← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 485 - Empowering Leaders: The Role of Intuitive Hiring and Collaborative Growth
00:44:17
Loading summary
Transcript36 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]
Simona
If somebody asks a question and you can help a tiny bit, put yourself in the shoes of the person who actually went out there to ask a question. Let's not leave any questions unreplied because that can be a little bit discouraging for everybody. But also I'm pretty sure that each one of us can have a contribution. As Cameron, you said at the beginning of this call, each answer is going to help a little bit. The person who asked the question. There is so much knowledge in this group, so many skills, such a diverse knowledge that I think it's going to be great to build knowledge together.
- [01:25]
Savannah Brewer
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 them the chief behind the Chief. And now, here's your co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
- [01:55]
Cameron Herold
In today's episode, I'm sharing unconventional strategies for leadership, team building and decision making, challenging traditional hiring methods and offering a fresh perspective on evaluating top talent. We'll discuss why behavioral assessments can be more effective than standardized profiling tools and how sharpening your ability to assess people beyond surface level metrics can transform your hiring process. I'll also break down the complexities of organizational transitions and share practical advice on maintaining stability and focus during uncertain times. From clear communication to structured short term planning and fostering a culture of transparency, this episode is packed with actionable insights you can apply immediately to strengthen your team and organization. And if you're a COO or second in command, looking to connect with like minded leaders. We'll talk about the motivation behind the COO Alliance. A dedicated community designed to support and elevate those in this crucial role. So the reason we started the CO alliance was really a community for COOs and those in the second command role to the CEO. It's not a place for me to teach you how to be coos. It's a place where I can actually be on the side and facilitate conversation, bring in guest speakers and get all of you connecting with each other. Because in almost every case, I would be a horrible COO in your company. Right. I know Chris really well. I've been coaching Chris. I've talked to his CEO a bunch of times. I wouldn't be able to be a COO in Chris's company. Chris probably could not be a COO in Rebecca's company and Rebecca probably couldn't be a COO in Michelle's company. But we're all in a very similar role. And the reason that it is similar is that we don't all have the same functional areas reporting to us. So we have different challenges. But it's the only community where we focus exclusively on, on that second in command. Right. We don't have general managers and VPs and six different people from one company. It truly is the visionary integrator role or the CEO COO role. If I was to retitle the CEO alliance today, it would be something about like the second in command because all of the members are the second in command to the CEO. So that's the most similar kind of title that we could wrap around us all. So it's a community where I wanted a place for us. I used to go to the CEO communities and I realized I really didn't fit in. The CEOs were talking at the 30,000 foot level and I wanted to sit down and talk about interviewing for six hours or they were staying at that kind of visionary level. And I wanted to go in and look at the dashboards and the metrics and the KPIs and it was kind of like me showing up at a baby shower. Men are not hairy versions of women. We see the world differently, we perceive the world differently. You need to have spaces for men and spaces for women. Well, we needed to have spaces for the coo and we don't allow the entrepreneurs to come. I've had a lot of CEOs say, Can I join too? I'm like, no. They're like, yeah, but I want to be a Part of the community. Sorry. So it really is a place just for you to collaborate with each other, to share frustrations with each other, to share worries and insecurities and fears, vulnerabilities, and then to be there to support each other too. Just a quick show of hands and this will kind of illustrate the point and belindt you can kind of answer this in the chat because I know you can't go on video, but put your hand up if you feel like everyone else on the call is probably smarter than you. Right? It's a really natural, normal feeling. And we've noticed this at every COO alliance event, the in person events, something happens where the members start to shed that imposter syndrome. So there's no way that everybody can put their hand up saying everyone is smarter, because everyone just did. So at an event that I was at around six years ago, one of our members came up to me at lunch and he said, cameron, I feel like everybody in the room is much smarter than I am. And I'm like, well, Brian, you've been running your company for five years as COO, you've got 80 employees, you're a $15 million company. You are equally as strong as everybody in the room. He said, yeah, but I feel like an imposter. And I said, can