← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 427 -Hyperzon Co-Founder and COO, Hristo Arakliev
00:45:43
Loading summary
Transcript100 lines
- [00:00]
Cameron Herold
Hey, it's Cameron Herald, the host of the Second In Command podcast. Before we dive in, there's something you need to know. If you're a coo, VP Operations, or you're in any role where you're the second in command to the CEO, the COO alliance is the place for you. If you're the integrator to the visionary, you're going to want to join us. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command. We've had over 500 members like you join from 17 countries to grow their skills, connections and confidence. You'll get the tools, friendships, and a 10x guarantee to ensure that you get your money's worth. Go to cooalliance.com to learn more and see if you qualify. You can even book a free call with our team to ask questions. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
- [00:44]
Christo Arakliev
And there's a very cool quote by Simon Sinek. He says, leadership is not about being in charge, it's about taking care of those in your charge. And I think that's where COOs can make a massive impact. We're not always at the forefront, but we are the ones ensuring the entire machine is running smoothly so that everyone else can shine.
- [01:12]
Cameron Herold
Welcome to the Second In Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made him the chief behind the chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Herold.
- [01:36]
All right, our guest today is hyperxon COO Christo Arakliev. And Hristo is the co founder and COO of Hyperzon, which is a top tier Amazon marketing agency based in Sofia, Bulgaria. That's over in Eastern Europe. They help brands worldwide double their current revenue by utilizing Amazon as a sales channel. He's a serial entrepreneur and Amazon marketing specialist with a passion. He's a dad. He's a voracious traveler. He is. Sorry. His various business initiatives have varied from brick and mortar establishments to tech startups, and in the past seven years, he became an expert in Amazon growth, hacking a CRO as well as building successful sales strategies outside Hirsto's Hyperson duties. He's also a musician, avid sports enthusiast, engaging in many hobbies like hiking, extreme sports, and as I mentioned, traveling to exotic locations. He's going to talk about something that kind of blew me away about midway into the episode, talking about the images that we create for ourselves, about ourselves. You're not going to want to miss that. And then he also goes into some of his favorite books towards the end of the episode that I think you're going to love. I also talk about a couple of my favorite books that are must reads too. We'll see you on the inside and you can also watch all of our episodes on our Second in Command podcast YouTube channel. We'll see you on the inside. So, Christo, welcome to the Second In Command podcast.
- [02:59]
Christo Arakliev
Hey Cameron, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I've been a fan of Second in Command for a while and the reason being, honestly, I think it shines a light on the role that often goes unsung but is absolutely crucial.
- [03:11]
Cameron Herold
Good. Well, that was the whole point of starting it eight years ago too. I really wanted to give some light to the role. I wanted to give some exposure as to the difference between the COO and the CEO and then also just to highlight some great brands and some great leaders globally. So I'm glad to have you on. And you're actually out of Bulgaria. Are you based out of Sofia or what city in Bulgaria are you based in?
- [03:32]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah, correct, in Sofia. All the way here. It's kind of exotic for Americans but you know, it's actually a very good spot right now.
- [03:40]
Cameron Herold
Well, I've got, I'm from Canada, from Vancouver. I've got a good friend of mine from Vancouver who travels there quite a bit. So I'm looking forward to learning from one of the leaders from the region.
- [03:49]
Christo Arakliev
Awesome. So happy to share my thoughts.
- [03:52]
Cameron Herold
Yeah. Why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about Hyperzone, what it is you do as a brand and then we'll kind of dive in from there. I want to talk about people and operations and your role as a second command and co founder, but why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about the business itself?
- [04:07]
Christo Arakliev
Absolutely. Well, Hyperzone is a full scale Amazon marketing agency. We focus on helping cool D2C brands that are already successful in their field and they're driving traffic to website no matter how they're driving the traffic. It might be like with Meta or Google or Instagram TikTok influencers, but they are already generating some substantial revenue, at least 300,000amonth. And what we do is we take these brands and we take them on a journey to expand their exposure to Amazon and we help them double their revenue over the course of 1012 months working together. So that's in its core is Hyperzone.
- [04:49]
Cameron Herold
Interesting. So I coached A business in similar. In this space, I think I don't need to mention their name, but they're based out of Colorado. They actually inventory the product for their customers as well. Do you inventory the product or are you more just kind of the marketing side of things for the brands?
