← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 549 - Cabochon Group COO Josh Post - How To Break Through Burnout With Essential COO Growth Tips
00:38:06
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- [00:00]
Josh Post
For me, the first thing is to understand the business. The levers, how the model, how the business itself functions, how does it make money? Most business owners don't know how their own business works. Once they understand it, then it's like, okay, we're not done, actually, why don't we tell the team how this thing works? Right? This is the one thing you can do. Once you sort of have the model figured out and that works, then it's really about the next step for me is leadership. Right. So, okay, so who's leading this thing? Most business owners don't spend enough time working on their business.
- [00:31]
Narrator/Announcer
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 host, Cameron Herald.
- [00:55]
Cameron Herold
All right, our guest today is Josh Post. Josh is the COO of the Cabochon Group. He's also a COO alliance member. Josh translates visionary goals into operational reality. Grew up in a family business and he now oversees cross functional execution and ensures the company's advisory and acquisition arms operate with discipline, cohesion and clarity. Under his guidance, Cabochon helps businesses refine processes, align teams and unlock sustainable growth. He's also got deep experience as an integrator and a former executive. He's led organizations through growth phases, transitional challenges and turnaround scenarios. He brings expertise across organizations and finance, human resources and sales, enabling him to design systems at scale while preserving accountability and team health. He's also certified in the five behaviors and disc tools that he leverages to align leadership, foster culture and strengthen communication. You'll love this episode. Lots of really good nuggets in here. We'll see you on the inside. So, Josh, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.
- [01:57]
Josh Post
Thanks for having me, Cameron. Appreciate it.
- [01:59]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, looking forward to it. Another Canadian. I grew up a little further north than you are. I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. You're growing up near. Near Guelph, Ontario. A place called Elora. I've actually been there. Tiny, tiny town. What's the population of Elora?
- [02:12]
Josh Post
I'm not sure. I just know it triples on weekends.
- [02:15]
Cameron Herold
Would it be a couple thousand people, though? It's pretty small, isn't it?
- [02:18]
Josh Post
Yeah, that's pretty small. Yeah, a couple thousand sounds about right. Yep.
- [02:21]
Cameron Herold
So how does somebody from a small town like that end up running a business that you're running?
- [02:26]
Josh Post
Yeah, that's a question I probably still ask myself more days than not. I grew up in the family business. My, my pop started construction business back in 74, so we're 51 years now. And I would say I'm, I'm probably an entrepreneur by accident. I would, I would say I started out more as a duty being part of the family business and it sort of evolved over time.
- [02:48]
Cameron Herold
What kind of roles did you play in the family business then? How long did you work there?
- [02:52]
Josh Post
I think I'm 22 years in now, which is my entire working career. In high school I remember I was thinking about, you know, my, my career path, just sort of saying I'm never going to work in the family business. And yeah, that didn't work out. So I said, yeah, I started in construction just as a summer student and then I got accepted to university, University Guelph. And I thought to myself, I should just take a year off and do I really want to spend the money and, and get a degree I wasn't sure I wanted? And that's sort of how it kind of took off. Right. So work my way through a supervisor, swinging a hammer, became a purchaser. Absolutely hated it. I hate to sit behind the desk looking at Excel sheet. And we just got engaged and I called my wife and I said, I hate my job. And she said, well, you gotta, you know, feed us. So how about figure that one out? So yeah, over time I worked into project management, operations manager, general manager and then that CEO back in 2019. So yeah, it's been a journey, part of that journey.
- [03:47]
Cameron Herold
I grew up in a family business. My dad ran a family business. I moved to the west coast because I didn't want to work for him. My brother ended up working with my dad and I saw a lot of, you know, the plus sides and the downsides of a family business. I just want to ask you, I'm not going to kind of focus on around too much, but I want to ask just one question of what do you think you learn from working inside of a family business that allows you to be a better leader overall? And it's more around probably situational leadership and handling conflict and you know, dealing with the day to day because you know, we can't fire our parents. Our parents often, you know, never really fire the kids, but there's often the day to day normal stuff that you have to deal with. How do you think you've dealt with that stuff? Maybe better because you're blood related than, you know, if you weren't.
