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October of two thousand, I walked into one and under
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got junk. You know, I've been working with Brian for
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a few weeks and he came in one morning and
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he was all excited that he'd been out the night
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before with our head of marketing knocking down signs of
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our competitors with a hockey stick. One of them was
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driving and one was sitting on the windowsill of the
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passenger seat, and they were knocking down street signs that
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our competitors put up. And I'm like, first off, if
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I ever hear you talk about that again, I'm leaving. Secondly,
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you don't beat our competitors by hurting their marketing. We
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beat our competitors by out marketing them. So now what
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I want you to do is drive around the city
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and look for their signs, leave them up, and every
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time we see one of their signs, put five of
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them around. I want to do what we call search
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and destroy, and we're going to cut off their marketing
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with a geometry of this whole destroy marketing.
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Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Mall
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and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
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authentic transformation in each episode, I'll bring you insights from
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leading experts to explore traumrie, cuver ever, mindfulness practices, positive psychology,
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and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This
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is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change,
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helping you find alignment with the person you are always
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meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't
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just about thinking differently but feeling differently. Science shows us
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that true change happens when we align not just our minds,
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but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts.
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This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
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and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind
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All access, membership and community, a space designed to help
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you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live
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with greater clarity and purpose.
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With over one thousand.
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Hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs,
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You'll learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts
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in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift
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your mindset and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your
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full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit
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and course we've ever produced, a Treasure Trouble Wisdom worth
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over ten thousand dollars in growing, plus live gatherings and
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an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're
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ready to step into a more heart centered, connected and
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conscious life, I invite you to join us. Clip the
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link to learn more and start your journey today. What
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if scaling your business wasn't about working harder but thinking
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more vividly? In this episode, I sit down with the
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one and only Cameron Herald, founder of the COEO Alliance
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and the strategic mind behind the explosive growth of companies
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like one eight hundred Got Junk. He's not just a
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CEO whisperer, as he's been called. He's a vision a
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who believes your business needs a three year future.
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You can feel.
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Cameron takes us on a deeply insightful journey through the
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power of vision, delegation and aligned leadership. We explore the
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essence of what it means to build, not just scale,
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a company where people thrive and results speak for themselves.
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Whether you're a solopreneur breaking the six figure mark, or
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a leader aiming to grow from ten million to thirty million.
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There's gold in this conversation. Let's dive in miam is
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doctor Fleet Mall your co host for the session and
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I'm thrilled to be here today with Cameron Harold.
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Welcome, Cameron, Thank Fleet, Thanks very much for having me.
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I appreciate this.
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I want to jump in and talk about your books,
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Vivivision and Double Double in, both of which cover the
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idea of the vividvision, and really talk about the importance
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of that. But I wonder if you could give me
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just a really thumbnail sketch. I know it's hard to
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do it, just a minute or two of your kind
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of a little bit of your Orange story, because I
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know you played a major role in scaling we got
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you Oka, and I think everybody's seen that we got
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Junk Trucks franchise somewhere in their town or city, and
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I know you played a major role in scaling that.
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So how did you go from a successful second in
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command scaling big company to being the consultant, then coach
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and teacher you are today?
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Sure?
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Yeah, And actually the brand was called one eight hundred
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Got Junk, and we actually took a very fragmented industry,
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professionalized it, cleaned it up. I was the CEO of
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that company. My best friend Brian was the CEO, and
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I helped them go from fourteen employees to three thy
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one hundred employees in six years, from two million to
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one hundred and six million in revenue. That was the
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fourth company that I'd built. So I also was a
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behind the scenes as a second command for a private
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currency company. I was the VP of corporate development for
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another brand that became Gerber Auto Collision in the United
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States and Boyd Autobody in Canada is the largest collision
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repair chain in the world. And I'd opened up the
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West coast of the United States for a group called
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College Pro Painters back in the late nineties and or
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early ninetyes Storry in late eighties. In fact, got known
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for hiring Kimball Musk back in nineteen ninety three. Elon's
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younger brother worked for me and his cousin Peter Reeve,
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who a w ontebuilt Solar City. So it was this
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kind of track record of having coached all these entrepreneurs
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thirty years ago, building four brands. When I left one
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to under got junk seventeen years ago. Now I started
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getting asked to do speaking events all over the world,
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and people that started using my systems and content started
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to really scale, getting ranked as best companies to work for.
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And I guess there was somehow this little magic dusk.
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Somebody said, how come everything you touch turned to gold?
