Loading Events

« All Events

Webinar: An Interview with Cameron Herold – CEO Whisperer, Best-Selling Author, & Keynote Speaker

Thursday February 25, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
View Webinar Recording

Murray Resources has partnered with our sister company, ResumeSpice, to bring you the following free webinar: An Interview with Cameron Herold – CEO Whisperer, Best-Selling Author, & Keynote Speaker

A top business consultant, best-selling author, award-winning speaker, and founder of the COO Alliance & Second In Command Podcast, Cameron earned his reputation as The CEO Whisperer by guiding his CEO & COO clients to double their profit and revenue in three years or less.

At age 21, he had 14 employees. By 35, he’d helped build his first two 100 Million Dollar companies. By the age of 42, Cameron had engineered 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s spectacular growth from $2 Million to $106 Million in revenue in just six years.

He’s the author of the global best-selling business book DOUBLE DOUBLE – in its 8th printing and in multiple translations around the world, as well as Meetings Suck, Vivid Vision, Free PR and The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs.

Cameron is also a top-rated international speaker and has been paid to speak in 26 countries. He is a top-rated lecturer at EO/MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program and a powerful and effective speaker at CEO and COO leadership events around the world.

We’ll discuss how Cameron helped build 1-800-JUNK into a $100 Million company in six years and will also cover the following topics:

For Employers…
– Cameron’s hiring process and key traits he looks for when hiring.
– Are there ideal types of employees at different stages of a company’s growth.
– What separates “A” players – and how can you identify them when hiring.
– How can employers make sure they keep their “A” players.
– Which companies do the best job of developing their people – and what we can learn from them.
– Some of Cameron’s favorite interview questions.
– Cameron’s approach to firing employees.

For Job Seekers…
– How can job seekers separate themselves from the pack?
– Advice for those at the early stage of their careers.
– Advice for later stage professionals.
– Advice for those looking to change careers.

 

View Full Transcript

The following transcript was auto-generated from the video version of the webinar. Please excuse any typos / inaccuracies.

Keith Wolf:

I’m excited for today’s webinar. I am the CEO of ResumeSpice, Keith Wolf. I’m also the managing director of Murray resources, a national recruiting firm here in Houston. And together we’re bringing you this webinar. I’m extremely about today’s webinar because I’ve got someone on who I first was introduced to maybe six or seven years ago. I heard him speak at a Vistage event. So for folks who don’t know what Vistage is, it’s a CEO networking round table where you meet with other CEOs and leaders, and you hear some of the best speakers around the country and really the world. And to this day, Cameron, Harold is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard. Something that I recall specifically is he S he spoke better than I could ever speak if I was paying full attention.

Keith Wolf:

And it was when he was answering questions at the very end and packing his bags up. And literally he packed his bags up and answered the audience questions and just walked off the stage. And I don’t know if that was intentional, but it was just left to, you know, here we are six or seven years later, and I’ll never forget that. I’m like if I was fully looking at the person, I couldn’t have asked the question that coherently. So can you address that in a second, if you remember that? So Cameron, he wrote, he wrote a book called double double that you know, after hearing him talk, I read that book and that book’s premise is, you know, how can you double your company’s profits and revenue in three years? You know, putting a plan in place. And part of that plan is something he calls and refers to as a painted picture, you know, how your company is going to look, feel, and act, you know, during that time.

Keith Wolf:

And, and you very deliberately lay that out. So our company did that and lo and behold, three years later, we’d hit our goals. So I’m obviously a big believer in what Cameron preaches and he’s, he’s just had a lot of amazing experiences, amazing success in his career. Let me just touch on your bio here, Cameron, and I’m going to take that’s all the time for the intro. And then we’ll kind of get into some of the questions. Sure. Cameron is a top business consultant, a best-selling author speaker. He’s a mastermind behind hundreds of companies, exponential growth. He’s touched thousands of businesses directly and indirectly through his work base, 21, he had 14 employees by 35. He’d helped to $100 million companies grow by the age of 42. He engineered one 800, got junk, spectacular growth from 2 million to 106 million in six years. His company’s landed over 5,200 media placements in those six years, including coverage on Oprah.

Keith Wolf:

He’s the author of the global best-selling book, double double, which I just referenced. It’s in its eighth printing. He’s also written meeting, suck vivid vision, free PR and miracle morning for entrepreneurs. He has been paid to speak on 26 different countries. He’s also a founder CEO Alliance. It’s a group that provides high-level leadership and training and support Prisco’s VP’s of operations GM’s and presidents who run company wide operations. And last but not least, he is the host of a podcast called second in command, where he interviews top level COO’s about their insights, tactics, and strategies. So anytime I give a bio like that, I feel pretty bad about myself, but that’s why you’re speaking and I’m not. So let’s let’s get into this welcome Cameron for being with us. It’s great to have you.

Cameron Herold:

Yeah, thanks very much. Appreciate it. And yeah, to address that comments about me answering questions while packing up my bag, I have 17 of the 18 signs of attention deficit disorder. And when I, when I’m in a kind of like, it’s when, I mean motion, it’s like a body in motion stays in motion when I realized, okay, the talk is over. I have to leave. I kind of turned to the bag and I started doing the next thing. And then I realized, even as I’m answering questions, I stopped packing my bag, but it’s kind of like, I can’t stop that momentum. And I, I know that I shouldn’t even be doing it. I ended up doing it anyway. It’s this bizarre thing that I do. And so I’m in my head it’s weird.

Keith Wolf:

That’s to like, Hey, well, we’d never would have known that it was just, you had places to go. And you’re just thinking, that’s what it looked like.

Cameron Herold:

It’s by, I did a speaking that recently where I showed up and their AB system didn’t work and I had to do a 90 minute presentation off the top of my head and we did 90 minutes. They gave me a whiteboard and I just went off the top of my head for 90 minutes. I’m really good with that Q and a style and presentation, but thanks. I’m looking forward to today. Yeah,

Keith Wolf:

Definitely. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for being here. So let’s just, let’s start, you know, I gave your bio, but I, I really, I want to dig into a one 800 junk cause that’s what initially sort of put you on the map and just kind of set the stage for, you know, some of your experience. I mean, you had the experience of being there when it was a couple million and then growing that to, to a hundred million plus over six years. So talk a little bit about, you know, how you even got started. And then the process just spend a couple of minutes, if you could kind of, you know, what the growth was like and what it was like being there

Cameron Herold:

With those challenges. Sure. And then I want to go after we do that, I want to go backwards before that and talk a little bit about college pro painters, because that’s really where I learned everything at all. Feel free to start there, feel free to start there, but yeah, let’s do that. So, so college pro painters in university, I was awarded a franchise of this. I was painting company. And, you know, in Texas, you probably wouldn’t know of college pro, but if you’re in many of the other States in the U S you might and went on to become the largest residential house painting company in the world. Every year I would, I ended up being at the head office. I was a franchisee for three years, one of 800 franchisees. And I was one of the top franchisees. I was in the top kind of eight to 10 in their, their group.

