The Greatest Leadership Lessons from the CEO Whisperer

 Our job as leaders, whether we're managers, directors,
 VPs or sea level, is to grow people, to grow their skills,
 to grow their confidence, to grow their connections.
 Very similar to being a parent.
 This is right about now with Ryan Alford,
 a Radcast Network production.
 We are the number one business show on the planet
 with over 1 million downloads a month.
 Taking the BS out of business for over six years
 in over 400 episodes.
 You ready to start snapping necks and caching checks?
 Well, it starts right about now.
 Hello, and welcome to rent about now.
 You know, I don't whisper much myself.
 My voice kind of booms and carries,
 but we have a whisperer today of a different kind.
 He is the CEO whisperer.
 He is Cameron Harold.
 What's up, Cameron?
 Hey, Ryan, good to see you.
 Appreciate you coming on.
 I know you are a busy man and, hey, a world traveler.
 So where are we today, Cameron?
 Today we are in Colona, British Columbia.
 We've got a bunch of friends that live up here.
 So my wife and I decided that we would spend some time
 up in this part of the world.
 And so yeah, we're in Colona.
 We'll be here for a month.
 But we've been in 54 countries in the last 36 months.
 Geez.
 That is.
 Hey, has that a bucket list thing?
 Look at this.
 Pardon me?
 Yeah, we're calling it a bucket list dream life.
 So we both rode our bucket list three years ago.
 We each put 150 things on them and we're just chasing them down.
 So yeah, every, every week or two,
 we do another big bucket list item.
 Sometimes with friends, sometimes on our own
 and often in just different parts of the world.
 We sold our homes, sold our cars, sold our furniture.
 I have three long sleep shirts.
 I can tell you my entire wardrobe now, down to the item.
 You know, I actually like that.
 I'll say this.
 I'm wearing pink today, which is actually used.
 I'm usually black.
 I'm kind of like Steve Jobs, but I mean, I don't know.
 Like I'd like T-shirt every day.
 I've got three black leather, lemon, three gray,
 and three white, all the same type.
 And I just recycle those every four to five months.
 Two pair of shorts, pretty crazy.
 So we'll make you the CEO whisperer, Cameron.
 I've been, I was given that moniker
 by the publisher of Forbes magazine.
 So Rich Collard has been publisher of the physical print
 of Forbes and online for about 20 years now.
 He has seen me speak about four or five times
 and gave me the nickname, the CEO whisperer,
 because I'm often behind the scenes
 talking to CEOs of these 50 to 500 person companies.
 And I've worked behind the scenes with CEOs
 in 28 countries now.
 I'm including at the highest level.
 I coached the CEO and the second command of Sprint.
 I coached a monarchy.
 They own the country of Qatar.
 So I coached the royal family
 on running their groups of companies.
 So I've always worked behind the scenes,
 teaching the CEO what has to happen.
 And then often working with their COO
 on how to make it happen.
 The Sprint name rings belt to me.
 I worked on wireless in the ad agency business
 for about 15 years, launching multiple phones.
 We kick Sprint's ass for quite a bit.
 I was over rising wireless.
 Yeah.
 With Marcelo Clarei, was the CEO of I coached
 and then Jamie Jones was his second command.
 Oh, wow.
 Yeah, that's it.
 Let's throw it back for sure.
 I mean, I think I've, you know,
 the operating officer side, you know, of what,
 you've got to, I think about this one a lot
 because I own multiple companies.
 But like you have the grand visions of the CEO
 and you have them wanting to do things.
 But if you can't operate, you can't do,
 or bring all that to life.
 Is it really boiled down to that?
 Yeah, it does.
 I mean, it was Thomas Edison that said vision
 without execution is hallucination.
 And I think go often entrepreneurs
 have the kind of trendy visionary title,
 but the only ones who actually are visionary
 and can actually make it happen are the ones
 that can either execute or that they have
 that operations type person right beside them.
 I'll give a crazy example I've never spoken about.
 The very first business that Elon Musk built was called ZIP2.