- [04:36]
Josh Post
Yeah, that's the golden question. When it Comes to family businesses. Yeah, I often think of business as being like a movie script. The challenge with family businesses is that instead of starting with the script and then finding the characters, you start with the characters and then you just keep moving the script around to make it work. And so we found for years we just kept switching roles, adjusting processes all around people, and yeah, it just doesn't work right. So I found at the end of the day, the business has to come first. You have to do what's best for the business, and once you prioritize that, then you have some hard conversations to have usually. But I would say for myself, early in my career, I ran from conflict or I hid from it, or I just delayed it as much as possible. Now I just get dialed up and I just deal with it as soon as possible. Sooner you can get to the real conversation and wrestle out what has to happen, the faster everything goes right. So I think really thinking about the business first and then sort of applying and moving the characters around to fit the script is sort of the, I would say the mistake we made for a lot of years.
- [05:39]
Cameron Herold
I think that is one of the key lessons though as well, is almost externalizing from the character and dealing with the issue. And I teach a conflict management model in my invest in your leaders training. And that's exactly what you do. You address the issue, not the person. You stated the specifics versus the generalities. It's hard though. I remember my, my dad calling up one time, your brother's an. I'm like, yeah, well we know dad, but you know, whatever. So he tells me the situation. Then my brother calls up 10 minutes later, hey, Todd, what's up? Oh, dad's an asshole. I'm like, yeah, I know Todd. And they work through their conflict and then four hours later they're off golfing as if nothing's ever happened before. It was completely bizarre. There's an organization in Canada, for anybody listening, called cafe, which is the Canadian association of Family Enterprise. And it's an organization of entrepreneurial organizations that are only family run companies. And they have some really, really great resources out there for companies to draw on. And I wish there were more of those. I wish there was organizations like that in the US and globally. I've never really bumped into any, but I think it's a pretty cool. It's kind of like a YPO or Tech or an eo, but it's only for family run companies. So in the COO role that you're in right now, as you said, you kind of started the organization 21 years ago. Now you're in the COO role. How many total employees? What. Give us a scope on kind of what the organization looks like today. And then I want to talk to you about kind of what your journey has been in growing as a leader.
- [07:00]
Josh Post
Yeah. So over the, over our businesses, I would say we're about 50 employees. So we're not, we're not massive. And then I work with a number of clients obviously up to, you know, I had up to 200 employees in various. Few add them all up. So yeah, sizable enough but still very much in the small business realm.
- [07:19]
Cameron Herold
Yeah. But it's a real business with real moving parts too. Right. So what have you had to learn in terms of your career and your growth over the years? As you've taken on more responsibilities, as you've started to manage more people, where have you had to grow or where have you focused your growth?
- [07:34]
Josh Post
I think early in my career I focused on my weaknesses and then there was a transition where I started to focus on my strengths. And so I just found that, yeah, just focusing on what I'm really good at and being light out about it and then just being real. Like I think that's one of the things that really helped me. CEO alliance Amber, one of my first calls with you was just talking the importance of video and communication. And I always thought, hey, I suck at that kind of stuff. But I just thought, you know, at the end of the day, let's just be real. Like I'm not going to try to be someone I'm not. I'm just going to own both of the weaknesses and the strengths for me. I've just really had to work on, yeah, just my communication, being more direct, dealing with conflict faster and just really making hard decisions I think was always, always a challenge of any leader. So you know, some of sometimes we're all, we're all wusses. So yeah, just been really focused on how to do that better in my career.
- [08:27]
Cameron Herold
I don't even know if we're all wusses, but we're all, we're all 15 year olds trapped in adult bodies. I think we're all that 15 year old kid still that has our, our normal insecurities, our fears, our doubts, our, our shadow stuff that kind of pops up. And I think part of our growth is the ability to shed some of that and work through some of that stuff. Right. So you mentioned the CO alliance. I'm going to ask you about that in a second, but I think again, some of that Is probably that wisdom of you being able to realize that there are some areas that you, you know, you suck at and there's other areas that you're really good at. The school system messed us up. You know, the school system told us we had to be good at everything, right? And then anything we weren't good at, we were supposed to go get a tutor. In the business world, you get to delegate that stuff. Were there areas in the business that you used to handle that now you know you have delegated? Or were there business areas that used to report to you that you just felt were better reporting to somebody else? And can you walk us through how, how you did that?