- [05:07]
Christo Arakliev
Logistics is the only thing that we don't do because, you know from experience, always something goes wrong when you deal with logistics. So, you know, we're focused on marketing support. You know, we help with inventory planning, but not with, you know, being in charge of inventory, if that makes sense.
- [05:27]
Cameron Herold
And that was the. That's the least kind of interesting part and the least fun part of their business, too. I never really understood why they decided to get into that. I think if they stayed away from that, they could be even more successful than they are. How did you start the business? You guys started seven or eight years ago, right?
- [05:43]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah, something like that. It started, you know, my journey to CEO has been far from traditional, I'd have to say, and it's given me a bit of an unconventional perspective on management and leadership. And I'm a strong believer in the idea that every CEO needs to be a bit of a psychologist, part strategist, and at times even a firefighter. But above all, we are here to serve and enable people to do their best work. And today I'm excited to share some of the lessons I've learned from the trenches and from some incredible mentors in person and in books. So first, actually want to talk on the topic of leadership and servanthood. So one of the ideas I often come back to is this concept of servant leadership. I believe in leaders who are both humble and have a fierce resolve. It's not about being the hero. It's about empowering others to be heroes, in my opinion. And there's a very cool quote by Simon Sinek. He says, leadership is not about being in charge, it's about taking care of those in your charge. And I think that's where COOs can make a massive impact. We're not always in the forefront, but we are the ones ensuring the entire machine is running smoothly so that everyone else can shine.
- [07:05]
Cameron Herold
That's interesting. Simon was on our board of advisors back in 2004 when I was the COO of 1-800-got-JUNK. So 20 years ago, five years before he wrote the book Start with why and before he did his famous TEDx talk, he was on our board of advisors. We spent a lot of time with Simon. Where did you get exposed to servant leadership first? Was it the book Servant Leadership or was it just in general kind of listening to other leaders?
- [07:31]
Christo Arakliev
It was the book. But you know, in general, listening to other leaders has also been a big part of it for sure.
- [07:37]
Cameron Herold
What do you think? What does it mean to you specifically? Like, give me an example of something that you would do where you see yourself showing up as a servant leader versus more of the, you know, do as I say leader, which is kind of the 1970s style, right?
- [07:52]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I'm a strong believer in building a culture of trust to start with. And I often think of Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety. She talks about how important it is for people to feel safe, to speak up, to make mistakes, and to learn openly. It's something we strive to cultivate within our team, to be honest. And people sometimes underestimate how much productivity and creativity are driven by this feeling of safety. You can't expect people to bring their best ideas to the table if they're afraid of judgment or failure. My job as a COO is to make sure that fear doesn't live in our organization. From experience I can share. I remember reading A Radical Candor by Kim Scott, I believe it was, where she emphasizes the idea of caring personally while challenging directly. It's a bit like walking a tightrope, you know, you have to strike this balance. If you lean too much on one side you're just nice but ineffective. On the other you're a dictator. It's about building that environment where honesty is not just accepted, but it's expected, if that makes sense.
- [09:03]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I talk about being firm but fair, right? That we kind of have to walk that tightrope, but you really want to be nice and caring for people. How do you open up the lines of communication so that you can get feedback from your direct reports? How do you open up so that they can tell you where, you know, where do they want Hristo to improve or where do they want Hrsto to give them more?
- [09:25]
Christo Arakliev
Okay, that's a great question. Well, you know, I invite them very openly on like a friendly conversation they have together. And even though I'm usually not really good at giving feedback and it took me a while to be able to do it properly because my brain works in a. In a way that I always see what's not right with something and I always focus on that. So how I change that is by asking more open ended questions where I can see first how people approach that situation, if they see the problem with it at all, and then afterwards talking about how we can Fix the process and the system rather than telling them, you know, that's not the best way that you've done something, or, you know, this is not the optimal way of doing things, or maybe there's a better way of doing it.
- [10:23]
Cameron Herold
It's.
- [10:23]
Christo Arakliev
It's more focusing on how we can fix the process. And I see them opening up much more this way because now you're not challenging what they did, but you are challenging the process as a whole. It's kind of, you tell me, you tell someone, but someone else has to hear it. You know, it's. I think this, this is the right way to do it. Because even if in my personal relationship with my wife, when I challenge her directly, it just doesn't work. You know, it needs. It doesn't work, never works. And it gets worse. You know, it's the same with employees. They cannot say to you directly, but they got pushed back and they close up and it's, you know, it's not working out for anyone.