I just ask the group something without betraying our trust, without saying who it was? He goes, sure. So we walk into the room and I said about 30 minutes ago, because I didn't want them to know that I was just talking to them just then. I said, About 30 minutes ago, I was chatting with the member and they mentioned they feel like a bit of an imposter. I said, who here feels like everyone in the room is smarter? And every single hand went up and then the whole room started laughing. So one of the things that happens in your first year of membership is you shed that imposter syndrome and you gain confidence that you are actually supposed to be in that role and, and that you are able to help lots of other members in lots of other scenarios, and you're also able to receive help too. So I don't want you showing up at the events only wanting to learn, because if all of you just want to learn, then no one will contribute. So let's say as an example that, you know, Rebecca asks a question in the slack. Chris may not want to answer because he doesn't have the perfect answer, but if Chris gives his answer and Michelle gives her answer and Wendy gives her answer, those three answers almost have a little Idea, baby. And they give Rebecca exactly what she's looking for. But if Chris does not contribute, she doesn't get exactly what she needs. So it's really an opportunity for all of you to answer questions, for all of you to contribute, for all of you to share. Because it's going to be the, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, right? Is is that's really what's going to happen here. So don't just show up to ask questions, also show up to contribute. Another great way in the slack to contribute is, is just to drop in some resources, drop in links of information that you've read or information that you, that you use, drop in quick loom videos to answer questions. And that can be a great way to add in. But the other thing that happens in the first year is connections. And I didn't see this at all until we started the CEO alliance. I didn't realize how lonely CEOs were in their role and I didn't anticipate that the CEO alliance was going to fill that gap. I understood that CEOs were. I understood that entrepreneurs often felt lonely and I saw the entrepreneurs feeling that sense of community, of having other entrepreneurs to lean on, to share frustrations with. But I didn't realize that it was the same for the coos. So what we've really noticed is the first year of membership is when you gain the confidence in your role and the connections to feel like you're actually heard and supported in the community. Year two is when everybody seems to settle into everything and they start gaining all the information a lot faster because you're showing up with a lot more clarity. You're not showing up worried about who's seeing you. You're not worried about your own shit anymore. Right? You're just able to settle in and show up. You know, we have some members coming to our in person event in Vancouver. We have 60 members, we capped it at 60 and we cap the September event at 60. But we have 60 members coming to that event. Some have been there for seven or eight in person events. So they really know a lot of the other members already. You know, they're showing up and giving each other hugs and they know everything about each other's lives. And that's going to happen to you over the course of the first year as you will gain that sense of community and then as you do, you're able to just settle in and learn all that information. So that was really the purpose for starting. It was to give you a community to give You a shared space to give you a safe space to give you access to resources. It's really not about the speakers. I think often people think that you're joining a community to gain access to the speakers. I would almost rank the speakers as fourth or fifth on the list of impact that you're going to get. You know, we can all go on YouTube right now and watch a speaker. In fact, most of the speakers that we have coming to speak monthly or coming to the in person events. You can go online and watch videos of them on YouTube speaking. You know, you can read books by many of our speakers. We had Dan Martell, who wrote the book Buy Back youk Time speak to us about two years ago. You just buy his book or watch him on YouTube. You know, there's lots of information. So it's not about the speaker. And we've often had members show up at an event where the speaker is someone from their industry and they still walk away with pages of notes. So they walk away with pages of notes because they're seeing their industry from a different lens, from a different perspective or it allows them to work on the business instead of in the business. You know, taking pause in the day, hearing questions that other people ask about their industry. So I don't want you to opt out of showing up at events because you have heard the speaker or you know that space. It's really about taking time in your business to, you know, be more strategic. So put the. One of the best ways you'll get value is to put the two hour time blocks in your calendar. And Mary, I think we run the calls for 2025 the same day and time, correct?
- [10:45]
Simona
Yes.
- [10:45]
Savannah Brewer
Second to last Wednesdays at 12:30 Pacific.