- [09:26]
Josh Post
Yeah, I think the biggest shift for me was in 2019 when we, my brother and I bought out my other two partners, two brothers. At that time I was leading the crew. So the entire field staff reported to me. I had 45 direct reports, which is way too much. But I didn't want to let it go. And my team told me I couldn't let it go. There's no one that could fill the role like you did. You know the story. And so that was scary. But I had to step into the sort of the COO role and I had to let go of managing people and being a leader that wasn't, you know, completely one on one, completely face to face and being this, you know, getting the same results, having our values and our mission, you know, happen through the organization, but not by individually knowing every single person. And so I really, for me, that dynamic took a little bit of time for sure. And hiring someone in my role and mentoring them and having being one step away was, was definitely a challenge, but it had to happen for the growth of the business for sure.
- [10:20]
Cameron Herold
What was it like buying out two partners, you know, and especially being the two brothers part, let's just focus on them first being partners or shareholders in the company. Because I was just Talking to the CEO recently about buying out a long term, 25 year majority partner, like a secondary majority partner in the business. And they're quite worried about the discussion and how it's all going to go. Can you give us some lessons as to what went well, what didn't go well, or what you maybe could have done a little bit better?
- [10:47]
Josh Post
Yeah, I think the number one problem with small businesses is just the understanding of the different roles in a business. Shareholder does not mean owner, does not mean employee. Right. So is this an employee discussion, this a shareholder discussion? And having different places to have those conversations. And for myself, of course, I'M I'm the youngest in the birth order so it's expected sort of that as you mold into the script of the movie, you're, you're the, I would say least important but you know, you fit a certain role. Right. So that's the biggest challenge for us is wrestling with sort of the different roles and I'd make a decision in my functional area and then someone would override me because he's a shareholder. Right. So once we were able to resolve that through the buyout. Yeah, it changed everything. Like business suddenly became really, really easy.
- [11:34]
Cameron Herold
What you're speaking to there is that the varying role of the shareholder versus the manager. I own shares in Apple, but I don't make any of the day to day operational decisions and I can go to a shareholders meeting and I can vote on issues that are there for shareholders and, but I'm not allowed to get involved in the management of the day to day. And I think that is sometimes where the confusion comes from is when you have the, almost like the player coach or the, the owner slash working in the business component is. Yeah, you don't get veto rights. You don't get to say that, you know, I'm, I'm the dad or I'm the bigger shareholder. Like it doesn't work inside of a business. So it's interesting you navigated that. How did the buyout discussion happen? Was it kind of mutual that everybody want it to happen or was it a, was it an easy discussion or did it get strenuous?
- [12:20]
Josh Post
Yeah, it definitely took time. It's interesting. So I would remember the two times I became an owner, which sounds weird, but the first time I was just a punk and my brother pulled me aside and said, listen, dad wants out of the business. Do you want to buy his shares or work it out? I was maybe 17, 18. I had no business being an owner. In theory, I became an owner on paper. I never felt like one until 2019, October the first to be exact. Not that it's in my memory, but it is. I just remember driving down to the office, it was like 8:30, 9:00 clock at night, meeting with the partners. I was, I was in like a cold sweat just because I realized like the weight of, of everything's now on two shoulders instead of four. My debt doubled, my responsibilities doubled. When it went from being a really important cog on the, on the train to actually like driving this thing. Right. So, so yeah, for us it took probably a year and a half of conversations and negotiations. I mean more just around like, you know, who wants to move forward? We had different. Different goals for the business. We had different levels of engagement and just sort of working out okay, you know, what's. What's this thing gonna look like? What's the vision for this business? And are you in or are you out? Right. And I don't think anyone was right or wrong. It's just. It's just at the end of the day, we weren't aligned. And the best way for us to figure that out was to. Was to split it up. And Herman and I once been fairly aligned around sort of management leadership style. And so it kind of became natural sort of transition.
- [13:44]
Cameron Herold
And that's. He's the CEO, correct?
- [13:47]
Josh Post
Yeah.
- [13:48]
Cameron Herold
How did you and your brother decide who was going to do what? How did you kind of divide and conquer and split up the roles and responsibilities? Was it just the stuff that you were good at and love to do and same with him or.
- [14:00]
Josh Post
Yeah, I mean, he was always the CEO as long as I recall. Even though my dad was in the business, he was the president at the time. So I grew up. He was always the president. He was always sales and estimating. That's sort of how he came up to the business. I came up through operations mostly because I like to manage people and nobody else did. I just remember I was promoted as a supervisor and I was like, I had no idea. It wasn't even on the list.
- [14:23]
Cameron Herold
Right.
