossible to be a teacher.

[Harold]

Oh, absolutely.

[Cameron Herold]

There is no way that a really good human who really wants to grow kids and teach kids can help 30 kids.

[Harold]

Same thing as teachers and nurses. A teacher gets into education to teach and to inspire and a system that's broken. And same thing with nursing is they get into help and to heal, and then both of them are lost in politics and corporation. So it's just all admin. It's all politics. And you've got one nurse taking care of a hundred patients. You got one teacher.

[Cameron Herold]

I don't think the intent of the system was to hurt me, but the system did hurt me.

[Harold]

Absolutely. It was a failure of the processes and of the. Of the big, big education.

[Cameron Herold]

There's a lesson in that too, by the way. It was a failure of the process, not the people. When we were scaling 1-800-got junk. The company that I'm. Well, one of the companies I'm very well known for having built, we used to say, people don't fail. Systems fail. It was a quote we learned from Michael Gerber, who wrote the Emyth Revisited. So when someone dropped the ball or when someone made a mistake or when something didn't go well, we never blamed the person. We said what system was broken or what system was missing. My mentor called me up one time. He was being groomed as the COO at Starbucks, and the CEO at Starbucks had called him one day and said, why is the letter B on this sign in Seattle not working? Greg said, I don't care. Howard was like, what do you mean you don't care? He goes, that's not the right Question Howard goes, what's the right question? Greg said, the question we have to ask is what system was missing or what system was broken? Or what system should we put in place to ensure that every letter on all of our signs at all of our locations are always working right? Don't blame the person for something going wrong in your company. The other thing I've been doing a lot of recently is I'll say, if you point your finger at somebody and say, like, kelly didn't do a good job, there's three fingers pointing back at you. Right. How did you not coach Kelly? How did you not develop Kelly? What did you miss in the interviewing and hiring process with Kelly? But don't blame Kelly because there's three fingers pointing back at you.

[Harold]

Cameron. That was fucking good. Good leadership.

[Cameron Herold]

There's good leadership in that, right?

[Harold]

That's good. I'm going to steal that one and use that forever.

[Cameron Herold]

It's so easy. One of my bigger pet peeves is when an entrepreneur will be like, oh, yeah, Brad just quit. And I'm so glad he's gone. I'm like, you hired him.

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

You were happy to hire him.

[Harold]

You trained him, you onboarded him, you set the vision, you set the standards.

[Cameron Herold]

So what did you miss? Why are you so happy to get rid of him now there's three fingers pointing back at you? Is huge introspective growth there. When we were building College Pro Painters, one of the things that they looked for in a good franchisee was the ability to blame yourself first instead of an external environment. So when we were hiring franchisees, when I was hiring Kimball Musk, I looked for his ability to blame himself. Right. It's so easy to say, it's the market, it's the customer, it's the supplier, it's my employee, it's the economy. Okay, well, what are you doing wrong in that environment? Because in every one of those situations, someone is crushing it. Blame yourself first.

[Harold]

I think that's not just an absolutely banger quote for business, but for life also. It's when you're pointing the finger in your marriage, when you're pointing the finger in. In your health, when you're pointing the finger in any single aspect of your life, there's three fingers pointing back at you.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. You've heard the saying, if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, water your own grass.

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

That's pointing the fingers back at you. By the way, a good marriage quote that I've heard. You know how people always say, happy wife, happy Life, Happy spouse, happy house. Both spouses have to be happy in the marriage. If the guy is always trying to make the woman happy, we're missing. She has to be trying to make him happy. And both of us have to make ourselves happy. Right. You really have to show up full as yourself, not always trying to do it for your spouse. Our job is to put our own mask on first. Same in a company.

[Harold]

I love that. Happy spouse, happy house. Dude, you're just on it today. We're just gonna go down rabbit holes after rabbit hol. Review everybody like and subscribe to the video, man. So let's. Let's take that from. We just talked about it all. Like, who should be an entrepreneur, who shouldn't be an entrepreneur. We talked about raising entrepreneurial children. We talked about happy spouse, happy house, how to have a good relationship as an entrepreneur. Let's talk about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and a little bit about regulation. I want to. I want to start this side of the conversation as. With a little bit of context. I'm going through a season of suck right now. And so it's just. As an entrepreneur, it's like, things are really good, and then all of a sudden, the next day, it's just like, what the hell is happening? And you're. And when it rains, it pours.

[Cameron Herold]

Okay? And you just said something really good there, which I'm glad you said. Sometimes the next day, sometimes the season of suck is a month. Sometimes it's three months. Sometimes it's a year. Sometimes it's a day. Sometimes the season of suck is an hour. What's really weird about the entrepreneurial rollercoaster is there's minutes of the day and hours of the day and sometimes of the week where we think we're gonna take over the world, and then something can trip us and we can fall back down. So let me walk you through the roller coaster of entrepreneurship. And I was trained in this in 1989 at college pro Painters when I was running a franchise. Okay. So I was 24 years old, actually, so I was trained earlier than that. But I was training franchisees in 89 on the concept. You know, when you're going up a physical roller coaster and you're. You're getting to the top before the first drop, what's it feel like? What are the. What are all the feelings going that you're going through going towards the top?

[Harold]

I mean, you're. You're heightened, your adrenaline's pumping, you're feeling good, like, you've got that endorphin rush, ready to go. Anticipation.