- [10:50]
Cameron Herold
Can you drop those in? Or Simone, if you have the dates in front of you, can you copy and paste them into the chat for everybody? And then all of you, I would say send this off to your executive assistant right away, have them put these dates and times into your calendar immediately. And if you don't have an executive assistant, you are one. You're in a role right now where you should have an EA working with you to help leverage your time. So I would be looking for that as a first opportunity over the course of the year is to really bring in a fractional EA to help you manage. But put those dates and times in your calendar as two hour non negotiable time blocks and try to work the business around those. This is classic working on the business, right? Not a single One of your CEOs will be upset with you taking this two hours away from your business to be in the CEO Alliance. They see this as strategic, they see this as high impact. In fact, they're probably going to be more upset if they pay $500 a month for you to be a member, which is what your annual fee is, and you not showing up. Right. It's almost like booking a dinner reservation, paying $500 and then staying at home and not going to the restaurant. Like, why would you ever pay 500 bucks for a dinner and not show? Why would you ever pay to be a part of the SEAL alliance and not show? So put those in your calendar. Many of our members show up at 10, 11 or 12 of the monthly events in a row. And again, that's where you're going to get value because you get to know the other members, you hear some of the other members stuff, and you do spend time thinking about the business. So that's number one. Number two is try to attend the in person events. Right. For the money. Huge value in being there. Members actually get a discount over what outside CEOs pay. And they do sell out. If you know the March event starts March 10th and we've already got the 60 seats already sold. Mary, is that correct? Are we at 60 or do we have one left?
- [12:39]
Savannah Brewer
We have one because somebody just let me know they weren't be able to attend.
- [12:44]
Cameron Herold
Who's that?
- [12:45]
Savannah Brewer
Ashley Ingram.
- [12:47]
Cameron Herold
Okay, yeah. So if we have one spot left, Chris, I know you're already in, but if anybody else wants, I just dropped it into the chat. That will sell out for sure. But when we announce the September event, the September event dates are September 10th to 12th. They're at MIT's Endicott House in Boston. That event will sell out for sure. And it's absolutely capped at 60. There's only 60 seats in the room. So the room itself at Endicott House doesn't hold any more than 60. And the first 34 members who sign up get to stay on site at the mansion at Endicott house. The other 26 members who sign up stay off site at a hotel that's about seven or 10 minutes away. So you're getting value that way. You're going to get value by being vulnerable by showing up and asking the questions that maybe are uncomfortable. We operate in a kind of a cone of silence and a space of confidentiality and trust. So ask the tough questions. Hey, I'm struggling with my CEO or my CEO is driving me crazy or I have a VP that I'm thinking of firing or we just found out that someone in the company was stealing from us. Whatever the things are that you're seeing or feeling or frustrated with, drop those questions into the chat because you'll get huge resources back from and then also be there to contribute and to answer questions for other people. You'll get big value that way. The member portal so as I mentioned, Simone is actually in the works right now and this will be launched by the Vancouver event in March. We're moving everything from the Slack community and the member portal into circle. But for the next two months, all of the communication happens in Slack where you can ask questions, you can connect with other members, you can ask them questions. The member portal has all the prior speaker videos for the last eight years. So it has all the speaker videos, all the slide decks, any of the resources they handed out, all their contact information, and it's all organized and categorized by by category. So you can watch all the speakers who came in to speak about sales or all the ones who talked about marketing, all the ones who talked about budgeting, and you can share those links because they're YouTube links, you can actually share those links with other people inside of your business. So I highly recommend you do that. You also all as members, get 15% off the invest in your leaders course. If you use that promo code, COOA15, you get a 15% discount for all of the employees inside of your company. I recommend that you have your management team sign up for it first and then second, have anyone in your company that manages people and then third, is any of your emerging leaders inside of your company. Some of our members have got 25 or 35 of their employees going through that course. I think our largest has got 56 of his management team going through the invest in your leaders training program. So really, really good content, stuff around situational leadership coaching, delegation, interviewing, handling conflict, running effective meetings. It's what I consider to be the 12 core leadership skills. And these are the skills that I trained and certified everyone in at 1-800-got junk. And I also trained all of our senior franchisees at 1-800-got junk. And this is some of the stuff that CEOs pay me $78,000 a year to coach them on. So you actually get access to this for, I think it's $650. And then you get a 15% discount. So it's really a rounding error in terms of what you can afford to hire people and to train them. I just presented to 2,500 entrepreneurs and leaders in Dubai two weeks ago. And I mentioned to them that if you've got an employee working for you and you're not willing to spend $650 to train them, you should probably fire the person and hire someone that you're willing to spend $650 to train because it's just huge leverage for them. And then somebody said, well, what if they, what if they quit? Like, what if I spend this money on them and they quit? Well, what if you don't train them and they stay? What's the damage to your company that's happening? Or the cost of, I call it the coi. The cost of inaction versus the return on investment. The cost of not training people is that they take up your time, they mismanage projects. Projects take longer than they should, they cause frustration. They're managing people and they don't know how to run one on one meetings or they're interviewing people and they don't know how to do a proper job interview. So there's some big upside for you to participate in that. We also have some one on one calls. Mer, can you explain how the one on one meetings work?