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And I laughed and I said, I only touched gold.
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So I think that's the cheat sheet that I have,
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is that I only work with really great companies. I
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don't work with any bad ones.
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So I just really want to let our audiors know that,
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because what you're going to be sharing with us today
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is not business school theory.
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This is real world experience.
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So coming back to your books, Vivid Vision and Double Vision,
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which a guid to really contents leaders in setting a
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clear roadmap for their growth. What is a vivid vision
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and why is it critical to successfully scaling a business?
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So the concept of the vivid vision is one that
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I learned from an Olympic coach. Back in nineteen ninety eight,
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I was at a lunch that was run for a
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bunch of entrepreneurs in Vancouver, Canada. We were part of
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a group called the Entrepreneurs Organization. Back in the day,
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it was yeo and one hundred and twenty of us
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got invited to the lunch, and only sixteen of us
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showed up. And this Olympic coach was a sports psychologist.
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Talked about how athletes used visualization in their sport to
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become the best in the planet, and he said, if
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we could ever take visualization and bring it into the
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business world, we'd be able to succeed. So we talked
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a lot about different businesses that were good at visualization,
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you know, creative agencies, marketing agencies, and we came up
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with the idea of homebuilders who would talk to the
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homeowner and get the vision of what the homeowner wanted.
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The contractor would create the blueprints or the plans to
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build that home, and then they would hand the vision
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and the blueprints to the employees and the employees could
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build a home without ever talking to the homeowner. We thought, wow,
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Imagine if the employees and a company could build a
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company without the CEO having to be there every day
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to tell people what to do and hold them accountable
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and manage them. Imagine if vision could align. So I
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worked on a vision for the private currency company that
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we built out and took public Brian was building one
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out for his company called the Rubbish Boys, and we
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saw it being successful in our businesses. When I then
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joined Brian as his COO for what was now called
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one eight hundred God Junk, he had just taken twelve
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years to get to two million in revenue. He handed
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me his two thousand and three when I now call
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that vividvision document, he used to call it a painted picture.
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And he handed it to me, and I was so
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clear on what he wanted to build that I gave
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him the plan of how to make it happen.
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And he's like, I don't know how to do.
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Any of this stuff, and I'm like, no, I do,
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because I've already built two other franchise companies, so I
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can actually make it come true. You just stay focused
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on where we're going and let me focus on the
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execution and operations and culture and kind of building it
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all out. So we then saw it really come to
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scale well, and then from there again, I've been coaching
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CEOs in now in twenty nine countries. I've coached well
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over a few hundred entrepreneurs and all the way up
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to the CEO of Sprint Marcelo Claret and his COO.
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I coached them for eighteen months. I worked with the
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royal family that owns the country of Katar and worked
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with them around vision and core values and core purpose.
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So anytime I've worked with these brands, it starts with
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that vision, almost like a picture on the front of
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the jigsaw puzzle. We have no idea what we're going
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to build unless we can see that picture. So that
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was the genesis of where it came from. The vivid
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vision becomes a four or five page description, a written
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document that describes what the company looks like, acts like,
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and feels like three years in the future, Almost as
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if you were walking around your company and you described
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what you saw, the people can then figure out how
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to make that come true.
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So this division, it's a narrative document that not only
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includes the numbers, but what the culture will look and
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feel like, what your customer base will look and feel like. Really,
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it's a real like your former party used the term
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painted picture. It is a painted picture and narrative of
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what that company is going to look and feel and
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be like in three years.
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Yeah, And the reason I changed the terminology from the
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painted picture because I'm the one who really got that
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well known. In my first book, Double Double, that's what
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I called it, and was speaking all of the world
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on it was People thought it was like a vision board,
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the concept that John Ashraff popularized in the movie The Secret.
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So they thought it was a bunch of pictures. But
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the problem with a vision board is that's really good
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for one person. But a picture says a thousand words.
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You know, if I showed you the picture of my
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room that I'm sitting in right now, you might think
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that it's all about the picture of the COO Alliance.
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What I wanted to show you is the stairways and
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the white walls, So my picture might only illustrate the
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white walls, whereas you thought it was the picture hanging
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on the wall was important.
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Right.
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So a written document is impossible to misunderstand because it's
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all written in that description. So you're going to talk
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about what sales looks like and feels like, what operations
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is like, what it engineering customers, what your customers are
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writing about you on board, what the media is reporting
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about you, how you work with your partners, And again
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you don't say how it comes true because you don't
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know you're describing it in the finished state, and then
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the team can figure out one or two projects to
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make every sentence come true. And then you just build
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that vivid vision. Kind you reverse engineer it, so you
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plan your work and work your plan.
