The Reality of Entrepreneurship: Challenges and Misconceptions

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Home Service Expert Podcast
Host: Tommy Mello
Episode Title: The Reality of Entrepreneurship: Challenges and Misconceptions
Date: September 29, 2025
Guest: Cameron Herold ("The CEO Whisperer", author, founder, and COO expert)

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Main Theme Overview

This episode features a candid, in-depth discussion between Tommy Mello and legendary entrepreneur/author Cameron Herold, exploring the gritty, unglamorous realities of entrepreneurship—especially in the home services industry. The conversation debunks popular myths, clarifies the difference between coaching and mentoring, emphasizes building effective teams, and explores both the emotional roller coaster and the practical systems of scaling companies. Throughout, both Tommy and Cameron bring personal stories, hard-won advice, and actionable insights, all intended to help entrepreneurs cut through the noise, avoid common traps, and build businesses (and lives) with intention.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Truth About Entrepreneurship: Not for the Faint of Heart

• Entrepreneur DNA: Only about 3% of the population is truly wired for entrepreneurship—similar to the percentage that is ADHD or bipolar. Entrepreneurship has become “too trendy," but most people are not equipped for its reality.
  • Quote: "Entrepreneurs are just wired different. It's 5% of the population." — Tommy [03:34]
  • Quote: "It's 3%." — Cameron [03:43]
  • Quote: "Entrepreneurship in my mind has become too trendy... the people that actually have the DNA... is much less." — Cameron [03:56]
• The Hidden Struggles: Founders rarely share how hard things are while they're happening for fear of hurting their teams or brands. Stress, anxiety, and silent burdens are common.
  • Quote: "No entrepreneur that I've ever met will tell the truth about how hard it is while it's happening." — Cameron [04:37]

2. Coaching, Mentoring, and Consulting: What Actually Helps?

• Trend vs. Substance: Cameron breaks down how most “coaches” today aren’t what business builders truly need:
  • Coaching (Socratic method): Asks questions so you figure out the answer, but can frustrate entrepreneurs.
  • Mentoring: Shows practical shortcuts, tips, insight based on real experience.
  • Consulting: Actually does the work and builds systems.
  • Quote: "What most entrepreneurs really want is more of a mentor..." — Cameron [06:54]
• Specialist Help: Just as athletes have multiple coaches (skills, nutrition, mindset), entrepreneurs should assemble a team of diverse advisors.
  • Quote: "You don't say 'I need a coach.' Right, you need a Skills coach, a mindset coach..." — Cameron [08:25]

3. Data, Metrics, and Core Business Levers

• Know Your Numbers: Most businesses want more leads, but struggle because they don’t understand their core metrics or process bottlenecks.
  • Quote: "Can you show me your call center? What's your booking rate, cancellation rate and abandonment rate? They don't know it." — Tommy [09:47]
• Employee Happiness Is Foundational: Happy employees create great customer experiences, drive referrals, and reduce churn.
  • Quote: "If you have very, very happy employees, they're going to take care of your customers..." — Cameron [10:05]
  • Memorable Story: Cameron describes visiting Tommy's company and witnessing exceptional engagement from long-tenured staff [10:15].

4. The Power & Challenge of Scaling

• Pareto Principle and Square Root Rule: Half your output comes from the square root of your team (e.g., 16 of 200 people). Protect and invest in those core A-players.
  • Quote: "50% of your output as a company is produced by the square root of your number of employees..." — Cameron [11:27]
• Teams and Complexity: Most managers want more people, but the answer is often fewer, higher-quality staff—and more efficient processes.
  • Quote: "You don't actually often need more people. You need to get people focusing on the critical few things versus the important many." — Cameron [13:18]
• Delegation Hierarchy: Stop → Optimize → Automate → Outsource → Delegate-internally (in that order).
  • Quote: "Why would I delegate something or outsource something that we don't even need to keep doing?" — Cameron [14:08]

5. Financial Literacy for Founders

• Fractional CFOs: Most small companies need real financial expertise, even if just part-time.
  • Quote: "Get a fractional CFO that can look at your P and L, can look at your budget every month, can give you 10 things to work on." — Cameron [17:50]

6. The Role of Morale—and How to Build True Loyalty

• More than Perks: Authentic care for employees’ real lives, dreams, and struggles builds unstoppable engagement.
  • Quote: "If we care about them more than anyone else, they'll go through brick walls for us..." — Cameron [21:41]
• Vulnerability in Leadership: Testing for vulnerability in interviews and opening up about struggles builds trust and resilience.
  • Quote: "I test for vulnerability in the interview..." — Cameron [23:55]

7. Book-by-Book—Cameron Herold's Playbook

• Double Double: How to double profit/revenue/free time in 3 years through systems learned building large franchise businesses [24:53]
• Meeting Suck: Practical guidance on structuring and participating in meetings
• Free PR: Treat PR as a sales function, systematize outreach and amplification (don't just rely on marketers) [26:58]
• The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs: Mindset and morning rituals for leaders [32:04]
• Vivid Vision: How to craft a compelling, detailed vision for your company's future
• The Second in Command: How to empower, find, and work with powerhouse COOs

8. The Entrepreneur's Emotional Roller Coaster

• Bipolar & ADHD as Superpowers: These are not conditions to be “fixed” but harnessed for entrepreneurial success (as long as managed with self-care).
  • Quote: "It's a superpower because we see everything... We notice metrics jumping off the dashboards..." — Cameron [40:15]
• Never Stop Growing: Business growth matters, but so does personal, spiritual, and physical growth.
  • Quote: "Growth doesn't have to be always business. Growth can be, how can I grow as a person? How can I grow spiritually...?" — Cameron [49:44]

9. Work-Life Design & The Myth of “Busy”

• Intentional Living: Cameron describes selling all possessions, traveling the globe, prioritizing experiences, and deeply planning for family, fun, and personal passion.
  • Quote: "Let's encumber ourselves of everything. Let's get rid of all the stuff that we don't really need" — Cameron [37:45]
• Time Blocking: Top priorities (family trips, key events) go into the calendar first, business builds around them.
• Buy Back Your Time: Delegation is essential—but unless you fill the time with true passions, you’ll fill it with more work.

10. The Power of the A-Player

• A-Players Multiply Output: Two A-players can outperform six average ones by a wide margin, at a lower cost.
  • Quote: "When you hire A players, it's actually free. You save money by hiring and paying more for the A's because you don't hire the Cs." — Cameron [52:30]
• You Must Poach A-Players: They’re not on the open market. Be relentless and intentional about hiring the best.
  • Quote: "A players are never looking for a job. So you have to go poach A players." — Cameron [54:11]

11. Practical Wisdom & Book Recommendations

• Reread the Best Books: Study, don’t just read, foundational texts like "Think & Grow Rich", "Good to Great", "Built to Last."
  • Quote: "A lot of the books that people read, they don't need the next book, they need to go read it again." — Cameron [60:32]
• Cameron’s All-Time Favorites:
  • Endurance by Alfred Lansing ("My grandfather said this was the number one book he read." [61:44])
  • Insanely Simple by Ken Segall – about scaling Apple through simplicity

12. Legacy, Meaning, and True Purpose

• What Really Matters: Ultimately, business serves as a vehicle for changing lives—yours, your team's, and the community's.
  • Quote: “None of this matters. We're just walking each other home. Enjoy the journey.” — Cameron [66:21]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the myth of entrepreneurship:
  • “I just see a lot of entrepreneurs like flies banging their head on the window. And I feel like if they keep doing that, they're going to end up dead on the windowsill.” — Cameron [03:05]
• On “guru coaches”:
  • “I'd say 9 out of 10 are just full of shit.” — Tommy [06:14]
• On truly caring for your team:
  • “If we care about them more than anyone else, they'll go through brick walls for us to build the company.” — Cameron [21:41]
• On being a student:
  • “The day I do [think I have it all figured out] is the day I should die.” — Tommy [49:32]
• On ultimate purpose:
  • “None of this matters. We're just walking each other home. Enjoy the journey.” — Cameron [66:21]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:32–06:30: Introduction, Cameron’s background, why entrepreneurship is misunderstood.
• 06:30–10:15: The reality (& value) of true coaching and mentorship.
• 10:15–16:21: Metrics, employee engagement as business foundation; picking the right KPIs.
• 16:21–23:29: How to prioritize, optimize, and build with fewer, better people. Stop > Optimize > Automate > Delegate.
• 21:41–24:44: Building true employee loyalty/morale; the Dream Manager.
• 24:44–32:54: Cameron’s books in order, how to leverage PR, and why sales should own it.
• 32:54–37:29: The COO Alliance, why Cameron targets second-in-commands, and leadership training.
• 37:29–41:35: Designing your ideal life—travel, freedom, why and how Cameron gave up owning a house.
• 41:35–47:38: The emotional patterns of entrepreneurship; avoiding burnout, managing energy.
• 47:38–51:33: The importance of personal challenge, fitness, and leading by example.
• 52:30–54:35: The power of the A-player—pay more, expect more, and win big.
• 55:01–58:37: The rewards of slow travel, working from anywhere, top global destinations.
• 58:58–61:44: Book recommendations, the importance of deep study, and leadership classics.
• 63:49–66:28: Legacy, meaning, caring about employees, and Cameron’s simple closing wisdom.