 And in January of 1995, I got a phone call
 from his brother, Kimball, who had just finished working
 for me for a summer running a house painting business.
 And the company that was going to invest in ZIP2
 would not invest in Elon Musk,
 because he was too visionary, too out of the box,
 they'd never done anything.
 Right, remember this is 1995, so 29 years ago,
 they actually backed Kimball Musk
 and put all the initial money into ZIP2,
 which was what they sold for 350 million
 prior to selling PayPal.
 So their first company was funded based
 on the COO experience of Kimball Musk,
 not on the visionary.
 You really need to have both parts for anybody
 to believe in the company, quit their jobs,
 come orate it to just even scale.
 So it's safe to say that even Elon Musk,
 you know, like sometimes the CEO
 gets all the sort of buzz in the credit,
 but there's always, but there's always at number two, right?
 There's always, it has to do.
 I just sent Guy Ross in the note yesterday.
 He's the host of the How I Built This Podcast.
 I'll see if I still have my note that he had an episode
 on his podcast from the woman he started,
 smart suites, kind of a sugarless candies.
 Yes, and he said, you know, every good CEO has a COO
 and I just dropped Guy a note again.
 I've known him for years through the TED conference
 and I said, I'm glad you continue to recognize
 that every good CEO has that second in command.
 Without it, it's really, really tough
 because the visionary role is so particular.
 It's almost like a homeowner
 who's building their dream home.
 I need to be able to visualize what my home's gonna look like,
 how it's gonna feel, what the cabinet's gonna look like,
 what the floor is like, but I don't have to be good
 at making it happen.
 I shouldn't be a good electrician or a plumber,
 but I should know how to get a contractor, the CLO,
 who can hire all those people,
 like the leadership team in front line staff
 to make my vision come true.
 And I think that's where the beauty
 of the CEO, CLO relationship is.
 It is.
 It took me a long time to put that together,
 but I have figured it out.
 I just, and it, I don't know, I would click,
 I think I knew it, but I didn't,
 you want to believe that that's, I don't know,
 again, not even being like a martyr to get it all done,
 but I think it's difficult somewhat for the CEO
 to even like sort of get there, especially early CEOs,
 but I'm sure those experienced ones
 and those successful ones that eventually clicks,
 but do you have to probably,
 I'm sure your job with a lot of times
 is like getting that to click, right?
 Well, I read an organization called the CLO Alliance,
 so I have second in command, CLOs,
 that are members from countries all over the world.
 My job is working with them to help them balance
 and become that really in and yang with their CEO.
 So even in my book called the second in command,
 I talked about how do you find the right person,
 how do you build a relationship with the person,
 and a lot of it starts with understanding yourself
 as the CEO first, where most CEOs go awry
 in their first couple of hires
 and trying to hire that second in command,
 regardless of the title,
 is they don't do a deep enough dive on themselves.
 What do I love?
 What do I hate?
 What am I really good at or what am I unique abilities?
 What do I suck at or what am I just okay at?
 What fills me with energy on a day to day
 and what drains me?
 And then how can I hire somebody
 who can do all the stuff that I hate,
 can do all the stuff that drains me of energy,
 can do all the stuff that I suck at?
 And they match me in terms of core values,
 they match me in terms of the scale of the organization.
 Maybe they can bring in more strategic insight
 or P&L responsibility or autonomy.
 It's a very different hire than hiring ahead
 of any other functional area that just has to be good
 at that area.
 This year hiring your business space as well.
 I love that.
 I mean, where were you five years ago for me?
 But I'm here today and I'm still ready to learn more.
 The COO alliance, I know you started this,
 talked to me about what it is and how it helps people.
 Yeah, well five years ago I was whispering
 in the ears of CEOs that were paying me.
 Oh, I'm hearing more of it publicly.
 Oh, well, I'll go read the old stuff again.
 I did my cheat notes because I wanted you on the show,
 but like, I got to go deeper on Cameron.
 Go deep, figure this stuff out.
 Yeah, so when I left the organization, 1-800-Godjunk,
 17 years ago, I was the CRO of that business
 and it was the fourth business that I built.
