Ep. 515 - Erik Church – How To Scale A $100M Brand Into A $365M Powerhouse

Summary

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Second in Command with Cameron Herold

Episode 515: Erik Church – How To Scale A $100M Brand Into A $365M Powerhouse

Release Date: October 2, 2025
Guest: Erik Church, President & COO, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and O2E Brands
Host: Cameron Herold

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Overview

In this episode, Cameron Herold sits down with Erik Church, the President and COO behind the explosive growth of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? (and related O2E Brands). The two reconnect as old friends and former colleagues, delving into how Erik built on the company’s $100M foundation to nearly quadruple revenue. The conversation explores leadership evolution, the vital role of culture, the partnership between visionary founders and skilled operators, strategies for internal talent growth, and balancing rapid change with operational discipline.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Erik’s Leadership Journey: From Helping Founders to Building Powerhouses

• Background & Chemistry with Brian Scudamore:

  • Erik and Cameron both have long histories as "second in commands" working with strong founder-visionaries, notably Brian Scudamore.
  • Erik’s career focus: partnering with founders to realize organizational growth and “true intent”.
    • "My background has been working with a variety of founders, organizations ranging anywhere from a startup up to a couple of billion dollars." – Erik (03:23)

• Learning Command vs. Collaboration:

  • Early leadership style was too "command and control"—a lesson learned to shift toward collaboration, listening, and peer buy-in.
    • "If I look back, I had way too much command and control in my world. So one of the things I did learn...was how do you work with your peers and how to get buy in and how to use your ears more than your mouth." – Erik (00:00, 12:27)

2. The Vivid Vision (Painted Picture) as a North Star

• The Power of Visionary Documents:

  • All brands in O2E (1-800-GOT-JUNK?, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, You Move Me, Shack Shine) use distinct “painted pictures” to define future states.
  • The “painted picture” (now “Vivid Vision”) is set four to five years ahead, describing what success looks and feels like beyond just numbers.
    • "For anybody in the organization...to see where are we going? What is it going to look and feel like...when we're standing in that moment?" – Erik (05:28)
    • Enables strategic clarity and helps teams know what to say ‘no’ to.

• Strategic Planning & Prioritization:

  • The vision document becomes the anchor for a four-year strategic plan, annual goals, and monthly reviews. New ideas are filtered based on alignment with the vision.
    • "Strategy is more about what you say no to and less about what we say yes to. And this really does afford us the opportunity to know what to say no to." – Erik (05:52)

3. Saying No – The Art of Focus

• The Discipline of Focus:

  • True leadership and strategy are rooted in discerning which opportunities to decline.
    • Quote: "True leadership is saying no more often than we say yes." – (07:02, referencing Greg Clark, College Pro founder)

• Balancing Founder Boldness with Operational Scalability:

  • Erik’s approach: let the founder (Brian) generate the “crazy” ideas, then operationalize and scale the winners.
    • "The best thing you can do as a COO is empower them to do what they're good at...Our job is to figure out can we make it scalable and can we replicate it?" – Erik (29:57, 32:19)

• Memorable Anecdote:

  • Brian’s idea for a "Hunks of Junk" calendar: an example of bold (and sometimes wild) founder visions that need steering for maximum impact.
    • "He had this amazing vision, and we're just looking at him going, are you out of your fucking tree?" – Cameron (29:04)

4. Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

• Onboarding to Sustain Culture:

  • Erik draws from fraternity, military, and EF Education experiences to emphasize onboarding as critical for cultural perpetuation.
    • "How you bring people into an organization is equally important because you want people to start to learn and onboard the culture.” – Erik (09:00)

• Global Perspective:

  • At EF Education, the company culture transcended local customs in 45 countries—a model for consistency at scale.
    • "You get exactly what the culture is, regardless of what the culture is of that country. The culture of the company shone through." – Erik (10:00)

5. The Yin & Yang – CEO/COO Partnership

• Division of External/Internal Focus:

  • Brian handles the external brand, media, and vision, while Erik steers inward development and franchisee relations.
    • "For me, my leadership really turns inwardly to the organization...And so it's just, it's kind of a match made in heaven in that sense." – Erik (13:31)

• Two-in-a-Box Model:

  • At the executive level, CEO and COO operate as true partners ("two-in-a-box") rather than isolated silos.
    • "So we are operating together not in a co-CEO role but as two in a box decision making and defining a role." – Erik (34:18)

6. Developing Leaders and Succession

• Replace Yourself to Grow:

  • Leaders are encouraged to develop their replacements as a prerequisite to their own advancement.
    • "There’s no role available to you inside the organization until you replace yourself." – Erik (15:18)

• Internal vs. External Hiring:

  • Rapid growth (from $100M to $365M) has reinforced the need to grow talent internally for speed and cultural fit.
    • "The only way that we can truly grow is from within." – Erik (16:20)

• Coaching & Feedback Loops:

  • Erik invests in executive coaching, frequent performance/professional development reviews, and seeks constructive feedback.
    • "I actually work externally with a coach who gets intimately involved, who really challenges me." – Erik (17:28)

7. Building Connection Beyond Work: The 101 Life Goals

• Implementing Dream Manager Concepts:

  • Inspired by Matthew Kelly’s "The Dream Manager," O2E Brands employees list 101 personal life goals (tracked company-wide).
    • "We get all of our employees...to list out their 101 life goals. And we track it and we post it so everybody in the organization can see." – Erik (20:18)

• Community & Retention:

  • Shared personal goals enable unrelated employees to connect and support each other (e.g., school-building trips to Africa).
    • “The goal is that we can find communities within our community who have common aspirations.” – Erik (21:00)

• Manager Integration:

  • Managers reference team members’ goals in check-ins, coaching them to progress not just work, but personal ambitions.
    • "When you sit down with a direct report...many of our managers will spend time looking at 101 labels of their direct reports and ask them how things are progressing." – Erik (22:09)

8. The COO Superpower & Self-Reflection

• Humility and Developing Others:
  • Erik’s “superpower” is making others successful and putting the spotlight on their contributions.
    • "Where I get great pride...is having the people around me be successful. And I want them and their names and their work to be associated with the achievements." – Erik (24:49)

9. Systematizing Project Prioritization

• Filtering Initiatives:
  • Projects are weighed for impact/urgency, grounded in the vivid vision, and continually pared down to the essential.
    • "We start with our painted picture...build out a four-year strategic plan...and then on a monthly basis we have our executive steering group. This is where we bring the new ideas." – Erik (27:23)

10. Managing Rapid Growth & Constant Change

• Change as a Constant:
  • The company’s appetite for innovation requires ongoing focus on how to support team members through frequent transitions (e.g., major Salesforce rollout).
    • "Change is the constant and the only constant for us." – Erik (40:15)
    • "Those who don’t change in time will be changed by time." – (41:25, quoting EF Education founder)

11. Optimizing Time & Personal Performance

• Leveraging Travel Time:

  • With operations across Toronto and Vancouver, Erik carves out nine hours of undistracted focus weekly while flying—critical for reflection and planning.
    • "Those weeks where I stay in Vancouver for the weekend and I miss that nine hours of focus time. It's a terrible thing." – Erik (38:16)

• Mentorship & External Networks:

  • Importance of peer accountability, e.g., YPO forum and COO Alliance for learning and best-practice exchange.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Strategic Clarity:
  "Every sentence of the painted picture is a future state...the key is to look at which project to put in place first because it's foundational. You build almost like building a home." – Cameron (29:04)

• On Letting Visionaries Soar:
  "There's no controlling Brian...the best thing you can do as a COO is empower them to do what they're good at, which is come up with those big, bold ideas which people in the data departments hate because they can't measure them." – Erik (29:57, 32:19)

• On Growth Through People:
  "I've built a strong team. I've brought people from the outside who believe in people, believe in empowering people, believe in developing people and providing a vision not just for the company, but...for what growth of the individual means." – Erik (47:03)

• On Handling Change:
  "Human beings are not generally calibrated to constant, ongoing change. So how do we affect change in a positive way where people feel valued, part of the experience...?" – Erik (41:28)

• On Two-in-a-Box Leadership:
  "I would say...sharing best practices around working with...a founder visionary type, how that works, and how that two in a box can work." – Erik (34:18)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [00:00] Leadership lessons from college, using ears more than mouth
• [03:23] Erik’s background working with founder-led businesses
• [04:28] The “Painted Picture”/Vivid Vision and its use at O2E
• [07:17] Saying no, the importance of strategic focus
• [09:00] Lessons on onboarding and sustaining culture
• [13:31] How the CEO/COO partnership is balanced inward/outward
• [15:18] Succession planning: replacing yourself to grow
• [17:28] Erik’s learning and feedback process as a leader
• [20:18] Implementing “101 Life Goals” company-wide
• [22:09] Managers coaching to employees’ personal goals
• [24:49] Erik’s superpower: shaping other leaders’ success
• [27:23] Project prioritization, executive steering group
• [29:04] Managing visionary “big ideas” and operational reality
• [34:18] The “two in a box” leadership model
• [40:15] The challenge of leading through endless change
• [47:03] Erik’s core growth philosophy: it’s all about the team

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Conclusion

This masterclass episode dives deep into what it really takes to scale a business from $100M to nearly $400M while protecting culture, focusing strategy, and developing leaders at every level. Erik Church emerges as a model COO—steady, humble, people-focused—who proves that empowering others is the surest way to drive organizational greatness. Whether you're a founder, operator, or aspiring executive, the frameworks, candid advice, and entertaining war stories offer practical roadmaps for scaling fast and staying true.

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Transcript

[Eric Church]

If I look back, I had way too much command and control in my world. And so one of the things I did learn at the fraternity was how do you work with your peers and how to get buy in and how to use your ears more than your mouth and again get the common sense of purpose and then how to lead people to that, to that right area and then holding people to a standard that they want to be held to and not letting them slip.

[Podcast Narrator]

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.

[Cameron Herold]

Today we're talking with Eric Church and Eric and I have actually been friends for 330 years. Eric is the current COO for 1,800 Got Junk and he actually joined 1,800-Got Junk in November of 2011. Amazingly, not only have we been friends for the last 30 years, but I was also the COO for 1,800 Got Junk, leaving there around 10 years ago. As the COO, Eric's responsibility is to translate the 1,800-Got Junk vision into strategic and operational plans that are realistic and capable of delivering positive growth results for the company. Prior to arriving at the Junction, Eric led EF Education Canada, which is the largest privately held education company in the world, where he was able to more than double the company's profits during tough economic times. Eric became president of EF Education in Canada in 2007 after working at the company for eight years in a variety of roles. He was President of EF Explore America, President of EF College Break, and Executive Vice President of Global Marketing. Eric is a hands on leader who believes the best way to learn anything is by living it. So he traveled extensively to interact with customers and suppliers to make sure EF was providing the best possible experience. The summer before joining 1-800-GOT junk, Eric traveled to Kenya, Ecuador, Holland, France, England, Switzerland and China. Before joining EF Canada, Eric was also the Senior Vice President at eons, Senior Vice President for Student Online Solutions, Vice President for Plum Traders, a college pro, franchise owner and a leadership Consultant for Acacia educational foundation. In 1991, he moved to the US and worked in Chicago, Boston and New York. Eric lives with his wife Paige and their daughter Elizabeth, and he's a seasoned outdoorsman who loves canoeing and fly fishing. He's also a motorcycle enthusiast who has ridden across Africa from Mexico to the Arctic Circle and across the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Eric, welcome to the podcast.