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So I like I talk just a little bit about
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operationalizing that, and you kind of begin to describe that
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just there. You know, in your early stage of entrepreneurship,
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a solopreneur or an entrepreneur with a small team may
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not have a COO. You know, they may be wearing
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three or four hats. So how do they begin really
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operationalizing this and then build a team that can make
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that vividvision happen and begin to make that transition into
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a true CEO role.
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So the first part is when the CEO or entrepreneur
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is very clear on what they're building, they can start
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to figure out the core components to build. First, much
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like buildilding your home, you have to build the foundation.
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Then you have to put in the walls. Then you
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put in the electrical and the plumbing. You don't hang
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the cabinets and paint the place and then pour the
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foundation later. There's an order of operations in building it.
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So the entrepreneur has to build their company in that
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right methodology. It starts with vision, with understanding core values,
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who your customer is. It starts with hiring one or
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two core people. And the first person that almost anybody
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should hire is a fractional or a part time executive assistant.
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Right if you don't have an assistant, you are one,
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and you need to get all that min work off
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your plate to free you up to work on the
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things that you're either really good at or that really
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feed you with energy, or that are at least worth
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the amount of money that you're doing. But there's no
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way that an entrepreneur should be doing five dollars an
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hour or ten dollars hour tasks that can be offshore.
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So it's starting with hiring those people. And then the
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first few key early hires tend to be the jack
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of all trades, master of none, the people that are
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really good at handling projects. They're really good to saying yeah,
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I'll figure that out, Yes i'll grab that, Sure, I'll
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try to work with this technology. You don't want the
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full time experts because you can't really afford them. The
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second layer, though, and where we are really nicely set
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up now in the kind of mid to twenty twenties
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is we have access to technology and to a global
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workforce of fractional people that can work from their laptop
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from anywhere in the world for five hours a week,
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ten hours a month, just on exactly.
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What you need them to be.
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Twenty years ago, we had to hire a full time person.
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They had to come to an office and they had
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to work on and we had to find stuff for
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them to do. Now you don't have to do that,
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So the early stage entrepreneur, you can hire some fractional
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freelance experts to work in little chunks for you. And
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then the last part of this is I always try
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to work on revenue generating ideas first and build the
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better products second, because there's not a single problem that
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exists that writing a check can't solve. So if you
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generate more revenue, you generate more gross margin. You can
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use that money to buy your way into better success
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as you scale. That would be some of the early
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starting points.
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Another way I've heard that said is there isn't a
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problem that sales can solve. So let's say the entrepreneur
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sorry has proof of concept, they have some momentum, and
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now it really is about scaling the business, whether it's
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growing up from six figures to seven or seven to
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eight or beyond, their role begins to change, and that
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can be a tough transition to make, and I think
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a lot of CEOs may falter or even fail because
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they don't make that transition.
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Yeah, one of the transition points is starting to delegate
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everything except genius. Right, so you're starting to hire people
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that are better than you that you can delegate some
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of those core roles too, so you can work on
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the stuff you're really good at and feeds you with energy.
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The next hurdle that happens to a lot of entrepreneurs
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is they've kind of delegated everything and now they have
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a team of people that are doing all the stuff
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that are reporting to them, and the entrepreneurs wonder what
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they're supposed to do, so they often try to break stuff,
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or they do what I call seagull management. They kind
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of swoop into an area, they shit all over everybody,
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and they fly away. None of that is really helpful,
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So the CEO needs to reinvent their role, or they
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stay focused on vision, they stay focused on culture, They
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inspect what they expect, they do skip level meetings. They
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understand that their role is to grow people and develop people,
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to be thinking strategically, to be meeting with partners, to
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plug themselves into a number of different mastermind communities. I
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know that you and I are both members of different masterminds,
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and I believe that everybody should be in at least two,
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because I think it's like ideas having sex. You'll take
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an idea from the Genius network and an idea from
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strategic coach, and those two ideas have an idea baby,
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and that's what you're looking for. But everybody should be
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in kind of a trade type of a group, like
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if it's a if you run a marketing agency, you
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should be at lots of events with other marketing agency owners,
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and then you should also be at one where there's
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no marketing agency owners or just other business people so
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that you can see your business from a different perspective.
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Well, I think you shared kind of the secret of
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making that transition there, because often the CE as entrepreneur,
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the one who's you know, built somewhat of the team.