- [11:16]
Cameron Herold
You said something interesting around leadership, that at times you're a bit of a psychologist and at times you're the bit of the firefighter. How do you slow it down enough to recognize that it's time to be a bit of a psychologist, or how do you slow it down enough so that you do remember the people side about all the situations and you can play a little bit of the psychologist or you can think of the people side more. Is there anything you specifically do, like to get your mindset or to, you know, get your frame ready when you're. You're dealing with a conflict or a tough situation?
- [11:47]
Christo Arakliev
Well, the approach that I, that I currently have is, again, when you're inviting people, it needs to be really laid back to start with. Because, you know, if I call on someone and I'm like, I need to speak with you now, it's. It's really not setting you up for success. So I really try to be super friendly with the team, and I see some positive sides of that and some negative, but we have built a culture where we are more of a friends rather than something else. And I see people feel very comfortable sharing with me all kinds of stuff because I'm not going to judge them. We're going to laugh about it, and we are going to find a way to solve it, to solve it together. Which brings me to the fact that when someone asks me, how do you make people accountable? I just hire accountable people. I think it's very important to make the right hire, because if you don't hire Accountable people. You're always going to have issues down the road. You cannot teach someone to be accountable. Okay, maybe you can, but it's going to take you a lot of effort, a lot of time, and you don't want people that are slacking. You need to lean on trust. And this is where it all starts. And having that basis when I invite someone to speak with them, first of all, I try to make it a group, a group conversation most of the time, because again, when you sit directly and talk with someone, he is always kind of on the fence. He's prepared to be attacked, and he thinks that he's done something wrong rather than opening up the discussion with the team that he has worked on a certain project. And then we start discussing. And I can be a psychologist without them even knowing I'm doing it, because I let them share, I let them discuss. I asked them, was that, you know, now in hindsight, was that the right thing to do? Does that make sense?
- [14:03]
Cameron Herold
It does. And it's interesting because you, you mentioned Simon earlier and one of his books is Leaders Eat Last. I've always said that the leaders speak last. And it seems like you're kind of absolutely that kind of a leader, that if you're speaking, you seem to be asking questions and understanding versus the command and control leader. So I think that group, that group kind of mental or not group mentality, but that group focus tends to work well for you. Can you speak to us a little bit about how you lead teams and lead people, how you personally do that? Do you have any thoughts around leadership? More than just the authentic leader side or the kind of supportive leader?
- [14:38]
Christo Arakliev
It's very important, like the time management and delegation are crucial. And as CEOs, our plate is always full. And if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will, you know, do it. So I think this is especially, especially true in a COO role. And delegation is one of the hardest skills to master. But it's absolutely necessary, in my opinion. I had to learn to let go of perfection and trust that my team could do things differently and sometimes even better than I would. And when you do that, you start focusing on what truly adds value. I really encourage other CEOs to actively delegate, not just tasks, but ownership. Give people the freedom to make decisions within their roles. And when people feel like they own their work, you get much more than just compliance. You get commitment. And I can give you an example. So we hired a few months back a guy from the Philippines, and he was an Amazon expert. He's been in the field for eight years and he had a lot of knowledge. Okay. But before that, we had conversations within our team that we are actually going to promote our senior account managers to account directors. And all of a sudden, just this perfect guy showed up. We hired him and oh my God, it was a disaster. So they could never open up to him. They were always pointing out the smallest of mistakes he was making. Anyway, we ended up firing him for different reasons. And afterwards we changed our approach and we actually created the account director position. And this changed everything. Like, the account directors, they opened up, they started caring more, they felt much more appreciated. Now I don't, you know, there was one girl, she was like a dark cloud. And I'm like, what is wrong with that girl? I mean, she's a great employee. And all of a sudden, when we empowered her and empowered the whole team, she changed completely. Like, she's a different person now. She cares, she asked questions, she sees mistakes. She's like super proactive and, you know, it's very important.
- [17:00]
Cameron Herold
I love that. I love that whole thought process behind it too. And I love your thoughts around delegation. It's one of the core 12 modules in my invest in your leaders training is delegation. And you're right that people don't know how to do it. They're not very good at it. But I love that you not only delegate projects, you delegate the responsibility and you and the ownership. Can you speak? How many employees do you have at hyper zone?