[Eric Church]

Thank you very much, Cameron. Really appreciate the invitation.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. This has been. Been a long time and as we were talking just before we hopped on, we're, we're overdue to get back to Ottawa and visit everybody and see what we've built there too, so.

[Eric Church]

Absolutely.

[Cameron Herold]

So give me a bit of a background as to where you came from because you came into this with a lot of experience and you walked into a hundred million dollar company, whereas when I started there it was only 2 million. You walked into a hundred million dollar company and really grew it. So you came in with a lot more experience in your role than I ever did. Tell me a little bit about your background and then what it was like walking into the brand the first, you know, first year.

[Eric Church]

No, that's an interesting question. And Brian Scudamore, who you knew very, very well, of course, and who I've got to know very well, had he and I had a conversation even actually previously to, to me being inside the organization, had connected through, through mutual acquaintance here and yourself as well. And he kind of pointed out to me that I had made a career working with, with founders and helping founders bring their business to the next level and helping them realize their true intent and what their mission is. And so my background has been working with a variety of founders, organizations ranging anywhere from a startup up to a couple of billion dollars. And I find myself in a place where I can be most successful when I'm partnered with the founder, the CEO, the visionary. And I can help drive an organization to the next level by working towards those goals that are going to have the biggest impact on achieving those goals and those outcomes.

[Cameron Herold]

And you talk about Brian kind of being the visionary and does he still use the concept, the paint in picture concept?

[Eric Church]

Absolutely. It's pivotal. And not just in one or got junk but in fact Oliver Brown's brands of wow one day you move me and shack shine and the O2E ordinary to exceptional company. Being the parent company of all of those, we each have, they have separate painted pictures for each of those organizations and we encourage everybody individually to have their own painted picture for themselves.

[Cameron Herold]

Cool. So this is for our listener. This is what I've kind of codified. My new book comes out in a couple of weeks called Vivid Vision. And it's the concept of this painted picture that Brian had created when I was even back at 1-800-JUNK that he and I had learned about four years before from an Olympic Coach. So walk us through Eric. How the painted picture concept or the vivid vision concept that you guys are using, how does it help you as the COO in terms of understanding where Brian's going? How does that tool, that painted picture help you?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, it's a fantastic tool for anybody in the organization, not just myself in the role of president, chief operating officer, but for anybody in the organization to be able to see where are we going? What is it going to look and feel like when we're standing in that moment in that time when we we the paint picture is dated so we dated four years out or five years out. And it is painting the picture of exactly what it looks and feels like to be in that moment at regardless of whatever you establish, whether you want to be at $500 million or whether you want to be at $50 million. But what does it look and feel like for the entire organization? Not not just the scorecard of the numerical value, but what does it look and feel like the people who are surrounded with by what does the customer look like? What's the customer experience? Everything that you can envision is going to be true in that day and we can then very clearly build out our multi year strategies to accomplish those goals. So if we use that as a barometer of the things to say yes to and the things to say no to and as most people, and I'm sure most of your listeners are aware is strategy is more about what you say no to and less about what we say yes to. And this really does afford us the opportunity to know what to say no to.

[Cameron Herold]

It's funny you mentioned so that's another weird one. I forgot about that. But you and I also both had a history with College Pro Painters and we're franchisees with College Pro. And the founder of College Pro, Greg Clark sent me an email just the other day and one of his points, he sends me emails all the time we chat and his point was that true leadership is saying no more often than we say yes. And it wasn't from an autocratic dictatorial way of saying no, but it was looking for the, I guess the waste and the things that we spend time on that maybe are low return. But give me some examples of things that you guys have gotten good at saying no at.

[Eric Church]

That's a great question. This also layers in on top of the urgent and the important and how you to find that and where people spend their time. Totally interesting. As you talk about about Greg, his his younger brother Tim Clark is now in our organization as our Head coach.

[Cameron Herold]

It's awesome.

[Eric Church]

Yeah. Which is. Which is great.

[Cameron Herold]

And I've heard you hired Rodney Longmont as well.

[Eric Church]

Yeah. So Rodney's in the organization as well. And so we. I have a real affinity for. For when I hear. Got. Excuse me, a real affinity for. For college as well as when I got junk. But in particular, college trove the. Because that's where I got to cut my teeth. That's where I learned a lot of the lessons that I need to learn to be successful today. And so we have lots of our franchise partners who've come from college Pro as well, and it was certainly a formative experience for me. So it's something else I have to come clean on is that I owe you a debt of gratitude for getting me into college pro as well. So.

[Cameron Herold]

No, that was a fun time for both of us. It's funny because college pro Rod Larman, who you guys just hired, I trained him as a franchisee. I just remember that his. His general manager was Rob Archambeau, and he was massively underprepared going into his first training session. And so my VP asked me to go in and literally overnight, I had to go in and train a whole group of people I didn't know. And Rod was in that group. And he, I guess, has been with the company for 20 years now. I think that was in 1989. I think I was training him. Sort of 1990 coming up.