Cameron Herold:

I went on to work at the head office where I was in charge of recruiting and hiring and training franchisees. And then there were only 60 of us at the head office. I was in the top 30 people and every year we had to recruit, hire and train 800 franchisees. And then in one month we had to train those 800 franchisees, how to go out and recruit, hiring train 8,000 painters. And we did it in 30 days. And then between May 1st and 31st, we produced $64 million in house painting. And then September 1st, 8,800 university kids quit and went back to school. The 60 of us got drummed and we woke up the next day and did it again for four, for four years. I had to add 8,800 people in four months and did it four years in a row. So we became operationally, world-class interviewing recruiting, training and onboarding of people.

Cameron Herold:

And then on the operational side of the business, I learned how to do operations. I hired Kimbal Musk, his brother back in 93, and also his cousin who went on to build solar city. I recruited and trained both of them in 93. In fact, Elan references, college pro painters in his book, as the reason for them getting funding for their first company, zip to when they only had one employee, I had to be a reference for them and had to explain what Kimball knew at college pro painters because Elon was unbankable. So that’s really where that’s where I learned everything. And then I built two other companies that after that one that went on to become Gerber auto collision in the U S it’s now the largest collision repair chain in the world. I started with them at seven locations. It’s now a $900 million company and we built it up to about 70 locations and then took it public.

Cameron Herold:

And then I was part of the private currency company, where we were adding three employees a day for about probably 90 days and got up to like 900 people. And then the stock market crashed and we had to start firing 150 at a time. So that was, was all prior to joining my best friend at one 800, got junk. I walked into one 800, got junk cause the 14th employee. And when I left six and a half years later, we had 3,100 employees system-wide I had been in charge of everything except it and finance. So I ran sales, operations, PR marketing, the call center, franchise sales, our corporate operations. We opened up into four countries. We were operating in 43 States, nine provinces in four countries ranked as the number two company in Canada to work for. So we became really well known for being a strong culture.

Cameron Herold:

And when I left there 14 years ago, I just started coaching companies, typically 50 to 500 employees, but I’ve coached the CEO of sprint. I coached the second command at sprint for 18 months. I’ve coached a lot of technology companies and I’m known for building cults for turning companies into talent magnets. That would be what I’m really known for. I coached the current number two company in the United States to work for on Glassdoor. I’ve coached the number three and number 12 companies to work for in the U S on Glassdoor. I coached them to get there because they weren’t even on before I coached two companies that went on direct number one to work for in Australia built the number two company in Canada, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s kind of my zone of expertise in terms of how we built 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The first things I did when I got there with Brian, I said, there’s three things that we have to do.

Cameron Herold:

The first one is we have to raise our crisis by 40 or 50% because no one’s making money. We’re not making money. The franchisees aren’t making money. Our guys in the truck, aren’t making money. We need to charge more and position ourselves as the FedEx of junk removal or the Starbucks of junk removal. We can’t be the Walmart of junk removal, right? We have to have the profit and then we have to deliver. So that was the first thing. Second thing was we have to turn our company into a little bit more than a business and a little bit less than a religion. We have to get into that zone of a cult, which means we have to attract and hire a players and really work hard at building out that culture machine. And then thirdly, we have to tell our story to the media because we have no money for advertising. But if we talk about how great our culture is, if we talk about the vivid vision for what our company is going to look like, the media will tell that story and we’ll attract more franchise partners and more employees to work for us. So that became our obsession, was building the cult, telling the media and delivering on all of our promises.

Keith Wolf:

So early on, when, when you’re getting started, first of all, you had the confidence, when you, when you, where did all that confidence come from, was it, was it delivering it at the, you know, the painting company? Was it, was it earlier than that sort of, how do you even have the confidence to come in and, and do what you did?

Cameron Herold:

It’s both. So there’s confidence and massive insecurity at the same time. So the confidence came yes, out of college pro painters because I was trained on how to follow systems and run them. And I executed really well and it all worked. So I realized that if there’s a system, follow it and the shortcuts will create momentum and momentum creates momentum, not perfection. So for me, it was just, they gave me a system. I did it, it was successful rinse and repeat, do it again and rinse and repeat. And then, and then, because I was in coaching, I started coaching entrepreneurs 32 years ago before coaching was even a thing, right? So by 1988, by 1994, I’d coached 120 entrepreneurs. Coaching didn’t even become a thing until kind of 2000. So, because I was then coaching entrepreneurs and seeing them being successful, that gave me the confidence to then do it with the auto body business and then do it with the private currency company.

Cameron Herold:

And it kept working. So I just built that, that confidence that this works, and they also knew how to stay in my lane. I knew where I was really weak. And just to avoid that you know, in the school system, they say, get a tutor for what you’re weak out in business. You hire people who are good at that and you stay away from it. So I learned to stay away from it and stay in my zone. Yeah. And my insecurities are, I, I, I hate going to cocktail parties or I even you’ve been going to a speaking event. I get, I, you can’t even hear her to my voice right now. I get nervous and anxious. I’d rather stand on stage and speak to a thousand people. And I’ve had companies pay me to go and speak in 26 countries, but I’m nervous walking around beforehand. I’m, I’m amazing on stage. And I’m amazing with the group and I’m fine afterwards if people come to me, but I, I hyperventilate, I’m extraordinarily nervous to walk into a group.

Speaker 4:

What you’re saying, if you’re saying, well, I know a lot of people can, can empathize with that. They have some similar experience, but maybe not the stage part, most people feel on the stage, but

Cameron Herold:

I’m comfortable going to a cocktail party on stage, right? Most, most speakers, if you ever, by the way, here’s a tip for you. If you ever wanted me to speak or contact them before the event and say, Hey, I’m not sure what you’re doing the night before your event. But if you want to grab dinner, a couple of CEO’s now we’re going to go a couple whatevers. Now we’re going to go grab dinner. They will always say yes, because they’re sitting in their hotel room doing nothing. And after they speak, they’re slammed. Forget it. You can’t talk about this because there’s a lineup, but breakfast before going for a run before, go for a hike with them before, go for dinner the night before they’ll always say yes to that. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. That makes sense. That’s a good point. So let, let’s talk about, you know, you hired a lot of different types of people throughout your career. What sort of traits let’s start with sort of entry level. Cause that’s what you’re looking for first. And those folks typically don’t have much of a resume. So how are you making hiring decisions? You know, let’s start with sort of folks earlier in their career and then let’s talk about some, you know, going

Cameron Herold:

My, my understanding and my training was that behavioral traits have been exhibited by the individuals since they were young. So let’s say as an example, you’re looking for someone who’s going to be a strong leader, but you’re hiring 22 year olds. So know they haven’t been as a manager in a company yet, but maybe they were the top Cub scout or maybe they were in their church, youth group, or maybe they were on student council or maybe they were captain of a sports team, or maybe they were the kid that rallied all their friends to go play pickup baseball, fall leadership traits are exhibited at a very young age, goal orientation. You know, people that are driven and focused. I mean, I had goal orientation back to seven, like why was I top Cub top scout on student council? Why was I doing all these sports?