- [17:23]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, absolutely. So we work with another group who manages our one on ones. Just a quick note, they will say they're coming from Cameron. If you respond to those, they don't go to Cameron. So just heads up, if you're trying to email Cameron, that's the wrong address. But every month if you choose to opt in, we're going to introduce you directly to another member, tell you a little bit about one another and then encourage you to hop on a quick, you know, 15 minute Zoom call. But the goal on those is that you're strengthening the individual ties in your own network and not just getting on a zoom call with, you know, anywhere between 80 and 100 plus people and you're like, oh well, that face is familiar. But the goal here is that you are making actual connections with other CEOs so that you have people that you can turn to when you've got a specific challenge because you'll get to learn their strengths, what their companies do and they'll learn the same about you.
- [18:24]
Cameron Herold
Love it. Thank you. We also have a bunch of members have found formed accountability groups and we help them set up groups of five or six members who they will meet every month for one hour, just that group of six, to discuss what was talked about on the last monthly call to share what they're working on with each other and to hold each other accountable. If you are interested in being a part of Those accountability groups. And if you are able to commit to showing up to those monthly calls, then Simona and Meredith will work to get you into an accountability group. We do not make it mandatory, we do not highly market it, but we have a bunch of those up and running. We tried to push all of the members into it a couple of years ago and it fell apart because a bunch of people said they'd get in and then they weren't showing up. So the accountability groups that we do run are the ones where people are active and actively engaged. And a lot of those people tend to be ones who have come to an in person event. They get to know others, you know, they've shed their imposter syndrome and they're, they're just definitely all in. But if you want to be a part of that, you can mention that. Simone, do you want to add in how they're going to get value when you launch Circle and how they're going to get the most value from Slack? Sure.
- [19:36]
Simona
Hey guys. Hello again to everybody. We have talked briefly on Slack this, this past week. So, so good to see you semi in person here. So the idea is to make your life easier by having just one tool through which you can access everything that Cameron has mentioned right now. So you would have the resources, you would have a video library, you would have the downloadable playbooks and files and everything is going to be in one place including the possibility to network and including all the videos, all the meetings, we can schedule them through Circle and you can download directly to your calendar. So let's say on this call all the links will come from the same URL will be just different pages that you can go through and you can download an app. So you would have the ability, if Chris wants to talk to Chip, he can do through the app, send him a direct message and you guys have, you know, it's like having access to CEO Alliance 247 beyond the, you know, the time zones and beyond the live meetings.
- [20:49]
Cameron Herold
Thanks Simone, I appreciate it. One of the things that I'm really looking forward to about moving it away from Slack is it kind of moves it away from the day to day distraction of our other parts of our business too that it becomes a much more intentional use of the community, much more intentional time being spent. And again think about all of the time that you spend inside of Circle with the CO alliance at co alliance events on the monthly calls as classic working on the business instead of working in the business, right? If you were to spend, let's say you come to Every two hour call monthly and maybe you spent a total of another two hours a month. That's only one hour a week. One hour a week divided by a 40 hour work week is like one and a half percent, two percent of your week. That's not a lot of time considering it allows you 98% of the time to be busy being busy. But the time of sharpening the saw of asking for resources, asking for introductions, asking for shortcuts, kind of fact checking what you're thinking about things even. We've even had people role play tough discussions that they've had to have with their CEO or with direct. Hey, it's Cameron. I hope you're loving today's episode. Quick question for you. Does your company have a strong leadership training program in place to grow the skills of everyone who manages people? If you want to help yourself and your company grow, get everyone who manages people learning from my invest in your leaders online training program. There are 12 core leadership skills that I cover online and they're all going to really grow. CEOs pay me $78,000 a year to coach them one on one and now you can all benefit for 1% of what they pay me. These are the same leadership skills that I created and certified everyone in at 1-800-got junk when I was there as COO. Go to investinyourleaders.com today and use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month to get 10% off each manager you sign up. Now back to the show reports or with other members of the leadership team and they actually hop on a quick call with another member and they kind of role play stuff. So there's going to be some really big value that you'll start to gain out of that. Mir, am I missing anything on how they get value?