[Eric Church]

More like 25 years, I guess. That's crazy. Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

It's a lot longer. It isn't. That's right. The decades are laughing now. Now with. With Acacia fraternity, did you pull any culture or cult ideas from there into your business? Do you remember any of the things you might have pulled from Acacia?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, absolutely. I think if we. If we go back to the importance of common sense of purpose and finding. Finding a meaning in what you do and interesting. Going back to my eight days in university, I found more meaning in the. In the relationships and that and the activities doing with my peer group, whether at the case of fraternity and the learning that came with leading your peers, working with your peers, striving for a common goal, common purpose, that, you know, that was very, very important to me. But certainly the idea of how you bring people into an organization is equally important because you want people to start to learn and onboard the culture. And every year we bring, of course, new students would come to the university and join the fraternity. And it's how you onboarded them was very important to how. How they worked within the culture, how they added to the culture. And in fact, as we look back and we go back 30 years later, the culture is going to be enhanced from where we had it, but it will be have the same foundation. So that onboarding process, I certainly learned that and was not dissimilar from my time time in the military. And one of the, probably the most formative times for me in a cultural organization company called EF Education. And they have their $6 billion company offices in 45 countries around the world. And I had good fortune of running one of their divisions. And to participate in an organization where culture is so strong, whether you're in Germany, Japan, Canada, the United States, Switzerland, you name it, you can get the sense, you get exactly what the culture is, regardless of what the culture is of that country. The culture of the company shone through. And that is certainly for me, the value of culture. Coming from college pro, from the military, from, certainly from EF Education and now at O2E Brands is paramount. And so culture eats strategy for breakfast is commonly said.

[Cameron Herold]

So I, I've never told you this, but I was always in awe of you as a leader that second year when I kind of passed the gavel off and you, you really took this kind of raw group that we built in year one. And you, you actually built a fraternity. I think we started one the first year and you built it the second year. But I was always in awe of you as a leader. And, and we were young. Like, we were really young. You know, you were probably 21 years old, 22 years old, managing a business with, with lots of moving parts and meetings and what, what came naturally to you as a leader and what did you have to work on? Like, what were you. I think all of us as leaders are 16 year olds trapped in adult bodies. And you know, at times we're, we're faking it, right? We get up going, God, I hope people don't figure out that I have no idea what I'm doing. So what, what came naturally to you as a leader that you can share with us? And what were you faking it that maybe you had to work on or that you, you suck at?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, it's a great question because I look back at early days of leadership, whether, whether there or, and rugby are my first, first business opportunities, and I think, oh my God, how is it possible I got anything done? I was such a crappy leader. So, so while I appreciate your accolades, in retrospect, I look back and like, I can't believe we actually did what we did. So it's all, it's all relative. I suppose at the time.

[Cameron Herold]

For me.

[Eric Church]

The migration for me as an individual was, if I look back, I had way too much command and control in my world. And so one of the things I did learn at the fraternity was how to work with your peers and how to get buy in and how to use your ears more than your mouth and again, get the common sense of purpose and then how to lead people to that, to that right area and then holding people to a standard that they want to be held to and not letting them slip.

[Cameron Herold]

What do you, you know, in your, in your role now you're working with an entrepreneur, a CEO, Brian Scudamore, who's, who's got a really strong personal brand. You know, he's been in the media for 30 years, since 1989, I think was his first, first media piece with the Vancouver Sun. And he's, he's certainly out there as a brand, you know, doing lots of media exposure. And you're kind of the seat, the chief behind the chief, where you are the very inward facing. You know, you appear in the media once in a while. But how, how do you show up every day at work knowing that you're the guy really helping to build all this and Brian's the guy in the spotlight?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's an interesting question. I, I think we complement each other really, really well. We both get involved in parts of the business. We have different perspective. I, I'm not somebody who truly wants, I don't really to be in the media. And as much as we're talking today, happy to have a conversation with you, but it's not something that I would go out and seek to do. So it's about my personal motivation. For me, my leadership really turns inwardly to the organization and how I get to work with people inside the organization, whether it's developing or coaching or leading. And it's really important for a business to have an outwardly facing vision as well and a view. And so Brian does an unbelievable job, not just being the CEO of setting the vision for the company, but be able to convey that publicly as well. Where I really enjoy spending my time is the inward facing piece. Whether it's working with our franchise partners, our employees, that's what inspires me. And so it's just, it's kind of a match made in heaven in that sense. And I don't view it as the chief behind the chief. It is truly a partnership and we divide and conquer in.

[Cameron Herold]

In their areas.

[Eric Church]

Of expertise.

[Cameron Herold]

It's kind of the yin and yang relationship.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

It's our true marriage. It's great. So you, you mentioned something that was really cool, and it was the. The develop and coach and lead, I think is what you said. And I've always believed that a leader's job is to grow people. So how. What. What do you work on in, you know, in terms of maybe over the course of a quarter or course of a year, in terms of growing and developing people. You talked about franchisees.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And maybe 10 of some of your direct reports or people in the organization. How do you. How do you approach growing and developing people?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, it's a great question. The, you know, first and foremost, if we just start the most basic level of succession planning, and if as we want people inside our organization who want to grow and take on the next roles inside the organization. And so as they have aspirations for growth, an easy way to frame that in the conversation with them is, that's fantastic. But who is replacing you? Because there's no role available to you inside the organization until you replace yourself. And that can be kind of unnerving for people. Certainly is the first time they hear this idea that they're trying to replace themselves inside the organization with a fear of unknown what the next opportunity is. But the reality is the next opportunity will never exist unless they can develop people below them. So we really start to work on their ability to coach, develop their teams, on how they can replace themselves in succession playing. So it's a great way to frame it in their career progression and how they coach their teams.

[Cameron Herold]

And it trickles fast when you approach it that way too.

[Eric Church]

Yeah. And we recognize as an organization, when I joined at 100 million, we'll do about 365 million this year. And I'd like to be at 500 next year as an organization. So we're growing rapidly and the only way that we can truly grow is from within. It takes better part of a year to hire from outside to get somebody who they can really start to hit the ground running and have the get it factor to drive the business in an autonomous way. If you have the ability to grow and develop people internally, you can grow much more quickly. And you can. And so there's a real speed to lead on that. And this just is exactly why we've hired Tim Clark as our head coach. And his sole focus is working with our organization to improve our abilities as coaches and in reinforcing and facilitating our leadership way.