 And in building those four companies,
 I noticed that there were lots of organizations
 that were there to grow and mentor and give skills
 and confidence and connections to entrepreneurs.
 We had YPO, we've got entrepreneurs organization,
 Vistage, Genius Network, Baby Bathwater, GoBund,
 and there's so many organizations
 for the entrepreneur to go and learn from each other.
 And then there's lots of organizations
 for marketers and engineers.
 In fact, there's trade associations for virtually everything,
 but there was nowhere for that seconding command to go.
 So what happened was we kept going to these entrepreneur events
 and we just didn't fit in.
 It's very similar to a husband that goes to a baby shower.
 Like, you're not supposed to be there,
 even in this day and age, it's really there for the women.
 So even if we're showing up,
 we just know that we're in the wrong space.
 C-O-O's are not more operational lensed CEOs
 and men are not hairy versions of women.
 So I created the C-O alliance as a place for C-O-O's
 to go without the entrepreneurs there,
 without the distraction of the visionary,
 and a space where they can connect with themselves,
 connect with them and grow their skills,
 grow their connections and network of people they can rely on
 so they're not as alone.
 And then also work on shedding that imposter syndrome
 and the confidence that many C-O-O's
 and frankly, many CEOs have as well.
 Yeah, I love that.
 Talk to Cameron Herald, the second in command,
 but the first in our hearts.
 Cameron, what, tell me not to make up of a C-O-O?
 Like, what does that person look like?
 Because as a CEO and very much of a more of a visionary
 and a dreamer and like, I recognize again,
 but what makes them, what makes them, what's the makeup?
 Well, and this is what's so hard about them is
 it's almost like saying what makes a great wife.
 What makes a great wife is a female,
 a woman who matches the husband that she's marrying
 because my wife would be a horrible wife
 for lots of other husbands and lots of their wives
 would be a horrible wife for me.
 So the C-O-O has to be the good match for the CEO.
 Most of my C-O-O-Liance members would be horrible C-O-O's
 for all the other members of the C-O-Liance companies.
 So what the makeup of the C kind of really
 what your question is is what's the makeup of a C-O-O for me?
 Because the common skills that they have
 are the good at situational leadership,
 they're good at building consensus,
 they're good at fostering debate,
 they're good at project planning and team building.
 They're often good at collaboration,
 but they need to be good at all of the functional areas
 that they're gonna be reporting to them
 and that's different on a CEO to CEO basis.
 I'll give an example of this.
 When I was the C-O-O for 1-800-GOT-Junk,
 I did not have finance or IT reports to me.
 I had the product development team of IT report to me.
 I had sales and franchising and corporate operations
 in the call center and PR and marketing all reporting to me.
 And then I have other members of the C-O-O-Liance
 who don't have marketing and they have finance
 or they have legal but they don't have IT.
 Because whatever the CEO is great at, they're gonna keep.
 And in some cases the C-O-O is very outward facing
 like I was a lot of speaking PR marketing,
 business development.
 And then in some cases they're very inward facing.
 Even the current C-O-O-L at 1-800-GOT-Junk
 never talks to the media, never does speaking,
 is a very inward facing process, operations,
 culture and strategy, C-O-L.
 So there are these commonalities around leadership
 but not around the functional areas they need to be strong at
 because that's the match to the CEO.
 Love that.
 And I love the characteristics part because you're right.
 Like the husband-wife thing rang true to me.
 I've been divorced once and hopefully never again
 but finding that right partner is so crucial
 and so different depending on the person.
 So I love that.
 And I, but I do think there's something like
 there's a lack of ego I think that gets in the way of most C-O-Os
 because as being willing to be the second in command,
 you know, I think a lot of times like we talked about,
 you know, the CEO might be out in front.
 But a lot of CEOs that I know, you know,
 don't let their ego get in the way.
 In the way that a lot of it seems to be a common thread.
 Yeah, very common.
 The very C-O-Os tend to be that level five leader
 that Jim Collins talks about in good to great.