[Cameron Herold]

It's exciting anticipation. And it's uninformed optimism, right? I'm excited. I'm gonna fucking take this. I can't wait. And then you get to the top and you just go over the top and you look down and what do you say? Fuck. Oh, shit, right? Everybody's like, oh, shit. Fuck. What the hell? You see it coming. It's the informed pessimism, right? It's that holy shit moment. And then you start screaming down to the bottom of the roller coaster, and you're getting right towards the bottom, and you're pretty sure that this is the first time in history that your roller coaster is going to go straight through the bottom and you're going to die. That's the crisis of meaning. But then all of a sudden, you come out through the bottom of the roller coaster. Oh, my God, I survived. And then all of a sudden, the chain kind of clicks in and it's like, that's the hopeful realization or the informed optimism. Okay, so let me explain each of these stages. In the business world, the uninformed optimism is when you hire your first employee or you hire your next employee, or you put money down on a big ad spend or you commit to running a big event. That's the excitement, the energy, the mania. We need to be at that stage, but it's often dangerous. And then something changes. Oh, it wasn't that easy. Oh, there's a lot of work to hit that goal. Oh, I didn't realize it was going to take a long time to get to the night before. I'm the overnight success story, right? The uninformed or becomes the informed pessimism. You get a little bit nervous, a little bit scary, a little bit cis. That's kind of where you are right now. When you go down to the bottom, when you're frozen, when you can't do much, when you're literally in that crisis of meaning state.

[Harold]

Valley of despair.

[Cameron Herold]

The valley of despair, which is normal as an entrepreneur. Those are like the Tuesdays where we're at home with our duvet over our head, where we don't get out of bed, where we stay in bed longer, we don't shave, we're drinking a little bit more. We're not reaching out to friends, we're not getting a lot of work done. It's that par. And we can't tell anybody. We're certainly not on social media talking about it, because that would hurt our company and our employees and our brand and our customers. So we live in this fear. And it's embarrassing to tell our spouse, and it's embarrassing to even tell our friends, because yesterday we were telling them, we're going to take over the world. That valley of despair, that crisis of meaning, is a hard fucking stage. I'll talk about how to get through it, and then you do come out through the bottom of that. What is dangerous for many entrepreneurs is they come out the bottom and they think, oh, I'm good. No, it's like the little engine that could, where you're like, I think I can. I think I can. You got to get to the point that you know you're okay, not that you think you're okay. We often, because we're entrepreneurial, tend to come through that valley of despair, that crisis of meaning, and okay, now we're okay. No, you're not okay yet. You're still fucking there. It's just feeling a little bit better. Does that make sense? So when you're at uninformed optimism, when you're at that exciting, fun, great energy stage, is that a good stage or a bad stage to be at in business?

[Harold]

I think there's a degree of both.

[Cameron Herold]

Bingo.

[Harold]

Because I feel like if you need to have a dose of ignorance in entrepreneurship in the beginning, because if you knew how difficult it was, nobody would do it.

[Cameron Herold]

Correct. Nobody would join you. Right. So sometimes that mania and that energy is when you're going to hire somebody to come and work for you or you're going to talk to the media, you're going to start things. That. That uninformed optimism is why we say, yeah, let's do it. Right.

[Harold]

Well, my favorite quote is, pessimists get to be right. Optimists get to be rich.

[Cameron Herold]

Okay?

[Harold]

So a pessimist is always going to be right. Like, congrats, you're correct. It went down. It didn't work.

[Cameron Herold]

But optimists are why we get started. It's why most people don't have the DNA to be an entrepreneur, is they're not willing to just try and fail. And by the way, most perfectionists in school, most of the A students, struggle with being an entrepreneur because they have no experience with failure. When you fail on every class and every test that you've ever gotten, or when you get C minuses, you're okay with failure. I'm going to try hard. I'm going to try hard. Oh, fuck, I failed again. But when you try hard, try hard and get an A plus. Try hard, try hard and get an A plus in entrepreneurship, that's not the way a world works. So people tend to shut down. It's why most entrepreneurs are the C and B minus students. So uninformed optimism is both good and bad. The good is, it is the energy. It is the perpetual motion machine. It is why people will join you. It is why the media will write about you. It is why you'll start stuff. The danger is that you can make the million dollar super bowl ad or you can hire people you can't afford or you overextend, you overreach, you take on debt. You know what I mean? You plow into something instead of going, I should have dollar cost averaged in. That's the mania of the uninformed optimist. Shut up.

[Harold]

Bitcoin.

[Cameron Herold]

Well, I've been, I've been dollar cost averaging on bitcoins.

[Harold]

I'll put a million dollars into it.

[Cameron Herold]

I have more than that in, I have more than that in as well. But I've been buying a thousand dollars a week since 2017. Yeah. So there's, there's a way to. Anyway, the, when you go around to the informed pessimist, the. Oh shit, is that a good stage or a bad stage? It's both.

[Harold]

It's. It's both. And right now. Yeah. I'd say January for us with was definitely informed pessimist. And to something to what you're saying is this isn't even just a Mac. Also applies in like different skills and different like micro buckets.

[Cameron Herold]

Yep, exactly.

[Harold]

So like paid ad.

[Cameron Herold]

There's little mini curves, there's little mini roller coasters on the big roller coaster.