Cameron Herold:

I was driven. I was driven. I was driven. You know, you could talk to me about goals that I had when I was 10. And I could tell them what, tell you what they were in. If I hit. And when I struggled, you could look at tenacity, you know, where I struggled and where I failed and where I worked harder and where I practiced in books that I read. So traits are exhibited at very, very young age. And the problem in most companies, most managers in most companies have never had any training on interviewing, which is really sad. If you think that you would never send your kid off to play little league baseball without teaching them how to hold the bat and how to toss the ball and catch the ball, cause your kid would come home from baseball and say, baseball sucks. It’s like, no, Johnny, you suck at baseball.

Cameron Herold:

Well, the reason that interviews are so bad is because most of our managers have never had even an hours training. They don’t know how to screen a resume. They don’t know what behavioral traits are. They don’t know how to define behavioral traits. They don’t know how to look for them. They don’t know how to rate them on a bell curve. They don’t know how to debate with other interviewers on where the person really was. They’re not sure how to assign behavioral traits on a role by role basis, because I’ll tell you salespeople’s behavioral traits are very different from HR peoples, right? It was not a good salesperson on the planet that will ever make it through an HR person screening process because HR people hate salespeople. Salespeople are making it up, shoot from the hip, they’re winging it. They don’t follow the systems. They’re outside of the box that doesn’t exist in HR it’s policies and procedures and follow the rules.

Cameron Herold:

There are no policies and procedures for sales, right? So you have to think of, again, most managers don’t know that stuff. So yeah, so that’s kind of my starting point with companies is really making sure that they understand there’s a gap. In fact, I have a course. I told you about it earlier, but I’m launching a course on Monday called invest in your leaders. And one of the 12 modules in the invest in your leaders course is an interviewing course. That’s really, if I was to think about like a bronze, silver or gold at a skill is going to get people to a solid bronze or silver, for sure. You’re not going to be certified as is, you know, Jeff smart and topgrading or his dad brought grad smarty rod topgrading. Like, but you’ll be pretty darn good. Yeah. And I think most companies miss on that. So at college pro painters, we received a lot of training on interviewing. We, we did tons of role-play plays and practices on open-ended questions, closed questions, you know, reference checks, torque screening through a resume, pregnant pauses, setting up a room, reversing the cell, like all kinds of skills. And then we learned how to find what we were looking for. And I would bring all of those skills through to any of the companies that I coach are built as well.

Speaker 4:

Let’s talk, let’s talk about your process for finding people. So all the way from writing the job description or whatever it starts to the onboarding, what’s your approach.

Cameron Herold:

So my process first starts with what are the key things the person has to get done in their first year with me? I wasn’t maybe the five big projects they have to get completed in their first year. And then what are the behavioral traits they need in that role to exhibit? And then what are our company core values? And I want to make sure that they already live those core values as well. So I’m going to look for people that have done what I need them to do. I’m not looking for people that know how to do it. You know, like do, if let’s say we had to hire a swimmer and this is a weird analogy, but trust me, it works. If we, if, if you wanted to hire a great swimmer, would you want to hire someone that knows how to break a world record and knows how to win an Olympic gold and knows how to do all four strokes?

Cameron Herold:

Or would you want to hire someone that has broken a world record has won Olympic gold and has competed in all four strokes, very different from knowing how, and there’s lots of educated people that have read books or gone to school, but they’ve never done it. So what I want to do is look, what do I need them to do? And have they done it before? And to what level, what traces they need to have and do they live them and exhibit them? And how do I know? And then are they already people that live our core values, you know, four or five strong core values that we would fire people to break them? That’s my starting point from there that scorecard, I then build a job description. Once I get the job description. And usually the hiring manager or the department manager will get the first part of the job description done.

Cameron Herold:

Someone in HR might Polish it, but then I take it from HR and I hand it to a copywriter, either an in-house copywriter or I’ll, I’ll spend 300 bucks to an outside copywriter to Polish it, somebody even off Upwork and take the job posting and make it like a marketing letter, like a sales letter. Something is like, Whoa, that actually is going to attract me and it’s going to push some candidates away. And then I push that out high wide and handsome. Like I really, really pushed that job posting out to everywhere. And I use it like a recruiting tool to bring people into the, but I don’t look at any resumes that get sent in at all. As soon as the resume gets sent in, we kicked back an auto reply and we go, thanks for your resume. Please read this vivid vision, this five page description of what our company looks like, acts like and feels like three years from now and read this article about, you know, article in the media about our company, and then reply with a two to three minute video of what you love about our vivid vision and how you want to make it come true.

Cameron Herold:

And how you think you’ll Excel in your role. If we like your video, we’ll bring you in for a group interview. So I will only look at the resumes of the people that submit videos that I like if I don’t like their video and I’m not going to watch three minutes, if it sucks at 20 to 20 seconds, but if it’s good, if it grabs my attention and energy like that cult, then I’ll look at the resume to see if they have the rough skills and then I’ll do a group interview. But for me, the group interview is six to eight candidates at the same time. And I’m only looking for two things. First thing is their cultural fit with the behavioral traits and the core values of the organization. Like did they fit right? Regardless of the role, are they the right kind of energy and people?

Cameron Herold:

And I’m not saying that they all have to be the same personality profile, but do they fit the DNA and the core values and the traits that we need. And then secondly, are they strong leaders? And I want payroll clerks that are leaders. I want frontline marketing staff that are leaders. I want guys in the trucks, that’ll put their hands up and say, I disagree. I want leadership at all levels after the group interview. And you can interview six to eight people over zoom. I can talk through a system that I use for that. We select a couple of people from that to do very in-depth one-on-one interviews. And then you can do a second one-on-one interview. And then your reference checks, that’s kind of the, the overall view of the process I use.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Funny couple things, couple observations. One is write the job description for who you want, but also for who you don’t want. Right. So, yeah, you’re good repelling people away and it’s probably more efficient way of hiring. You want to scare the out of people? Like, I want to tell you, this is gonna be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but you’ll love it. Like you’re going to be working like crazy, but you’re going to dig it. We are a strong culture. And if you don’t like to be accompanied events, don’t come here. Right. Yeah. But then other people are like, yes. Sign me up. Right. Yeah.