[Cameron Herold]

That's awesome. That's huge. So where are you getting your growth? Where do you work on your skills as a COO and as a leader?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, so I really seek lots of feedback from people who I work directly with. And so we do two different types of reviews inside organization. We have performance management reviews, performance reviews annually, and then we have professional development reviews. And so in the professional development review process, I actually work externally with a coach who gets intimately involved, who really challenges me. So I'm talking about that, my direct reports, professional development and I'll comment on an area of opportunity. He'll often turn it back on me and say, well let's talk about that. Why is that? Why is that? And what are you not doing to help that case? So I go externally and I seek coaching on a regular basis from somebody who thinks an awesome coach and has really helped developing me and holding my feet to the fire.

[Cameron Herold]

So I remember years ago when I was building Boyd Auto Body, I turned to the CEO and I said, you know, I needed a one on one weekly meeting with him. And Terry's response was, well, I don't really need that. I'm like, no, no, this is about you. I know you don't need the one on one weekly meeting with me, but I need the time with you. I need to get in sync, I need some direction, bounce ideas, I need the time. And it became a really powerful meeting. What do you need from Brian or from others that you've worked with and what have you had to not fight for, but what have you had to make sure that you put in place to continue to strengthen that relationship or be able to have you excel in your role?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, for me it is fighting for the time that's the hardest component. And half an hour meeting, hour meetings might be good for rapid decision making, do goal review, but it's not a great time for alignment. So one of the things that Brian and I do is we spend a day every month and just reviewing our, our organization strategies. So half a day on the strategies, how are we progressing? We greenlight that the yes, we are on track. Then we can deep dive into some other areas of longer term planning. So we really ensure that we have at least a day and inclusive of a dinner and or we also ensure that we try and get at least quarterly out of the office and doing some something off our 101 life goal list which we as an organization have 101 life goals. So we try and go out and do different things. So last quarter we went to the CMAs together in Nashville and playing so we try and plan different events where you can kind of get out of the office, free up your mind a little bit and start to imagine, envision the future from a different perspective, not just sitting in the office.

[Cameron Herold]

That's really cool. So the idea of the 101 Dream Goals comes from a book called the Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. Walk us through how you guys are using that internally.

[Eric Church]

Yeah, so it's actually, it's interesting. We're working with a company called Bucket List and they've done a white label solution for us called 101 Life Goals, which we get all of our employees. It's not required, but it's strongly encouraged for them to list out their 101 life goals. And we track it and we post it so everybody in the organization can see what everybody's doing. We try and allow people to kind of group together. And so that the goal is that we can find communities within our community who have common aspirations. And so last year as an example, we had several people in our organization who want to build schools somewhere in Africa. And so we have partnership with me to E. So I had the good fortune of taking eight of our employees over to Kenya to build schools with me to E. And so from across the organization, from our Toronto office, from our Vancouver office, bringing people together for a couple of weeks to do something outside of the office and connecting at a different level. And that's ultimately the 101 life goals for us is as we grow fast and we have more and more people, how do we keep people connected and with a common purpose, common mission, common values and 101 life goals truly enables us as an organization to let people connect into the organization fairly quickly and connect with other people. I have to say, on a very selfish note, one of the best interview questions you can do is ask somebody to write down their 101 life goals and say, I'll give you five minutes, I'll be right back. Now I've never had anybody complete 101 goals in five minutes, but it's interesting. Put anything under that pressure. Kind of what comes out and what.

[Cameron Herold]

You see in people. I love that. And then you can actually just help them make them come true later on.

[Eric Church]

Yeah, exactly. And, and it's part of our GS&R process. When you sit down with, with a direct report and you're having a weekly or bi weekly meeting, many of our managers will spend time looking at 101 labels of their direct reports and ask them how things are progressing. Right. Because it's about attainment, about their personal life as well. It's their personal goals, not just their work goals. Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And the key is the company's not paying for them to make those happen. You're just helping to coach and motivate them and make them happen. Right?

[Eric Church]

Correct, Correct. So we had a variety of people last year who wanted to learn to drive standard. So I took people out at lunch and said, great, let me teach you how to drive standard. Now I need new transmission, but that's another story altogether.

[Cameron Herold]

That's so funny. And in about 10 more years, we'll be teaching kids how to drive a car, but there'll be 40 year olds.

[Eric Church]

Exactly, exactly.

[Cameron Herold]

I guess our kids are old enough now that they'll be driving. But in the future, you're gonna have to go to Disney World to drive a real car.

[Eric Church]

Yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna watch in the movies, like, well, look at that. People are driving cars. Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

One of my favorite times with Brian was we would meet every week or two. We would go and sit up at the Arbutus Club and just do our work together. And it wasn't talking about stuff, but it was just sitting in the lounge, just feet up on the couches, cranking through work and being able to just kind of vibe off each other once in a while or just know that we were both focused in doing stuff and we kept our email turned off and yeah, it's that kind of get in sync. Time is really powerful. What's. What's your superpower as a coo? 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. If you had to brag for a second.

[Eric Church]

Yeah, I mean, I mean, then I have to say my superpower might be humility because I'm not sure I can.

[Cameron Herold]

I'm so proud of my humility. Right, exactly.

[Eric Church]

Exactly.

[Cameron Herold]

Is that true? Is that, is it your humility?