- [23:08]
Savannah Brewer
I think that's the biggest one. Just lean in. Ask questions. When you have questions, there are no dumb questions. Ask them. Like don't be afraid to ask.
- [23:20]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, lean in. As Mara said, I have a friend of mine who says there's no dumb questions. There's just dumb people with questions.
- [23:27]
Simona
Can I also add something?
- [23:29]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, go ahead.
- [23:30]
Simona
And there is no dumb answer. So if somebody asks a question and you can help a tiny bit, put yourself in the shoes of the person who actually went out there to ask a question. Let's not leave any questions unreplied because that can be a little bit discouraging for everybody. But also I'm pretty sure that each one of us can have a contribution as Cameron, you said at the beginning of this call, each answer is going to help a little bit. The person who asked the question, there is so much knowledge in this group, so many skills, such a diverse group with such a diverse knowledge that I think it's going to be great to build knowledge together. Especially on circle when those conversations that we create can be researched later and can be continued timelessly.
- [24:21]
Cameron Herold
I love it. Yeah. And we are very global as a community too. It's pretty interesting. I think about 40% of our members are women. Mary, it'd be great to actually get an update now that we finished 2024. Simonic maybe can get us an update. How many of our members are women and how many countries are we in now at the end of 2024? I think we're 17 countries and 40% of our members are women. The smallest size company that we have as a member is 2 million. To attend the in person event you need to do at least 5 million. But our biggest members are around 5,600 million. So we really kind of run that, that nice gamut. The mean kind of the average size members, about 34 million. But you really get to do a nice global perspective. So that's actually important. So let's open it up for an active Q and A. I'm willing to take any questions on operations, execution, culture. Oh, by the way, I spoke about this on stage last week at the Mindvalley Future Human event in Dubai. The area that we are the strongest in as leaders is probably the area that we're like, oh yeah, but that's no big deal. It's that no big deal stuff that is our unique ability. It's that no big deal stuff that most other members suck at. So the stuff that you're like, oh, that's easy. No, that's the stuff that you need to be sharing because nobody else is good at that. The fact that I could walk out onto a stage in front of 2,500 people, the same stage that Jay Shetty was on and Steven Bartlett was on. Marie diamond from the Secret. If I led you the list of the other speakers, it was pretty crazy that I'm a main stage speaker, but I could have walked out on that stage, spoken for 90 minutes without any slides and without any agenda what to talk about. Because speaking for me is my unique ability. But if somebody says, oh, how do you do keynote speaking? I'm like, oh, it's no big deal. Just hop up on stage and talk. That doesn't work for most people, right? So yes, I do have a structure. And I could walk people through my structure of how I structure a talk, how I prep for a talk, how I organize slides, how I manage my time on the stage, how I work the room, how I connect with people. There's a whole kind of list of things that I now take for granted because it's my unconscious competence, Right. I've moved from that unconscious unconpetence all the way around the cycle to unconscious competence. That's the stuff that I want you to be cognizant of, that you can help other people in. The stuff that you dismiss as easy is the stuff that everybody else can help in. So just for fun, why don't we all just write down what's one thing in the chat right now that we are really, really good at? What's our kind of one unique ability area. And then I'd also like you to open the slack up. I'm going to have you do one thing in the slack really quickly too. What's one thing that you're all just really good at? Drop that into the chat. Spotting errors. That's interesting. Leadership, people, management. Building systems. Great. Building operational systems and processes. Great. Documenting processes and getting others to follow. Yeah. Chris, what's your simplifying data and KPIs? Love it. So, you know, it's interesting when we think about those things, those are things that I'm actually not that good at. I'm not good at simplifying data and KPIs. I'm not that good at documenting processes and getting others to follow. Those happen to be your unique abilities. By the way, if you've done your Colby profile, drop your numbers for your Colby profile into the slack. Right now it's the four numbers, or is any? Just put your hand up if you've not done your Colby A profile yet. Oh, a few of you. Has anyone done theirs yet? Michelle, what are your numbers? And Chris, have you done your colby?