- [17:22]
Christo Arakliev
Around 45 right now.
- [17:24]
Cameron Herold
So with that many people, how do you prevent yourself from getting sucked into the day to day? How do you prioritize your focus and decide what to delegate and what to keep?
- [17:35]
Christo Arakliev
That's one of my favorite topics, actually. I live my life and strongly believe in the fact that keeping the balance in every aspect of your life is crucial. You also need to be able to balance between systems and flexibility. One of the biggest challenges for any COO is balancing structure and flexibility. And you need systems, processes, that's a given. But you also have to recognize that each team member is unique. And what motivates one person might not motivate another. And I've been recently obsessed with the following idea about OKRs. The idea is to look at it as a flexible framework rather than a rigid system. And the goal is to measure what truly matters and then give people the autonomy to reach those goals in their own way. Not necessarily follow a strict like, you know, how we've mapped it out. And actually a recent tweak, we made our process was implementing a feedback loop that isn't just top down, but also bottom up. And I wanted to understand what's working and what's not directly from the team. We added quarterly post checks, which gives us a real time read on team morale and any bottlenecks. Honestly, it's amazing how a small shift like this can make people feel heard and valued. But again, speaking more on the topic of balancing your life, like, I have many, many friends in different positions, which are entrepreneurs, and they're making tons of money, like hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in profit for themselves. But I have a few that are extremely unhappy about, about their life and about everything. They work 18 hours a day and they share with me. I don't enjoy being anywhere. I go at the most expensive restaurants in Switzerland or in Dubai or whatever, and I don't feel anything. I'm not. I'm not happy. I'm not enjoying my life. And then I started talking with a friend of mine, George, and I was asking him, okay, do you, like, like yourself when you see yourself in, in the mirror? Because he is in. Not in his best shape, let's say. And he said, no, I. I don't like myself. And I'm like, you know, in order to be happy in life, it's really not about how much money you're making, but it's about the person you believe, like, strongly believe that you are. And you need to match that image as close as possible. So the further away we go from the image that we've created for ourselves, we become, you know, much more unsure, sad, and we, we don't even understand. We don't even realize why it's happening. You know, wow. If you think of yourself, I'm a great guy, or I work out, or I do this and I don't, and then you don't do it, Trust me, you're going to hate yourself. And I, I'm going to say a quote that I. I love. And for many years it was actually showing up on my phone every single day. And it's one day when you're about to die, the person you are is going to meet with the person you could have been. And then, you know, hell, wow. So that's.
- [21:21]
Cameron Herold
That's heavy.
- [21:23]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah, it is.
- [21:24]
Cameron Herold
But it's.
- [21:26]
Christo Arakliev
The choices we make in life matter. Like, every little choice matters.
- [21:31]
Cameron Herold
This is a really, really profound concept. And I don't know if I've ever heard anyone talk about it before. It's really like the image that you've created for yourself. If it's different from who you really are. That's what really starts to trouble you. And it's really. I just went today and I grabbed a box of pasta, handmade right in front of me. I only had to pay €6 for it. It was one of the best meals I've had in months and months. And sitting there with a bunch of students at this little pasta window in Siena, Italy, going like, this is amazing. I felt so good. And that's who I am. I'm this kid from a small town in northern Canada, and, you know, I can be a successful business entrepreneur or whatever, but I felt very congruent in that moment with exactly who I am.
- [22:16]
Christo Arakliev
Right. But.
- [22:17]
Cameron Herold
But wow. What. What a really interesting challenge for somebody to think about, like, who are we? Who's our mask at work and our mask that we're showing up with and. And are we really the same behind that mask as we are?
- [22:27]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah.
- [22:28]
Cameron Herold
So.
- [22:29]
Christo Arakliev
And doesn't. Doesn't really matter. I mean, as long as we are true to ourselves, I think this is the only way to be happy, is if you are true to yourself. Yeah. I mean, you might not be the best husband, the best team leader, the best son, whatever, but as long as you're true to yourself and you're happy with the goals that you set for yourself and the image, I think you'll be fine. And you will be happy in general.
- [22:56]
Cameron Herold
Do you talk to people that work with you about that concept? Is that some. Some of what you work with people at, or is that just more of a way that you lead yourself? Do you think it's more of a.