Cameron Herold:

I don’t, I don’t love that. I swear, but I’ve actually written the F bomb in and like the full word in the job posting because I was recruiting somebody that needed to work very closely to me. And the last thing I wanted was them three or four months in going, Oh, he swears too much,

Speaker 4:

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron Herold:

Employees don’t quit either. I’ve got, I’ve got, I’ve got an employee, a friend coming for dinner tonight that worked at one 800, got junk 14 years ago coming for dinner. Like my team loved me, but they, they understood me, but that was because I pushed away anybody that would.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And then the video, you know, I think that’s, that’s pretty unique. I don’t know a lot of companies. I think that they’re starting to be more part of the process, but specifically putting together a video that they send out is

Cameron Herold:

I’ve used, I’ve used the video for about eight, nine years and it’s simple. And I had somebody that I was hiring a year ago. He sends me a bit and he was like, sorry, it’s during COVID I know I’ve got the laundry behind me. I’m like, dude, you could have at least moved the pile of laundry.

Speaker 4:

Come on.

Cameron Herold:

There’s something to be. So I was just like, I’m not even gonna watch your video. You’re clearly just not gonna

Speaker 4:

Africa. Yeah. what are some of your favorite interview questions?

Cameron Herold:

It depends on, it depends on what I’m looking for. So I I’ll give you an example years ago. This is, this is a longtime example, but it’s a really good example of how deep I’ll probe. I needed someone who was really, really good at project management and time management, because they’re going to have a lot of that complexity, a lot of multiple projects. They really had to manage time, not using like Gantt charts and project management software, but just the ability to multitask and get a bunch of stuff done and hit deliverables. So I needed somebody who was good at time management. So I’m asking this person in the interview and he’s giving me all this stuff, but it sounds to me like it’s right out of a textbook. Like it was like a professor teaching you time management now. I mean, if he did it, that was going to be amazing.

Cameron Herold:

So I, I said, do you do this? He’s like, yeah. I’m like, where’s your day-timer. So this is how, how long ago it was, it was like 18 years ago, 17 years ago. I said, where’s your day-timer. It was set in the car. I said, is everything you’ve described? Like your, your monthly goals, your weekly goals, your daily goals, the A’s and B priorities numbering. Your A’s putting them into the calendar, the right it’s all in my calendar. It’s great. Where’s your day-timer. He goes out in the car. I said, okay, cool, go grab it. And he goes, why? I said, I just want to flip through it. You can keep it on your side of the table, just flip through it and show me because if I see that, that level of detail and understanding time management is being used by you, I can give you a five out of five on that trait. So go grab the daytime or I’ll just grab a coffee, come on, back in. And we’ll, we’ll start chat. So I got coffee. I sit down. I’ve never seen him since

Speaker 4:

I thought that was going to go one of two ways. Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re not willing

Cameron Herold:

To do that, kind of, I did another one where I did a reference check with the guy and I made him stand at my desk. As I called his boss and asked his boss what he was like, and his boss said, Oh my God, you got my best guide, but he didn’t want me to call. I’m like, no, you stand here and I’ll call your boss. And if you’re that good, I’m hiring you. Right. He and I are still friends to this day, 18 years later, one of my favorite interview questions in the group interview. So let’s say I’ve got seven candidates sitting in that group interview. My second, last question is always, if I was hiring two people, you plus someone else in this room, who else should I hire? And why should I hire them? Hmm. And what happens is the strongest leaders will sell you on hiring somebody else.

Cameron Herold:

They were also paying attention and they can repeat stuff that that person was saying. And all of a sudden, the seven people are all pointing in the direction of one or two. They did my job for me. I bring in those one or two people and I grill in based on the resume and I know who I can bring forward. And then my second last question, and this is legal in every state and province is how much money do you need to make this year? And how much money would you like to be making in three years? And person, number one will be like, I need a hundred. Next guy needs. I need 98. One was like, I need 97. Next guys need, I need 95, but I’ll need a hundred, but I’ll work for 95. They compete. And their price actually comes down. When you do one-on-one interviews, they’re all like, Oh, I need 120. Where’s that number come from?

Speaker 4:

Well, what happened is in a group, they all hear each other’s answers.

Cameron Herold:

Yeah. Then, then they actually tell you the truth. Hmm.

Speaker 4:

Interesting. Well, so let’s, let’s flip the flip the corn a little bit because we had, we have folks on here who are company leaders currently, you know, running companies, heads of HR. And we also have folks who might be in between gigs and looking for role they’re interviewing and let let’s talk about, I always think it’s interesting as the folks who are hiring, how they would answer the question, some of the most dreaded questions that people get. One of the big ones right now is this career gaps. Right? So how do you career gap on your resume? A lot of folks have it with COVID, you know, more so than ever. How would you, how would you like someone to address that

Cameron Herold:

Stuff? I’ve, I’ve actually been trained to go through the resume and look for the gaps and make notes on the physical paper. Copy about the gaps, to ask myself some questions to then probe about it. Most interviewers don’t even know to look for gaps in a resume. And I’m not talking about the four year gap or the 12 month gap I’m talking about. I left in September. I started in October. I’m like, all right, why did you leave that job? What wasn’t going? Well, why didn’t you just stuff with your boss? What, how, who did you talk to before you decided to quit? Did you really quit or was it mutual? Was it mutual or were you fired? Like, and I’ll ask 20 questions about, about why they moved to the next, like where you poached, you know, did somebody recruit you? There’s so much to learn about just that transition from the one to the other, let alone what happened in between.

Speaker 4:

So what’s what, what are some good responses? I mean, what are some, so if someone’s dealing with this and they let’s say they have a three, four month gap in there, you get this question all the time. Like, how do I overcome a career gap?

Cameron Herold:

Tell the truth. The reality is as soon as anybody decides to make something up in an interview, our human computer goes, wait, meter, meter, meter. You’re making something up because your resident and your tone changes, body language change. You tell the truth. I was struggling. I got a little depressed. I didn’t know where to go. I got confused. I decided to take some time off. I went on a trip, whatever, and then I decided to kick back in again. Okay. That seems normal. But as soon as you start making something up, well, I was working on a line and then it’s, you’re dead. Sober. Yeah. Just tell the truth. Okay.

Speaker 4:

I like it. And if folks have questions, other questions, or they want the edge. So I’m actually not looking at the chat right now, but I’ll open it up in just a second. Just fire them off. Another one we get a lot is someone’s biggest weakness. You know, it’s asked almost every single interview and folks struggle with that. And Hey, you know what? My biggest, my biggest weakness is I’m a perfectionist. I try too hard. I never leave the office. People have to tell me to stop. You know, that’s kind of what people think the right answer is, but it’s so cliche. We know it’s not. So what is a good answer to their biggest weakness?