- [14:23]
Josh Post
And I'm the boss's kid. You'd think I would know, Right. And so I just thought to myself, there's gotta be a better way to do this and that sort of. So I kind of of got into the management side because I filled a void that nobody else was too excited about. And I sort of evolved from there. Right. So myself being in operations, Herman being sort of in. In sales and the other president stuff, it was just been a very natural fit.
- [14:47]
Cameron Herold
You said that you were kind of always managing people. Why do you think? Was that something you were always good at? And what was it that that kind of made you good at that, do you think?
- [14:56]
Josh Post
Yeah, I would say I was not always good at it. If you met me in high school, I'd be a totally different person. Really? I think. I mean, part of it is my birth order. Being the youngest, I had the opportunity to kind of stand back and observe. And I just became a very good observer around human behaviors at an early age. I really dove into sort of the personality profiles and how people operate in part because I was a manager of 40 people when I was, you know, 21 years old. I was in the D band, so I had to figure out a swim. Right. So I just really dove into that. And yeah, at the end of the day, I just, I actually like people. Like, I just love spending time with people one on one. I'd much prefer that over sitting down, looking at a spreadsheet, although obviously I have to do that. But I just enjoy working with people and I love seeing how they, how they change, like when they actually achieved the thing they thought they couldn't do. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And just watching people light up.
- [15:43]
Cameron Herold
I like that you're saying, like, you had to figure out how to swim. What did that mean to you? Was it. Was it courses? Was it books? Was it getting coached? Where did your growth happen more naturally for you?
- [15:54]
Josh Post
Yeah, a lot of books. A lot of books. Which sort of shifted to podcasts. Yeah. Starting or starting out. Like, the first leadership guy I ever heard of was probably John Maxwell, which now seems pretty like. I don't say basic, but it's pretty straightforward leadership stuff. Right. Servant leadership. Yeah. I remember picking up a book called Tribal Leadership from Dave Logan after I met him down in Denver at a conference and just blew me away. How tribes, how people operated and how you can't just fix it with one technical change here or there's. And just remember. Yeah, I just love soaking up books. The one thing I really appreciate that you often have said is that you don't have to read every chapter in a book. You give me permission just to written chapters. I was like, blew my mind. Right. So just. Yeah, it's just, I mean, when I, when I see a book, I see someone's taking their entire life or something they've learned and they put it into, into a book for you. It's usually a pretty good investment for 25 bucks.
- [16:52]
Cameron Herold
Hey, it's Cameron Herold, your high energy leadership guru, here to pump you up on the Second in Command podcast. If you get frustrated because your managers aren't leading like you want them to be, check out my game changing leadership course@investinyourleaders.com that's investinyourleaders.com for just 347 per leader. You get 30 years. My proven experience straight from taking 1,800-got junk from 2 million to 106 million as COO. And it's packed with 12 easy modules. Learn situational leadership coaching, delegation, conflict management and more, all in under six hours@investinyourleaders.com with straight to the point videos, worksheets and real life scenarios. Your team will master time management, be able to hire a players and get aligned with your vision. It's all backed by a 30 day money back guarantee and raved about by hundreds of CEOs and thousands of managers already learning from the content. Grab this now and watch your business soar. It's interesting that that whole concept of you don't have to read the whole book is something that I learned when I was reading the book good to great. And I remember going back to it and reading the section around the flywheel and then later going back and reading the section about the hedgehog concept and then later going back and reading the concept around level one leadership and I'm like, interesting. Like it's not a novel. There's like literal components of that book that are relevant to what I need. And it doesn't matter if I read the whole book front to back right now I need to read what I need to learn. And I think from that I, I don't know if I coined the term or if I've maybe started popularizing it, but maybe it's not even a term yet, but it's more like just in time learning versus just in case learning. And I think so often people read a book just in case we need to have that knowledge at some point in the future. Versus I'm working on something this week or this month, I'd like to read about that thing that I'm working on just in time. Right. So I'm learning about and I think that's probably why that that kind of even occurred to me is just grabbing parts of a book and reading the parts versus you know, it's not 50 shades of gray. You don't have to read it front by back to get the whole story. So.
- [19:05]
Josh Post
Yeah.
- [19:06]
Cameron Herold
All right. So I guess part of your growth as well was was joining the CEO alliance. Well, how did you find the COO alliance? And for anybody who's, who's listening, who doesn't even know what we do, we've got a global organization of second in command, the COO or President, VP Ops, etc. To the CEO members from 17 countries. Josh is actually one of our members. And so how did you find out about the CEO alliance and what was it that you think got you to join?