[Harold]

Correct. And so that was us with trying to run paid ads and figure out paid ads. And now January was a forward pessimism. Now we're value despair.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah.

[Harold]

And. But we know what's coming because we've been through the cycle.

[Cameron Herold]

But in the big macro you're probably more at the hopeful realization side. Right. So, so, so it's understanding that you're going to ride the roller coaster and these mini roller coasters. It's important. But here's what happens at the informed pessimism stage. When you're a little bit nervous, a little bit scared, you see all the information, you're a little bit more cautious. That is a good stage. That's your budgeting, that's your planning cycles. That's when you're actually doing the proper hiring.

[Harold]

That's when you protect your margin.

[Cameron Herold]

Protecting your margin. Right. That's a smart stage to be at. Now you don't want to talk to the media when you're at informed pessimism. How's it going? Well, I'm a little nervous. You don't fucking say that to the media. You want to talk to the media when you're manic. You want to talk to the media when you're crushing the world. Right? So you need to protect your confidence and do the. You don't want to go and have a sales team meeting when you're pessimist, because they can feel that. So our job as the entrepreneur is to show up with different energy for different roles in our organization. When you're manic and uninformed optimist, you don't want to be buying ad campaigns, you don't want to be making buying decisions. You need to caution yourself down and say, okay, I love this idea. Let me check in tomorrow.

[Harold]

Right?

[Cameron Herold]

You need to wait now. When you're down at crisis of meaning, there's nothing good about that stage. That is actually a bad stage. It's a hard stage, but it is just a stage. Right? You will get through that. The roller coaster of entrepreneurship goes forever. When you get on a roller coaster at the theme park, you go around once you get off. When you're an entrepreneur, it's a never ending rollercoaster.

[Harold]

Correct.

[Cameron Herold]

So recognize you're at the crisis of meaning. If you're at the bottom and you're in the valley of despair, what should you do there?

[Harold]

Keep going.

[Cameron Herold]

No, don't keep going. You need to unplug a little bit at that point.

[Harold]

Okay?

[Cameron Herold]

You need a break.

[Harold]

Don't say that to me.

[Cameron Herold]

Not forever. You need to go to the gym, you need to go to a cold plunge, you need to go for a sauna. You need to go hang out with friends. You need to go dance. You need to go hop on a lime scooter. You need to decompress and get yourself away from your computer and your phone and your laptop as a racehorse. You can't keep going. You need to go and hang out in the stable once in a while so that you can come back and race again. No one is ever going to praise you for working hard and no one will actually criticize you for taking a break. They need us to take our breaks. Our employees need us to take our breaks. The reality is you're not doing much when you're at crisis of meeting anyway. You're just completely unproductive. So working hard when you're at that point is pointless because you can't fucking do much.

[Harold]

This is huge.

[Cameron Herold]

There was a stage where Brian and I were on the verge of bankruptcy with 1-800-got junk. We were a small company, about 6 million in revenue. We were both terrified. We had no cash coming in the door. I lied to our cfo and he goes, is everything okay? Everything's fine. And then I pulled Brian. I'm like, we need to sell the next two guys that come in, regardless of if they can do it or not. We need the cash. Brian and I were incapable for that week of doing much. You know what we did? We went to the storage closet, we put on some music and we cleaned the storage closet. The CEO and coo, because we were unable to. It didn't even really need to be done, but we just couldn't even remove ourselves. But sometimes the better thing to do is get the fuck out of the office and go for a walk on the beach.

[Harold]

Which is funny because when things are great, it's like you feel okay to do that. And when things are bad, I have that Alex Hormozi kind of angel and devil on the shoulder that's telling me you need to do a violent amount of effort to get out of this.

[Cameron Herold]

No, you need to take a break. You need. You know what Alex Hermosi needs to do more than anything right now?

[Harold]

Take a break.

[Cameron Herold]

Alex needs to go to a music festival and do some MDMA and chill the fuck out a little bit and just relax. Really? He really. He needs to have some kids. He needs to have a little bit of.

[Harold]

You heard it here first, Hormozi.

[Cameron Herold]

It's true.

[Harold]

I mean, we saw it on. Tony Robbins told him the same thing because that interview. Yeah, he did an interview with him and Tony Robbins kind of broke the Internet because of how polar opposite they are. No, Tony said, dude, go have some kids, Alex.

[Cameron Herold]

Alex and Layla came to one of my events. I was hosting an event about building a world class company culture. Ten years ago, Layla Hermozi was on my podcast, I think episode number 16 or 17 on the second in command. Their COO was a member of the CO alliance nine years ago. I like Alex. He's great. He's very, very smart. But he's too intense and he's too. Business is not a hobby. Business is what you do to make money. Hobbies are hobbies, right? He needs to skip a couple arm workouts. He needs to take his nose drips off, and he needs to just go breathe and chill and relax because at the end of the day, we're going to die and none of this shit matters. So telling an entrepreneur who's in the Crisis of meaning or that depths of despair. To work harder is completely the exact wrong advice. You need to love yourself. You need to give yourself a break. You need to breathe, and you need to go home and just take a break. It's okay. You're gonna get through this.

[Harold]

Can I share a story that reinforces this quickly?

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah.