Cameron Herold:

The first part is for the interviewer is never ever give somebody that question. Don’t say, tell me what your weaknesses. So what I do is I said, look, I want you to tell me what your weaknesses, but don’t give me a fluffy one. Like I’m too organized. I want you to give me one. That’s going to me off and drive me crazy. And if you don’t tell me that I’m going to chase you down the street with a baseball bat after you work here. So tell me the good. Now that’s going to drive me nuts. And I kind of say it in that tone and I laugh and then they go, I suck at whatever. So I actually think it’s better for you as a, as a candidate to say, well, I know you don’t want to hear that I’m too detailed oriented because that’s the real, I’m just going to give you the real one.

Cameron Herold:

You know what? I really suck at this, but I’m good at finding people who can help me with it. But no, I’m really bad at it, but I’m good at this, this and this. Yeah. Again, we’re so our computers are so strong that if the meter goes off, just tell the truth, own it, and then explain. I’m not supposed to be good at everything. Nobody’s good at everything you don’t have to say, or you just say, no, one’s good at everything. I suck at this. And I avoid that stuff, but I’m really good at these. Then people go, okay, fine. Who’s telling the truth.

Speaker 4:

Well, I, you know, I think sometimes people are so concerned about giving the honest answer because they just want the job. But the reality is the interviewer knows the role better than you do. And so, if you’re honest about your shortcomings, they’re not going to maybe hire you for that role. You’re going to be miserable. And then six months later you might get the role, but you’re going to be miserable. So you might as well be honest. Well, again, it’s also that

Cameron Herold:

When, when you tell the truth, that resonates and it comes off differently, right? So I think that’s the power of all this stuff is just to be able to to just own it. Because like here, I’ll give you an example. For me, I’m terrible at writing. I’ve written five books, but I, I spoke all of them and then had writers Polish it for me. But I can’t, every time I write an email, I somebody off. I said, I sent my best friend a happy birthday message. She’s like, what’s wrong. I’m like nothing. I said, happy birthday. He goes, I know that’s dead. I’m like, dude, what, how do I upset you? I said, happy birthday. So, so I just tell people that, right? Yeah. I’m bad at finance. I’m really bad at it. I’m terrible in those areas.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. We talked, we talked a little bit about early in your folks career, kind of what you’re looking for when they don’t have great resume. What about when you’re hiring the cream of the crop at the top levels where everybody’s got a great resume, everybody’s got great backgrounds. How do you separate at that level? I know when we’re doing executive research, everyone’s got a great background.

Cameron Herold:

Well, so, so I’ll give you a very specific example. This is 2006. We were hiring our head of finance to replace our VP of finance had been with us for five years and we needed a very seasoned senior head of finance, a real CFO, a proper CFO, not a controller with the CFO title, but a CFO. And you know, we were a hundred million dollar business and we’re interviewing, we got it down to, we used to two executive search firms, one retained, one contingency. We did all of our own networking. Like we pulled out the guns to get the right person, right. I’ve always believed by the way, you used an executive search firm to poach great people. And you use all your own recruiting efforts at the same time, but you don’t. You’re the best employees are not looking for a job.

Cameron Herold:

They’re working in a job. The best employees are not on an industry, job boards. That’s what your C players play. So recruiters get you there. But anyway, so we hired a recruiting firm, two of them to help us with all the candidates. We narrowed it down to three, did the interviews for three, narrowed it down to two and we knew their skills were good, but we also didn’t know the skill area well enough to interview them. So we brought in our, our accounting firm and M and a firm to interview them for the skillset that we needed. And we interviewed them for cultural fit. So our, our real experts interviewed them for the domain expertise, cause that was above our pay grade. But then we interviewed them for cultural fit and we came down to two and we’re like, God, this one guy’s really good.

Cameron Herold:

But this one woman’s really amazing. I wanted her because I wanted more. I wanted another woman on the team am like, I need to know more. And then I looked at their addresses on the resume and they both lived in my neighborhood. So I’m like, I’m just going to drive by their house. There’s no law that says you can’t drive by their house. It’s an address. They gave it to me. It’s it’s th th th that it was prior to Facebook. So it was, it was now you’d go on their social media, right, right back there. So I drove by their house, the one guy’s house, which is very beige. And it was just kind of like beige nondescript. I was like, wow, that’s boring. And then I go to Trisha’s place. I drive by it. I’m like, wow, this is really cute. I like this place.

Cameron Herold:

And she had her living room blinds up. Like, I can kind of see it from the road. This is like, this is exactly who we’re hiring. And just, she just felt like Brian and myself have insurance. She felt like us. She was amazing. The first, yeah. She like culturally aligned. So when you know that you have the skill set, you have to hire for culture fit first skillset second. But that’s how you pick between the best skills is who culturally. And for me, it’s also like my, our core purpose at 1-800-GOT-JUNK was to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. But it was building a world-class brand. We wanted somebody who was obsessed about building a world-class brand. We wanted somebody who was like an entrepreneurial culture fit. You know, if they were too corporate, they weren’t going to fit. So you just interviewed for that.

Speaker 4:

I want to ask you about when folks don’t work out you ha you have I’ve, I’ve heard you talk about it. You know, firing employees, nobody likes to do it, but everybody has to at some point a career, if they’re in leadership. So talk a little bit about that, your approach. I know there’s a, there’s a story that you’ve told before about having to let somebody go. And so go into that exhibit a little bit.

Cameron Herold:

Sure. Yeah. So when you have doubt, you have no doubt is, is the one that’s always worked for me is like, when, you know, you gotta make the cut. So but I’ve also always believed that the person has the right culture and core values. First try to get them into the right seats. And then if you can’t get them in the right seat, try to coach them. But if they have the wrong core values and the wrong results, or they’re just the wrong core values, regardless of the results you got to get rid of them. So years ago we had, I was having breakfast with a mentor. It was seven 30 in the morning. I’ve always had mentors. I’ve always paid for coaching or gotten into mastermind groups. Or I’ve always worked on my skills for 25 years and having breakfast with this mentor and your seven 30 in the morning, and we were at Denny’s and he said, you know, is there anybody, you know, in your company that you have to fire, I’m like, yeah, I’ve got this one guy.

Cameron Herold:

And he said, what’s his name? I said, Tyler. He said, how long have you known you should fire Tyler? And I was like, I don’t know, six months. And he said, so why haven’t you fired Tyler yet? I started giving him all these reasons and he listened for a couple minutes. And he said, so basically you’re chicken. And I went, yeah, pretty much. And he said he said, when are you gonna fire Tyler? And I said, I’ll do it by Friday. And he shook his head. He said, first off don’t ever tell me when you’re going to do something by tell me when you’re going to do it. And secondly, Friday’s not soon enough. And I said, fine, I’ll do it tomorrow. He shook his head. I said, fine. I’ll do it today. And he said, what time today? I said, I’ll fire him at 12 o’clock today.

