A (0:00)

Okay, and let me explain the title. So the reason I even called the book the Second in Command and not the COO is your second in command. Could be a coo, it could be a Vice President, operations, it could be a Director of Operations, could be an Operations Manager, could be a gm, could be an Executive Assistant. It's your yin and yang partner. Okay, so the title, to have a true C level title, to be a Chief of anything, Chief Technology, Chief Marketing, Chief Financial, Chief Chief Operating. Thirty years ago, you had to be a major player at a major company. And then what happened is the banks in the late 90s started to give away titles of VP to people as a marketing tool. Remember when you had like your 25 year old friend was the Vice president of some random bank. You're like, what the fuck? He's like, no, I'm 12 layers below the CEO.

B (0:52)

Welcome to the Second In Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herald. 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.

A (1:17)

Today I'm clarifying what it truly means to be a second in command far beyond just the COO title. I'll explain title inflation and what's really required for a true C level role. Strategic insight, autonomy and P and L responsibility. I'll illustrate how my own fit for 1, 800, got junk evolved and how the right COO depends on a company's season of growth. I'll advise entrepreneurs to know yourself first, then seek a counterpart. Learn my controversial approach to hiring, including poaching talent through a compelling brand and vivid vision. Define a CEO's role. What does that mean? Chief Operating Officer. What does that mean? Okay, and let me explain the title. So the reason I even called the book the Second in Command and not the COO is your second in command. Could be a coo, it could be a Vice President, Operations, it could be a Director of Operations, could be an Operations Manager, could be a gm, could be an Executive Assistant. It's your yin and yang partner. Okay, so the title, to have a true C level title, to be a Chief of anything, Chief Technology, Chief Marketing, Chief financial chief operating. 30 years ago you had to be a major player at a major company. And then what happened is the banks in the late 90s started to give away titles of VP to people as a marketing tool. Remember when you had like your 25 year old friend was the Vice President of Some random bank. You're like, what the fuck? He's like, no, I'm 12 layers below the CEO. And then when the Internet started to hit 95 to 2000, we started to actually be able to market ourselves. So a title became a marketing tool. So we started to give out not only equity in lieu of compensation, we started to give out titles to people as a door opener with their email signatures. That's where title inflation started. So to be a true title inflation, I think I coined that term. So to have to be a true chief operating officer or a chief financial officer, et cetera, you have to come in with a level of strategic insight where you're actually helping to direct the direction of the organization. You come in with a level of autonomy where you actually can say, here's all the stuff that needs to get done. And the CEO goes, thank God. I didn't know what to do. Brian didn't give me anything to do for five years. I was showing him what needed to happen. You have a level of P and L and budget responsibility and the ability to actually manage a P and L and budgets. You bring people and partners into the company with you. Oh, and then your compensation is actually valid compared to what the title is. If you have $120,000 person, they're not a COO, they're a director. A true COO is in the 250 to 550 range. I was getting paid $312,000 18 years ago. I was a COO. So be careful with the title you give people. Okay? The question though was, what is one? Because you have the COO alliance, you have a focus. I would retitle it now as to like, you've got the genius network. Not like, I would call it the second in command society or something, because we have COOs, directors, ops, GMs, whatever, as long as you're the second in command of the CEO. So to find a really good one, you have to know yourself. The weird thing about a CEO is I was the right CEO for Brian from from 2 million to 100 million. It was the right stage. I knew how to franchise. I'd done it twice before. I could come in with all the autonomy and strategy and like, I literally nailed that role. And on the trust and friendship side, he was my best friend. So it was just a perfect yin yang approach. The stuff that I sucked at it and finance, he loved. And he was good at all the other stuff I was really good at. And he didn't want to go near, 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 grows, 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 CEO. 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. The current COO, Eric Church. I've known Eric for 38 years, which is really weird. We started a fraternity together in Ottawa, Canada in 1987. I was president the first year, he was president the second year, and he's now the COO at 1-800-GOT junk. Eric's been there for 12 years. Crazy, right? Eric's been there for 12 Years. He would have been a horrible COO completely. And he studied. And so is Brian. He would have been incapable to be a COO for the first six years because he didn't have the entrepreneurial skills. He wasn't from the franchising space. He didn't know how to scale a startup. But he's been incredible from the 100 million to the billion. It's absolutely his zone of genius. Remember Jeff Taylor from Monster? Do you know Jeff Taylor? Remember monster.com? maybe it was Vern who introduced us. So Eric used to work as like a. A senior executive VP with the head of Monster. Like, he was very seasoned in the corporate world. So even though it's the same CEO, there's a different season that you have to hire for. If I look at all of my members of the COO alliance, I would be a horrible COO for 95 to 98% of their companies because I don't match the skill set of the industry. I don't match the size of the company they are. I'm not a good fit with their CEO. So it's this weird role. But if you're the head of marketing for a finance firm, you could probably be the head of marketing for all finance firms. If you're the head of IT for a fitness company, you could be the head of IT for all fitness companies. If you're the COO for a fitness company, you may not be the right fit for that CEO. So it's a really tough role to hire for today. How do you go about hiring for, like, let me ask, how many of you have a COO or someone that is your second in command? Okay. How many of you don't have one, but would like one? Okay. How many of you might be replacing the one that you have in the next 12 months? By the way, if you're looking at the person that you have as your coo, remember that at some point they're going to drive you crazy. But even if you replace them with somebody else, that new person is going to drive you crazy too. When I was coaching Marcelo Claret, Marcelo was the CEO of Sprint. He'd sold his first company for over a billion dollars to Softbank. And then Masa appointed Marcelo, the CEO of Sprint, to prepare to do a merger with T Mobile, which we did. I was sitting in Marcelo's office in Kansas City, and he was asking me about people, and he said, when are people not going to be the problem anymore? I'm like, you're the 82nd largest company in the United States. They're always the fucking problem. So our job as a leader is to grow people. It's to grow their skills, to grow their confidence, and to grow their connections so that we can delegate everything except genius. So your job is to keep working with the people you've got. So the CEO that's driving you crazy, that's just an opportunity for you to coach them or to put them into the CEO alliance and let us work with them, let them work with each other. But our job is always to grow people. So don't get frustrated with them, don't give up on those people. Where do you find them? The first thing is to know yourself. So really do an activity inventory of all of the stuff that you suck at as an entrepreneur, of all the stuff that drains you of energy as an entrepreneur, of all the business projects and things you'd love to be doing but you don't have time to do, of all the business areas that have to report to you but you're not good at. Make a list of all those things and then flip it upside down and that becomes what this new person is going to be doing. They're going to do all the stuff you're bad at. Okay, number one, then describe the kind of person you are as a leader. Look at your Colby profile. Look at your disc profile and look for the counterpart to that, someone who matches really well with that personality profile. That's the starting point of what you're looking for is to understand yourself first. Once you know what you're looking for, I would describe the title that matches the roles and responsibility, the metrics that they're responsible for, and then think about the proper compensation and put the proper title in place to match the compensation. Don't put a big title on a small role and don't put small compensation on the wrong role. And then I like Engaging Executive Search Firms I have three executive search firms that we refer to. One is Max Hansen. Is everybody Max Hansen from Weisscotes? So Max, now a genius network member. They're specialists in recruiting COOs and senior executives. I like working with them because they're culture based recruiting and they know it really well. Oh, then were you involved in a search for John Barry's law firm a couple years ago too? No. So anyway, so another random story. Yeah, I like getting executive search firms to poach really good people and then giving them the vivid vision. And if the really good people don't like the vivid vision of where we're going, I still want to go out and keep searching for the people that do.