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Tone and Style

This episode retains a direct, no-nonsense, but deeply caring tone. Both Tommy and Cameron blend tactical, streetwise business advice with earnest reflections on meaning, wellbeing, and the importance of lifelong learning. Discussions are frank and occasionally blunt but always constructive—interspersed with humor, vivid stories, and humility.

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Actionable Takeaways

• True entrepreneurship demands both the right DNA and constant upskilling.
• Get real mentors (not just generic coaches)—people who’ve been where you want to go.
• Before growing a team, optimize, automate, or stop low-value tasks.
• Identify and nurture your A-players; let no mediocre performer crowd them out.
• Track your real numbers; bring in part-time (fractional) experts where you lack skill.
• Show deep, personal care for your employees’ whole lives, not just their outputs.
• Invest in yourself outside the business: fitness, hobbies, family, and travel matter.
• Return again and again to fundamental texts and lessons—mastery > novelty.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

How do we care more about our employees lives, their fears, their insecurities? Because if we care about them more than anyone else, they'll go through brick walls for us to build the company.

[B]

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share a important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes. But I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O t e s to 888-526-1299 that's 888-526-1299 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I got Cameron Herald, who actually is a great friend and he's coaching us and he wrote the book, one of his best books. I don't know, he's got a lot of books. Double, double free pr. You wrote Meetings suck. What are some of the other books?

[A]

Co authored the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs, Vivid Vision. And then my most recent is the Second in Command.

[B]

I Love. By the way, he's no fluff. He'll tell you exactly what it how it goes. He's an expert in sales, business, COO, advisory because he realizes CEOs don't do anything, they just delegate to their COO. He's the host of the Second in Command. He's known worldwide as the CEO Whisperer. Founded the CEO alliance and host of the Second in Command podcast, the only podcast that's dedicated to CEOs or, you know, general managers. By the age of 35, Cameron had already built $200 million companies. By 42, he engineered the spectacular growth of 800 Got Junk, scaling it from 2 million to 106 million in revenue and 3,100 employees in just six years while landing over 5,000 media placements, including an appearance on Oprah Cameron is also the best selling author of the six books we just mentioned. Top rated international speaker who has shared the stage in 29 countries. He's been described by Forbes publisher Rich Car Guard, Carl Guard as the best speaker I've ever heard. He hits grand slams. And it's an honor to have you in the studio and just in town.

[A]

Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it. Great seeing you.

[B]

That is probably the best resume I've ever read on the show. And you, you know what's nice is you've experienced so much entrepreneurship that you kind of get down to the brass knuckles and just tell people what's up.

[A]

Yeah, I think I was talking to someone last night at dinner about this and I seem to say what everybody's thinking and they don't have the courage to say it. And I think it's just because I don't have a filter and, and I just don't take myself so seriously. I grew up in Canada. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. I started running my own business when I was 20. And I just see a lot of entrepreneurs like flies banging their head on the window. And I feel like if they keep doing that, they're going to end up dead on the windowsill. And I just kind of show them that the doors right here are the shortcuts. And I was never the smart kid in school. I was the one that found the shortcuts.

[B]

Yeah, that's crazy how that works. I did a podcast last week with a guy that wrote the book Driven. And it's just entrepreneurs are just wired different. It's 5% of the population.

[A]

It's 3.

[B]

3%.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the problem is we were misfits. We got adhd. We don't feel like we belong in school. A lot of us sometimes are on the spectrum. We're diagnosed people and we're told we've got a condition.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. There's only 3% of the population are bipolar. Only 3% of the population are traditionally ADHD. And it correlates very closely with the 3% that are actually entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship in my mind has become too trendy and too fashionable and too, like, cool. And people are trying to be an entrepreneur. Maybe they should be entrepreneurial. But, but the people that actually have the DNA and then the skill sets to match to really be an entrepreneur, to really be a company, is much less than has become trendy.

[B]

And you know, I, I read this statistic yesterday cause I wanted to make sure I had my facts. 70% of businesses fail within the first 10 years, and it's not for the fainted heart. Everybody wants to see the views, but no one wants to make the hike well.

[A]

And the other thing is, no entrepreneur that I've ever met will tell the truth about how hard it is while it's happening while talk about it a year or two later. But we can't talk about the real dirty, hard, crappy stuff because it can hurt our brand, it can hurt our team, it can hurt our company's confidence. So we tend to live in that little silent shelter. Or we have. Maybe we only tell a couple of our friends, or we tell our coach or maybe a mastermind that we're in. But no one talks about the theft or the embezzlement or having to fire a friend or not being able to meet payroll or the worry that we have at night. So we live in this kind of silent compression bubble which amplifies the stress and the depression we go through. But we do tend to share the, oh, here's the beautiful life I've got. And here I am flying private, and here I am on all my vacations. So we share the good stuff, and everybody on social media only sees the good stuff. It's kind of like nobody shows how hard our normal day is at home either.

[B]

You know what's funny is I know if they're in home service, I most likely been to their shop. If they're successful. And I see a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people, Cameron. And it's all success stories, motivation online. And I happen to know that they're not making any profit.

[A]

Right?

[B]

I mean, literally, like they're out there coaching clients, they got a best practices group, everyone's becoming a coach. And I just look at that and I say, you know, we've got a coaching program where we go over budgeting, know your numbers. And Jim runs that. The Home Service Freedom group and super, super amazing guy and helped me. He was my CTO/CMO for a long time, but I don't take a paycheck out of that. You know where I make my money? In the garage door industry.

[A]

In the. Yeah. In the core business.

[B]

I don't even take a paycheck from that. I mean, long term, I think it's going to open the door to a lot of opportunities for us. That's really. And I like to help people. I like when people say, you changed the destination of my life. Even this podcast. And what, what do you think it is? How can you tell a real guru Coach I'd say 9 out of 10 are just full of shit.

[A]

So there's coaching has become a trendy thing. So coaching only really started in business in 1993. The International Federation of Coaching and CoachU both started in 1993. I'd already coached 120 entrepreneurs by 1993 because I was involved in a franchise group called College Pro Painters, which became the largest residential house painting company on the planet. We had 800 franchisees that we had to sign and train every year. So imagine finding 800 new franchisees every year. So that was the group that I grew up in. What happens is coaching is supposed to be the Socratic method, where you ask somebody a lot of questions to get them to help figure out what they should already know intuitively inside. That drives entrepreneurs crazy. What they really want is more of a mentor. That's probably what I play. I built the companies before I built businesses in the home services space. I can talk to you about what you're doing. I stay away from the areas I'm not good at. The problem with coaches is they tend to try to talk to you about every area of the business that they've never done it before. So they might be good at asking the Socratic questions, but they're not good at giving you the shortcuts and the tips that most entrepreneurs are looking for. And they don't have the actual skill set to really analyze the business in a very good way. And then in the middle of that spectrum is the consultants, the person that you're hiring to come in and actually do the work to help fast forward you. So I think a lot of people that say they're coaches are probably more mentors. That's where I think the real benefit for most business people comes from, is finding a mentor. And then the next part of that is you've got the business process. People like the EOS coaches or the scaling up coaches or the next level growth coaches, they're actually teaching you systems to help you scale up the operational side of your business. But they probably don't have the leadership skills around things like situational leadership coaching, managing people, handling conflict, like the soft skills of leadership that something like that I would bring to the table. So it's a, it's a weird, it's a weird thing that most people are looking for.

[B]

What do you think?

[A]

Sorry, let me one other analogy on that. If you're an athlete, let's say that you're a professional athlete, you don't say, I need a coach. Right, you need a Skills coach.

[B]

Specialist.

[A]

Well, you need a skills coach, a mindset coach, a fitness coach, a. A nutrition coach. Maybe you might have five or six different types of coaches coaching on different aspects of your business. So you don't need a coach for the garage industry, but maybe you need a finance coach, maybe you need a leadership coach, maybe you need someone to work with you on communications. So there's different types of business coaches as well.

[B]

Yeah. It's not uncommon for me to have seven people I'm working with.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

I mean, right now I've got a team building out bi tools that are specialists to pull the data that I need to make good decisions.

[A]

And I could never touch that. That would be a very huge weakness of mine. So even if you asked me to help you on that, be like, dude, I don't know, I'm not. I can give you some ideas on what to put there in the dashboards, but in building that stuff out, not my zone of genius at all.

[B]

What if you were to guess, and I know the answer to this because this is nine. I'm not kidding, Cameron. 90% of people, what do you think they say they need to me, when they, when they come for help, what's the number one thing they ask for? What do you think they're missing out?

[A]

They want more people, they want more leads.

[B]

Oh, sorry.

[A]

Okay. Franchisees. I thought you meant managers. Because managers always come to their CEO.