 It's that drive to succeed but the humility.
 There's no need for most of them to actually be forward-facing.
 Now the only time that even I wanted to do it
 for one in C-O-Junk was it was good for the brand
 because I had built other franchise organizations already.
 We were leveraging off of that credibility.
 Right, when I had already built out a boy out of body
 and what became Gerberado Collision in the US
 or College Pro Painters, we were relying on some of that
 as the reason to buy into a belief in what we were doing.
 Right, so we were leveraging that.
 Yeah, the current C-O-O of Shopify as an example
 is a very outward-facing C-O-O.
 And then you take the current C-O-O of Facebook
 or the past source, Ashile Sandberg,
 she was a very inward-facing C-O-O.
 She never spoke to the media until post-leaving Facebook.
 Highly thinkable steam from Shopify
 is always talking to the media
 because his CEO, counterpart Tobias Lucas,
 is a very inward-facing engineering and process-focused CEO.
 You know, for audience listening,
 it's, I think there's a, you might think,
 you and myself told, like I said admittedly late,
 I'm 47 years old.
 Finding out within yourself, you know,
 whether you're the idealist, creative person
 and you're the dreamer and you're this,
 I think there's actually confusion that people have
 of where they belong, like whether I'm, you know,
 that process, that operator, that whatever,
 sometimes what hat they wear.
 I can't believe that.
 Yeah, you know what tends to happen for the C-O,
 you know, the visionary entrepreneur is,
 they're worried if I delegate all this stuff
 to a second in command, what's my job?
 What am I doing if I'm getting rid of all that stuff
 that used to report to me?
 And they forget that their role is to be the caretaker
 of vision, of strategy, of culture, of people,
 and really to be thinking about board and compliance
 and kind of the legal stuff as well,
 like they really need to be thinking
 of the whole business more holistically.
 And if they don't have time to grow people,
 they don't have time to grow the confidence
 and skills and connections of their leadership team,
 they're really missing a huge opportunity.
 So getting that second in command,
 they can take care of operations and the projects
 and the times and the people,
 so the C-O can stay in their unique abilities,
 zone of genius, freeze up their time,
 but then they often need some coaching and ideas
 around what does my day in tail now, right?
 And otherwise they start meddling.
 Mel, good word.
 Or you know, C-Go management, right?
 They fly in, they shit all over, buddy, and they fly away.
 That's not often a board C-E-O, right?
 It's a C-E-O that doesn't know what their swim lanes are
 and where to focus their time, so they get distracted
 instead of realizing, point out the problem,
 let the C-O-O take care of that problem.
 But if the C-E-O wants to protect their brand
 and that cultural impact they have is that
 kind of cultural icon in the business,
 they can't be the one shitting all over everybody, right?
 And the C-O-O can often do it in a much better way
 and then the C-E-O can make the C-O-O look good
 while the C-O-O is making the C-E-O look good.
 That is wisdom, my friend.
 If you're listening, that'll be a highlight clip.
 I can already tell you because there is so much truth
 in what you just said that I think it takes
 like experience that you have like to really reflect on that
 especially or experience of someone like me,
 a young C-E-O that's been through it and seem like,
 and I'm not a micromanager,
 but I think a lot of C-O's do like they go out of their lane
 to try to help, but it doesn't really help.
 Well, let me give you a side example right now
 for most entrepreneurial C-E-Os,
 they've really never been trained on the pure leadership skills
 that they actually need to run a team of people.
 They can be very good at the functional area of their business.
 Maybe they're greatest marketers
 or they're greatest salespeople
 or they're great with their engineering or the specific product.
 But I'll ask you a couple of questions as an entrepreneur.
 How much training have you had on running proper job interviews,
 like on interviewing and hiring people?
 You know, minimal.
 Like I did it because I worked for a large ad agent.
 I mean, I'm a little, you know, but very little.
 Yes, you got some training with enough.
 Usually what's happened is if you're in a company
 of plus 250 people, you tend to start getting some training
 from the leadership team or the HR team, right?
 When you're in a company of less than 250,
 have you ever had training on how to run effective meetings?