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They started off being really good at product creation, or
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really good at providing a service, or just a really
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great salesperson. They were really good at the stuff they
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now need to replace, and they don't have any experience
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doing this other stuff you're talking about. So that idea
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of getting into a mastermind and it has been it
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has really been a huge value for me in my
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experience with it. You start rubbing shoulders, whether they' CEOs
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and other entrepreneurs, and you start learning what do entrepreneurs
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do at that next level.
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You get to experience it directly totally.
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I've attended ten different Mastermind events in twenty twenty four.
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Wow, I can name them.
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You know, I was in multiple other Mastermind communities over
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the last twenty five years. I started in the first
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one back at the Entrepreneurs Organization in nineteen ninety five,
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so thirty years ago is when I got involved in
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the first Mastermind.
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So my kind of MBA is.
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My mentor board of advisors or all these people that
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I've met from all over the world that I can
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tap into. You know, two of my friends, Dan Sullivan
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and Ben Hardy wrote a book called Who Not How,
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and they actually and I in multiple masterminds with both
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of them. They identified that in the old days, we
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had to be the smartest person in the room, right
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you had to know how to solve every problem because
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there was no way to connect with all these other experts.
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Nor know who they are.
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Now it's about understanding, well, there's a person somewhere who's
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probably online or in a freelance group or on a
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social platform that can solve this problem. I have to
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know where they are, how to connect to them, and
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then see if they can help me figure it out.
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So entrepreneurs' skills no longer have to be the smartest
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person in the room. We have to know how to
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connect with all these people. And it's really interesting watching
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gen Z right now. The kids who grew up playing
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multiperson playing video games are very used to solving problems
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with lots of other people over headsets and video and
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chatting and collaborating and problem solving, and that's actually the
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way business is being done today. Whereas you know, thirty
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years ago, you were the one person playing the video
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game by yourself. Maybe you'd talk to your friend at
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school and then you go back and try it out.
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That way of learning has accelerated things.
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It's really interesting to see that somehow serendipitously, young people
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are being prepared for these roles, or maybe it's somehow
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been co created that way.
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Remember when you and I were growing up that we
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had to learn how to type. We take typing class
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to learn and we had to learn the letters on
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the keyboard and over. When my son was four years old,
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I said to his mom, we have to teach him
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how to type. And I went into his bedroom and
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he was typing on the computer. I said, how did
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you learn how to type? He said, well, that's right here.
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I'm like, well, how did you learn where the letters are?
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He said, well, they're right there. Like I'm like wow,
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Like a four year old was typing as fast as
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I could type with it. So yeah, they adapt and
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learn these new skills, and our job is to now
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learn from them as much as think that we have
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the wisdom right often we have. We don't really have
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thirty years experience. We've got five years experience, six times
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in a row.
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Absolutely.
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So let's talk a little bit about you know, some
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of the challenges as we begin to scale, cash flow
387
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can become a real issue. Profit really gets squeezed. You
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start building your team and suddenly got a much bigger
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cost structure and what you thought you had, you know,
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this really profitable business that was almost like printing money,
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and suddenly you know you're looking for profit. So operational
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efficiency becomes really important managing cash for all these kind
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of things.
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So I wonder if you could talk a little bit.
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Yeah, you know, I talk about cash being like oxygen.
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Right, Cash is the entrepreneurial in every business's oxygen. Brian
397
00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:28.880
and I almost bankrupted one eight hundred got junk when
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we were one hundred million dollars in revenue and we
399
00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:34.440
were earning big profitability because we didn't understand cash flow.
400
00:18:34.960 --> 00:18:37.039
So I remember when I was about four years old,
401
00:18:37.079 --> 00:18:38.880
my dad threw a penny in the swimming pool and
402
00:18:38.920 --> 00:18:40.640
I kind of ran down or dove down to get
403
00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:43.000
the penny, and I came up gasping for air. He's like,
404
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you're not going to die. You were down three feet,
405
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you know you're okay. And then I go scuba diving
406
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for the first time and I run out of oxygen
407
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at eighty feet. Well, I'm not going to die, but
408
00:18:51.680 --> 00:18:54.359
I got pretty sick. But if I go scuba diving
409
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and I run out of air at one hundred and
410
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forty feet, I will die. So the way that you
411
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run a one person company changes when you get to
412
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three to ten to thirty to one hundred to three hundred,
413
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right or a million to three million to ten million
414
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to thirty.
415
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To one hundred million.
416
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Your cash flow statement becomes critical when you're a small company.