- [23:08]
Christo Arakliev
Way that I lead myself? Honestly, I haven't opened up with them about. About that topic, I think is going to be more of a burden to them if I put it in a. In a working conversation, to be honest.
- [23:24]
Cameron Herold
I don't know.
- [23:25]
Christo Arakliev
I haven't.
- [23:26]
Cameron Herold
You know, I've done it a couple times with people in slightly different wording. I had a woman who, who worked with me years ago, who every time she would stand up and address the group, she kind of put on this professional face. And I'm like, who are you? Like, I've seen you every day for the last two years. You're a different person than this. Like, hi, my name is so and so figure that you had put on. And I think her team sensed that. I think the people around her sensed that. They got the everyday version and then this standup version. And once she could change that a little bit, I think that connected her with her, with her team a lot more. I've also spoken to a lot of people when they do keynote speaking or public speaking. And I've said, you know, you've been doing speaking since you were 2 years old. Don't try to be a professional version of you. Just stand up with the confidence and with your normal energy and your normal intonation and your normal domain expertise and just talk like you would talk to your friends versus being this because your voice doesn't translate. But I guess that's only a tiny little snippet of what you cover.
- [24:29]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah, I agree with that. But I think, and I. I've seen people don't deal very well with failures. And I think this is more our role, the leaders. I believe in cultivating resilience and dealing with failures. And I think one of the unsung qualities of a great COO is resilience. The role requires you to be okay with things not going as planned and being willing to adapt quickly. And the importance of being able to pivot. Sometimes the best late plans will fail and it's your job to make sure we learn from those failures rather than letting them define us. And I remember a project we launched that was supposed to streamline operations, but in the end added more complexity than we anticipated. And it was a humbling experience. I'm telling you, we have to admit it wasn't working. Scrap it, start fresh. And I think that's key, having the humility to say, this isn't working. Let's go back to the drawing board. But I can see how we can do it as managers and we have to learn to do it as managers. But still, for most employees, it's a hard concept and they prefer to stay in a safe space. It's not like they don't like to challenge themselves, but they still want to be challenged in a limited kind of, you know, base. Still, once you open up too much about such topics, at least my experience is that most employee are really not. Don't deal with it very well.
- [26:09]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I think, I think these are more discussions and they're more, they're more coaching opportunities for senior leadership and for leaders that are already going to that next level.
- [26:16]
Christo Arakliev
Right.
- [26:17]
Cameron Herold
They've been leading companies and teams for 10 years, et cetera. I'm curious about some of the Amazon side of your business and I'd like to ask you a little bit about that. First off, are your clients mostly in Europe? Are your clients mostly in North America?
- [26:31]
Christo Arakliev
They're mostly in North America. And the reason being, trust me, I've tried working with Europeans, but they're just much more difficult to work with. Like decisions take so much time. They have trust issues. Everything is happening really, really much slower than working with North Americans when everything's like snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. And you know, only if you fail at something then it's a problem. But it's more of a. I, I'm open to your suggestions. You are the expert, show me what you've got. And as long as things are going in the right direction, I don't have any, any reason to tell you not to do it. This is how, how it's going on with, with our U.S. clients and Canadians and in general.
- [27:16]
Cameron Herold
Do you know any Amazon agencies that focus on authors that just help authors sell more books on Amazon or is that a product where the margins are so low that it just doesn't really lend itself to your space?
- [27:29]
Christo Arakliev
I don't really know of agencies. I know people that are self taught authors in a way. It's not like they are releasing a profound book that becomes a bestseller. But what they would do is they see niches like for example Keto Diet was very popular a few years back and they would go and they would release 20 different keto books under different monikers and they will generate quite a substantial revenue this way. But I don't really know of agencies that work directly with others. I think it's just much, much different, much more difficult. You operate from a completely different platform. The KDP is just. No, I, I don't have anyone.
- [28:17]
Cameron Herold
I'm more just curious. Yeah, I have a friend of mine who did something in the Paleo space. Mike Geary reduced, printed a lot of cookbooks in the Paleo space and crushed it on Amazon. And I have a person that I met the other day who does a lot of direct to consumer and is doing Amazon now and, and they were considering expanding from the UK to the United States and I'm like stop. Like the UK is a pretty big, big market. If you just own the UK market and Germany is a pretty big market. Do you help any of the US brands sell into Amazon in Europe at all? Or again, is it mostly U.S. brands selling only in the U.S. yes, we.