[Harold]

So this is a story about how I made $1.3 million from a YouTube video. Seriously. Based off of the principles that you're teaching. So again, entrepreneurship becomes easier the longer that you're in the game. Just because you can recognize patterns correct. And you can start to recognize when you're in the midst of this suck, you're like, okay, well, on the other side of this, it's gonna be okay. It's upward momentum, and it's gonna be okay. And. And so it was November, and we do 40 to 50% of our revenue in the year through Black Friday in December, because that's when everybody wants to invest in themselves. And so every single year, we spend, like an entire quarter creating what our Black Friday offer is going to be. And it was one week, two weeks before Black Friday. We had no offer. We had what we thought was an offer, but we didn't have one. And so I'm riding in the cards, me and my girlfriend riding to South Texas for. To meet her family for the first time. Five hours in the car. Just nothing on the side of the road. And as we're driving, I'm on the phone with my team, and we've got an all hands on deck meeting about creating this Black Friday offer. And everybody's just basically like, low energy, like, this isn't it. This is not this. And the sales guys are like, we can't. No, this is going to sell. I'm like, shit. Like, what are we even doing here, guys? I hang up the phone, I'm stressed, I'm pissed, I'm fuming. And I big, big Tony Robbins guy. And so what he talks about is the power of state. So that's what you're describing, is when you're in that type of state, that valley of despair, you're not going to come up with the breakthrough idea, the breakthrough strategy. You need to change your state. And so for me, in that moment, I was like, babe, we got to pull over to the side of the road. We pull over the side of the road, I get in the passenger seat, she starts driving. I put on some Tony Robbins videos. I watch these YouTube videos, and I just close my eyes, and I'm doing the meditations it's so hokey bullshit. But it works. And I was just like, there's only. Because if you think about it logically, there's only two different ways that you can make a decision that's going to change your business. You can make it in a stressed out, pissed off, sleep deprived cortisol state.

[Cameron Herold]

Not good.

[Harold]

Or you can make it in what's called a beautiful state where you're optimistic, flowing, confident, like, I can do this. And so I changed my state and within 10 minutes I call my growth director, Steph, and she's on the phone crying. She's like, you should fire me. I shouldn't even be here. I'm useless. Why are we even doing this? I can't help you. I don't know what I'm doing. And I was like, hold on a sec. Cause I'm feeling the same way. What is an offer that we can make that's so good that it'd be irresistible that people would feel stupid for saying no? And then we just started going through it. I was like, what if we extend membership for it was a one year program. What if we do two years? What if we do three years? What if it's a lifetime program?

[Cameron Herold]

And because you're in flow, you made a great.

[Harold]

And because we're in flow, we made the call. That was a Friday. That Sunday, we launched the offer internally to our community of annual members. Lifetime offer. That next week we launched it to the public and we made $1.3 million in 10 days.

[Cameron Herold]

That's why. This is a phone. You have a phone? I do have a phone.

[Harold]

I do have a phone. Cameron.

[Cameron Herold]

Do you plug it in at night? I do. To recharge it?

[Harold]

I do.

[Cameron Herold]

Do you feel guilty when you plug your phone in at night?

[Harold]

I don't. Point proven.

[Cameron Herold]

Right. Why? Why as entrepreneurs, do we feel guilty for recharging ourselves? You can't work harder when you're running on a depleted battery. You get to a point of these diminishing returns. So wisdom happens. An entrepreneur who's 30 can outskill me in a gazillion ways with AI. I got it, I admit it. Wisdom that comes with time is from having been through this battle so many times, right? You can't battle your way through that valley of death. You need to just unplug, recharge, take a break, have a cry, go to yoga, go to a hot, you know, hot sauna, take a breath, go to a fucking, you know, movie by yourself. Whatever you need to do. Unplug. You're never Going to get it all done anyway. Your to do list will be there tomorrow. You're going to add more, you'll grow more, you'll buy another company. Like, you're never going to catch up. Entrepreneurs who say that business is my hobby are really fucking boring. That was me in 2007. I had no hobbies. I had nothing other than building the companies I was building. Now what I recognize is I can be way more successful. And look at Richard Branson as a good example of this. Elon Musk goes and parties and does stuff. He's running 12 companies, but he has hobbies. He plays video games. He's one of the best in the world at one of the video games he plays. Don't confuse the fact that people think he's working constantly. Not at all. He has lots of other things he's involved in and engaged in learning. So I would say be those. Look at Zuckerberg. He does Muay Toy and, like, kickboxing and.

[Harold]

Yeah, he's got. He's got all these hobbies. He's becoming the. He's trying to become more like us humans.

[Cameron Herold]

Correct.

[Harold]

He's trying to fit in and become.

[Cameron Herold]

Less of a cyborg. But it's so. So no one is going to praise you for working hard. No one's going to criticize you for taking a break.

[Harold]

I agree with that, comma. And I'm curious, what is the finish line there? Because I can see how somebody can be there, throw their hands up and just kind of say, all right, I'm gonna go take this advice and I'm gonna go. Just relax for a little bit. And then all of a sudden, time goes by and they never really flip it back on.

[Cameron Herold]

No. Okay, well, that's a hypothetical. That's two different questions. One was, where's the finish line? The finish line is we die.

[Harold]

True.

[Cameron Herold]

That's the real finish line.

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

Right. And I think we have to remember that and not lose sight of that. We are all on this one journey for this one journey, and we should enjoy the journey.

[Harold]

One of my favorite maxims is, you're either gonna figure it out or you're gonna die.