- [19:31]
Josh Post
Well, Herman mentioned to me often his suggestions aren't always suggestions, but he's really out there and I think it's things exact words where I heard this guy named Cameron Harold, you should check him out. Seen this program and so like my learning style, I just dove in. I think I watched every YouTube video you've put out there. Maybe that sounds creepy now, but started hopped on your podcast. This was quite a while back, probably in the early stages of the podcast. It's been following it. And then I had a couple calls with a guy named Jesse. Still remember Jesse. And yeah, joined shortly thereafter. So, yeah, went pretty quick.
- [20:09]
Cameron Herold
That seems to be what's happened with people, too. They either hear about the book, the second in Command, or they stumble onto the podcast the second in Command, and they kind of get, I guess, indoctrinated into some of those ideas. But for me, I just, I don't want to be there teaching coos. I've always wanted to just get a whole bunch of great coos together and have them all learn from each other and bring in some group speakers. We've got an event coming up later this week. We've got one of the pretty solid senior people at Amazon coming in to speak, but it's also going to be about the breakout, where the members get to talk to each other and communicate and learn from each other, and then the group discussions they have. But glad you joined, glad you found us, so thank you for that. So you're doing some work on the side outside of the organization in terms of, I guess, coaching and helping other entrepreneurial organizations with their operations. Can you speak to what you're doing there?
- [20:56]
Josh Post
Yeah. So I started out, so 2019, I became COO and general manager of my business. That meant I was now in charge of finance and operations. And so, you know, long story short, I sort of went through sort of a change framework with our business. And then once that got completed, I was at the point where I could sort of leverage what I learned and apply that framework to other businesses. So, yeah, it's been a bit of a journey. Like, for myself, I stepped into the role not really understanding finance that well. And I think a lot of finance people learn finance first and then they attempt to learn the business. They tend to learn operations. For me, it was a gift. I knew operations really well. I knew how to handle people. I know what it's like to be in the front lines and hold the hammer. And then what I had to do was figure out how these numbers translated and talked to the stuff that's happening on the job site. And so that just, I think, gave me a different perspective that allows me to sort of run businesses because I understand both the finance on one end and then the operations on the other end.
- [21:54]
Cameron Herold
How did you learn Finance. It's interesting. I actually had just stumbled onto a speaker that I'm going to bring out is one of our monthly mastermind speakers for the CEO alliance, who runs a finance group and teaches people how to simplify, kind of demystify finance. I think that's really smart. The way that you put it is you really understood how a business operated. So that probably made you or helped you understand budgets and cash flow and a P and L, because you understood what the numbers meant. But so how did you actually then learn finance or how are you continuing to learn finance?
- [22:27]
Josh Post
Yeah, I think it's an ongoing thing. Some of it's just like necessity is a mother of invention. So being in charge of finance, being in charge of the books, I wasn't aware how to do bookkeeping that kind of like, I understand the basics of debits and credits and how to read P and L, but I had to take it to a new level. Right. So yeah, when it came to like the functional pieces, I mean I'd be on YouTube, I'd be diving down, you know, things on how to use QuickBooks properly. I went to conferences and I'm not, I'm humbled enough to know that there's very few original ideas out there. It's really about going out and finding the right ideas. So I've hacked stuff off of EOs and traction and Ryan nice and scalable and other places just to understand it all. But for us, the whole thing changed when I realized that not about revenue, it's all about gross profit. And once I just structured my business around what's the gross profit this brings in and how much effort does it take to bring that in. Everything else just kind of made sense. Right. So it was a journey and sometimes it feels like you talk with imposter syndrome, but I mean, I've had to let go, you know, full blown CPA with 30 years of experience and I've got like, you know, I joke with my wife, I barely passed high school, right. So, but you know, I could turn businesses around and it works. So it is what it is.
- [23:42]
Cameron Herold
You understand it from the, from the perspective that it needs to be understood too. There's a couple of videos that you may want to take a look at that are inside of the Member Circle portal for the CEO Alliance. One is Ryan Deiss's partner, Roland Fraser spoke to us about four or five years ago and around the different numbers in the business and the implication of kind of changing some of those numbers around, it was a very, very well received Talk. And then Greg Crabtree, who wrote a book called Simple Numbers, spoke at one of our in person COO Connect events a couple years ago and his content again, was, was quite solid. So you may want to take a look at both of those because they, they might add to your continuing journey of running finance. But good for you on, on learning it because that's probably one of the areas that I think most business people get a little bit nervous of. And it's interesting. I'd say about 50 or 60% of the CEOs out there have finance report to them and about 30 or 40% don't. So.