- [28:51]
Christo Arakliev
Do help U.S. brands in Germany and the UK and sometimes in France even. But it's always taking quite a lot of time because Americans are kind of afraid of Europe because it's far away, it has different administration and this and that. I mean they're in the ripe to be honest. And it only helps us that we are on this side of the ocean, that we know how the administration works. We have connections for each part of the puzzle like logistics and accounting and dealing with Amazon Europe and stuff like that. So actually if somebody, some of our clients decide to go to Europe in three months time, we could be already selling. If they try to do it on their own, at least a year. I mean it's a lot of bureaucracy, it's a clunky system. You need to know which buttons to push to make it work.
- [29:47]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I just see that Europe is such an untapped market for so many. That's so much less competition. I don't think there's much price competition. And if you get to 100 reviews, you own the category. But you need to get to 1500 reviews in the United States to even be considered in the category. I just think that people are missing.
- [30:03]
Christo Arakliev
Correct.
- [30:03]
Cameron Herold
An opportunity.
- [30:05]
Christo Arakliev
And a cool thing is that the reviews are actually transferable. So once you've already sold on the US markets and when you go to Europe. Yeah. People can see your reviews really Holy. Yeah, yeah. So you immediately become the best seller. I mean they show up slightly differently but still are very easily, easily visible to the, to the broad audience. So that, that's, that's a game changer. And you know, many times you are, I don't know, number 20 in US and you go to Europe and you're number one.
- [30:39]
Cameron Herold
It's just I've coached a number of brands that were in the supplement space in Canada and the United States. One called Jack Factory, another called Viva Naturals. There are four or five that I coached over the years, but I always coached on the operations side of the business. Nothing to do with selling on Amazon. I was working with them on growing teams and growing people and building leadership capacity and running meetings and planning and budgeting. Kind of the real how to grow their company side. But it's amazing what they pull from you. Talk about how you differentiate yourself from other Amazon agencies. I know there's a bunch out there. I spoke at Ryan Moran's conference years ago to the Amazon sector. How do you guys differentiate yourself?
- [31:19]
Christo Arakliev
Yeah, there are quite some agencies out there. Well, we differentiate in the following manner. First of all, one account manager with us works with no more than three to four brands. And this allows them to become experts in those brands. It gives them time to really go deep and see what the issues are, what the opportunities are. And you know, this way clients are extremely happy and our churn rate is almost non existent. Like we have clients that have been working with us for five years. It's just because things are very streamlined and they don't have to think about anything. And you know, it's a kind of a cliche, but we really do care for their brands like they are ours. And we can see it from the testimonials that we receive. People are like extremely happy. They're like, you've already completed that task before me even giving it to you. And you know, when we see that, that feedback we, we can only feel happy and humbled that we were able to create such a, such a cool agency. But again, many times I'm even considering changing the word agency to something else because there is such bad connotation with the agency. Word like agency has become a bad word. Honestly, I'm even about to make a post that on LinkedIn. We have so many clients coming to us and they're like, we've worked with three other agencies, it was terrible. This is like the last chance that we're giving to an agency. It's you please make it work. And then we make it work. And they're super happy and they congratulate us most on communication because communication is crucial. We're very swift to reply on Slack and we have these weekly calls that I believe all clients should attend because the weekly calls keep everyone on the same page and things are, you know, moving smoothly. Compared to some business owners that are like, no, I don't have the time for these meetings, just write me reports and stuff, you know, it's, you need to care about your brand more than anyone else. So you're not allowed, you're not allowed the comfort of saying I don't want to get on these coasts because it's a make it or break it for your business.
- [33:41]
Cameron Herold
Do you see yourself as more of their partner and less of an agency then?
- [33:45]
Christo Arakliev
Absolutely. Because in our payment terms are also such that we work on Rev Share. So the more they're making, the more we are making. It's not a fixed fee.
- [33:56]
Cameron Herold
Okay, so you're working on a Rev Share percentage. That's interesting. That's like a group I used to coach out of the US called Giddyup Marketing that does kind of performance based partnerships or almost like higher end affiliate marketing. Do you take a percentage of revenue? Do you carry the ad cost as well or does your client take the ad cost on?