Cameron Herold:

He said, good. Call me at 1230, because I know this is going to be a really tough one for you because he’s one of your friends. But he said, you make darn sure you’re there for Tyler, because he said every day for the last six months, you’ve just destroyed the will of a human being. You’ve known for six months that you should fire him. And since then you’ve picked on him. You’ve excluded them. You’ve been off at him. You’ve shown him all this stuff he’s failing at. You’ve pulled them out of meetings and he’s trying his best. But you failed him as a leader because you’re not comfortable enough to let him go. So fire him. But it’s your job to make sure that he gets back on his feet and he’s successful. Again, I go back to the office. It’s 8:00 AM. Tyler’s sitting there.

Cameron Herold:

I’m like, Hey Tai, can I grab you for a sec? And Tyler was the guy that got off on Oprah. He was the guy that landed the Oprah Winfrey show for us. He’d landed 500 articles about our company. He was amazing, but he was, he was wickedly bipolar. He was way more manic than Brian and I both are in much more stressed and depressed. And Brian and I would get, even though we’re both bipolar, he had, he had the inability to control his emotions and it was getting too hard for us. As the company was big. He just couldn’t fit culturally inside of the company anymore. So it was the right time. Anyway, we walked into the boardroom, closed the door and I turned it. We didn’t even sit down and I turned around to say something and he had tears in his eyes and I got tears in mine.

Cameron Herold:

And he said, what took you so long? I didn’t even have a chance to say anything. And I said, I’m sorry. And he goes, no, he goes, this is the right thing, but you should have done it three months ago. He said, I told my mom, three months ago, you were going to fire me. He goes, I’m the guy that got us on Oprah. But he goes, I know this is the right decision, but why did you wait so long? And I basically replayed my discussion. I thought you could change. I wanted to try to help you. You got us on Oprah. Like, and anyway, Tyler left, we named a room at the company after him. We did coach and mentor him. We got him an outplacement firm to help him and started his own PR company up. I got emailed letters and phone calls and texts from him for years saying thank you for one time saying thank you for setting me free.

Cameron Herold:

Thank you for making such a hard decision, but it ended up being one of the best of my career. And then about seven years ago, I got a phone call at Tyler had gone out on a hike and had gone missing. And we’ve never found the body. It ended up being the largest search in BC history in Canada, in Vancouver, a 7,700 hours search and rescue team. Tyler had gone on a five day hike that hadn’t been done in 80 years and he never survived and they never found the body. I can live with myself cause I know I set them free. I wish I’d done it sooner.

Speaker 5:

And

Cameron Herold:

Probably my hardest part as an employer, as a boss is when you know the hard part for me is going from when I’m not sure to, when I know the second part of that saying is I let a second guy go that same day. I knew on the drive home. I got to get this other guy out too. So I let him too. And you do it with integrity and with empathy and it goes fine. Like they were both friends of mine. One of them came out of like asking me for a reference three years later, even though I’d fired him. The second part is cut deep cut. Once. You know, if you know, you’re firing multiple people, take a look across the teams and see who else has to go and do it at once. Because if you do one or two now, and then one or two in three weeks and one or two in three weeks, it’s like the earthquake. And then the aftershocks, the aftershocks that scare everybody earthquake, we got over. But it’s all the tremors that just give us the PTSD while your employees that are left, the survivor guilt and the problems they have, because you had the inability as a leader to lead. That’s your job.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Well, I know that that resonates with a lot of people. I don’t know that I heard the second part in Tyler. So

Cameron Herold:

I, I led the I led the PRF experts for we, we did a big PR search, Brian and the CEO did the fundraising for it. We had low flying planes, helicopters, ATVs, dogs, 7,700 hour search with search and rescue and never found them.

Speaker 4:

I know that, you know, letting people go is one of those difficult things that somebody does and you know, we’ve all had to do it and I’ve had folks have the same reaction. I can’t believe you. Didn’t say, why didn’t you do it sooner, but thank you for it was actually thank you for not doing it sooner. You probably should. Let me go log in. Yeah.

Cameron Herold:

It’s almost always, they know. It’s almost always, there’s a data point that I thought was really interesting from the group of top rating. I’m friends with Brad smart who wrote topgrading and his son, Jeff smart. He wrote who there’s a data point that they came up with about 15 years ago that the cost of the wrong employee is 15 times their annual salary. So if you’re paying somebody a hundred grand a year and they’re the wrong person, it’s costing your company about one, 1.5 million in opportunity, cost and mistakes and frustration, and the negativity they bring in, in the A-player that quits because they can’t work with that jerk anymore. You have to get the wrong people off the bus. Most companies don’t work hard enough to get the wrong people off the bus. You know, we all talk about recruiting and interviewing, and selection and onboarding and training. But what about getting the wrong people off the bus as Jim Collins talks about you got to be great, right?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And I want to ask you a question. That’s almost impossible for anyone to answer, but I’m going to ask it anyway, because I’m interested to hear what your, your response is. But I know a lot of people probably on this, on this call are probably in much into a lot of people, but I know there are some people for not as satisfied in their careers are finding enough fulfilling. Maybe they’re not performing. Maybe, maybe they’re going to be fired. Maybe they’re not, but either way, they’re not satisfied where they are. Yeah. I was gonna say, what’s, what’s your boss.

Cameron Herold:

No quit, quit break up with your partner. Quit move cities to change, whatever, like stop you’re in control of your life. Like you’re going to be okay. A lot of this is our first world problems, that you make up in our minds. Like if you’re not happy, change it, stand up, walk out the door, quit, change up, leave the relationships. Like the only reason most people live in the city is because our parents lived there. What guess what? Your great-grandparents moved from Europe or Asia somewhere to come here, pick, pick up city and go like, you know, especially now that you can work from anywhere, something we didn’t talk about. I want to go back and this isn’t to talk about my investing your leaders course, but it’s worthwhile for people taking it. My obsession as a leader has always been to grow my people.

Cameron Herold:

And I’ve always felt that the more I grow the skills of my people, the more they’ll grow the brand for me. And the whole reason for me launching, invest in your leaders course was to show and give companies the tools that most companies don’t have in place, or if they do, it’ll take them a year or two years to put all these tools in place to grow their leaders. And I’ve just always believed that I was on a clubhouse room last night with a couple thousand people. And I was one of the speakers on this room and clubhouse, and they were talking about what is it that gives the entrepreneur or the CEO, the most freedom. And, and I came in and said growing their people, because the more I grow their skills, the more I don’t have to do stuff, the more I can work on strategy, the more a VP grows their people.