417
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If you need some money, you borrow some money from
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your bank account. You don't pay yourself, you don't submit
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expenses for a few months. Maybe you max out a
420
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couple credit cards. All good, you make it up and
421
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you figure it out in a month. A couple months later,
422
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you pay yourself back. That doesn't work when you're a
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twenty million dollar company anymore. You can't not pay just
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yourself to meet payroll. You know, you can't just max
425
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out a couple of credit cards. We actually had no
426
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credit line and no loans, and we went to a
427
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bank after spending five million dollars of our cash on
428
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renovations and an office move, some new technology, some bonuses,
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00:19:45.559 --> 00:19:48.039
some taxes. We spent all this cash and we thought,
430
00:19:48.119 --> 00:19:49.720
let's just go to the bank and get a credit line.
431
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We have number two company in Canada, worked for six
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consecutive years of one hundred percent revenue growth hundred and
433
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six million. They're like, no, we can't loan your money.
434
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We're like why. They're like, because you don't know how
435
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to run a business.
436
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We're like, yeah, we do.
437
00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:02.759
They said, no, you would have come to us last
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00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:04.759
year when you had five million in the bank. But
439
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:06.480
the fact that you're one hundred million dollar business with
440
00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:10.039
no credit line means you don't understand cashflow management. Brian
441
00:20:10.119 --> 00:20:12.559
had to borrow four hundred and twenty thousand dollars from
442
00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:15.119
his mom that night to meet payroll. We had to
443
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fire twenty two people. The following week, we had to
444
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call all of our suppliers and tell them they weren't
445
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being paid for sixty to ninety days until we could
446
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turn the company around. And we had our new CFO
447
00:20:25.640 --> 00:20:29.039
generating cash flow statements on a daily basis and at
448
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times twice a day.
449
00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:32.640
So companies need.
450
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To hire a fractional CFO to come in and help
451
00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:40.960
them actually understand how to run the business financially when
452
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they're small. A controller and a director of finance sometimes
453
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don't have those right skills, nor does the entrepreneur often
454
00:20:48.319 --> 00:20:51.720
know what skills are even needed. But getting a fractional
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00:20:51.759 --> 00:20:53.640
CFO to come in and help you with some of
456
00:20:53.640 --> 00:20:56.839
those systems around cash is really critical. And a big
457
00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:58.400
opportunity for smaller companies.
458
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At what stage would you say that needs to happen.
459
00:21:01.319 --> 00:21:03.880
I'm kind of at that place myself, and I'm reading
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by a fractional CFO and learning what I can from her.
461
00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:09.359
But at what stage do you think that's necessary?
462
00:21:09.759 --> 00:21:11.960
Sure, I talk about the ones in the threes a
463
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lot where a company changes, when it goes from one
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employee to three, from three to ten, ten to thirty
465
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thirty to one hundred, three hundred. We can talk about
466
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that in a second. This stage is when you go
467
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from three million to ten million. When you're a company
468
00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:25.920
going from three million in revenue to ten million in revenues,
469
00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:28.759
when you need a fractional CFO to give you the
470
00:21:28.799 --> 00:21:31.559
proper budgets, the proper cost flow, to look at your
471
00:21:31.559 --> 00:21:34.240
financials on a quarterly basis and pick holes in them
472
00:21:34.279 --> 00:21:37.079
for you to help you, you know, optimize, to help
473
00:21:37.079 --> 00:21:39.240
you go through your general ledger, the stuff that nobody
474
00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:41.559
knows how to do. Once you get to ten million
475
00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:44.200
in revenue, you've probably got a proper VP of finance
476
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:46.759
as you're scaling to thirty million, but it's usually that
477
00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:49.599
three million to ten million zone that is the death
478
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:52.400
trap for the you know, oxygen starved entrepreneur.
479
00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:56.880
That's extremely helpful. So how about operational efficiency and to
480
00:21:57.240 --> 00:22:00.000
as you grow up so your profit isn't getting squeezed
481
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:01.440
out by inefficiencies.
482
00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:05.279
And yeah, I didn't realize when I launched my online training.
483
00:22:05.319 --> 00:22:07.839
I launched an online training course that I've got thousands
484
00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:10.119
and thousands of companies going through. It's called invest in
485
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:12.839
Your Leaders. And I didn't realize that when I launched
486
00:22:12.839 --> 00:22:15.640
it that the reason for it was actually going to
487
00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:18.920
help companies on their operational efficiency. I thought all I
488
00:22:18.960 --> 00:22:21.119
was doing was helping them grow the skill sets of
489
00:22:21.160 --> 00:22:23.920
their people. What happens when you're a company in the
490
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:27.920
three employee to ten and ten employee to thirty zone
491
00:22:28.680 --> 00:22:30.559
is that your managers.