- [28:12]
Savannah Brewer
No, mine's 7672.
- [28:15]
Cameron Herold
Yeah. Oh, 7672. Interesting. So you're kind of high on three. So you're high on factfinder, meaning you ask a lot of questions before you start stuff. And then you're a reasonably high quickstart too. So you work pretty well in an entrepreneurial environment, which is good. Most of our members have a very high first two numbers. Mayor, can we make sure that in the onboarding with all new members in Simona that we get all of the members to do their Colby A profile and that we push to get their CEO to also do their Colby A profile. The Colby profile teaches you how you start and initiate projects. We speak a lot about it on our CEO alliance calls and our monthly events. I don't make any money off of it, but it's a really powerful tool to teach you about working with your CEO. It's very similar to the book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It's all about learning how to understand the other person, how to communicate with the other person, how to get in sync. And if you go onto ChatGPT and put your Colby A profile in, and then you actually put your CEOs Colby a profile in, it will tell you how to work together. Like Meredith could drop in her 7634 and drop in mine, which is a unique entrepreneur. 14393 and say, how should if my Colby is this, and this is my role, and this is my CEO's role and this is their Colby, how should we work together? It will tell her how to communicate with me, It'll tell her how to ask for stuff from me. It's a really, really interesting shortcut on removing any conflict and increasing the level of sync that you can be in, which is pretty powerful. So Meredith's profile is 7634 and mine's 4393. Completely different. All right, who's got questions? And if I don't know or I haven't done it, I'll tell you. But anything around operations, execution, culture, meeting rhythms, people. One of my unique abilities is definitely the people side of the business. Anything from interviewing, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, or if you've got questions about the CO alliance, you can ask those too, or questions about the course. We also have about 15 different partners in the SEO alliance and you can actually ask for introductions to any of the partners and we'll introduce you. The partners cover a range of different industries. So it covers things like executive search, fractional CFOs, fractional CMOs, remote and offshore hiring, vivid vision writing, EOS implementers and coaches each of these areas and you can actually read brief descriptions of them down below. We have partners for each of these areas that we've been referring to some of them for like 10 years. I've referred a couple of executive search firms for the last 10 years. We've got some really good offshore hiring people that we use now, book publishing. So if you need introductions to any of those, just drop Meredith or I or Simona a note and we'll actually be able to introduce you. They will give you the absolute best pricing. You won't be able to get better pricing. If you go direct. They will take care of you better because you're getting kind of handed over to them from the CO alliance and they really love our referrals. And you'll get kind of front of the line service from them too. Again, because I'm making that introduction versus just dropping into their sales team and I usually introduce you right to their CEO so you don't have to go through their whole process. Who's got questions? No dumb questions.
- [31:47]
Savannah Brewer
I have a question about the partner stuff that you talked about. What tends to be the most leveraged of the partners that you have on there, which is most commonly used?
- [31:56]
Cameron Herold
Wow. Most commonly used is the executive search firms. The most leverage I think is a fractional cfo, fractional cmo, or the remote offshore hiring a marketing broker. I'll walk you through each of those. If you're a company right now that is less than 10 million in revenue, often you have a controller or a director of finance, maybe a VP of finance. You might have given them a CFO title, but they're probably not truly a strategic cfo. So when you get to that stage and you can hire a fractional CFO to look at your books every month, to look at your budget, to look at your cash flow and projections, to help the leadership team make strategic decisions, that becomes a very invaluable tool. And it usually costs like 50, $60,000 a year to have a 250 or $300,000 CFO dropping in and overseeing. Same with marketing. If you've got a director of marketing, even if you've given them a CMO title, if they're not truly a strategic head of marketing. We had a client one time who was a million dollars in marketing. That was their annual ad spend for marketing, and they had an $80,000 director of marketing overseeing it. And I said, you need to go and pay a fractional CMO 50 or $60,000 a year to coach and lead your director of marketing. And instead of spending a million dollars, spend 940. They got way more bang for their buck by having more strategic insight. So if you want more leadership tips and systems from me, they're free at YouTube amronherald. And that's H e r o l D. I think that was where some leverage came in. But they couldn't afford to have a $300,000 CMO. Right. But they couldn't afford not to have a fractional one. The marketing broker we have is fantastic. He just has vetted hundreds of marketing freelancers and marketing agencies that do everything. They do digital, they do search, they do paid, they do YouTube, they do SEO. Anything that you want done, design, he actually knows where to plug you in. So that actually can be quite good as a leverage point. Yeah. And the other big one is the commercial real estate leasing. If any of you are looking to move into new space or get out of space that you're in or take over more retail or more warehouse or whatever, or even negotiate with landlords if your leases are coming up for review. This company that we refer to is probably one of the best in North. Well, they are one of the best in North America. They've been doing it for decades. And they only work on behalf of the leasing side, so they never work on behalf of the landlord. So they really understand how to negotiate with landlords. And, and they only make money based on what they save you. So there's a lot of leverage off that. Next question. CEOs pay me $78,000 a year for a 90 minute call. You should ask me some questions. I heard that from you already. I'm like, okay, shit, it's time to ask the question just on my brain.