- [34:16]
Christo Arakliev
No, only for one client. We carry part of the ad cost but for all the others they do. And then we take revenue from the top line. Revenue, meaning we are not removing the, the ad costs before Taking that percentage. But still it makes sense because over time we're making them a lot of money. And I have estimated that these 7% that we take out of the revenue, which actually we lower over time, but they always come up to anything between 23 and 33% of profits, but they're not moving a finger. We do all the legwork. So I think it's only fair.
- [34:57]
Cameron Herold
Interesting. Do you take equity in any of your clients at all?
- [35:02]
Christo Arakliev
Every now and then. Right now we are in the process of suggesting the following deal to one of our clients because they want to make an exit for like $100 million in two years from now. And they have a really huge potential because they're a brand that started from China, but they're selling now in the us, in the UK and France and they're very well positioned. And I'm like, how does it sound to give you a 30% discount from your monthly invoices but you give us shares each month from your company for the same amount?
- [35:38]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
- [35:39]
Christo Arakliev
So let's see what they say. But I think it's going to be a good deal for everyone because right now, as you can imagine, whenever a company is growing, it's tough to pay those monthly invoices for whatever you're paying and you need to grow as fast as possible. So and these shares right now, you know, they're not worth so much, but in a couple of years they're going to be worth a lot.
- [36:03]
Cameron Herold
Well, and for the clients, it, you know, if they give you some equity in their company, they know at that point that you care more about them than anybody else.
- [36:12]
Christo Arakliev
Right.
- [36:12]
Cameron Herold
When you're really a partner, really embedded.
- [36:16]
Christo Arakliev
Correct.
- [36:16]
Cameron Herold
Going to give it, it's like, it's like one plus one equals five. You know, you're just going to carry a little bit more than normal. Can you talk about the CEO, CEO relationships? I know you're also, you know, operating as the CEO, but you're also a co founder of the organization. How do you and the CEO divide up roles and responsibilities?
- [36:37]
Christo Arakliev
Well, I'll be completely honest. We have very, very interesting and different structure. We are actually five partners in our company. And under this hat we have multiple companies and multiple brands that we operate. So we have D2C brands of our own, we have crypto related projects, we have the Amazon agency and some other things. And it's more of you deal with that project, you're in charge of it, you deal with that project. So we don't have that much friction in a sense because we are responsible for different things. And I am kind of taking part of the CEO responsibilities as well and also part of the sales responsibilities. It's, you know, we made it work. It was not easy. It was actually a serious challenge. But as long as there is trust between the partners, I think you can make it work.
- [37:52]
Cameron Herold
Can you walk us through how you spend time then as the co owner and how you spend time as a leadership team? Do the five of you have meeting structures where you're talking to each other as owners and then where you have other meetings where you're talking as, you know, more operationally running a business?
- [38:11]
Christo Arakliev
Yes, this is exactly how we're doing it. We have meetings that we discuss more like owners making more high level decisions. If we go in this direction and that direction. If you want to sell this business, if you want to grow this one, if we want to move some funds from one business to the other, and then we have other operational meetings which are strictly operational. And again, when making the operational meetings, I believe that keeping it up to two, three people, it's usually the most productive. When you start adding people to all these meetings they prolong and they, you know, they just take forever sometimes and it doesn't make sense.
- [38:56]
Cameron Herold
Well, have you, have you heard of Jeff Bezos from Amazon? Have you heard of his role around meetings?
- [39:01]
Christo Arakliev
He said, I'm not 100 sure.
- [39:04]
Cameron Herold
He said, if the attendees of the meeting cannot all be fed by two pizzas, you have too many people coming to the meeting.
- [39:11]
Christo Arakliev
I've heard that. I've heard that. That's a good one.
- [39:14]
Cameron Herold
And it's European sized pizza, not the North American size that feeds. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [39:18]
Christo Arakliev
Right, Exactly. A real normal pizza man meals in the US are huge. When I, in your. In Europe, me and my wife are going to sp. Split three meals between each other. When I go to the US we cannot eat one meal between us two. Sometimes it's just crazy.
- [39:38]
Cameron Herold
It's kind of like it's. It's no wonder that they, they have a. Well, they have a bit of a weight problem. All right, I want you to talk a little bit about your growth. You've clearly done a lot of work and reading a lot of books and growing from reading a lot of books. Where else do you, do you learn and grow? Do you work with coaches? Are you in mastermind groups? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you just ask your team for feedback? How do you tend to grow yourself?