492
00:22:30.279 --> 00:22:32.160
Have never really run companies before.
493
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:35.000
They're the jack of all trades, master of nuns their
494
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:38.519
director level, So they don't necessarily know how to say no,
495
00:22:39.279 --> 00:22:41.599
They don't necessarily how to get more done with less
496
00:22:41.599 --> 00:22:45.680
people faster, they don't necessarily think about optimization and automation
497
00:22:45.799 --> 00:22:49.200
and AI now, and their answer to every problem tends
498
00:22:49.240 --> 00:22:51.559
to be hire more people. So when you go in
499
00:22:51.599 --> 00:22:54.559
this trap from ten to thirty and thirty to one hundred.
500
00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:57.319
You often get all this bloat. Once you get to
501
00:22:57.359 --> 00:22:59.680
one hundred employees. You tend to start hiring your first
502
00:22:59.799 --> 00:23:03.279
LEADLeadership team and they can start firing thirty percent of
503
00:23:03.319 --> 00:23:06.359
the company. That's not really necessary. I heard an interesting
504
00:23:06.440 --> 00:23:08.839
number the other day, and this is kind of scary,
505
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:12.720
but fifty percent of a company's output is produced by
506
00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:15.359
the square root of their number of employees. So I'll
507
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:17.799
explain that to you that if you've got one hundred employees,
508
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:20.279
the square rood of one hundred is ten, so ten
509
00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:22.759
times ten is one hundred. So fifty percent of a
510
00:23:22.799 --> 00:23:25.480
company's output is produced by ten percent of the one
511
00:23:25.559 --> 00:23:28.839
hundred people. That's scary to think about. If you've got
512
00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:31.880
twenty employees, the square it of your number there would
513
00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:35.599
be four and a half, right, So four and a
514
00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:39.119
half people producing fifty percent of your output. A lot
515
00:23:39.119 --> 00:23:41.680
of the early stage managers don't know how to fire people.
516
00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:43.680
They don't know how to say no, They don't know
517
00:23:43.720 --> 00:23:48.319
how to say not now. And often the entrepreneur isn't
518
00:23:48.359 --> 00:23:50.880
good at saying no either. So somebody will come to
519
00:23:50.960 --> 00:23:53.519
them and say, oh, we need to hire XYZ. Oh
520
00:23:53.559 --> 00:23:56.279
how much is it going to cost? Eighty grand. Oh crap, Okay,
521
00:23:56.319 --> 00:23:59.000
go do it. They make a one minute decision on
522
00:23:59.039 --> 00:24:02.440
an eighty thousand dollars expense. If a marketing manager went
523
00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:04.279
to that same entrepreneur and said I want to do
524
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:07.400
a marketing campaign for eighty grand, they'd have to sit
525
00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:09.319
down for an hour and a half and pitch them.
526
00:24:09.519 --> 00:24:11.279
They'd have to show them the plan and the budget
527
00:24:11.279 --> 00:24:13.039
and the numbers and what the ROI was going to
528
00:24:13.079 --> 00:24:16.279
be like. But because the entrepreneurs often think the solution
529
00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:18.920
really is more people, we end up with all of
530
00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:22.359
this kind of operational debt. And that's an early stage
531
00:24:22.359 --> 00:24:25.720
company problem. It also magnifies again when you go from
532
00:24:25.759 --> 00:24:28.960
three hundred to one thousand, when you start becoming very corporate,
533
00:24:29.240 --> 00:24:32.240
when there's politics and silos, and that's kind of starts
534
00:24:32.279 --> 00:24:32.920
to happen again.
535
00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:34.480
Well, that points to something else.
536
00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:36.880
When you're going from one to three, three to ten,
537
00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:39.880
ten to thirty pretty early on, the people that got
538
00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:41.960
you to one point aren't necessarily the people that are
539
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:43.599
going to take you to the next level. I want
540
00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:45.200
if you could talk, because that could be a painful
541
00:24:45.240 --> 00:24:49.200
process for a founder a CEO to have people that
542
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:51.720
have really helped you get to one place and you
543
00:24:51.759 --> 00:24:53.680
suddenly realize they're not the people they are going to
544
00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:54.799
take you to the next level.