- [24:37]
Josh Post
Yeah, the other thing we actually did was we connected with Bob Gavreau from Gavreau, cpa, I think you're on. We've both been on his podcast.
- [24:45]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
- [24:46]
Josh Post
But yeah, having a mentor in the finance space for me was, was the other piece that was helpful.
- [24:50]
Cameron Herold
Yeah. What, what did he do on that mentoring side? Can you speak to what he might have done, like on a, on a monthly basis or quarterly basis with you? I'm not going to lead you on the questions because I've got a couple of assumptions of what he might have.
- [25:02]
Josh Post
Done, but yeah, no, that's cool. Yeah. So we would meet monthly and at that time it was my job to produce the monthly reports for all the businesses. So I had to have them in my deadline, which was critical because there's always bigger fires in the deck. So I, you know, I spent a lot of 2 o' clock mornings, 3 o' clock in the mornings finishing up financials, getting them out. And then that forced me to stand behind my numbers and tell the third party, this is what's happening in my business. And, and Bob had no problem calling me out on things and saying, well, it doesn't add up because last month he said this. Right. So it just having someone in your corner that's just honest with you, straight up, and doesn't mind, you know, pissing me off, for lack of better terminology, brings. Honesty is huge. Yeah.
- [25:42]
Cameron Herold
I've often found that even getting that fractional CFO or that finance advisor just to look at your budget and your P and L on your balance sheet on a monthly quarterly basis to ask questions because they don't necessarily know, but they can see stuff that doesn't entirely makes sense or it seems off and they'll ask questions that are often insightful that can then kind of point us in that direction. I've also used them as part of the interviewing process where if I'm hiring, let's say a director of finance or a VP of finance or even a cfo. I might not have the technical aptitude to interview for the technical side of the business, but a couple of outside advisors can interview through that while I can interview for them more on the, the cultural fit and the kind of base level stuff that I want. But sometimes you need that more senior person as you scale right. As you're able to wrap your head around it now. But at 1-800-got junk. We had 13 operating PNLs companies in four countries. You know, we were approaching 100 million in revenue with 3,000 employees system wide. It just got complicated and we, we. I had no idea how to interview for finance at that point. I was like way out of my sandbox. I couldn't do it. If there were 50 employees alone, 3100, who's kidding who? So your growth with working with your brother, I mean, you've got somebody who's been in that CEO role for a long time. I can't imagine that every day is blissful or easy. How do you work through excluding the fact that he's your brother? How do you make sure that you're on the same page with him and that he's on the same page with you? And then secondly, how do you work through the natural conflict? I'm working right now with a COO who has some conflict issues internally and he's kind of struggling with it. I'm curious what you use as a conflict model to help you kind of get through those normal parts of a business.
- [27:29]
Josh Post
Herman and I, obviously us brothers and, you know, probably best friends, I would say we're like feel like we're cheating a little bit on the system. It helps me have that natural sort of alignment. We've always been very aligned around values, admission, like the big stuff. We're very different in terms of how we operate, how we fit together. Yeah, people often call us like, he's a preacher and a pastor. He's more comfortable in front of a group. I'm more comfortable one on one. He's more of an ideator. I'm more, I'm more from the gut. And so I think just over, over time the biggest challenge for me was like, I grew up and he was more of a mentor to me. We're 11 years apart. He moved out. I was, I don't know, 6, probably 9, 10 years old. Right. So I actually got to know him after in sort of a business setting more so than actually in a personal home setting. Right. So yeah. So the Biggest challenge for me, I guess, was just navigating the shifting from seeing him as a mentor to seeing him as a partner, seeing him as kind of his boss. At the same time, we're very collaborative. We work through things very well. I would say we're more. I'm more structured than he is. And so I try to honor sort of his personality and his ability to just, you know, fly like a CEO does. I call it CEO, CEO brain. And so we're often, I'm usually for us it's practice. Once a week I sit down with breakfast and bring in the three things that are on my mind that I want his to put on. And I might just say, listen, these are, these are the 10 things I'm going to do. If you got a problem, tell me now. Otherwise it's going to happen. Right? So for me, I've had to learn how to translate what's in my gut when I feel is the right thing to do or, you know, that sort of thing and put it into words and say, you know, here's what I'm going to do it. Here's what I'm not going to do. Here are the things I have a problem with, right? So just the one on one weekly breakfast is critical probably for us.