[Cameron Herold]

Well, we're gonna die for sure, so.

[Harold]

We'Ll figure it out.

[Cameron Herold]

But we are all gonna die, too. The death rate is still 100%. So that is the finish line. I think on this journey, most people will like. You can't stay in the depths of despair. Remember, I didn't say lie in bed all day. I said go for a hot sauna, go for a Cold plunge, go for a yoga, go for a workout, go to the gym, go to the beach, go for a walk, get on a lime scooter.

[Harold]

And all this revolves around changing your physical state.

[Cameron Herold]

Right. State shift. It's also okay to lie in bed. Not all day. Right. But you need to find other things. You need to close your laptop down at 5:30 and people are like, I can't. I have work to do. No, you have work that needs to be done. Your job is to delegate everything except genius and then grow the skills and the confidence and the connections of your people so they can do the work for you.

[Harold]

I want to, I want to punctuate the work. I want to punctuate that quickly. The ultimate entrepreneurship hack, to your point, like the unlock here, is shifting from a frame of I have more work to do to there's more work that needs to be done.

[Cameron Herold]

Correct. No one who's watching or listening right now has their name on the to do list that they have. It just says to do list. It says reminders like your name isn't on that list. So all of the things on that list need to be done. Yep. Not by you. So here's a great tool or a hack that people can use every Sunday night. Make a list of all the core projects and tasks that you want to get done this week or that need to get done this this week. Okay. Make a list of them all. Then categorize them into A's and B's. What are the big things that you really need to do? What are all the other things you need to do? Take all the A's and number them. A1, A2, A3, into which order you want to get them done in. If you only got six of the eight, what six do you have to get done right away? Do the same with the B's. And then put a number of minutes or hours on each task or project. 15 minute increments, okay, 15, 30, 45, 15 hour, whatever. And then add up the number of hours of all of your projects and tasks, you're going to have more than you have in your week to do them anyway. When you think about all your meetings and other stuff you have to do so you can't work more. But if you have 60 hours worth of projects before you start working on project one, I want you to delegate 80% of those hours to other people. Take a look at all the projects. Say this needs to be done. Who can I delegate it to? And if you don't have someone, pick someone anyway and spend your time growing their skills and confidence and connections so they can do it so that you'll be able to delegate more to them. Next week and next week and next week. Leave yourself with 20% of your number of hours that you're allocated and put those into your calendar. If you have time in your calendar to do that project work, you're okay. You do that every week. Game on.

[Harold]

I fricking love that. I mean, it's again, it's designing your business around your life, not your life around your business.

[Cameron Herold]

Priority management, not time management. We only have the same number of hours. We only have the same amount of time, but it's how do we balance and manage our priorities to get the right stuff done, to work on the critical few things versus the important many. And then our job is to grow people so that they can get results. Our job is to get results through others. When I ran my first company, a house painting business, I did millions of dollars of house painting. I don't like painting. I'm terrible at painting houses. I don't like heights. I'm terrible at scared of climbing ladders. I've probably painted a total of maybe 15 hours in my entire life where I've had a brush or a roller in my hand. But I've done millions of dollars of house painting from hiring others and building a business that could actually execute that. You don't have to do the work.

[Harold]

I freaking love that. I want to go back to. You shared an example of kind of the hero's journey here or like the entrepreneur's journey of going from.

[Cameron Herold]

Oh, let me talk about how to get through that crisis of meaning.

[Harold]

Oh, yeah, no, you don't need to do about that. I mean, everyone's just going to go take a vacation.

[Cameron Herold]

No, there's other things too. Join a couple of mastermind communities. Everyone who's in an entrepreneur should be in 2:1 for your industry. So let's say that you're running a home services business where you do work on people's property doing construction or renovations. Or join Breakthrough Academy, a great group, hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs that are all running home services businesses. And join another mastermind community of other entrepreneurs that are in all different industries because you're going to get ideas. Having sex. Right. You don't want to just be in an industry event because you're getting the kind of echo chamber and filter bubbles. But both will be very helpful. That's one. Get a coach, get a mentor, whether it's paid, whether it's unpaid, get advice from others. Right. Have a pastor or a priest or a spiritual advisor or a shaman who can work with you in some unlocks. Have a network of friends that you can actually open up and be vulnerable with and go, you know what fucking sucks today? I'm struggling today. I'm really scared today. Have a network of those people and then make sure that you also have some kind of a way to communicate with your spouse or your partner because they're almost like in a backpack, strapped to your back, riding this roller coaster. And they didn't know that this was coming. If they're not an entrepreneur, this is freaky for them. So you have to say, by the way, I know I'm scared and depressed today, not suicidal. I know I'm going to be okay tomorrow. And by the way, tomorrow, when I think that I'm going to take over the world and knock the COVID off the ball, I haven't really completely lost my mind. It's just a roller coaster. Teach them the roller coaster. Those systems, those resources will help you get through that crisis of meaning.

[Harold]

Speaking of which, that actually makes for an excellent transition into kind of the macro concept of problems. Because I'd say that my biggest unlock as an entrepreneur this year is how I view problems. And so how this began was to your point of the relationship. So I have my girlfriend now. And then what you do is you go create these business goals or for anybody that's listening, you have all these goals that you make and, and then you stress yourself out going towards these goals. You're like, we gotta hit this goal, we gotta hit this goal, we gotta hit this goal. And this is mountain peak that you pulled outta your ass, quite frankly.