545
00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:55.720
It's funny.
546
00:24:55.720 --> 00:24:57.279
You and I were chatting before we went live, and
547
00:24:57.279 --> 00:24:59.160
you mentioned that you're in a masterminder or friends with
548
00:24:59.240 --> 00:25:01.880
Jeff Walker from Product Launch Formula. I was sitting beside
549
00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:05.319
Jeff Walker, and I was watching a speaker, Clayton Mask,
550
00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:07.960
who built Infusionsoft, and I spoke with Clay at lunch
551
00:25:08.039 --> 00:25:10.640
that day and he and I both agreed on this number.
552
00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:13.960
A mid level manager, like an early stage manager in
553
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:18.240
a company, a director junior VP ish can usually only
554
00:25:18.279 --> 00:25:20.839
stay in that role as the head of that area
555
00:25:20.960 --> 00:25:23.559
through two doubles of revenue of the size of the
556
00:25:23.559 --> 00:25:26.519
company before it's too hard to stay in the third double.
557
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:29.119
So let's say your company does two million in revenue
558
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:31.599
today and you're the director of marketing. You can probably
559
00:25:31.640 --> 00:25:34.240
be the director again at four million. You can probably
560
00:25:34.279 --> 00:25:36.680
be the director again at eight million. By the time
561
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:39.680
it gets to sixteen, it's too substantially different than it
562
00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:41.480
was when you came in his director at two million.
563
00:25:42.119 --> 00:25:44.400
Ben Horowitz, who wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things,
564
00:25:44.680 --> 00:25:47.839
said the person camely go through one triple so I'd
565
00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:50.119
be from two million to six, but it's too hard
566
00:25:50.119 --> 00:25:54.000
to go from six to eighteen, right, So that tends
567
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:56.839
to be the death zone is after two doubles. When
568
00:25:56.880 --> 00:25:59.160
I was the COO at one A under god Junk,
569
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:02.079
we went through six doubles in the size of the
570
00:26:02.079 --> 00:26:04.039
company over six and a half years. We went from
571
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:07.079
two million, we doubled six consecutive times. I was the
572
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:10.079
last of the six leadership team members to get replaced.
573
00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:13.319
The reason I was able to go so long was
574
00:26:13.359 --> 00:26:16.519
I'd already built two other franchise companies before, so it
575
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.519
kind of gave me a head start. And Brian was
576
00:26:19.559 --> 00:26:21.559
my best friend and the best man at my wedding
577
00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:24.519
before I even started working for him, so he had
578
00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:26.599
this huge amount of trust and relationship.
579
00:26:26.920 --> 00:26:28.400
So I think that gave me a bit of a
580
00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:30.680
maybe a buffer by about a year or so.
581
00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:33.480
But I probably should have left the company when we
582
00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:36.960
were at fifty million. It got operationally very complicated for
583
00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:38.440
me by the time we got to one hundred. The
584
00:26:38.559 --> 00:26:41.480
key is keep growing the skills of your people at
585
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:44.039
the rate that your company is scaling. Right again, my
586
00:26:44.119 --> 00:26:48.200
investing in your leader's course covers things like situational leadership, interviewing,
587
00:26:48.559 --> 00:26:53.160
running effective meetings, coaching, one on one coaching sessions, delegation,
588
00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:57.319
time management, project management, the core executive functioning skills that
589
00:26:57.359 --> 00:26:59.680
people need to not only be trained in, but they
590
00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:02.200
need to be certified in those skills. And if you
591
00:27:02.240 --> 00:27:05.000
can train them in those skills and grow them, you're
592
00:27:05.039 --> 00:27:07.839
giving them a chance to stay. But if you expect
593
00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:11.000
that in the nineteen seventies, if you joined a company,
594
00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:14.680
the company didn't grow that quickly the business climate. Even
595
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:18.039
if it grew, the business climate didn't change. God, we
596
00:27:18.119 --> 00:27:21.279
only got introduced to chat GPT two years ago and
597
00:27:21.319 --> 00:27:23.519
the stuff that it's doing right now is blowing our mind.
598
00:27:23.559 --> 00:27:27.039
And we're just getting started. So companies are changing so quickly.
599
00:27:27.079 --> 00:27:29.200
The skill sets need to change to it. There's a
600
00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:31.000
quote that I heard years ago that if the rate
601
00:27:31.039 --> 00:27:33.799
of change outside your business is greater than the rate
602
00:27:33.839 --> 00:27:36.799
of change inside your business, you're out of business. And
603
00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:38.279
I think that we need to be mindful of that
604
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:40.680
with our executives. We have to keep investing in them
605
00:27:41.039 --> 00:27:44.200
and growing their skills or the company will outgrow them.