- [35:08]
Savannah Brewer
Because you just talk Colby. But other than Colby, are there any other. I don't want to say personal, but like, you know, things that you. Tools that you use during the hiring that you'd highly suggest?
- [35:17]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I don't like personality profiles in the hiring process. I like personality profiles once I've made the hire, right. It's kind of like I wouldn't want to go out and use a personality profile to find a wife. But I would like to use personality profiles to learn how to build better relationships and a stronger relationship and continually growing relationship with my wife. So what I used to do at 1-800-GOT junk was every year we would have the leadership team go through another personality profile together. One year we would all do Strength Finders. Next year we'd all do Disc. Next year we would all do Colors. Next year we'd all do the Love Languages. Next year we'd all do Colby. So it's less about having the perfect one and it's more about just gaining more insights and additional kind of points of reference. Because I can't change Meredith, Meredith can't change me. But it's. How can we understand each other more to continue to build that strong relationship with each other?
- [36:12]
Savannah Brewer
That's interesting. So you haven't found that specific role where you need somebody very detailed like the land the plane kind of person. You don't use anything to see if they would naturally fit that.
- [36:23]
Cameron Herold
No. And if you go through the interviewing module in my invest in your leaders course and you read the book who by? Jeff Smart, who's a prior speaker, and even watch his talk in the portal, you'll see that I believe more in behavioral profiling and also past performance out of the interview than off a personality profile. And I'll give you a bias as to why I don't love them. Back about 20 years ago, we profiled all of our top franchisees and we tried to kind of reverse engineer to come up with a personality profile that matched them. I ended up being the prototype franchisee, which didn't surprise us because I was also one of the very top franchisees for college pro painters. So it didn't surprise us that I was the prototype. We ended up in an interview interviewing this woman from California, and she ended up dead match to the profile. But in the interview, she was a no on the three core areas. She wasn't that strong in leadership. She wasn't that strong in attainment. She wasn't that strong in tenacity. The profile said she was a good fit. So the franchise sales team pushed us to follow the profile. We did. And about eight to nine months later, we had to remove her franchise and terminate the contract because she was failing because her leadership attainment and tenacity weren't strong enough. So we ended up getting sued and we ended up. The lawsuit ended up getting dropped. But what we realized was the profile was only one part of it, and it made for lazier interviewers. We found that the people that were using profiles didn't know how to do proper interviews. They didn't know how to go through a resume. They didn't know how to ask tough questions. They didn't know how to do reference checks. So they started relying on this tool instead of actually relying on their interview skills. That's my bias around it. I'm fine if people want to use it. And I see some value in some of them for sure, like strength finders as an example. But I see more value in definitely doing it once you've onboarded. Belinda, I think you had a question. Yeah, I would love to get your perspective about my situation in terms of like, no CEO. We have temporarily the CFO taking some of those tasks, but it's. It's like, how would you approach it? Yeah, I would really take the. The kind of the plan down to three months. I would get the leadership team and if there's a board or the cfo, whoever's kind of in charge to agree on what the three month plan is, what the three month metrics are, and then what the one month plan is and what the one month metrics are for each person on the leadership team so that you know with clarity what's expected of me, what should I focus on? To allow you to say no more often than you say yes. To allow you to focus on the critical few things versus the important many and to allow you to stay hyper focused. Because I think the opportunity for distraction and nervousness is there. Secondly is I would really get a strong communication plan in place to do a town hall meeting with all the employees over zoom and in person because all the questions that the leadership team is having, the employees are having times 10. So it's