[Cameron Herold]

Exactly.

[Harold]

All of these are just.

[Cameron Herold]

It's why are. It's why your to do list will never get done. Cause you'll keep growing.

[Harold]

Correct. And so the fallacy of making it to the mountaintop is once you get to the mountaintop, all you see is larger mountains down an infinite range. And so my girlfriend pointed this out to me, like very intelligently so. And she said, hey, you're really stressed about getting to a million dollars a month right now. And when you do that, you are going to stress about getting to $5 million a month. And when you do that, you're going to stress about getting to $10 million.

[Cameron Herold]

Learn to DE. Stress and chase the goals.

[Harold]

So why don't we just change the approach and change the climb so that we can enjoy this journey more together? And I was like, it's more often.

[Cameron Herold]

Because people don't have the wisdom to do that, or the coach or the mentor or the network of people that can challenge them and call them on their shit. Most people don't get the girlfriend like that who says that to them, and.

[Harold]

That'S why I'm gonna wife her up.

[Cameron Herold]

Or the entrepreneurs don't say, oh, that's interesting. Let me think about that. We get a little bit more narcissistic and defend ourselves and we try to explain it instead of going, oh, that's interesting. If you look at the best athletes in the world, have you ever watched like Khashoggi, like the marathoner running the two hour marathon? They don't look like they're trying that hard. Like he runs a two hour marathon, which is fucking mind blowing. And he really, like he's running and he's running at a fast pace, but he's not grunting. He doesn't look like the Olympic weightlifter who looks like he's going to explode when he lifts the weights. He seems like he's in flow. The mechanics of being in flow. Entrepreneurs need to learn how to be in flow. Richard Branson is in flow. Steve Jobs was in flow. Elon Musk is in flow. Because they focus on the critical few things versus the important many. They know that they'll keep working and keep getting. They don't take themselves so seriously. They laugh and enjoy the journey. Entrepreneurs have to learn that stuff. One of the entrepreneurs keep growing.

[Harold]

Yeah, I'm curious about this because once she told me that, then I realized I need to change my relationship with how I'm doing this. And so that I realized was when I got into entrepreneurship, I thought, if I make enough money, I'm not going to have any more problems. And that is the giant fallacy, because entrepreneurship is problems. Like you actually want to chase large problems because the larger problem you solve, the more capital that you collect from that as profit and as income. And so one of my favorite entrepreneurs right now is Brad Jacobs. Do you know Brad?

[Cameron Herold]

No.

[Harold]

So he wrote the book how to Make a Few Billion Dollars. He was the CEO and founder of YPO Logistics, United Rentals, like waste management. And so his whole moniker is he's built like seven or eight billion dollars companies from scratch. And so he had this conversation where he was talking about how he thinks if you're an entrepreneur or not is how, how you view problems. And he's like, you should want to chase the problems because you solving the problems is what actually builds the business. And he goes, so you need to change your relationship with Them, instead of being stressed by them, be excited by them, because everyone that presents themself is an opportunity for you to become better. And so he had this exercise, and the question that I'm going to put to the tail of this is, do you have any exercises like this where he says, okay, when I'm dealing with a problem, he's like, I sit and I visualize it, and I see that problem, I see that bottleneck, I see that constraint, and I visualize it red hot, white hot in my mind.

[Cameron Herold]

And.

[Harold]

And I'm so pissed, I'm so angry at it. And I put a scale of 1 to 10 to it. I'm like, how pissed am I? And he goes, I'm an eight out of ten. He goes, okay, great. Now relax your fists. Calm. Like, relax your body. Make it a four. Now it's like, just make it a four out of ten. And then he's just like that. Just that mental framework and that reframe. You're like, oh, I can just choose to be less pissed about this and you're going to solve it faster. So I'm curious, do you have any tools in your tool belt that you can add to that for people?

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, a couple things. Um, you said entrepreneurs need to kind of reframe the how we're going to do this. There's something else that entrepreneurs have to remember as well as the why we're doing this. Don't lose sight of why you're building this business.

[Harold]

I. From time to time. Because you get removed from it and here and so. Sorry to interrupt, but it's just like when you're going in, when you're building the business, you get to see all the good, the bad and the ugly, but emphasis on the good. You get to see the transformations. But when you're kind of as a CEO.

[Cameron Herold]

Speak from the eye.

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

When I'm building the business, when I'm doing. Instead of when you. Or when you're. I want you to learn a skill.

[Harold]

Shouldn't it be we.

[Cameron Herold]

No, it should be I. No, I want you to learn the skill of speaking from your experience about what you're feeling and what you're harnessing. So when you're giving that example right now, if you were saying when I'm going through this, when I'm. It har. It makes the lesson sink in more. It's a system that I learned in the entrepreneurs organization and in ypo. It's called Speaking from the Eye. Okay, I can talk to you later over lunch about it. It's really powerful.

[Harold]

So when I'm. When I'm going through that, it's like I have to remind myself that everything is going to be okay and, like, we're going to make it through it.

[Cameron Herold]

You know, I'm going to make it through it.

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

Doesn't that feel different than when you're talking from, like, the theoretical. When you're going.

[Harold]

It does feel different.