[B]

You're right about this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I need to build my team. But they say if I could just get the phone to ring more.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then what's my first question? Do you think I'll give it to you? Because can you show me your call center? What's your booking rate, cancellation rate and abandonment rate? They don't know it. And then I say, what's your conversion rate when you knock on the door?

[A]

So I'll start even before that. How happy are your employees?

[B]

Yeah, the net promoter score of the employees. Correct.

[A]

Because if you have very, very happy employees, they're going to take care of your customers, which means your customers are going to be happy. And you'll generate referrals and recurring revenue. But people don't tend to look at how happy their employees are.

[B]

What?

[A]

One of the first things I noticed when I walked into a one garage this morning, I'm walking through the courtyard, this guy notices that I'm kind of a little bit lost. He comes and grabs me and he goes, oh, I wish I could remember his name right now. He runs your training department. He's been with you for five years.

[B]

Is it John?

[A]

Yes, John. John grabs me, walks me around, takes me into the other building, makes sure I'm okay, looks to see if you're in the office, says goodbye and makes sure I'm fine. Second employee comes out, sees if I'm okay, says hi in the lobby. Like, you've got very happy, engaged employees. That translates into customers. It translates into a low abandon, translates into referrals. But most people don't start there.

[B]

You know, that's a really hard thing, I think. You know, I was just recently in Canada, and this guy named Todd, and He's got about 10 people, and they die for him. It was actually Martell's office, and I.

[A]

Met on my podcast, you Todd? Yeah. He's great.

[B]

He's a really cool guy. And I'm like, it was so easy when it was 20 of us. I knew every person. I knew their wife's name. I mean, I had serious relationships with them. And I will say, without the I can't be everywhere now. So it's developing leaders that feel the same way. I look at a good market. It's because of a great leader.

[A]

It was. Todd Melnick is the CEO of Dan Martell's group. So I just spoke with somebody about this yesterday. That 50% of your output as a company is produced by the square root of your number of employees. So it's a little bit confusing math, but how many total employees do you have? Let's say at your corporate offices? About 200.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the square root of your number of employees would be about 16 people. 16 times 16 is 196. So 16 people produce 50% of your company's output. And then you go to the Pareto principle, which says 20% of your people produce 80% of your output. So 40 people produce 80% of your Output. Somewhere between 16 and 40 people is your core. God forbid they ever quit your company. We need to make sure that they're handcuffed, and we need to grow them. Those are your emerging leaders. We need to give them the skills we need to put them through. Invest in your leaders course. We need to give them mentoring. If we really take care of those racehorses, you can actually get rid of most of your C players who aren't producing enough to even worry about. And then what we end up doing is spending all of our time and all of our energy and more. More ccs and more slack messages and more meetings with all of the C players who aren't giving enough output. So not only does it cost money but it's the time and energy drain. And that's what happens is when you have a mid level team that keeps saying, I need more people, we build all this complexity into our company that's not needed in the first place.

[B]

I love this topic because during a meeting we had, we showed you the org chart for next year and you said, well, maybe this is right. I'm not going to knock it. But why? There's another person that wants a stake in the outcome. There's another person that's a decision maker at the table. There's another person with Slack and email and I love that. And all of a sudden you said, how do you do more with less? What would need to happen? And you got us to think outside of the box. I mean, you're right. There's not a teammate, a management person I could talk to that can't say I could use more people.

[A]

Right. And they really don't need more people. They need to learn how to say no more often. They need to learn how to prioritize the work that they're doing. They need to delegate work and control Parkinson's law to get work done faster and cheaper. The working title for my first book, Double Double, was actually how to get more Done with Less People Faster. That was the working kind of theme around it. Because you don't actually often need more people. You need to get people focusing on the critical few things versus the important many. That's a Jim Collins quote.

[B]

Well, one of my bracelets says ruthlessly prioritize. So sitting with our project manager yesterday and I said, one of the things I want to work on, Joan, is can it be delegated externally? Right now we've got an AI company building a lot of stuff in the call center. I said, so even if it's lower on the priority list and there's a third party doing it, that it's a specialist, I still want to get that done.

[A]

Okay, but let's start before that. Yes, we can delegate, but before that is can we actually stop it? Like, do we even need to do it? So I stop, optimize, automate, outsource. So I look at the work that we're doing and I do an activity inventory of all my people every six months. I look at all the stuff that we're doing and the first thing I look at is every single task. I like, do we need to keep doing this task? Can we just kill it? Like, does it really need to be done? Because why would I delegate something or outsource something that we don't even need to keep doing. If we're going to keep doing it, can we optimize it? Can we do it faster? Can we do it shorter? Can we do it in less time? Parkinson's law says that work expands to fill the time that we give it. So, so if you give something two days, it'll take two days. If you give it four minutes, you'll get it done in four minutes. Can we get it done faster? Once I know we've optimized it, then can I automate it? Like, why am I going to delegate something that can be done by AI or by Zapier and can just be done by the machine? If we can automate it, that's great. If I can't, can I outsource it? And can I outsource it offshore first? I've got people working for me in Brazil, in the Philippines, in India and Karachi, Pakistan. Rather than outsourcing or delegating to a person here in my office or even in the United States, can I offshore it first? If no, then can I get it done by somebody outsourced? Because I don't need it more in my house. I want a fractional person that can just do that task two hours a month or two hours a week. And then worst case scenario, can we do it internally? The problem for mid level managers is they keep saying we need to hire more people instead of can we even stop it or optimize or automate it.

[B]

You know, I think a lot of people need to like re listen to that.

[A]

I just, There was a lot there.

[B]

But yeah, no, it's interesting because I don't know of anybody that literally can't say I need more people. And I really believe, like if you look, the conversion cycle is simply booking rate, conversion rate, average ticket, and then you fill it through the leads, the cost per lead and a lot of stuff is broken. And even I'm questioning people on our team, which is Luke mostly. It's the number one guy I talk to in the company is, can we get to 95%? He says, well, what are the cancellations are through the roof and the revenue is not there. And I said, well, let's look at that. He goes, 90% might be optimal based on the fact. And I said, well, I know their CSR is booking at 95%. Let's study these numbers. And so now we're getting the data to make these decisions.

[A]

And you know what a good way to look at your numbers is? Picture every number on your P and L picture Every number on your budget as a gear. And, you know, some gears are bigger and some gears are smaller.

[B]

Yeah. Even like in a watch.

[A]

Right. Or and on a bicycle, like a bigger on the front. Right. So picture which gears are the biggest gears that if we optimize that gear, it'll throw off the most optimization in our company. So as an example, when we were scaling 1, 800, got junk, one of our franchisees was obsessed about how much gas he was spending on his trucks. He was tracking everything. I'm like, gas is only 4.1% of your P&L. Your labor is 26% of your P and L. Why don't we optimize labor? Right? So then what he started doing, he put these RFID chips into with trucks, and he only paid the guys for when the trucks started to move until the 1. The truck was parked at the end of the day. And what happened was they got rid of about 15 minutes in the morning. Like, guys, see how I showed up at 8. Really? The truck started moving at 8:12, and I finished at 4:50. No, you finished at 4:30. But you actually padded by 20 minutes. So when he started cutting was about a half hour a day per person. He dropped his labor from 26.2 down to about 23. That's like literally not having any gas in your vehicle. That was a big gear. The second biggest gear was dump costs. Right. You can't optimize for franchise fees or royalties. We're not changing that gear. But which gears can you actually optimize?

[B]

That's genius. And you know, the problem with, with most companies is they don't know how to read a balance sheet or.

[A]

Or the P and L. Right?

[B]

Yeah, the three main sources.

[A]

If you're a small company and you can't afford to have a real cfo, you probably have a controller with a big title or a bookkeeper. Right. Or a bookkeeper with a big title. That's fine. Right. But go get a fractional CFO that can look at your P and L, can look at your budget every month, can give you 10 things to work on. Maybe they can coach your bookkeeper a little bit, but get a fractional person. When I started my company 18 years ago after leaving 1-800-got junk. My company was called the Back Pocket COO. And my basic pitch was, you can't afford me full time, but you can't afford to not have me in your back pocket. So if you're a small company and you can't afford a real strategic CFO, get a fractional for 1500 bucks a month. That's going to look at your numbers for you. Maybe a 65, 70 year old former CFO who just wants to have some casual cash coming in as he's living in Portugal.

[B]

And I've always said fractional is amazing. Get a $500,000 person a year as a fractional, pay them a few grand a month, they'll give you those $500,000 systems totally like automatic reconciliation.

[A]

And they're not all a few grand a month either. There literally are a lot of really good solid fractional CFOs that are retired.

[B]

Where do you find them?

[A]

Go online, ask your network, post on Facebook.

[B]

Is it upwork?

[A]

Is that the upwork? Oh yeah, upwork is an easy one, but you could. Fiverr is another one. You could. They'll post something on Facebook and saying, I'm looking for a 70 year old retired former CFO who can look at my numbers with me on a monthly basis and I can pay them fractionally. They will, they're, they're living in Boca Raton, they're on the golf course, they're living up in Kelowna, skiing like, but. And they don't want, they don't, they don't need 20 grand a month. They're just, they just want a little bit of cash coming in so they don't drive their wife crazy.