[Eric Church]

I mean, to some extent I would say that where I get great pride and where I take. Get my energy from is having the people around me be successful. And I want them and their names and their work to be associated with the achievements inside the organization. And so when I see the organization being successful and I see people's names associated other than mine, actually that is really powerful to me. And so my goal and that's why I, I get my energy from on that side of coaching and developing people so that they can achieve their. Be their best self and achieve their goals. And that is sounds more like more, more of a coach role than anything else. But I don't know if that's my superpower, but I think it's, I think it's, it's something that I enjoy. I think I'm good at as a. I think I've got a pretty clear view of where we're going. And going back to your earlier question, which I know didn't answer very well, is around we say no to is that the ability to have clarity of where we're going and be able to weigh those things that are not going to or will help us accomplish our goals and hold people pretty tight to those things that will and push them very, very and challenge them on those. On those things that we should say no to.

[Cameron Herold]

When you talked a little bit about the urgency and impact filter as well of Stephen Coveys, I remember one of the very, very first days I spent at 1-800-GOT junk was back in October of 2000 and Brian and I went off to his dad's cabin or cottage over on Bowen island and we had stacks of post it notes and we came up with every single potential project that we could do over the next year to drive the company forward. And we thought about every business area. We thought about finance and IT and operations and sales, et cetera. We ended up with. I think it was in. Brian could validate this. I think it was 178 or 278. I think it was 178 projects. One project per post it note up on. Up on all the windows. And then we were like, now what the fuck do we do? Like this is impossible. They're going to kill us. So we categorized every single project as low impact or high impact and then low urgency or high urgency. And we tried to get rid of all of the big complex hairy projects as well and end up with this list of low hanging fruit. Do you guys use any system now to kind of vote on projects or, or let the highest impact ones that are easy? How do you select what to work on in different businesses?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, so what we have is we, we start with our paint picture. So we're going to go back to where we started with the pandemic. Where do we want to fund ourselves in four years? What does that look like four years down the road when we're standing in that time, in that moment, in that experience? So we start with that. We then build out a four year strategic plan and then from that we build out a one year strategic plan. Say okay, how do these things roll up? And then on a monthly basis we have or executive steering group and this is where we bring the new ideas coming to the organization at any level. And then we make the determination do these actually match up with our, our one year strategic objective or are they a longer term one which matches up with a, with one of the four year ones and it's going to take us longer to achieve and then we make those decisions based on, on that. Now that's very analytical, very scientific, brain data oriented. This is where Brian's magic comes in. His ability to, to imagine that which does not yet exist, which data cannot measure. We make sure that we save time for those types of creative projects as long as we can envision and see how it's going to help us achieve our painted picture.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, I look at, I look at every sentence of the painted picture of the vivid vision. I look at each sentence as a future state and then I try to come up with one or two projects that would make each sentence come true. And then over time you start stacking up all these projects that are going to make every sentence come true of this kind of four page document. So you end up with this long laundry list. And the key is to look at which project to put in place first because it's foundational.

[Eric Church]

Right.

[Cameron Herold]

You build almost like building a home. You put up the foundation and then you put up the walls, the electrical and the plumbing. And we often get distracted with that big shiny object we always want to put in the cabinets and the wolf stove. And Brian was pretty famous in the early days for the big shiny object. Like he had his. The best example I can give was he wanted to do this hunks of junk calendar. And it was a calendar that would have these guys shirtless, standing in front of trucks and we'd raise money for charity. He had this amazing vision, and we're just looking at him going, are you out of your fucking tree? This is a big project. How do you keep him? How do you give him the Runway to come up with the crazy ideas? Because a lot of them are fantastic. And how do you control some of those crazy ideas that. Because a lot of our listeners are trying to control or work with the entrepreneurial quick starts. How do you work within that?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, well, as you know, there's no controlling Brian, So let's start with that. And you don't want it. And I believe that anybody who's coming and working with a founder of an organization is the best thing you can do as a COO is empower them to do what they're good at, which is come up with those big, bold ideas which people in the data departments and the BI departments hate because they can't measure them. And the opportunity that the visionaries and the founders, like Brian bring to an organization are those big crazy ideas of which, and Brian would certainly say this, maybe 1 out of 100, maybe 2 out of 50, whatever the ratio is, are going to work. But having the space to come up and contemplate what those ideas are is really important. And so Brian does take the time out of the office, goes to the Arbus Club, goes up to Whistler, spends time thinking about what can we do differently? And it's that time outside of the office contemplating those that we quote, unquote, crazy ideas that inspire us to try and do new, innovative things. Because he's not constrained by what people perceive as possible today. And as we all know, everything is impossible until somebody does it.

[Cameron Herold]

Right? For sure.

[Eric Church]

Right. And so there's all those naysayers about impossibility. They hold themselves back. And so the last thing I want to do and the last thing anybody who wants, who works with the founder should want to do is hold back from that. Now, the opportunity is to be really closely aligned so you can dig into it and understand how that's going to impact ultimately the goal at the end of the day, and this is where saying no really matters. And this is. And Brian's really supportive of that process, but it's because we spend the time to go through all of the ideas and the transformative ideas that we get for our organization come from Brian. But the refinement and what my role is, and I think anybody who works with a founder is let's let the founder be creative, take the vision of where it can go. Our job is to figure out can we make it scalable and can we replicate it?

[Cameron Herold]

Well, I'll tell you, there's going to be a lot of creative ideas coming from Brian's strategy because Whistler is supposed to get three feet of snow between today and Sunday night. So I'm sure he'll be up at Whistler doing a lot of, of a lot of thinking time. Yes, on the, on the chairlift.

[Eric Church]

Exactly.