 Absolutely not.
 Well, have you had training on situational leadership?
 Nope.
 Running one-on-one coaching meetings,
 which we do every week with our team,
 like running, managing conflict or classroom teaching,
 like all the skills that in like time management,
 project management, delegation,
 and with running these businesses and not having those skills,
 the C-E-O needs to know,
 shit, this stuff has to be happening in our company,
 but I'm never going to be the one to teach it,
 I don't even know how to do it.
 I need a C-E-O that can come in and plug in stuff, right?
 Like I launched a course called Invest in Your Leaders,
 which covers all those skills I just rattled off,
 but a C-E-O has to be the one that's integrating
 and teaching that stuff inside of the organization.
 Otherwise, it's just, you know, you're hurting cats,
 you're constantly trying to hold people accountable
 and instead of hiring accountable people,
 you're trying to clean up message,
 you're always frustrated with stuff not being delivered.
 That's usually an operational sign
 that the C-E-O really needs to free up
 and then work in their unique ability.
 How does, I've always twiled with this camera
 and like small companies, you know, like,
 I ran 100 person teams in Manhattan
 and worked for a thousand person agencies,
 so I experienced exactly what you did.
 It's almost like, it's either my,
 it's either a blessing or a curse sometimes
 because I got to see the resources
 and the team, like when you have thousands of people
 or hundreds of people that training those exercises,
 those processes, all those things that can get done
 when you have the resource.
 But a lot of small businesses, 10, 15, 20,
 and I'm not my light mom and pop two person,
 but 10, 15, 20, how do we embrace
 some of the things that you're talking about
 with a true small business?
 The first part is creating a mindset
 that the leader's core job is to grow people, right?
 So if you're a C-E-O and you've got five people
 working for you, if you're an entrepreneurial company,
 you've got 30 people for you, whatever it is,
 our job as leaders, whether we're managers, directors,
 VPs or C-level, is to grow people,
 to grow their skills, to grow their confidence,
 to grow their connections, very similar to being a parent.
 Our job as a parent, yes, it's to show love to our kids,
 yes, it's to be there for them,
 but it's to give them the skills
 and the confidence, so they can do all the shit
 that they need so they can move out of the house
 when they've become adults, right?
 And if you don't teach them how to do laundry
 and do cooking and do some painting
 and do some basic color pairs,
 they're not going to have the confidence together
 to the house at 19 and 20, our great grandparents
 were running companies at 14 years old
 because they had the confidence in the skill set.
 So our job is to grow the skills and confidence
 and connections of our people.
 So one way to do that is create that mindset
 in your company.
 The second way is to put a budget in place.
 I suggest a minimum of 1% of their annual compensation
 or $1,000, whatever is greater.
 So if somebody's getting 120 grand a year,
 put $1,200 into a budget to grow them,
 you could have one person come in
 and do a speaking event to 15 people.
 So you got the one person's fee covering over 15.
 You could have a book club on a monthly basis.
 You could send out videos for them.
 You could put people through my investment in your leaders course,
 which is only $740 a person.
 So you can do it in lots of ways.
 The key is to create that mindset and the budget
 and then remember that if you're always trying
 to grow their skills and confidence and connections,
 they're going to be able to take on more,
 which means you can continue to delegate
 and that actually buys back your time,
 scales up the entire organization.
 Talk them with Cameron Harold.
 He is the second in command author.
 And look, I know he's a true COO
 because he's got solutions to every question.
 He's a real, I've built a few companies.
 Now do something like that.
 If you ask me deep finance questions, I'll take a pass.
 You ask me anything about technology, I will download.
 But if it's on the operations, execution, culture,
 people, meetings, and even a fair amount of RMP
 and marketing, I'm pretty conversant.
 What are we doing these days, Cameron?
 Like what's your passions like now?
 I mean, you've had a great career.
 You've had these successes.
 You've built the alliance.
 What are we up to and what makes your bell ring these days?
 Well, a big one is that it's a remembrance
 that none of this should actually matters.