[B]

I love the. There's so much gold in this podcast. One of the stories I really loved and I appreciated is when you guys came out with an lms. I believe it was the painting pros and they wanted to put it in Quebec. They wanted to put it in French.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And why don't you tell that story?

[A]

So this was, this was back at 1-800-got junk. Our learning and development department, we had nine full time people that built all the training content for our franchisees and the guys out in the trucks. So the LMS was a video system where our drivers and navigators, we had about 2,000 employees in the US would go online, they'd watch some videos about hauling junk, dealing with the customer, doing on site sales, safety, all that stuff, read some information and they would go through the training. And our training group, we just opened up in Quebec, which is French speaking. So our training group wanted to convert all this content over to French. And it was like a three month project to convert it all. It was going to be tens of thousands of dollars to convert it all over. It seemed like an okay idea, you know, 100 employees in Quebec. But I said, hang On a second, how many of our 2,000 people in the trucks in the United States have gone through all the training content? And it was like 15%. So I'm like, rather than producing content for the ones in French in Quebec, why don't we get the other 1800 people in the United States to go through the American content first and let's get them learning. So we literally killed the project. I don't know if they ever developed the project, frankly, because most of the French people also speak English.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it was just, how do we stop that project completely? Again, most companies would try to outsource it. How do we get an outsourced group to convert everything? Why? Why spend that time and money and energy when it doesn't need to be done in the first place?

[B]

Well, here's one question I always have. So, like, morale and call it the internal or the Net Promoter Score. The internal. Like recognizing birthdays, work anniversaries, even your wife's anniversary.

[A]

That's cost of entry. That's basic. That's like saying, I play jazz in a coffee shop. They all do.

[B]

Well. Well, let's just say this. There's certain things that literally you can't see in a KPI and you can't see. Like, we just took all the guys out for axe throwing yesterday. Yeah, it was about 80 guys.

[A]

Yep. That's fun. It's a perk.

[B]

I can't necessarily say to my cfo, this is what's going to happen.

[A]

Let me talk to you about how to really work on morale. So we had a contest internally called More Ale. It was our how do we increase morale? It's spelled the same way. Go have more beer. Basically, the whole program was this. How do we care more about our employees lives, their fears, their insecurities, their home life, the problems with their kids, with their spouse, with their weight. How do we care more about their bucket list and their dreams? How do we care more about them as a human than anyone else in their life does? Because if we care about them more than anyone else, they'll go through brick walls for us to build the company. So our whole thing about Net Promoter Score was actually caring way more than just their dog's name and their birth date. It's about what are they really struggling with.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So the book, the Dream Manager was foundational for us.

[B]

Yeah, we have a dream Manager full time.

[A]

So the Dream Managers thing is less about the bucket list and perks and more about truly connecting with their humanity. The newest tattoo that I just got is The Ram Dass quote, walking each other home. It's in Hindi, but it's to remind us that none of this really matters. This is just what we do to make money. And if we're constantly trying to drive them and give them perks like free massages, we were missing the point that at home, they're really struggling.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So at my most recent COO alliance event, I had every member in the CO alliance write down one thing they were deeply struggling with. They wrote it on a post it note, crumpled up the post it note, threw it in the center of the room, then they all went up together, picked up a post it note, came back, and they read it out. And it was stuff like, I'm struggling with my marriage, My spouse is cheating on me. I'm going bankrupt, I hate my weight. The people were sobbing in the room. Because we realize that every single person, including you, including me, is struggling with something. And when you care more about the person, that's where your employee net promoter score comes from. And that means hiring people that care about people.

[B]

It's hard to do. I mean, and it's hard to do that in an interview. It's hard to do that. And you know this. I mean, you, you, you gave me a lot of lessons on how to go through a resume, and you said, I don't give a about the resume, what I'm looking for, why they leave their last job, what happens when I call that last boss. What was there huge gaps in between. But you can't really tell a resume. How do you. Because this is probably the most important question. It's who, not how. We know the book, but I like that.

[A]

I test for vulnerability in the interview. I ask questions to see if they're truly vulnerable. I ask questions to see if they'll sugarcoat the answers or if they'll really go deep. So I'll just say to them, what are you struggling with right now? What's been the hardest time in your life? Who is really struggling in your company and how did you support them? And if it's really surfacey stuff, I know they can't go there. But if they go, yeah, I'm really struggling with X, and they're really willing to go there right away. I go, wow, they're really gonna go deep when they actually start to really like me and know me and trust me. Or I'll open it up and I'll go vulnerable first, right? And I'll say, hey, here's something I'm going through right now. Where are you Going. And then if I go vulnerable in an interview, they're locked and loaded for 10 years with me. Cause they're like, they've never seen that in an interview situation before. And again, none of this stuff really matters. The death rate's 100%. None of us are getting out of this alive.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's true. I want to go through real quick. You, you wrote several books. Can we just go through each book and give me the high level summary?

[A]

Sure. So Double Double was the first book and I had no desire to ever be an author. I didn't start out. I was told by a speaker's bureau that if I had a book, they could get me higher speaking fees. So now I get a $40,000 speaking fee for a one hour engagement. I'm doing two of them this month. So the speed the books worked. The first book, Double Double, is how to double your revenue, your profit and your free time in three years or less. So if you get 26% revenue growth three years in a row, that's a double in revenue. Yeah, that's double Double. So it's all the systems on how to get more done with less people faster. It's a lot of the content that I learned at college. Pro Painters. Right. And how to scale that 8,800 person company every year. We had to hire 8,800 people every year. So how do you build that, that business from an entrepreneurial position? That was Double Double. Then I wrote Meeting Suck and it was actually how to run proper meetings. It wasn't complaining about meetings, it was teaching people how to run them. So Meeting Suck is how to run not just an L10 meeting, but how do you run an annual planning meeting, quarterlies, how do you run financial reviews, business area reviews. How do you run one on one coaching? How do you run leadership team meetings? How do you run daily huddles? And then how do you get everybody who's coming to meetings to participate? How do you get people to actually opt out of meetings because their other work is too important? You don't need them there in the first place. That was the purpose for meeting stock. And it's for every employee to read, not just for the leader. Then I did a book called Free PR and that was how we landed all the free press. And the Oprah episode was a six minute episode on Oprah. It was like a long with all of our trucks and our guys and like imagine all your A1 garage branding on Oprah for six minutes. It was crazy. But it's really not about the press you're getting, it's how do you leverage the press that you get? So Oprah really only helped us for about three or four days, but being able to talk about being on Oprah for the last 22 years, being able to share the episode, I shared the episode clip at an MIT event three weeks ago. That's where you really get the leverage. So it's the digital trifecta of your earned media, your own media and your paid media. And I talk about how to leverage the press you're getting to really get the amplification.

[B]

I bought that book for five people in the company and just one thing I wanted to add. Can you just talk about. PR doesn't fall under marketing, it falls under sales.

[A]

Yeah, most marketing people, if they get a no, they run away and hide while a salesperson hears no, they're like, I didn't explain myself properly. When a marketing person hears no, they get all nervous and they run away. So I treat PR as a sales function and the product or service that you're selling is a story. And understanding that you're not really selling them and trying to get them to cover you. Every journalist wakes up this morning going, what am I going to cover today? What am I going to talk about today? Even for your podcast, the hardest thing for you and your podcast is finding a new interesting guest every week or two to interview. It's not doing the interview, it's who am I going to interview? So if somebody shows up to you and goes, hey, I've got a great guest. You're like, oh my God, you made my life so simple. So we phone the journalists, we never email them, we never send press releases, and we go, do you have two minutes? I think I have a good story for you. And I phone them in the morning when I know they're trying to figure out what they're going to write about. In the afternoon, they're on deadline, they're busy, they're trying to wrap everything up. I never phone them in the afternoon. The afternoon I do my follow ups or I do my research. I figured doing a call. But in the morning we pitch.

[B]

Give me an example. And I want to dive into the.

[A]

Press, but again, it's not about the press. So let's say that you get seven articles in the media, a couple podcast interviews, a couple of TV interviews, a couple of blog interviews. Now you've got seven interviews. I think of every piece of media as a log, like a physical chunk of wood. So I've got seven articles I've got seven logs. Well, they're just sitting there. What do I do? I gotta light the logs on fire. So now what I'm gonna do with every media article is I'm gonna share them on my LinkedIn profile three times a year I'm gonna take this podcast, I'll share it on LinkedIn three times, I'll share it on Facebook three times.

[B]

And that's a system you set up, correct? You're not doing it?

[A]

No, no, my team does it. It's all outsourced. As soon as I get the links from you, it goes into a system automatically that gets posted three times on Facebook, three times on LinkedIn, three times on Instagram, get emails to my list three times. It gets emailed to my list once a quarter as part of a summary list with the other big ones. It gets put on my press page of both my Cameron Herald website and my co alliance website. It gets put out on Digg and StumbleUpon and it gets pushed out onto Reddit. That's the lighting the logs on fire. So now I buy traffic to my LinkedIn posts, I buy traffic to my Facebook post and now everybody's seeing all of my media and they don't remember that they saw the same post three or four months ago. So that's the amplification of the digital.