[Cameron Herold]

I'm sure I'll see him up there because I'm heading up too. So we have a group called the COO alliance which is really the only network of its second in command. And we have COOs come in every three months down to Scottsdale. What would you, what advice would you give members of the COO alliance coming in for their next two events in terms of how to learn and what to learn with the other. Other members? What would you, if you even know you've never been to it, but what advice would you give them going into that event?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, I think I clearly it's a great opportunity for networking and can, and build your, build your network of support in your group. So you know, I'm very fortunate to be in YPO and my, I'm graduating this year because I'm now too old to be in YPO while we're there. Oh. But yeah, we're officially old. But, but my forum, the forum group I work with is really powerful, has really influenced me and I think made me a better person and so I think the, to create your own forum forums in, in your, in your COO alliance and work with that group and hold each other accountable because oftentimes there isn't anybody out there who's holding us accountable outside of our, even inside our organization. And why. What I love about my forum is they, they do hold me accountable to what I say I'm going to do month to month and both personally and professionally. So I think that's a, that'll be a cool way to, to connect with other people in similar roles. But I think also sharing best practices around working with if, if they are working with a founder visionary type, how that works and how that, how that two in a box can work. And this is a concept that you know, Brian has coined which is two in a box leadership.

[Cameron Herold]

I love it.

[Eric Church]

And so that we're kind of refers to is a top of the org chart. You've got, you've got a box. You've got, in fact instead of having two boxes of CEO and CEO you have in one box and just an Angle line across the middle thing. So we are operating together not in a co CEO role but as two in a box decision making and defining a role. So I only say that if that's the kind of relationship you have with the CEO and founder, that works really well. If that's not what you have, that's not a great recommendation. So I would say figure out what kind of relationship you have between CEO and CEO, find those people who are similar and work with them to refine your skills. There's a great book called called Rocket Fuel which talks about what it means to have this concept of two in a box. They call it something else, but it is very similar. And in there there's some very specific agenda items on how you stay aligned and how you divide responsibilities.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, it's a great place. Gino Wickman, who created EOS Traction, that's a great book to recommend. Now do you take the two in a box concept down to working with your like a VP that reports to you you have the same kind of two in the box?

[Eric Church]

I don't, I don't. That's really in certainly reading Gino's book as well. That's really designed for. For that the CEO. CEO relationship.

[Cameron Herold]

Got it. Okay.

[Eric Church]

And as. As we build out our brands, each of the brands. So each of the brands has their own managing director. When I got junk while one day you moved me shackshine. Uh and I'm starting to work more closely with them in that two in a box mentality because they're now running really their own organization.

[Cameron Herold]

That's a tongue twister. It used to be hard enough to say 1-800-GOT chunk you move me sack sign like well done. That's awesome.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And od we add some more grant.

[Eric Church]

It'S gonna get longer. Well this is why we had to come up with a name for the parent company. Ordinary to Exceptional.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah.

[Eric Church]

And yeah. So called O2E which of course everybody asked me if I. If I work at a water company me.

[Cameron Herold]

Oh that's funny. Yeah. Ordinary to Exceptional. OD is a really great parent company brand like and especially because it ties into just I guess the mentality that you guys operate with day to day too. What's your. What's your typical day like? I mean you've got a bit of a strange one because you live part time in Toronto and and are out in Vancouver at the head office.

[Eric Church]

Yeah. Tell.

[Cameron Herold]

Tell us how your typical month I guess and typical day works.

[Eric Church]

Yeah, fortunately I don't have a typical one which is great. Because I, I like, I like change. But I'll either fly in anywhere from Sunday night so if I have early morning means to be there for Monday morning or off or I will fly in Monday night and be there for Tuesday morning. We do have an office here in Toronto. We've got 120 people here in Toronto as well. So I need time in both offices. So I try and set up so I at least have Fridays in Toronto in the office and more typically is Monday through Thursday in Vancouver or out meeting with, with franchise partners at or we have a fantastic marketing consultant in, in Austin, Texas probably get down to see him on a regular basis. So by the time that I have in the air every week and I have roughly nine hours of focus time to myself every week on the plane where I get to do the reading I need to do, I get to do the research, I don't go on wi fi so I avoid email. And this time is so valuable to me to prepare myself for the week or finish the week and those weeks where I stay in Vancouver for the weekend and I miss that nine hours of focus time. It's a terrible thing. So if I miss a week of commuting back and forth it's really tough.

[Cameron Herold]

That's interesting. So you really do use that time.

[Eric Church]

Effectively and it's high, highly scheduled regimented time that I use. So I say and it's like two hours I'm going to read these articles or I'm going to make sure that I read this in preparation for our executive steering group. But I use that time very, very specifically and schedule it out just like I would a real deck.

[Cameron Herold]

I think your, your marketing consultant down in Austin is Roy Williams, correct?

[Eric Church]

Yeah. Wizard of ads.

[Cameron Herold]

Wizard of ads. Man, that guy has got like the unbelievable what he's done in his business. Anybody who's looking, does he do more than radio or is he just still in the radio?

[Eric Church]

Radio, TV but. And his creative ability is, is second to none. He, his. He hasn't. He does have a philosophy which makes him very effective which is he will only work with the decision maker in the organization and which means either Brian, myself or David St. James, our managing director of Oregon Junk has to be present in a meeting. If anybody else is there, one of us has to be there to ultimately make the decision. And that's you know it's a rate limiting step for which companies you can work with. Yeah but he is specialized in working with US companies that where you can move quickly. He also challenges us on operation so operational constraints are of no issue to him. So we say, he says open to midnight. He doesn't want to hear anybody say, tell us all the reasons why being open to midnight's a problem. He really does focus on what the consumer wants, what the customer wants, and that really does challenge us operationally, especially as a franchise system. It is. It's hard to do, but anything worth doing is usually hard to do.

[Cameron Herold]

That's really cool. Now, what do you struggle with as a. As a coo? What, you know, do you wake up with day to day or what are you working on yourself now?