kind of like if mom and dad are getting divorced, the kids are terrified. Mom and dad are talking to each other on what the plan is, but the kids have no fucking idea. You really need to bring the kids into that discussion so they know what the plan is. Not for 10 years, but so they know what the plan is for the next couple of months. They know what the plan is for the next month. So get the kids involved in this discussion and the plan. That's a great question. Yeah, so far I got got like, okay, we just keep on doing like there's no real change, but no, there is real change. The pink elephant is the room is they want to know what the plan is, they want to know what's hiring, they want to know if we are we. Okay, they're nervous, so you need to address that. So give them a chance to ask questions and to show them the plan. Thank you. Time for one or two more questions. Hey Cam, what's the one thing? Sorry, one quick one. Another big value. Your CEO is allowed to attend one of the monthly group coaching calls that I do with CEOs who pay to be on them. So there's CEOs that are paying to be part of the group coaching calls. Your CEO is allowed to attend one of those a year when you're a member. So really, really encourage them to show up. They'll get huge value in that 90 minute call with being able to ask me questions about their business and to be able to hear a lot of the questions that the other CEOs are answering. And it'll be a great way for them to meet another group of CEOs to chip. Go ahead. So you have a coach CEOs separate from this do you have a group where you coach CEOs separately from this and that's where we can. Yeah, I have a group, but it's nothing like the CEO. It's nothing like the CEO. It's just a monthly. It's just a monthly call that I do with CEOs where I am actually the expert in working with them directly. Okay. Okay, thanks. Yeah, go ahead, Chip. Yeah. No, for new members, what would. What's one thing that you would implore for new members to get the most out of this group that they do immediately ask a question in the slack and answer a question in the slack. And in fact, if you've got the slack in front of you right now, I recommend you all open it and write a question down in there today. It's that simple thing of just asking a question and contributing a question will slowly start to remove the. The imposter syndrome. That would be one. Another one is I know Simona sends out a list of our top kind of favorite videos is. I would watch some of those favorite videos, Mara. Those in the. The first hundred days as well. I know there's 100 days process we give everyone. Yes. So there's a list of our favorite calls. Those are the ones that were rated the highest by members. That's something that I would do quickly too, is dive into some of those. Excellent. Thank you. Of course, I'll have Meredith send out information on the group coaching too. If any of your CEOs want to be a part of that, they can sign up for that for the year as well. But definitely get them to join the one call that they get for free. All right, we've got time for one more quick question. Or we can wrap five minutes early so we all have time to walk down the hall, hug our kid, get a coffee, go to the bathroom and be on time. Everybody have a quick question.
- [42:36]
Simona
Hey, Cameron, you said you would ask somebody to do something in Slack or everybody to do something in Slack right now.
- [42:42]
Cameron Herold
Yeah. So the thing I want you to do in Slack is to go and open Slack right now and ask a question. Something that you're thinking about, you're worried about, you're frustrated with a tool, an introduction you might make. Just ask a question in Slack and you'll get some really nice responses. It'll make you feel welcomed. And then also in the slack, go read the last 10 or 15 posts that people have posted and contribute. Just drop in your little tidbit of wisdom, the stuff that you take for granted and a really great way to answer some questions in Slack is often do a quick loom video. All right, everybody, we'll see you on this week's call. Mayor, when is this week's call? Is it tomorrow or Thursday?
- [43:19]
Savannah Brewer
Wednesday. Always Wednesday.
- [43:22]
Cameron Herold
Tomorrow is Wednesday for me. I'm in Sydney, Australia right now. So we'll see. We'll see all of you in two days. One day for me, two days for you. Well, I don't know. I don't know when I'll see you. I'll see you in two days on our next call. Bye, everybody. Bye.
- [43:35]
Savannah Brewer
Thank you so much.
- [43:36]
Cameron Herold
Bye, everyone. Thanks, guys.
- [43:38]
Savannah Brewer
Thank you. 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.