[Cameron Herold]

It's a really powerful system that if we teach our employees to do that, to speak from the eye, it also softens things. So the second part of your question was, is there a way that I kind of work with problems to kind of similar to what Brad does? Elon Musk said something recently, about six months ago. He said that if you're an entrepreneur and you don't know what the one big problem facing your business is, this week, you're the problem. I was like, wow, that's interesting. So our job as the entrepreneur is to find the problem, but it's also not to make it into something that's so big. It's just. That's our challenge this week. As Tom Peters, who wrote In Search of Excellence, said, it's about becoming a monomaniac with a mission. Your mission this week is to figure out that problem, but treat it like a chess problem or treat it like a.

[Harold]

Instead of something. A tiger. That's going to kill you.

[Cameron Herold]

Correct.

[Harold]

Which is how it feels right now.

[Cameron Herold]

Because it's not going to kill you. And even if it does, we're all going to die anyway. So it didn't fucking matter because you'll be dead.

[Harold]

You went out in a cool way. Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And you're dead. So it didn't really matter. Once you're dead, all that stuff is gone anyway. So just release and surrender. So I'll tell you a funny story. That's a really good lesson. Around 1996, Ronald Reagan was meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. I think it was 96. Mikhail Gorbachev was the CEO or the President of the Soviet Union. Reagan was the President of the United States. I might be off. Maybe it was 86. And they were trying to solve all the world's problems. And they were working on solving all the world's problems. And they were listening to each other over headsets in translation because one was speaking English, the other was speaking Russian. And this guy came running into the meeting, screaming and ranting and raving. And Gorbachev said, remember rule number six? And the man stopped. You could see his shoulders drop. And he kind of laughed and he smiled and he walked out of the room. It happened three times. Somebody coming in, pissed off. Remember rule number six? Shoulders drop. He kind of laughed and he walked out of the room. So Reagan at the end of the meeting is like, I need to know what rule number six is. I mean, we've just solved all the world's problems, but what's rule number six? And Gorbachev said, started laughing, he goes, rule number six is, don't take yourself so fucking seriously. And Reagan laughed and he goes, all right, what are the first five rules? Gorbachev said, there aren't any. And I think when we look at all these big problems facing our big businesses right now, it's just not that big of a problem. There's a. How many billion people would trade anything to have our life? Right now we're running our own business. We don't have to report to somebody. We're not in school, studying for an exam. We've got nice clothes. You're driving a Mercedes. We chose all this. It's better than working for somebody else. Just breathe all the things and remember that none of this matters. Do you know that there's more planets in the universe than grains of sand on Earth?

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

Think about how many grains of sands there are just in a sand trap or on a beach. Like, this is such a tiny little thing in the speck of all this stuff that we're forgetting that it's like.

[Harold]

The telescope versus the microscope. Sometimes you have to zoom out a little bit and just remind yourself when you're getting a little too in your own ego. And what I was thinking, I lost the thought earlier and I just brought back the train, which is when you first are beginning. When I am first beginning my business, I'm involved with all of the losses and the wins. But now that I'm managing a team and I'm more of a CEO seat of like an eight figure organization, I don't see any of the wins and all I get are the problems. Well, and that's why you have to remind yourself of the why and remind.

[Cameron Herold]

Yourself of the wins. So here's a good system or a hack for you to use as an entrepreneur now where you are going forward. Every time you set three new goals for your business, find three goals that you just accomplished and celebrate those. Every time you find two things that have to be fixed, find two things that you accomplish that you can celebrate. Every time you criticize somebody for something going wrong, find two things to say thank you for. How often do you tell your girlfriend that you love her once a month, once a quarter.

[Harold]

She's Latina. She would kill me multiple times a day.

[Cameron Herold]

Multiple times a day.

[Harold]

And if I don't, she'll ask me, hey, do you still love me?

[Cameron Herold]

Multiple times a day you tell your girlfriend that you love her. Now, do you have a fight with her? Of course, every once in a while we have a fight. But because you've told her you love her and show her you love her so many times, you filled up the jar. So the fight doesn't diminish. We have to do that as entrepreneurs. We're good at finding the problems, we're good at setting goals, we're good at driving towards the horizon. We have to look in the rearview mirror and celebrate how far we've come. So put a system in place to do that for yourself. Force yourself to celebrate all the success, all the stuff that's going well, and keep fixing the stuff you're working on.

[Harold]

So include the last closing bit here. We have shared a lot of survival tools that people could put in their tool belt to make it an entrepreneurship. You've survived over 40 years and thrived in entrepreneurship for over 40 years longer than most entrepreneurs. Because a lot of people will go, go in burnout, kind of die in their entrepreneurial journey.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah.

[Harold]

So in closing, what are some of the. The pieces of advice that you can give to somebody that's at the starting line right now, where you can give them to where they can be the 40 year, 50 year, 60 year entrepreneur and not the person that fizzles out and dies.