[Eric Church]

Yeah, so I think it varies depending on what happens to be on the top of the pocket at any one time. We've just spent the last year, 2017, transforming from a proprietary software to a heart lung transplant to Salesforce. So few sleepless nights with that, for sure. And so for me, it's trying to balance the change inside an organization. And so because we move as quickly as we do, and because we are an organization who just believes in always being exceptional, change is the constant and the only constant for us. So it's. It's what keeps me kind of churning my. My mind on a regular basis is the impact of change on people, whether that's our customer, franchise partners or employees, and how we need to do a better job. Because the one thing I did learn at EF Education from the founder was those who don't change in time will be changed by time. It sounds much better when you say it in Swedish, but I know it.

[Cameron Herold]

Sounds great in English too.

[Eric Church]

But that's true. And human beings are not generally calibrated to constant, ongoing change. And so how do we affect change in a positive way where people feel valued, part of the experience, that they can see what this means for them, for the customer, for the organization. And so because there's so much change, I would say that would probably be top of mind for me and of course of any conversation or any day.

[Cameron Herold]

So that's awesome. I get asked this question constantly. And it was. It's funny. Years and years ago, I was at a Vern Harnish event and I was speaking and I came off the stage and this guy came up to me and he said, oh, my God, you're Cameron. I was like, yeah, that's weird. And he goes. I said, what do you mean? He goes, I thought it was a saying. And I'm like, what do you mean you thought it was the saying? He goes, well, people have been saying, I need a Cameron. And they're putting in place A bhag. And he said, I thought it was a saying. I'm like, no, I guess it was me. And he goes, I realized that they were saying that Brian always had a Cameron.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And they needed one too. And that second in command is often so powerful Now. I've been telling people, you know, if you don't have an assistant, you are one that before you hire a coo, hire an assistant.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

But what did Brian see in you? Because it was a hard. I remember talking to him at the time of making the decision to finally. Well, not finally, he. He had to fire a coo. And then two years before that, I, I left the company and he'd had a year of transition. So he'd been three years, kind of rudderless.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

Through the, through the recession and the, the downturn in the economy. And he was very, very nervous about hiring someone.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And you were, you weren't coming full time to Vancouver. You were going to do it part time out of Toronto. So he took a big leap. What in you, what do you think were either your behavioral traits or your skills? What did he see in you to make the decision to want to bring you on board? Because it clearly has worked out.

[Eric Church]

Yeah. I think there was a really strong alignment between us just in our conversations and common values, certainly aspirations, a view of why growth is important and likely had something to do with the people who I'd worked with in the past, other founders of companies where that's really been my bailiwick, where I focused my time on working together. So he likely recognized that also, I'm sure took a flyer, took a chance on it. Right. He knew I had to make a choice. And so maybe I was the least of all evil as. I don't know. But there was, I think, a real connection at those early days about the common, common goal where we were all going. One of the things that. And so I would say the majority of the system, if not the employees, would have given me six months to survive. And I've asked that question. So what's the pool? How many. When do you think? How long do the game want to last?

[Cameron Herold]

It was six months. That was the.

[Eric Church]

Yeah, exactly.

[Cameron Herold]

That's you. And has it been five years now?

[Eric Church]

Six years now.

[Cameron Herold]

Holy shit. So, yeah. Yeah. So I was only there six years and six months.

[Eric Church]

Yep.

[Cameron Herold]

So at some point you will be the longest serving COO at 1-800-got junk.

[Eric Church]

That's right. I should probably be more specific in my math because I started on November 1, 2011. So that's probably surpassed it already now. But I said it's.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. So you're six years and three months. So you got three more. Three more months left.

[Eric Church]

So there you go. I hope I make it. I hope I make it.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. If he invites you to breakfast at the Vancouver Club, just, just say, you know what? I'm, I'm.

[Eric Church]

I'm busy for the next three months.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, exactly. All right, one, one last question. And I've got to end with, with saying Colonel Flag, this has been a pleasure. Your Colonel Flag was your pledge name at Acacia when we were starting that off together. But it's been. I, I spent. I mean, I'm interviewing a lot of coos. Like last week I interviewed Harley from Shopify, and I've got a huge list of great CEOs I'm interviewing. But this is one I've wanted to do because I put my heart and soul into that company for six and a half years.

[Eric Church]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

And. And I'm thrilled to see what you've done with it because you've truly, truly, truly taken it to the level that we dreamed it would go to. If you, if you could give us kind of the one big thing that you've done, either to brag or puff your chest or the thing that you've done that others could do to grow their companies, what would it be?

[Eric Church]

Yeah. Before I even answer that, since, since I can't go back to your, Your pledge name, I think it was. Was it not Alfalfa, if I'm not mistaken?

[Cameron Herold]

It was Alfalfa.

[Eric Church]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

What was the TV show? The Little Rascals.

[Eric Church]

Little Rascals, exactly. So, yeah, any of your listeners can go back out and check Alfalfa, the in Little Rascal.

[Cameron Herold]

All right, all right.

[Eric Church]

But so I would say first, before going further, I said the organization is where we are because you, you're unbelievable job working with Brian and creating something that was scalable and there's so much of what you created is still inside the organization. So, you know, I think as an. What you created still there and we were building on it. So I'm very appreciative for all the find work that went on long before me. What I think I've done is I've built a strong team. I've brought people from the outside who believe in, believe in people, believe in empowering people, believe in developing people and providing a vision not just for the company, but providing a vision for what growth of the individual means.

[Cameron Herold]

That's awesome. Eric church, President and COO for one, 800 got junk and all of the O2E ordering to excellent brands. Dude, thank you. I really appreciate your time today, Cam.

[Eric Church]

Thank you so much.

[Cameron Herold]

All right, man.

[Eric Church]

Take care.

[Cameron Herold]

Say hi to everybody.

[Eric Church]

Bye. Bye. Bye.

[Podcast Narrator]

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 services from industry leading COOs, visit cooalliance. Com.