 I had a very, very close friend of 17 years
 passed away two days ago.
 Wow.
 Super close friend.
 We met in the entrepreneurs organizations back in 2007.
 And when I watch a friend at 45 years old,
 that a father of four little girls
 draw dead without having any prior illnesses,
 losing a couple of family friends, both my parents
 passing away in the last 20 years.
 My dad died 18 months ago.
 You realize that this is just what we're doing to make money.
 This isn't a reason for being as a human.
 So it's about having hobbies and having bucket list items
 and spending time with friends and family
 and spending time with kids and spending time with ourselves
 and remembering that we got to enjoy the journey.
 And I think so often people, especially North Americans,
 one thing I've known or known by traveling my life
 and I again sold everything three years ago.
 We've been in 54 countries in the last 36 months.
 When you spend so much time in other parts of the world,
 you recognize that no other parts of the world
 spend their entire focus on work.
 Nobody in Italy says work is my hobby.
 Nobody in Thailand says, oh, I love what I do for work.
 They have freaking hobbies and they take more than six weeks
 vacation every year.
 And I think that's been very reinforced to me right now
 is that I can still grow a successful business
 by delegating more, by growing people more,
 by getting stuff off my plate so my team is doing it.
 And then I give them five weeks paid vacation
 and I take vacation, two years ago I took 11 weeks vacation.
 You know, I think that's really being coming more
 and more reinforced in the last few years is
 you can actually build a much more successful company
 by taking time off, by having hobbies,
 by saying no more, by delegating everything except genius
 instead of getting caught up in the busy work all the time
 that we tend to get caught up in.
 There's your insights, my friends.
 That's true wisdom and I did not know.
 I've heard of John and I didn't know he's that young.
 That is just, I mean, I have a father of four boys
 and young, I did not know, yeah.
 His girls were the same age as your boys.
 So like imagine that today, tonight when you go see your boys
 and like, and you know what, yeah,
 go give every single one of those kids a hug
 and a big freaking bear hug and drop into the floor
 and wrestle with them and tell your wife what they'm stuff,
 you know, like it's, I have framed in an event
 in Turkey three months ago.
 He said at the end of the day, we all end up as cababs.
 We're just gonna be a meat on sticks, right?
 And I think we often take everything so seriously
 and stay so focused on it for no reason.
 And again, this isn't in the absence
 of building great companies,
 but I don't think that we should,
 we have to remember employees are showing up
 with problems and struggles and real life.
 And if we care more about them and the humanity
 of what they're going through,
 they'll care about our business, right?
 When you become that truly empathetic leader
 and care about people, they work way harder
 than holding them accountable and managing them
 and telling them what to do.
 1000% talking with Cameron Herald.
 Cameron, so what types of people come to you
 for advice these days?
 All types?
 Yeah, well, there's definitely the clients
 who come in that, you know,
 they're typically the mid size companies,
 the five million to 50 million or five to 100 million
 that put their second command into the CO alliance,
 they sign up for my group coaching,
 they sign up for one-on-one coaching,
 they're putting, one of my clients is 59 of his management team
 going through my invest in your leader's course.
 He signed up 59 people at 740 bucks a person
 because he wants to grow them.
 So there's that group.
 And then there's definitely the group
 that are, you know, inspired and learning
 and they're trying to ping me for information.
 So I just, I try to send them over to the YouTube channel
 where everything's free and to Instagram where everything's free.
 And I try to put a lot of content out there.
 And then my books are written in six books now.
 So I've got a lot.
 And then now I'm dealing with speaker,
 I don't know what's happened again.
 Somehow all these groups are starting to hire speakers
 in person.
 I guess COVID, they went on CS to throw a little bit of it.
 Yes.
 I have a group that today was looking me to go over to India
 to do two speaking events in India.
 Another group looking to have me speak in South Carolina
 and another one looking in Australia.
 So yeah, I'm dealing with having to say no
 to some speaking events I don't want to go to
 and trying to move somewhat with zoom.
 What part of South Carolina are you going to, Dina?
 I don't.
 That's for real.