- [29:15]
Cameron Herold
And I like. There's a couple things in there that I really like. First is that there is a weekly pulse and it's a weekly one on one with both of you where you're. It's kind of like mom and dad. You don't have all the other kids around you just like mom and dad get time. Two is you're doing it out of the office, so you're kind of doing it on neutral territory where there's none of the distractions, nobody's getting interrupted and you just get to sit there and break bread and sit and chat and kind of go through this stuff. But third, I like that there's a structure that you go through. And I think a lot of people, it doesn't have to be this big complicated structure. It can be as simple as like an L10 kind of a structure. But when you do those one on ones, I talk about it in my book, meeting suck. It really is critical to get on that same page. It's not like he's there telling you what to do. It is very much a same page meeting versus you're not being managed by your CEO kind of a meeting. So you're working with some other companies on the side right now. What are you doing with them? And kind of walk us through what you typically see with some other entrepreneurial companies out there that they're doing right or that they're doing wrong.
- [30:11]
Josh Post
Yeah. So after, so 2019, we started out with, with our business and we're looking to sort of structure, change how the business operated and functioned. And then I joined some peer groups during that time, Co Lines being one of them. Another peer group. I met a good friend of mine, actually, and just, you know, started talking about his business. I started giving coffee shop advice, which is like in a vacuum. It sounds cool, you should do this, you should do that. And so I ended up meeting his team and then he's like, well, can you help me? Can you, you know, can you help me make things move forward? And. And I was like, you know what? I. Yeah, the ability for me to drive outcomes is less about advice and more about your ability to get it done. And so it sort of began, became a fractional relationship where I became the chief operating officer of a different company. So that was sort of an accidental step into the advisory space. It was quite a bit different than I counted on, to be honest. When I first started, I sort of expected that external companies would respect me less because they're not the owner. And now it's completely the opposite. So they looked at me that someone has done it before and I had credibility they didn't have. Most small businesses have that problem where they've tried this. They tried this, they tried this for 10 years, 20 years. They keep trying. These things that don't work, they can't break through a certain barrier.
- [31:28]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
- [31:29]
Josh Post
And people are just sick and tired of it. Right. So when someone says, hey, I've done this before, just jump on board, let's go. It goes pretty quickly. The same with banks and third parties. For example, like I talk to the bank, say, listen, here's a path, I'm taking those here. I've done it before, this is how it works. And they're like, yep, done. No problem. They backed right off. For example, whereas in my business, my bank's think so full of crap every time I talk to them. So this is a very unique situation. But I think a lot of small businesses, like, often they grow sort of organically so that, you know, they have the structure and it's almost like a toddler that's suddenly driving a car. Right. Like somehow it works. We're not sure. But they haven't developed themselves, the leadership team, the processes haven't developed, the speed and the rate as revenue has. And often they're they're developing internally, which means they're just creating more and more clones of the business owners. There's not enough inside perspective and you end up with this kind of mass of really good people doing really cool stuff, but they're always banging their head against the wall. Right. So being able to come in and sort of align it all and help them see their blind spots is where you get to unlock the value.
- [32:28]
Cameron Herold
How much time are you spending on that versus being in the day to day running the business that you're running?
- [32:33]
Josh Post
I probably spend about one and a half, two days a week on my group and three and a half days consulting right now. Yeah. Okay.
- [32:40]
Cameron Herold
And are you doing it as a part of a group? Are you doing that? Or are you doing this all independently? Are you with tech or with McKay forums or something like that? Or are you doing it all independently?
- [32:48]
Josh Post
Yeah, I'm doing it independently. I do have a team. I have a lawyer that I hired and a CPA that's on my team as well, my executive assistant. And so we pretty much handle it ourselves. And yeah, I would say probably influenced mostly by Jim Collins. Good, great. Where he talks about the critical few or the important many. And I realize a lot of people are looking at all these wonderful systems and processes. They're trying to refine a wheel that doesn't even roll right. So yeah, I like to come in and say, okay, let's first find out if this thing is working. Let's divine the business model, let's define the levers. Do we have the right people in the right seats? And then you can start to refine it. And by that time I could probably go, walk away. Right. So totally, yeah.