[B]

So it goes over from the sales team to the marketing team. They're supposed to put the fire.

[A]

Correct. The marketing team puts the lights it on fire and the marketing team drive gas on it. The sales team generates the logs.

[B]

I, I think for the listeners, I'm just curious what would be interesting. So you have this phone call with a journalist. Give me something that they're like absolutely craving.

[A]

Okay. So I was contacting Bloomberg. Now, Bloom, we only had 12 or 14 franchisees at the time. We only had about 20 employees at the time. But I wanted to get one, one writer who could get us into a lot of newspapers on the same day. So you got Associated Press, Bloomberg, Canada, Wire. So I phoned this guy, Alex Armitage. It's crazy, I still remember his name 25 years later. And Alex and I started talking on the phone. I said, hey, do you have a couple minutes? I think I have a good story. He goes, sure, what's your pitch? And I wanted to pitch the roll up strategy, the consolidation play, the building a brand in an industry that never had one before. And he's listening and he's engaging and then all of a sudden he goes, what kind of weird junk do you haul Away. I was like, oh, truckloads of Buddha statues and, you know, an Elvis statue and some escargot shells. And then I go back to pitching the roll up play and the consolidation strategy. Three times in my five minutes of talking to him, he asked me about the weird junk. So all of a sudden, the salesperson in me is going, wait, I need to sell him what he's buying.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not what I'm trying to sell. So I was like, you like this weird junk angle, don't you? He goes, I love it. I'm like, cool, let me give you a couple more weird junk things, and let's figure out how to frame a really good article about for the media to that covers all the weird junk, and that'll be the hook. He goes, I love this. So literally it's ask questions and listen, But a salesperson understands that I will sell you whatever you're buying.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I guess it's a muscle that when you flex it enough, you start recognizing what is interesting to them, what's newsworthy.

[A]

And that's why you can't be the sleazy salesperson who's so focused on selling something. I'm trying to help them.

[B]

Yeah. You talk a lot about Haro in the book.

[A]

Yeah. I met Peter Shankman, the founder of haro, back probably 2003. He actually had me on his podcast. He wrote about me in his book on the ADHD stuff. Haro stood for help a reporter out. So the whole idea is a reporter every morning has to think about what to write. And then I avoid the city desks, I avoid the editors because they sit down with 400 news releases and press releases every day saying, no, no, no, no, no. Why would I call them iPhone the journalist or iPhone the photographer? And you know that every newspaper, every magazine, the photographer's name is beside the photo. So I pick up the phone and I call Dave. I'm like, hey, is Dave there? And they're like, yeah. Because the only person that calls Dave is his mom.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So when you call Dave, you go, hey, I think I have a good photo op for you. Do you have a minute? He goes, sure, I'm waiting to be put on assignment. What's the idea? And you pitch him about all these crazy trucks with the guy on the side and how you're branding an industry. And he goes, I love this. Let me see the photo.

[B]

I love it, man. Let's go to the next book.

[A]

Next book was I was actually at a genius network event where I'm heading off to after this, I was going to the bathroom. This other member of the Genius network comes and grabs me and he goes, hey, you're Cameron Herold. Would you consider co authoring a book with me? The guy was Hal Elrod. Hal had written the Miracle Morning and he asked me to co author the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs. So it was how to actually start our days, get our mindset right, get into the ability of focus. So I co authored that with Hal, hugely successful. And that was just me leveraging his brand and him leveraging my brand. We did that about five, five or six years ago, I guess. And then I wrote a book called Vivid Vision, which is crafting that four or five page vision document that describes what your company looks like, acts like, and feels like three years in the future. So everybody's on the same page as you. And then lastly, I just wrote a book called the Second in Command, which is all about unleashing the power of your CEO.

[B]

And let's dive into the coo, because you got the COO alliance. First of all, it started out as the CEO. That's who you worked with. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[A]

Yeah. So I started coaching entrepreneurs back in 2007. So right after leaving 1-800-got- junk, I landed three coaching clients right away that were all paying me six figures to coach them for the year. One was called Nurse Next Door, one was called Fairway Divorce, and one was called Achievers. It used to be called I love Rewards. They all went on to have like massive, massive growth. And I was sitting behind the scenes coaching the CEO and coaching their leadership team. What I started to recognize over the years was I was teaching the entrepreneur how to do things, but it was really their second in command that was doing it. So what I realized was the CEO needed to know what had to happen, but the COO needed to know how to do it. So I started to coach not only the CEO, but the COO. So right now I'm coaching the COO of ButcherBox. I don't coach the CEO. I coach the COO of ButcherBox. We do monthly calls together. I coach the COO of Mail XL. I coach the COO of Tinuity, which was a 2000 person marketing agency, the COO of Acceleration Partners. So I was teaching the person who was actually making the entrepreneur's dream come true, giving them the systems on hiring, on people, on operations, on meeting rhythms, on strategic thinking, on financial management, and giving the tools to the person who's actually making it happen, but then letting The CEO knowing what has to happen, but not how to do it.

[B]

Why did you switch? And this is really important, I think from a coaching standpoint. Why did you switch to once a month?

[A]

You explained this to me instead of the couple times a month.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I realized from talking to a bunch of my clients that they didn't have time to put in place all of the systems and the coaching that I used to do with them. So I used to do a two 90 minute calls a month with them. And after like three or four or five months, they were so overwhelmed with all the ideas they were getting. Like, you've already got pages of notes and stuff to do here. Yeah. And you're supposed to be interviewing me, but you've got all these ideas now to take into your company. Imagine doing that with me twice a month. It's overwhelming.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So I just slowed it down and went to once a month and charged the same amount of money and they were happier, which was a little bit more done. Yeah.

[B]

You know, if I'm listening to this and I realize every entrepreneur, every person needs a different prescription.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is there an order of operations to reading your books? Would you say?

[A]

Well, here's what's really interesting. It's not a novel. You don't read it. It's not like reading 50 Shades of Gray. You don't start at page one and end at page 300. My first book, Double Double the entrepreneur should read chapters one, two, six, ten and twelve.

[B]

You got like this photographic memory. Say that again.

[A]

One, two, six, ten and 12. Like chapter 12 is the emotional roller coaster of entrepreneurship. It's a must read. It's how to navigate the bipolar and the ups and downs that we go through as an entrepreneur. But you don't need to read the session on PR necessarily. You don't need to read the section on how to grow when it's slow necessarily. You don't need to read the section on boards of advisors necessarily. But if that's something that interests you or that you're working on, then sure, go deep into that chapter. I would read Double Double first. Then I would probably read the second in command. Then I might go in to read Vivid Vision as the third. But I cover Vivid Vision in the first book, Double Double in enough content that you can get a good glimpse at it. The other one is my course. So I did a course called Invest in your leaders.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is probably the most critical thing for any company to put in place. One of my clients just put 57 of his management team through the course. I was just with Russ from Titan restoration. He's got 21 of his people going. Yeah, so Russ has got 21 people. Russell Palmer. Yeah, he's got 21 of his people going through the course right now. So it's all the leadership skills that anybody managing people needs to be competent at. So stuff like situational leadership, coaching, delegation, priority management, one on one coaching, doing interviews, running meetings, handling conflict, classroom training. And it's the stuff that everybody, all of your management team don't have the strength in, that stuff. But if we give them those skills, they have the confidence, they can get done with, you know, more, with less people. That's what I really try to do, is grow that mid level team.

[B]

I want to, I want to shift gears real quick, talk a little bit about personal. You know, you decided to sell your house here in Phoenix and my home in Vancouver. And you live, you know, you've lived a lot of places. I mean, you were in town. We had coffee a few weeks, probably six weeks ago now. What?

[A]

It was June.

[B]

Was it June time? I can't, I have no idea about time. What do you think? What prompted that? And that seems hard for me because a lot of times when I'm on the road, I'm like, I just can't wait to be in my own bed.

[A]

Yeah. So for just over four years ago, my wife and I sold our home in Arcadia in Scottsdale. We sold our home in Vancouver in Canada, sold our cars, sold our furniture, sold all of our assets, gave, gave stuff away. I actually have two carry on suitcases and I've been in 69 countries in the last 50 months, some of them six, seven times. I've been to Dubai nine times in the last four years. So the impetus was my youngest son decided to go away to university in Montreal, which was closer to London, England than it was to Vancouver. I'm like, why am I going to wait in Vancouver to see you? You can come to Europe. So they were excited about that opportunity. So for the first year we kept our homes and we just traveled. And then after we realized we don't need the homes anymore, let's encumber ourselves of everything. Let's get rid of all the stuff that we don't really need. So it was just to go see the world and explore. And then I've got a very good team around me. I decided to delegate everything except genius. And I just have a really good kind of organization around my skills. I can tell you exactly where I'm going to be until the end of January. I know exactly what city by week until the end of January. Yeah.