Cameron Herold:

The more that the VP can work on the bigger issues, right? So it’s all about flipping the org chart upside down. I have the CEO at the bottom and I literally draw the org charts upside down the CEO at the bottom, supporting the VPs, supporting the managers, supporting employees who are all supporting the customers. And then everyone can see the vivid vision. And you build your company inside the core purpose and your core values. It’s almost like an, like an inverted pyramid with the vivid vision at the top. And I think the more that people invest in their leaders and grow their people, the more you don’t have those problems, you know, if people are complaining about meetings, teach them how to run meetings, teach them how to show up at meetings. Elon Musk came out about a year ago and put a tweet out.

Cameron Herold:

And he said, you know, if you’re in a leading meeting, stand up and leave the meeting. I’ve known him for 25 years. I sent him a text. I’m like no fixed meetings. And your employees won’t be in the meetings to have to leave right. Fix the root cause. So that’s another module in the course, as well as just to teach people not only how to run them, but how do you attend a meeting? How do you participate in a meeting? How do you speak up in a meeting, right? And to give the employees that confidence as well. And it was a bit of a segue, but I think

Speaker 4:

That’s one of your bullets, right?

Cameron Herold:

Well, it’s important as leaders to, if we invest in our people and they regrow our people, we won’t have to replace them. And especially gen Y one of the things that gen Y wants more than anything is career development. So if you’re not giving it to them, they’re going to go somewhere else. But if you are giving it to them, they’ll scale.

Speaker 4:

You and I talked a little bit about remote work earlier, and, and we’re kind of talking about what, what are you saying? Are more companies hiring folks remotely? Are they open to it? Are you seeing a change since COVID I’m?

Cameron Herold:

Well, first, so I used to coach the CEO of sprint Marsala cholerae. Who’s now the CEO we work he built and sold his first company for over a billion dollars is when I first met him. And I coached a second in command, Jamie Jones for 18 months at sprint. I was talking to Marcella what was happening at we work. And they’re really excited about the future of the remote remote workforce. And then I’ve been talking to a lot of my guests on the second in command podcast who are running companies. And typically I interview like the 50 to 5,000 employee companies. They’re not going back to offices. They’re they’re across the board saying, yeah, we’re going to shrink our footprint by 80%. You know, we might keep 20% of our office. Twitter told all of their employees don’t come back to work until July.

Cameron Herold:

Shopify is shutting down their 5,000 person office in Ottawa. So yeah, it’s pretty much unanimous across the board. Companies are going with the remote workforces, allowing people to be digital nomads. There’s whole other issues of, you know, people with young kids and how it’s hard. So I think there’ll be, we’ll have to have places and, you know, hoteling opportunities for them to use workspaces, but yeah, companies, it opens up a whole new, like how can you possibly expect the absolute best person for that job and your team? And they lived the core values and they have the behavioral traits lives within 30 minutes of where you like, forget it. It’s impossible.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I mean, I’m a big fan of Mark Cuban. I’ve mentioned him before on my LinkedIn and I reached out to him and he was pretty responsive and I, I met him once, but I remember he he said about the MBA. This was maybe 15 years ago. And he said, what are the chances that the best, the best NBA player just happens to live in the U S so that’s why he does so much recruiting and scouting or your fees and Gunter, but you can say like all the best Houston players live in Houston right now, hockey players, that’s not different at all from Canada. I’m curious, you know, you’re obviously a busy guy doing a lot of different things. I’m always curious, kind of what tools techniques somebody uses in order to manage their day. You know, whether it’s technology or processes is kind of taking a little different, different term from, from hiring and bringing people on. But I’m, I’m curious as we’re kind of getting, we’ve got about 10 minutes left, so I want to make sure that

Cameron Herold:

I’ll give you, I’ll give you something slightly different than a tool for me, it’s more simplicity. I just try to keep it simple, not the whole kiss thing, but I wasn’t the smart guy in school. Right. I got 62% in high school. I got 63 or something in university. So I wasn’t the smart kid. I wasn’t the MBA. I didn’t know how to do the complicated models. So I looked for the cheat sheets. And for me in business, it’s all about the cheat sheets. Again, like even in this invest in your leaders course, it’s like, here’s the cheat sheets to grow people just do that. You know, is it the perfect interviewing system? No, but perfect doesn’t scale, but it’s 12 really good ones. So for me, it’s all, it’s about momentum creating momentum. So I work, I worked very focused. I say, no a lot.

Cameron Herold:

I, I, I’m very clear on my, you know, Simon Sinek who did the whole golden circle and start with why was on our board for years before he wrote his book. So I understand my core purpose helps me to say no to the wrong companies, the wrong opportunities. So I say no a lot. I work in, in kind of momentum, creating momentum. And then I tried to figure out the who, not how, right. Instead of trying to figure out how to do everything it’s who could I outsource that to, or who was a freelancer that could do it, or who could I delegate it to? Because that momentum will create momentum. I ran a house painting company, but I didn’t paint houses.

Keith Wolf:

So, so tell me, tell me what you charge for a a keynote. Typically

Cameron Herold:

My, so my keynote is 30,000 plus travel, and then my zoom keynotes are 5,000 clearly with no travel because my commute is pretty close.

Keith Wolf:

Okay. So one of my reasons for asking it, so if you’ve got a question it’s a $30,000 opportunity, you’ve got eight minutes to ask it. So if anybody’s got a question, something that you want to ask from an employer or a candidate standpoint, I’m interested in kind of, how, how do you learn, who do you learn from, who are you paying attention to as a books or the podcast

Cameron Herold:

It’s it’s first off mastermind groups. So I’ve always believed if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. So I try to plug myself into a number of different mastermind groups. So I’ve been in the genius network for six years. I’ve gone to war room, I’ve gone to three baby bathwater events. I’ve been to five mastermind, talks events. I’ve been in strategic coach for seven years. I’ve gone to the main five day Ted conference for nine years. So I’m always plugged into these events where I’m just not the smartest person in the room. I definitely devour a lot of podcasts and, and digital content. And then I only really read books if they’re related to something I’m working on. Otherwise, I feel like I’m learning too much at random. So I’m usually trying to learn about what I’m working on right now. Yeah. Like if I’m, if I’m, let’s say I’m going to be hiring four people this month, read who write or read chapter two of double double, like, and then if I, if I’m done my hiring for three months, why do I want to read about hiring? Because I won’t in the learning environment, the learner has to know that there’s a gap between what they know and what they want to learn. Right. So, yeah, that’s how I, that’s how I, fast forward things.