- [33:28]
Cameron Herold
I've been coaching CEOs now formally since 2007. So 18 years of coaching CEOs and COOs doing one on ones and group calls. And then informally, I really started coaching entrepreneurs back in 1989. So, you know, way before even business coaching become a thing. One of the things I've noticed so most now in the last, probably last 10 years is I'll be sitting doing a coaching call, teaching a mid sized company how to do whatever. And I always walk away with notes for myself. Do you ever find that the student, the student becomes the teacher, like you're telling them to do something, you're like, oh God, I got to get back to our own company and do this.
- [34:00]
Josh Post
Yeah, it happens a lot. I often, I have to say now, like, look at my company. If you know, as a consultant, here's what I would do Right, Yeah. That's crazy. It's a whole different lens on how things should operate, for sure.
- [34:12]
Cameron Herold
Is it staying focused on the critical few things for you or is it what do you think you tend to coach on that you then come back and implement better on yourself?
- [34:20]
Josh Post
Yeah. For me, the first thing is to understand the business. The levers, how the model, how the business itself functions, how does it make money and does not just, you know, most business owners don't know how their own business works.
- [34:31]
Cameron Herold
Scary.
- [34:31]
Josh Post
Once they understand it, then it's like, okay, we're not done actually, why don't we tell the team how this thing works? Right? This is the one thing you can do, right. Once you sort of have the model figured out and that works, that's really about the next step for me is leadership. Right. So, okay, so who's leading this thing? Most business owners don't spend enough time working on their business. As a consultant, I have a luxury of just only working on your business so I can swoop in and just focus on the things that we said we're going to do to move this thing forward. And once when I talk about leadership, it's kind of the all in thing. Like, are you all in? That's time, that's effort, that's energy. Right. Being all in doesn't mean you're working 70 hours a week. Often that means you're not all in. It means that you're coming to work half in the bag and not aware of what's going on. Right. So I spend a lot of time, feels like therapy sometimes for getting the owners or the leaders in a business to actually get to the point where they're all in. And then I can cope. Then I have somebody I can coach, something like that. I can help make this thing stick so that if I get hit by a truck tomorrow, this thing keeps going. Right. And from there it's really about building a plan that works, getting it down to the team, and then I'm just managing it, which is the fun part. So for me, it's a combination of KPIs. So how do I get truth in the business without having to go ask for paragraphs and words? It's about access to people. I want to be able to sit down, look people in the eye and say, why is this not working? And then I would say the third thing, that sort of, that monthly advisory rhythm, which is what Bob did for us, I do for other people now just have it sitting down once a month in a shareholder space, not in the worker Space, not employee space, not the manager space. Making key decisions. And often business owners disassociate the two. Right. So sitting here over meeting and say, yes, or, you know, our overhead's too high. Great. Five minutes later, I'm exhausted and tired. I'm going to hire a bookkeeper. Right? So I was like, no, no, let's connect the small things with the big things. Right? So just looping that around.
- [36:19]
Cameron Herold
I do love the simplicity of that focus, too. All right, Josh, I wanted to go back and give yourself some advice. If you were the younger you, maybe the 17, 20 year old, starting off in the business, starting off in the family business, or even in the business world, what advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?
- [36:35]
Josh Post
Oh, dear. I'm a bit of an idealist. I would say if I gave myself advice, I would say stop putting round pegs and square holes. I think it's really important to walk through doors that are already open rather than continue trying to bang doors that are closed. Right. If a person isn't fit for the role, you can massage it, negotiate it, have a hundred thousand conversations. It's. They're not a fit for the role. Right. Behavior is a language. If someone doesn't act as a partner, they don't act as a partner, right? Like, I spent too much time trying to train values or teach new behaviors. It just simply weren't going to work. Now I just honor what I see, right? So I just say, listen, this is what I'm seeing. Which tells me this, right? Clearly you're not engaged. Tell me I'm. Tell me I'm wrong, right? So. And life gets a lot simpler when I stop taking responsibility for everybody else's problems.
- [37:18]
Cameron Herold
Few good lessons in there. Josh, post the COO for the Kabachon Group. Thank you so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast.
- [37:26]
Josh Post
Yeah, thanks for having me, Cameron. Take care.
- [37:30]
Narrator/Announcer
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 their other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit cooalliance. Com.