[B]

I'm pretty like, Joe's like, dude, why are you missing my meetings? I'm like, joe, I go to the 100k and I always make your annual meetings.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I'm like, dude, like, it's amazing when I go to those events and I need those. And I'm like, I need next year. I need to time block all of next year.

[A]

Yeah. So what I do for time blocking is I put the important things in my calendar first.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So those are my kids spring breaks, my kids Christmases. Like, my kids Christmas and New Year's. We're going to New Zealand. They arrive in New Zealand December 24. They leave New Zealand January 6. Their flights are booked. Every Airbnb is booked. I can tell you where we're going to be. When in Queensland, when in Wanaka, when in Christchurch. Already done. At the end of Christmas. Then at the end of January, I'm going to go skiing with Dan Martell and his crew at bald face. So 12 days before that, I'm going to be hunkered down at Whistler so I can get my ski legs right because I'm going to be in Dubai. I'm going to Nepal to go hiking with my sister for two weeks in January, in November. So I put the festivals in place, I put my retreats in place, I put my business there, you know, events in place. I put my Canadian Thanksgiving in place. All that stuff's in the calendar. And then I organize around that as to which countries do I want to go to or where am I going to, you know, slow things down and enjoy life.

[B]

You know, I wanted to ask you because the 3% that have what we have.

[A]

Yeah. And. And on that, they're not diseases.

[B]

No, I know that.

[A]

Like attention. Correct. Attention deficit is called a disorder by a teacher. But you don't find a lot of inspiring teachers running companies. Yeah. So it's not. It's. What it is for us is a superpower, because we see everything. We see what's happening with the economy, the market, our suppliers, the customers. We notice metrics jumping off the dashboards. We see the trends. We're hyper aware of everything. And it's so overwhelming that we have to delegate that to other people to handle it. For us, that's a superpower. But if we're so. The problem is that the doctors and teachers don't understand us because they're wired differently. They don't have this superpower at all. They're the farmers, but if they had it, they'd be disasters. I wouldn't want a doctor who was add. Yeah, right. I want a doctor who's laser focused. The other one is the bipolar disorder, the mania. And I'm fairly manic right now. That's a superpower in this situation. It's good energy. I don't want to make a decision right now because I'm a little bit too manic. The stress and depression is simply us course correcting. So we have to catch ourselves when we're in depression and. And then unplug from the business and treat ourselves more like work or racehorses. Too many entrepreneurs try to grind it out at 60, 70 hours a week. You get diminishing returns by the time you hit 30 hours, which means go to the gym, take vacation time, have some meditation, go on a hike, disconnect a little bit so that when you're working, you're a complete machine.

[B]

Yeah, it's, it's. You know, Dan told me, when you learn to buy back time, which you will do, the problem is with you, Tommy, and I'll tell you this, you're going to fill it back up, and you're going to continue to fill it back up. You're going to get way more efficient, but you're going to continue to fill it up. And it's.

[A]

Unless you fill it up with passions and with hobbies and with family, I've.

[B]

Done better at that. You know, one of the things that I've realized is, you know, you look at all the things we've got to do and how busy my schedule is for a month, and the funny thing is, you go out of town, something happens, God forbid it's a bad thing, like, like a death in the family. But let's just say you leave and you. You're going to make a week out of this. A wedding you feel like you got.

[A]

To be at or want to be at.

[B]

Yeah, but I'm just saying, you just completely. You get rid of your schedule. You're like, I got all this stuff planned. You miss it all. You go back and you're like, wait a minute. The world didn't fall apart.

[A]

It didn't stop at all.

[B]

Everything kind of worked itself out.

[A]

So we did this at 1-800-got-JUNK. Brian, the CEO and founder, was getting ready to go off on his real first probably vacation around 2004, since I started with him in and the head of it. And I decided that we were going to make Brian unplug for seven days. So Roman, the head of it, grabbed Brian, literally, as he's getting ready to go out the door, and he said, I need your laptop for a second. I need to change something related to Junknet, our internal system. So he basically lied right to Brian's face. Brian opened the laptop. Roman changed the password, handed the laptop back to Brian, and he goes, you may as well leave this here right now because I've changed your password. And Brian's like, what? And he goes, dude, we got it. And we're not going to phone you if the company's on fire because you won't be able to do anything. You're on vacation. We'll call the fire department. Have a good week. Brian walked out the door, a little bit of nervousness, but left his laptop on the table and took his first real vacation. That was a foundational, formative shift for the company because we realized that by being workaholics, we weren't inspiring our people. We weren't getting more of the right stuff done. We were burning ourselves out.

[B]

You know, there's two things that I wanted to talk about. Number one is Gino Wickman. You know, he sold EOS, or at least 87%, and he woke up feeling empty. And there's a great book that kind of hits home with me, A Man's Search for Meaning. And this idea of, like, you know, we keep climbing, but there's no finish line. And even when we hit that finish line, the goalpost has moved. I mean, I don't care if it's body fat. I don't care if it's how spiritual we are. And it's. It could be overwhelming at times. And I'll tell you, there's one day a month that I get to this field, and it's not like I'm burnt out. It's not that I'm. It's just. It's just what I. What I realized, my hardest thing is I've got all these different teams on top of a one. You got the family office. I'm getting married, building two houses. I've got a lot of three software. Like, there's a lot of irons in the fire. And they all need different types of communication. In fact, one of my team said, we don't think you understand how much. How hard we work. And I said, well, my people, when something doesn't work like our scorecards perfectly, I get 50 people a day calling me. And they don't sugarcoat it. So if you need me to sugarcoat it to you, I'm just A translator. I'm delivering the message that 50 people called me today. And so, you know, but this idea of we are. I'd say I'm happy but never satisfied is the best way to describe it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so. And Gino said, I woke up and I lost my meaning. And that's why he wrote the book Shine. But what is it? What is it like? Like, what's. And it feels like something's wrong, but it's actually a good thing. But what are your thoughts on that?

[A]

I think there's a societal pressure that we're growing up with that we're trying to drive towards something, and we don't stop and ask ourselves why. I think entrepreneurs only start a company for one of three reasons. Either to have a feeling of accomplishment. Right. That success, that I did it. To have money and to have free time. At some point when you can check those boxes, you have to ask yourself why we're doing this. What is that real reason? Because again, at the end of the day, we are going to die. So what do we want our life to be? What do we want our meaning to be? How do we want to enjoy this journey? And is it really going to work every day? So I'm at this stage right now where I finally have enough money that I'll never be able to spend it all before I die. I won't be able to spend every. Every bit of money that I've got. I live in an economic free zone. I don't pay tax anymore. So now my money's really growing. So I'm a resident of Dubai. I don't pay personal tax or like, so what? So I don't need more money. I have the feeling of accomplishment. I've already built all these companies. I've been paid to speak in 29 countries. I got paid to speak on every continent, including Antarctica. So there's no reason to. To feel the praise or pride of doing it anymore. So I'm actually looking in, how do I downshift? What is it going to be about? So I'm really looking at my hobbies now. I'm really thinking about what are my passions. I'm really thinking about where do I want to grow. Personally, I'm really thinking about what parts of the world do I want to explore? So I have a long bucket list. I have a long travel list. I was just working on again the other day with countries that I want to go spend time in. I know how many countries. I've been to 79 countries now. I want to get to about 120 of the 193. So I'm really thinking about that stuff because I'm not going to spend my entire life chasing something that doesn't really matter.

[B]

Well, let me ask you this. This is what's interesting is I got a buddy of mine who service champions. His name's Leland Smith. Two beautiful daughters, and he go in every Saturday and Sunday. Sunday no one else was there. And when I really talked to him, he goes, dude, this is my passion.

[A]

No, it's his passion because he doesn't have other passions that fill him.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He's lost the relationship with his wife, he's lost the relationship with his kids. He's lost the relationship with himself. He doesn't have the same hobbies and passions that he had as a kid. And because of that, the only thing that feeds him and gives him the dopamine is showing up at work. So when people say business is my passion or business is my hobby, then I don't want to hear about your hobby because I don't want to hear a lawyer talk about law, and I don't want to hear an insurance salesman talk about insurance, and I don't want to hear a dentist talk about cleaning teeth. I certainly don't want to hear you talk about building garage doors.

[B]

Well, Damon John, I'm out with Joe, and I'm out with him. And I said, do you ever get sick of it? Like, people just coming up to you? And he goes, tommy, I don't have to sing a song like Madonna, like their favorite song. When someone comes up to me, I get to influence their life and as an entrepreneur and help them build a culture within the community and raise their family. Cut that generational curse.

[A]

That's fun.

[B]

And he said so. And by the way, what I realized is he's on the road. He's probably. And I don't know this. He never told me this, so I don't want to. I don't want to imply this, but I don't think his relationships is perfect with his kids or his wife.