- [40:05]
Christo Arakliev
Well, I had different approaches throughout the years I've been part of Masterminds. I've had coaching etc but recently it's been mostly very well selected podcasts and very well selected books because you know, I've read hundreds of books, if not thousands and I love it when I stumble upon a book that is just so much better than all the other fluff out there and I'm like, wow. I mean it's disproportional. It's always super disproportional. There are books out there which are 100 times better in my opinion than all the rest out there. They're just game changers. And it's worth it to read those books over and over and over and over again and live by them rather than just, you know, listen to them or read them once and forget about it.
- [41:01]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I agree. It's. It's some of the books that could have been written as a, you know, three pages. Right. Malcolm Gladwell is kind of famous for that. His books that it's kind of an idea that tends to go on and on and on. And then there's others that are just really concise and to the point. They really kind of crush it with content. Have you got a couple that are your favorites that would be go to's for you?
- [41:21]
Christo Arakliev
Absolutely do. One is Principles by Ray Dalio.
- [41:27]
Cameron Herold
Of course. Yeah.
- [41:29]
Christo Arakliev
And people should check five moves ahead. It's a great book. I cannot come up with the author's name right now. And another I would like to mention is Liminal Thinking and Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It's one of my favorites. Yeah. One of my favorite leadership and the last one I'm going to mention is by Chris Voss. And it's never split the difference. This is just an amazing book on sales. But when I say sales we are always making sales in life. Whenever you're selling yourself to a client or you're selling just yourself in everyday situation I think it's important to know which words that come out of your mouth are going to have the most positive outcome for you. And again, it's not. I am not saying it's about being decisive towards people, but deceitful, I mean towards people. But it's more about still knowing how to get what you want to get. If that makes sense. Yeah.
- [42:45]
Cameron Herold
Chris actually spoke at an event that I was at a couple years ago called the Genius Network. I was in that mastermind for eight years. I'll drop in the, in the chat for you a list of my favorite business books. I'll also put them in the show notes so anybody listening can go to the link and check out my favorite business books I tend to agree with you on. I like the ones that are very, very packed full of good information. One of my favorites is Insanely simple by Ken Siegel. And it's around the 10 core simplicity principles that Steve Jobs obsessed about to build Macintosh and Apple. And it's very, very transferable in, in kind of every company out there. So I check, check that one out. Insanely simple is one of my faves for sure. I want you to go back and give yourself some advice, Risto. If you were Talking to the 21 year old you, what would you tell yourself at 21 that maybe you know to be true today, but you wish you'd known back then?
- [43:38]
Christo Arakliev
Honestly, I don't have any, any regrets, so just keep doing what you're doing. I wouldn't, I wouldn't change a thing. Apart from buy bitcoin. You know, I'm gonna buy bitcoin. This is, this is the advice that I'm going to give him. But apart from that, I honestly really live my life in a way that I have no regrets. And I think that this is, this is the only way that you could be happy.
- [44:03]
Cameron Herold
I love it. Well, and if you're not buying bitcoin, still start buying. I've got my two boys, 21 and 23, buy Bitcoin every week. I've been buying and accepting it as payment since 2017. My posts in 2014 on Facebook, everyone laughed at me for saying I accepted payment in crypto 10 years ago. But now I kind of have a bit of the last laugh there. All right.
- [44:25]
Christo Arakliev
Absolutely.
- [44:26]
Cameron Herold
Christo. And then. Is it Arakayov? How do you pronounce your.
- [44:32]
Christo Arakliev
It's a hard one.
- [44:34]
Cameron Herold
That's a tough one. Well, Hirsto, thank you. Got the COO from Hyperzone. Really appreciate all the time today that you spent with us on the Second Command podcast.
- [44:43]
Christo Arakliev
Thank you. Thank you, Cameron. And if I can leave listeners with one takeaway, it's this. Like, don't just manage systems, manage hearts and minds. People are at the core of every process, every KPI, every project. And when you lead with empathy and purpose, the rest tends to fall into place.
- [45:00]
Cameron Herold
That's huge advice as well. That's probably right up there with buying bitcoin. So thank you for that.
- [45:06]
Christo Arakliev
Thank you.
- [45:10]
Cameron Herold
You've been listening to Second In Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit cooalliance. Com.