 That's where you guys are.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Yeah, stop it.
 If you were in Greenville, yeah, yeah, it might be true.
 I usually Charleston, Columbia or Greenville would be.
 I got to look up and up.
 All I knew was it was South Carolina
 and it was the entrepreneurs organization chapter.
 It was the EO chapter.
 Yes, yes, yes.
 How does a company build culture in your mind?
 That's a great question.
 So I'm actually very well known globally for having built
 world-class company cultures.
 So I've coached companies that are going to rank number one
 in their country to work for, number one in their state,
 multiple countries, two companies that went on to rank number one
 year after year in Australia.
 I coached both of them.
 Culture is not all of the free massages and free lunches.
 Those are perks, okay?
 Perks are fine, but that's not what culture comes from.
 Culture comes from an alignment with four things.
 The first is your core values.
 It's a deeply ingrained system around four or five core values
 that you're willing to fire people if they break them.
 You hire people based on them.
 They're easy to understand.
 They don't need any explanation.
 And again, the CEO lives by the core values, right?
 That's culture permeates off core values as number one.
 Number two is that focus on core purpose.
 It's the why we exist.
 It's like Simon Sinek talked about in his book Start With Why.
 Simon was on our board of advisors five years
 before he wrote that book.
 So we were indoctrinated in this core purpose idea by him.
 And then you go into your B-Hag, that Jim Collins term,
 that big Herodacious goal, that long-term,
 driving stretch at 1-800-God John Cars
 was building a globally admired brand.
 My B-Hag today is to replace vision statements
 with vivid visions worldwide.
 So that driving B-Hag is culture permeates from that.
 And then the fourth is all of people systems.
 And that's the recruiting, the interviewing,
 the hiring, the onboarding,
 and the leadership development of people.
 Because when you obsess about happy people
 that are connected, that are growing,
 your high employee net promoter score drives custom engagement,
 drives how much more you can charge, drives profitability,
 drives parking, or everything.
 So it's a really an obsession with those four things.
 Culture comes from that.
 That might be the most succinct, best description
 of culture building I've ever heard.
 Like a true, that's a COO's culture building.
 Like, well, it's tangibly because the CEO knows
 they can describe it.
 I can describe what it is.
 I don't have to make it happen.
 And my whole world has been, because I've played
 the entrepreneur since my entire life,
 or the CEO of these entrepreneurial companies,
 my entire life, I always see the vision
 and I reverse engineer that.
 When you can describe to me what your culture looks like,
 what your core values look like, what your B-Hag is,
 I can help you reverse engineer that, right?
 That's the core of all of my work.
 In fact, my core purpose that Simon Sinek
 helped me write in my kitchen of my home in Vancouver
 back in 2007 or 2008 was to help entrepreneurs
 make their visions come true.
 That's why I do what I do is to help entrepreneurs
 make their visions come true.
 My CEO aligns himself some, my speaking helps
 and my books help them, my group coaching.
 Everything I do is aligned with helping them
 make their vision come true.
 I want to close your camera and know your time's limited
 as we close out, you're a good storyteller.
 I want you to tell our audience,
 maybe a story, maybe a time growing up,
 maybe a company you worked with, you've done that already.
 I'd love to just close with maybe a good story
 or a lesson or something,
 or maybe your favorite thing to talk about.
 Let me give you a failure story
 because I think there's something around the year,
 a good storyteller, I want to make sure that you understand
 that I'll also talk about anything with an open book.
 So I'm going to talk about when we almost bankrupted
 1-800-Gut-Junk as it was approaching
 100 million in revenue.
 So I had coached a company in the CRO
 from 14 employees to 3,100 employees in six years,
 from 2 million to 106 million in six and a half years.
 As we were approaching the six-year mark,
 we're kind of coming into the 100 to 106 million revenue.
 We had just hired a new head of finance, a CFO,
 and Trish basically pulled the fire alarm
 and said, holy shit, the company's running out of money.
 And we said, well, let's go to the bank
 and ask for a credit line.