[A]

Correct. And mine is like, I am so. Like last week when I was in Montreal with my son who goes to school in Montreal running his own business, he just ran his second marathon. Ran a 3:35 marathon. He and I played paddle twice. It's kind of like pickleball, but a little more. It's like squash and tennis combined. I had so much fun playing with my kid, going out for dinners with my kid, hiking up Mount Royal with my kid. Then I went to Vancouver. And I hung out with my son in Vancouver, who's obsessed with the film industry. So we went kayaking together, we went hiking together. We went and saw some cool films together. Now my wife and I are looking at the experiences we're having, what festivals I want to go to. I'm trying to find all the things that fill me. Oh, and yes, I help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. But when somebody comes to me and go, what do you do? Do you know what I say? Somebody came up to me today on the street and said, what do you do? I travel, I hike, I cook, I go to festivals, I listen to music. They're like, oh, I meant to make money. Oh, yeah, I don't talk about that. Oh, I actually want to talk about what matters to me, not what I do to make money.

[B]

And yes, I'm.

[A]

And I'm passionate about what I do to make money, but it's not my purpose.

[B]

You know what I love about this is a lot of people look at me on this podcast, and they're like, man, you're on stage and you're an authority, but you get someone great on the podcast, and all of a sudden, your humility and turn into a student. I'm like, man, I'm a student for life.

[A]

Yeah, we all are.

[B]

I just love learning. And by the way, I don't think I got it all figured out. The day I do is the day I should die.

[A]

Right? I love Ray Kroc said that if you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you're rotting.

[B]

That's true. Yeah. I, I.

[A]

But growth doesn't have to be always business. Growth can be. How can I grow as a person? How can I grow spiritually? How can I grow in a tantric relationship with my wife? How can I grow closer to my two kids? How can I learn this new sport? What's a new sport I want to learn? How can I get better in the gym?

[B]

Yeah. No, it's like, I really enjoy podcasts.

[A]

This is like, this is a. This is a low for you. But, like, I actually lifted the most I'd ever lifted the other day with a bench press, and I was like, I'm getting closer to my little goal right now. Right.

[B]

You know, it's funny. Quick story is yesterday I'm doing my orientation, 55 technicians next door, and they're graduating right after this. I want you to just go say hi. So. So we are. I'm doing my orientation, and I said, listen, personal goals of physical showing up, having Energy. Hitting the gym is something that's a must for me.

[A]

It's a racehorse. In Latin they say mensana incorporation, which is a healthy mind and a healthy body.

[B]

Yeah, 100. And I said, I want to lead by example. I said, in fact, if anybody could beat me at any exercise weight wise, I said, if anybody wants to have a bench off, I'll give you 500 bucks. So this big dude in the back goes, I'll take that money. And so I had him set up 130 pound dumbbells on each arm, put the flat bench. And I go, there is literally every guy's in a round circle. So it's £260.

[A]

So mine was 60 on each. And I was super excited. I'm like, that's amazing for me.

[B]

You know what? Colin will show you this video. So I said, you want me to start? So they start playing Rocky and we got it all on video. And I got it 13 times. And it was so funny because the dude, I'm like, dude, this dude's going to create. He couldn't get it once and it wasn't like I still gave him 100 bucks.

[A]

But I would, I would love to give him that money too because that inspires people. And you know, he. Even if you're second to a group of 500 people that work for you.

[B]

He texted me and he said, dude, I'm going to come back here and I'm going to give you a challenge in a year. He goes, thank you for doing that. It was like the coolest text ever. And I'm not bragging on the bible.

[A]

It's great.

[B]

I've been doing this for a long time. You know, one quick story, Just a few more questions. I could do this for 10 hours with you.

[A]

And by the way, that connection with that employee is more important than focusing to make sure that they're doing work. He will be more productive as an employee because of that connection that you had with him in the physical side than focusing on what he does every day in his job.

[B]

I mean, if I ever step down as CEO, you know what it'll be?

[A]

Dream manager.

[B]

It'll be the relationships. It'll be a little bit of content as well. Because I think my personal brand is more important than the company brand at this stage. To build a one. Not me personally to be selfish, but to be a magnet for great talent to inspire. You know, one of the things that Todd talked about is hire inspire and fire. It's that simple. And. But you got to pull that out of people. I love your story. When you went to Sydney and you meet these tall dudes and you used to play college volleyball. And this story goes back to don't hire more. Can you just share that? And then I. I'll wrap it up. I just got a couple more quick things.

[A]

Yeah, that was at Dubai in January. Yeah. I came off a stage. 2, 500 people I was paid to speak to. This group came off the stage. I'm 6 foot 3, 6 foot 4. This guy was about 6, 6, 6, 7. And I said, what do you do for fun? He's like, I play volleyball. And I'm like, where do you play? So I play professionally. I'm like, oh, so professional volleyball means you play beach volleyball. And beach volleyball is two on two. When I played college and I played in high school, I played on teams in high school. College, recreational. It was six on six court. Right. Hardcourt. So I said, you know what, if I had like six of my friends, six of us against the two of you, and I didn't even have a chance to finish the question. He started laughing. He said, every game we would beat you every game. And it dawned on me that two pro players can destroy six average players every day, every time. So imagine If I took two A players and paid them $200,000 a year and had six B or C players paying them $100,000 a year. My two A's cost 400 grand. Would destroy the six B's or C's that cost 600 grand. So when you hire A players, it's actually free. You save money by hiring and paying more for the A's because you don't hire the Cs. It's the Pareto principle all over again.

[B]

And I think the really lesson there is that happens in every department. A great CSR will book 50 calls, correct? So let's just say they made 100 grand and the other ones are averaging 20. But the booking rate's higher.

[A]

And they're costing you because all those clients that could have been booked aren't booking now. Or they didn't have the right energy or they took longer on the call or they didn't inspire other people in the company. C players cost you money. A players are free.

[B]

Well, one A player is equal to three B players. And bad employees get fired. Great employees take you straight up. Good employees do the bare minimum to get by. They're not on your radar, but they just kind of stay there.

[A]

And you know what the problem is? Most companies think they have A players but they don't. They have B's and C's and D's. When you have a real A player, it's so obvious all of a sudden. But A players are never looking for a job. So you have to go poach A players. If you're not poaching A players, you're only hiring the ones that are looking for a job. And the unemployment line, those are B's and C's.

[B]

What I wanted to ask you because this is important to me. I want to travel a lot more. Well, I want to go to Italy next. I just spent time in Hungary. Italy. Our family lives two hours outside of Rome. We've got a village that actually I've never met them.

[A]

Amazing.

[B]

And then Hungary, my great grandma, I. We found the genie that, you know, we figured it.

[A]

Or. Where were you in.

[B]

Yeah. Budapest.

[A]

Budapest. So beautiful.

[B]

It's amazing. But what I found about it, I.

[A]

Didn'T know that Budapest was Buddha and Pest. Yeah, yeah. I had no idea. I just learned that. So that's on my list of a place to go back to. But I want to spend a couple months in Budapest.

[B]

A couple months.

[A]

I didn't. Yeah, yeah. So what I like doing now for travel is I want to pick a city and I go on and go live there for two months and then I'll do some side trips. But I want to go and I'll work from there like you work from Budapest. It's easy.

[B]

So do you get an Airbnb?

[A]

Yeah, you get an Airbnb or you get like a long term rental place and you literally just camp out and work from there. You wake up in the morning in Budapest, you go for a walk, you go to the gym, you go do some yoga, you go do some sightseeing, you come home, you have lunch, maybe you clean up a little bit. You start working at 2 o'. Clock. It's only 8am in New York City. So you work from 2 o' clock until 7 o', clock, crank it out for five hours, you get ready, you go for dinner, you have a nice dinner, you go for a nice evening stroll and you call it a day.

[B]

And you know, I've been studying like Jeff Bezos, but he doesn't make a decision till 10. He's. And he says I'm productive from 10 to 2.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He goes, by the way, I don't have any stress. He goes, why should I have the stress? He goes, I got great teams.

[A]

You delegate stress. Yeah.

[B]

And I love that mentality. So Dubai's on my List. Look, Japan's on my list.

[A]

Have you been to Dubai yet?

[B]

No, I haven't.

[A]

Dubai is fantastic. I'll give you a whole short list of places to go and stay in Dubai.

[B]

This is what I want.

[A]

I spent a month in Japan last year. Spent a month in Japan. We did a week in Korea or week in Tokyo, week in Kyoto, week in Osaka. Went skiing for a week in Niseko, which blew my mind. Fantastic skiing. I'll give you the list of some. Really. And what's cool is go and work from there. Go and run your business from there. Go and, like, get to know the neighborhoods and enjoy the culture and just immerse yourself in it and then come home.

[B]

Might as well just go get my citizenship in Puerto Rico.

[A]

Well, yeah, I'm Canadian, so I'm different. Yeah.

[B]

You know how that works, right? And then I get five months.

[A]

Five months in a day.

[B]

Five months in a day. So give me the top three. Just if you had to go real quickly, places to go that you've been.