[Cameron Herold]

So the reason I became an entrepreneur was so that I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, where I wanted. It was so I didn't have to report to somebody else. It wasn't to make money. I've made a lot of money because I've been an entrepreneur, but I didn't do it for the money. When I'm focusing on that, I realize that every day is I'm already there, right. I'm already successful. The money becomes a bonus. The money becomes something else to drive. So that's number one. Number two is don't take yourself so effing seriously. I remember when Gillian Boxer came up to me in 2007 and she said, cameron, you're fucking boring. And I went, what? And she goes, all you talk about is work. So I learned to then have hobbies and festivals and bucket lists and travel and the stuff I'm doing to have fun as I'm building that business would be number two. I launched an online training Program called Invest in youn Leaders. And that's the 12 core leadership skills that I've always used to grow people. I would focus on growing them. Put your into something like the invest in your leaders training. Grow their skills, grow their confidence, grow their connections so you can get results through others would be a big one. Just always be growing people. Another one is delegate faster. I was too much of that radical self reliant that I can do this, I can do this. Maybe trying to get some praise, maybe because I didn't slow down enough to delegate. But when I learned to force myself to delegate more and delegate faster and then grow people, everything got easier and it allowed me to then work on the stuff I was really good at, my unique ability. So I stayed in flow more. And I guess the last one is that remember you're never going to get all this done. So stop working nights to catch up, stop working weekends to catch up. You're not going to catch up. As soon as you get your list done, you're going to buy a bigger company, set more goals anyway. So you're just creating bad habits for yourself. Give yourself 40, 45 hours a week to work, work monomaniacally in that time that you've given yourself and have hobbies and fun and passions and stuff to do outside of work and do those things but like close your laptop, put your phone away and enjoy the journey.

[Harold]

I'll say this to use that same principle on a different medium with the gym. I used to work out six days a week and I would have one day off. I'd do 30 to 40 minute workouts, kind of half assed now that I'm looking back on it. And I wasn't really getting any results for over 10 years. And now I hired a personal trainer, the coach, to your point, that's in great shape, better in shape than any other trainers that we see at the gym, which is hilarious. And we trained four days a week, three days off. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me man, I wanna lose weight, I wanna gain muscle. He goes, you will gain a lot of muscle, you will lose a lot of weight. And so here I am 13 pounds down, gaining a lot of muscle. At the same time, strength's up 30% because I'm taking three rest days, okay?

[Cameron Herold]

So I want to, I want to add to that.

[Harold]

And we're working out intensely when we work out.

[Cameron Herold]

So that's huge, right? The coach, the intensity, the changing the model, the not working as often, I want to add to that. I was in the gym recently and I thought to myself, why am I working out in the gym? Is it to have a better. To have better health, like, or is it to be better at some of the sports that I'm not playing enough of? And I think we need to build fun back into our life too. We need to schedule more golf games. I know you golf. When was the last time you played? I need, like, dammit.

[Harold]

Yeah, we need to go golf.

[Cameron Herold]

We need to golf. We need to play paddle, we need to play pickleball, we need to go for runs to have fun. We need to stop working out to be in shape. And we need to start using the shape we're in to enjoy our life. Like go hiking in Nepal to enjoy it. Right. So I think we need to stop this whole work, work, work, grind, grind, grind, and like, for what? Go, like, get out of the gym, Alex Hermosi, and go enjoy your life. Go play. Right? Let's all go play.

[Harold]

I had an. I had another woman.

[Cameron Herold]

You and I have to. I talked about this when I was here in August, that I want to go play golf with you. We need to do these, but we need to play golf too.

[Harold]

I agree, 1,000% agree. And I will put that on. Like, we will make that happen now and then.

[Cameron Herold]

I want all. I want everybody out there to remember that as well. The reason you're staying in shape is to be able to enjoy the body that you've got to play and have fun along the journey or to be able to live a little bit longer. But what's the point of living longer if you're not enjoying life?

[Harold]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

If you're just living longer in a healthy body to work harder to buy stuff that you don't need to impress people you don't like. Enjoy the journey, man.

[Harold]

I know a woman that's 64 and she said, you know the best way to start surfing when you're 64?

[Cameron Herold]

Start?

[Harold]

Yeah. Well, she's like, no, you never stop. She's like, I've been surfing since I was 15. I just never stopped. Everyone else stops.

[Cameron Herold]

Awesome.

[Harold]

Yeah, you stop it when you have your first kid or your second kid and then you try to pick it back up 30 years later and it doesn't catch.

[Cameron Herold]

That was a lesson I learned when I had my kids, was I became very present as a father. I was at their sports, I was at their activities, I was at all their stuff. Right. But I stopped doing things for me and I realized I wasn't role modeling the kind of dad I wanted them to become. I needed to get hobbies back in my life. So if somebody asked my kids, what does your dad do? They won't say what their dad does to make money. They'll say, oh, my dad likes traveling. My dad goes to Burning Man. My dad loves hiking, My dad plays paddle, My dad likes festivals. My dad loves cooking. Oh, and he does these things to make money. Yeah, it's huge.

[Harold]

If people want to find out more about you, they want to put their trainers, put their leaders through your training programs. Where can they find out more? Where can they partner with you?

[Cameron Herold]

Invite me to play golf. That's how they'll find about me. It's old. Go to Cameron Herold.com Cameron and then it's H E R O L D Cameron Herold dot com. It's got links to my books, my course, the CO alliance, my podcast, YouTube channels. It's all there.

[Harold]

Beautiful. So, guys, go follow Cameron. If you don't have it already on social media, it'll be in the description of the show. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this, send this to 2 to 3 entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that want to get into the journey. Of course. Follow for more. Subscribe and go be awesome and stop taking yourself so fucking serious.

[Cameron Herold]

Remember rule number six.

[Harold]

That's. Remember rule number six. Thank you, thank you and. And good night.