 So we did, and she came back and she goes,
 yeah, they're not going to give you a credit line,
 they're not going to give you a loan
 because you don't have any cash.
 Well, that's stupid.
 We are just the number two company
 to work for in Canada.
 We've had massive profitability, six years in a row.
 100% revenue growth, 16 second of years in a row.
 We're just on Oprah, like we're the shit.
 And we're cashful and positive.
 We just spent 5 million bucks on our office renovation
 and our office move and we spent 800 grand in cash
 and bonuses and 600 grand in taxes.
 Like, show them we just spent 5 million of our money
 so that we don't have any debt.
 She goes, that's the problem.
 Because you spent 5 million of your money,
 they won't loan you any money.
 If you'd gone to them with 5 million,
 then we'd loan you 5 million.
 We're like, we didn't need it.
 She goes, no, you need us to understand
 how to run a company that's not small anymore.
 You need to understand the financial acumen.
 And we didn't know that.
 The big lesson that we got because our head of finance
 prior to her had been warning us for a year.
 Do you think we're going too quickly?
 Do you think we're opening up too many corporate locations?
 Are you worried that we're going to drain our cash flow?
 And we just kept saying, no, no, we got this.
 Yeah, you were good.
 And he was so quiet and so kind of diminutive
 to a very aggressive dominant type,
 you know, Colby Quick Starts, like Brian and I were,
 and I was just a 98 eye on this, like 100 miles an hour.
 We didn't listen to him.
 And the big lesson that we got where I got from this was,
 if you're not willing to listen to the people
 that reporting to you, if you're not willing
 to listen to the senior team,
 replace them with people you're willing to listen to,
 or learn how to listen to them.
 He was giving us the signals to be careful
 and to be cautious and we weren't listening.
 And we almost lost that the company, Brian had to go out
 and borrow $420,000 from his mom to meet payroll
 and we had to do a round of layoffs of 20 people.
 We started calling some, anyway, brutal.
 But we had all the signs, we just weren't listening.
 Yeah, so simple, but yet hard, hard lesson to learn.
 Open your ears, baby.
 Like, yeah, we got, we got two years in one month.
 We should use them in the ratio we got them, right?
 We should listen twice as often as we speak.
 My mom told me that a lot.
 She said, you got two years of one mouth for a reason, baby.
 You got a listen more.
 Oh, Cameron, I could talk to you for a long time.
 I know we got short, you got stuff going on.
 But let me give, let's give all the shout outs
 where people can find the book, the Alliance,
 everything you're doing.
 Sure. So the CO Alliance is COO Alliance.com.
 Easy to find.
 It's two million or greater to qualify.
 And then we've got members from 17 countries.
 So it's an easy one.
 The Invest in Your Leaders course is at investinyourleaders.com.
 People can go to my name, Cameron Heralds.com
 and it's H-E-R-O-L-D and it shows all of my coaching
 and speaking and everything else.
 And then all of my books are on Amazon,
 Audible and iTunes.
 He's a true whisperer, folks.
 I'm, I was sitting here literally,
 I haven't done this in Wild Cameron,
 but I was literally like as you were talking,
 making marks at the time stamps
 that I'm going to go back and listen to this weekend
 for especially the culture building
 because your wisdom is appreciated.
 And we need to close our mouths and listen harder.
 I really appreciate you coming on the show.
 I have, of course, you're welcome.
 I'm still running too, right?
 At the end of the day, we're all still running.
 If you're green, you're going when you're right,
 you're rotting.
 That's right.
 And remember, time is short.
 Time is limited.
 Take that lesson, Cameron, give us.
 You know where to find us, Ryan is right.com.
 You'll find all the highlight clips from today.
 You'll find links to Cameron's stuff.
 And look, go buy his book, go get your leadership.
 It is courses.
 I'm telling you, this guy is a legend
 and knows what he's doing.
 And we appreciate you.
 We'll see you next time.
 On right about now.
 This has been right about now with Ryan Alford,
 a Radcast Network production.
 Visit RyanisRight.com for full audio and video versions
 of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.
 Thanks for listening.