[A]

Where would I go back to? For lots of time in the United States, it's Austin, Texas. I would definitely go back and spend a lot more time in Bali. I've been a bunch of times. Bali has an incredible culture and feel. Stockholm, Sweden is incredibly beautiful. Northern part of Ibiza is a beautiful. The northern part of Italy. I want to go back and spend some time in Cortina and Verona. Love that area of Italy. Edinburgh, Scotland, is extraordinary. There's so many New Zealand. I'm going to go back and spend a month in New Zealand this year. New Zealand is magic.

[B]

See, I'll just tell you one quick thing for me is. And it's probably a blessing and a curse, but when I come back home, I got my cold plunge sauna. I mean, I am routine. It's simple. I mean, it is easy to get in the groove. My dogs are there. Like, I've got. And I don't mean to be this structured, but it's so simple. Well, I'll tell you chefs here in.

[A]

Dubai, I can give you the exact condo unit to rent a condo in. And Formation Fitness is right down below, and it's a biohacking center. And they have the cold plunge and the red light saunas and the hyperbaric chambers and all the fitness stuff.

[B]

Here's what I did realize is when I get back into my habits, I don't even know what day it is or what month it is because time flies.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

But when I am traveling, all of a sudden time slows down and I'm experiencing new things and it's so much fun.

[A]

I got pictures every day. I went to a new coffee shop here this morning. Like, I love that. Every single day for me, I'm like, do you ever see the autistic kids who just are so aware of wonder.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or like the. That. That is how I feel every day. Every day for me over the last four plus years has just been like, this is incredible. Everything's been so new.

[B]

I love it. You know, one of the things I want to thank you very much. Luke loves you. I love working with you. I just love. Like, the fact is, is. And we're going to go through the leadership training. It's just, I got to tell you, I'm the bottleneck in the company because I see what we. What's possible, and I've got to do a better job of prioritizing.

[A]

It's, it's, it's also just aligning the employees with the vision of where you're going and then allowing them to go and make the decisions to go there. As long as they make decisions within the core values, within your core purpose, aligned with their budget and they have the skills and the confidence to do it, go do it.

[B]

And I think I've embraced failure more than I've ever have. Like, if they, you know, if they make mistakes, as long as you don't.

[A]

Make the same mistake in a row.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Make it once, fix it, and then move on.

[B]

Yeah, but I, I mean, I think the problem with most people listening if you're under 10 million is you're like, well, I wish they would have came to me because I knew the answer.

[A]

That's slowing down.

[B]

It's slowing down. And just embrace the, the don't make the same mistakes again.

[A]

As long as they make the decisions within the core values, their core purpose, the budget, they have their skills and their confidence and go do that stuff.

[B]

All right. This is going to close us out. Cam, give me. So obviously, readers are leaders. I became obsessed with reading in 2007, a CPA handed me. He said, when's the last book? I said, to kill a mockingbird, 11th grade.

[A]

That was a great book.

[B]

It is a good book. And then what is it? Lord of the Flies. And he goes, okay, so you never read any self help. He goes, this is called the E. Myth Revisited.

[A]

I think you'll do Michael Gerber. Love it.

[B]

Smoke through it. Richest man of Babylon smoked it. And then Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. And then all of a sudden, dude, I was Hooked. So for you, and I know Amanda really well too.

[A]

That was. I just did like rest in peace.

[B]

Yeah. So what are some of the books? Obviously there's the Bible, very, very good book. There's the Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie, the classics. But is there any book that really like, that's not common? There's a lot of great titles.

[A]

I'll give you two. So funny about you just mentioned Napoleon Hill. I walked into my son's bedroom, my son's 22, super high functioning, running his own business, already doing sub three marathons, 3:30 marathons. And he's reading Think and Grow Rich. And I said, I thought you've already read that. And he goes, I am. I'm reading it for the third time and he has a highlighter out. I'm like, what do you do with the highlighter? He goes, dad, you don't read this book. You study it. I'm like, wow, you get it. A lot of the books that people read, they don't need the next book, they need to go read it again. So when was the last time you read Think and Grow Rich?

[B]

It's been four years.

[A]

When was the last time you read Good to Great?

[B]

Jim Collins, it's been a hot minute.

[A]

How many times have you read Good.

[B]

To Great twice and Built to last?

[A]

Read it, read it again now. And every chapter is a real thought provoking study on how deep can we make sure that is being used. Like, how focused are we on the flywheel? How focused are we on the bhag? How focused are we on our hedgehog concept? How focused are we on first who, then what? How focused are we on getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus? Are we getting the wrong people off our bus? Like it's not always about the next book. It's about the right books and really, really understanding them. It's why they have Bible study groups.

[B]

Yeah, my grandpa read the Bible 52 times.

[A]

So I'll give you my number one book of all time. My grandfather was a voracious reader, an entrepreneur, read books constantly. He was always reading. He said the number one book he's ever read was called Endurance by, by Albert Lansing. It's about Ernest Shackleton's voyage to the Antarctic and how the ship wrecks in the Antarctic. Have you read Endurance? No. Oh, dude, it's going to blow your mind. It's fantastic. It's just a story about 110 years ago. This guy takes a bunch of people from Europe, takes them into Antarctica, the Ship breaks, and they have to spend almost two years together, living on ice floes, living underneath the lifeboats. The ship sinks, they take one of the lifeboats through 700 miles of the Bering Strait, going through to South George Island. Four of them in this lifeboat climb across a mountain range. It's only been done twice ever since, in gear from 110 years ago. They survive the whole thing. They bring a whaling boat back, and every single man survives. It's an. I bought. I bought copies of it for all of our franchisees. I've given copies out. Steve Jobs later, after I'd already been obsessed with it, said it was one of his top favorite books of all time, along with Autobiography of a Yogi. But that's my favorite book of all time. There's so many leadership lessons in that book, and it's just a great story. So. Endurance by Albert Lansing. Amazing. I bought the first American edition ever. Anyway, blah, blah, blah. My second favorite book happens to be about Steve Jobs, and it's called Insanely simple by Steven or Kevin Seagal. And it's around the 10 simplicity systems that they use to scale Apple. The simplicity of thought, the simplicity around font, around design, around running meetings. If you read, and it's an easy read, if you read that book Insanely simple and apply those 10 principles to a one garage, this thing blows up. Even though it's already blown up. It. It's exponential.

[B]

I always say we're still in the fetal stages, but. But, you know, now. And I could truly say, how many lives could we affect? Because the compound interest on the money I've already accumulated is a good number. And, you know, I love the idea of changing lives, man. I'll just tell you. And I feel like with great power comes great responsibility. And I don't think a lot of people harness that energy.

[A]

And so that's what I talk about about the Dream Manager is we don't. Do you know John Ratliff?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I used to coach John Ratliff. I introduced John to the company that helped him sell to Rob follows from STS Capital. When I met John, he was doing 3 million in revenue. He did 17 acquisitions, got himself to 36 million, sold for 107. John got introduced to the Dream Manager by me at an MIT event.

[B]

Kelly.

[A]

Yeah, Matthew Kelly. I've had dinner with Matthew in Vancouver.

[B]

Oh, you are.

[A]

No, I did. I had years ago. I've known Matthew forever. So I. I introduced people to the dream manager in 2007. So I had all of my clients reading it 2007 till today. John read it and put in place what he called the Dream on program, which was a blend of the Children's Wish foundation and the Dream Manager. And he'd granted 120 wishes at about $3,000 per wish over a course of four years. Literally taking some employee that could never do something and making their wish come true, and not tying it to a goal, but tying it to caring about people. So what my lesson from this comes is you don't have to care about your employees. But what if you did? You talked about, like, the great obligation, right? What if we did care about our employees? How would that change the way that we show up? And then we're not obsessed about business. We're obsessed with changing lives. And because we've changed lives, they scale our business.

[B]

I've got a gentleman I'm trying to get kind of not only at a 1, but to be over a lot of stuff. And he goes, tommy, I don't think I'll ever have an opportunity like this again, because I think I know what you're doing for everybody. And he goes, I do mean that. He goes, it's not even about the money for me. He goes, I think you're out to change a lot of people's lives. He goes, and I've never really met anybody that, like, they say that they invest in 513Cs. And he goes, but I see the mask and the reasons they do it. He goes, I really feel like I got to do this with you. And so I was honored. I was with not Gino Wickman. What's his name? Jocko Willink. And he talks about extreme ownership. And he goes, tommy, if you ever needed an investor, he spent. We spent four hours together. He goes, I never said this anybody, but you call me up, tell me how much money, I'm writing you a check, and I'm getting involved. And that was probably the best compliment I've ever received. How do people get a hold of you, Cameron? If someone wants to reach out, what's the best way?

[A]

So the website that has everything, my course, my podcast is Cameron Herald.com and it's H E R O L D. That's the easiest.

[B]

And finally, dude, you're probably one of the few people I could probably sit with 12 hours. I mean, I'd have way too many notes. But just close us out with something special.

[A]

It's that none of this matters. We're just walking each other home. Enjoy the journey.

[B]

I love it, man. Thank you for doing this today.

[A]

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

[B]

Well, that's a wrap. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 garage door service. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.