Keith Wolf:

Got it. Did you have a question that came in from Aisha asking for some career advice for early or mid-level folks? So,

Cameron Herold:

Yeah Y one of the mission is to you know, take on the big projects, you know, ask for more responsibility, stretch yourself. Your leaders are always overwhelmed. Look for like, just say, what can I take off your plate? What can I work on? Like, ask for that additional responsibility and then really grow yourself, really keep working on growing your own skills. I love it when, like, if one of my employees came to me and said, Hey, I saw this, this investing in leaders course, can, can the company pay me for it, pay for me to do it. It’s only 597 bucks. I’d be like, yeah, take the course. Or if the company is like, I don’t know, I’ll split it with you. How about I pay for 300 and you pay for 300, like when you showed that kind of initiative to your own growth and taking on responsibility, you’ll Excel. For sure. Next thing is to make sure that you’re the person who will tell your boss what’s going wrong, but do it privately do it. One-On-One pull them aside and say, Hey, I don’t feel good about this. Or I saw this as a problem, not ratting other people out, but just debate them and discuss some, but do it in a safe place. So you don’t put your boss against the corner.

Speaker 4:

Love it. We have a couple more here. What qualities do you look for in your mentor? So you’ve had some, it sounds like some good mentors.

Cameron Herold:

Yeah. I had a mentor who was being groomed as the second in command at Starbucks. And I got him to mentor me for about two years when I was building one 800, got junk. I first outlined the five core areas of the business that I wanted to get better at. And then I outlined three areas of my life that I wanted to improve on. And then I tried to find a brand that was similar to what I was building. So multiunit, operations, strong culture, strong leadership development, it all kind of pointed to Starbucks. So then I looked at their org chart and I found a roles of people that were similar to mine. And I just reached out to them. You know, I, I, one of my biggest pet peeves is people on Facebook. I need a coach who should I get as a coach? Really? It’d be like an athlete saying, I’m an athlete. I need a coach. Well, are you a baseball player or a basketball player, a swimmer, a gymnast. Like if you’re a gymnast, you don’t want a golf coach. Right. So you have to be very specific on what you want to get better at. And then from there, get someone to help.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Got it. And now we’ve got a ton of questions coming in. We’ve got five minutes. So what are some of the key leadership traits or team’s success in the remote work environment? So are you insane? Some definitely the ability to to focus and prioritize and login, to collaborate the ability to get done and deliver on your promises. You know, for me, my three core values are deliver what you promise, respect the individual and pride and all you do. So I’m looking for people that live those and exhibit those I think are key. Do you have a, or do you still guide a mentor, young entrepreneurs who are just starting out?

Cameron Herold:

I, my core part of my core business, other than the COO Alliance, which is this network of second and commands, I coach companies and CEOs, but it’s for a fee. So I’m paid $48,000 for a year to coach them. They get 90 minutes a month with me, and then they pay me a check three years later for what they feel the value was. So I don’t really do it as a pro bono thing. Most of my pro bono is, you know, speaking events or webinars or the podcasts that I host. But no, I don’t really, I don’t really mentor young entrepreneurs. What, what books would you

Speaker 4:

Recommend? You talked a little bit about the you read and is there any specific books or it’s, like you said, you’ve kind of targeted.

Cameron Herold:

We all learn. It’s like, it’s, it’s like saying, you know, what music should I listen to? I don’t know, like, what music do you like, like let’s start there. So, you know, I’ll give you some examples of, if you want a really good book on management, read the one minute manager by Ken Blanchard. It’s all grounded in science, on situational leadership that he and Paula hers, he developed, it’s solid 30 years old. It’s still the best book. I’ll step on strategy and, and kind of building a real business. Good to great, but read it three or four times and do what it says. If you want a great one on interviewing, read who by Geoff smart. I think his dad’s book topgrading is overwhelmingly long at 800 pages who is amazingly synthesized. If you want a really good book on getting done and, and, and managing through tough times, read the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. And then one book that I really loved recently around simplicity and, and really making everything simple. It’s called insanely simple. And it’s about the SIF systems internally that were used at Apple to really scale and keep things simple.

Speaker 4:

I love it. I hadn’t heard of that one. Hard thing to do.

Cameron Herold:

I would tell people like read, read my first book, double, double. It’s really, really strong, by the way, the reason I wrote the book meetings suck is for every employee at every book, every company to read the book meetings suck, I got companies buying like 300 copies at a time and giving it to every employee and saying, read it by Monday.

Speaker 4:

Like it just right now, just of the companies that you work with, or, or companies are just out there, I’m curious about which companies do you admire, whether their culture leadership, which do you think are doing a really strong job?

Cameron Herold:

I don’t think I look, I don’t think I’m looking externally for that anymore. I’m, I’m, I’m very, I’m so deeply focused on some of the clients that I’m coaching. You know, I coach a company called acceleration partners, Bob glacier. He, I think he’s ranked number two or number three in the United States to work for on Glassdoor today. You know, they’ve got like 200 and some odd reviews on glass door with a 4.9 rating. And he’s a complete remote company, but he’s been remote since day one with 150 employees. I’m impressed with them. I’m impressed with tenuity, which I coach from 40 people up to 700. And you know, they’re, they’re in the top 10 to work for the United States on glass door because they obsess about culture. I’m really more impressed with some of my clients and their ability to focus and execute and obsess about people. I’ve always believed on that as well. Your customer is not number one. They’re number two, you have to obsess about employee satisfaction. First employee net promoter score. First, if your employees are number one, they’ll take care of your customer. But if your employee start feeling the customer’s more important, they’re going to feel like they’re overworked. But if you obsessed about your employees being happy, obsessed about investing in your employees, obsessed about their growth, they’ll go through brick walls for you to grow their company.

Speaker 4:

The first time I ever heard that was with Southwest airlines, right? Face it always talked about there. Tons of questions coming in. Unfortunately can’t get to all of them. No folks were probably going to reach out to you, Cameron, if they want to do that on some best places at Twitter, is it email, what’s the best place to find you?

Cameron Herold:

If they go to Cameron, harold.com is my main website, COO Alliance. If they have a second in command, they should really plug their CEO Alliance into that, for sure. And then the invest in your leaders, cars, for sure they should all be taking a look at all. Five of my books are available on Amazon, audible and iTunes. And then the second in command podcast on, you know anywhere you listen to podcasts, really

Speaker 4:

Perfect. Well, this was recorded. So if anybody missed anything or they want to send it to a friend, they can, they can find it. And we’ll, we’ll send it out and we’ll, we’ll copy you on that email. Cameron,

Cameron Herold:

They want me to ever do a similar session to this or a normal presentation to their company, and they want to book me over resume for 5,000 to do it or in person for 30, but over zoom is amazing. They can send me an email that we can line that up too.

Speaker 4:

Perfect. Well, thank you everybody really appreciate it. Cameron cannot. Thank you enough. Thanks. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks everybody. So Marie resources and resume spies. Appreciate bringing you guys as, so thanks again. Alright. Bye-Bye love it.