606
00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:46.319
So you're pointing something really critical.
607
00:27:46.400 --> 00:27:48.279
Investing in our people so they can grow with the
608
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:51.480
company and when we need different people, or we need
609
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:53.400
to move people, or we need to you know, we're
610
00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:56.240
not doing somebody a service by keeping them in the
611
00:27:56.240 --> 00:27:59.599
wrong seat, you know, to use John Allin's idea getting
612
00:27:59.599 --> 00:28:01.079
the right pla people on the bus and the right
613
00:28:01.119 --> 00:28:04.680
seat some of the bus. If we're reluctant to transition
614
00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:06.720
to get the right people on the right seat, we're
615
00:28:06.759 --> 00:28:08.759
really not doing them a service in the long run,
616
00:28:09.079 --> 00:28:09.279
you know.
617
00:28:09.319 --> 00:28:11.759
And it's interesting, I have not seen a company yet
618
00:28:11.799 --> 00:28:14.720
in all of my years at advising and coaching companies globally,
619
00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:18.519
I can't think of a single company that I've seen
620
00:28:18.599 --> 00:28:21.519
or really worked with that works hard enough at finding
621
00:28:21.559 --> 00:28:24.359
the wrong people and getting them out of the company
622
00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:28.160
fast enough. We talk about recruiting and interviewing and selection
623
00:28:28.319 --> 00:28:31.440
and onboarding and training and rights like, but we never
624
00:28:31.480 --> 00:28:34.079
talk about how do we identify the underperformers, how do
625
00:28:34.119 --> 00:28:37.359
we identify the cultural cancers, how do we top grade faster?
626
00:28:37.519 --> 00:28:39.319
How do we actually have those tough and how do
627
00:28:39.359 --> 00:28:41.640
we top grade like it would be our mom leaving, like,
628
00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:44.279
how do we top grade with some empathy and care,
629
00:28:44.519 --> 00:28:46.480
you know, just because they.
630
00:28:46.359 --> 00:28:47.880
Don't fit in our company? Anymore.
631
00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:49.720
It doesn't mean you kick them to the curb, but
632
00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:54.160
you can have really strong outplacement, or you can grow
633
00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:56.319
them to a point and go, you know what, you're
634
00:28:56.359 --> 00:28:59.359
so good, you should go somewhere else for five years
635
00:28:59.559 --> 00:29:01.880
and maybe come back, or just go somewhere else anyway,
636
00:29:01.880 --> 00:29:04.000
because we're not gonna be able to keep promoting you.
637
00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:06.200
You've outgrown us. It's kind of like I love my
638
00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:08.279
two kids, they're twenty one and twenty three. I would
639
00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:09.799
love to have them around all the time, but my
640
00:29:09.960 --> 00:29:11.920
job is to kick him out of the house so
641
00:29:11.960 --> 00:29:14.839
they can become successful adults and you know, go on
642
00:29:14.880 --> 00:29:16.440
in their life. And sometimes we have to do that
643
00:29:16.480 --> 00:29:17.400
with our employees too.
644
00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:20.160
So you were speaking about leadership, let's go there.
645
00:29:20.240 --> 00:29:23.119
So, as a company grows, even in your early stages
646
00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:26.400
as a founder of CEO, you're transitioning.
647
00:29:25.839 --> 00:29:27.880
From being a doer to a leader. You have to
648
00:29:27.920 --> 00:29:29.079
transition from being.
649
00:29:28.920 --> 00:29:30.839
A doer to a leader, and then you have one
650
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:33.720
people to grow leaders right, So, and you can't do
651
00:29:33.799 --> 00:29:35.839
that if you don't understand how to lead yourself. So
652
00:29:35.880 --> 00:29:38.440
if you could talk a little bit about embracing leadership
653
00:29:38.440 --> 00:29:40.079
and learning leadership, how do you learn it?
654
00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:41.000
Where do you learn it?
655
00:29:41.599 --> 00:29:44.960
Yeah, I was taught a mantra back in nineteen eighty
656
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:47.480
six at a company called College Pro Painters. That's where
657
00:29:47.519 --> 00:29:49.720
I really learned. I call it my real world MBA.
658
00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:51.960
I opened up the West coast the United States for
659
00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:55.200
College Pro Painters. I hired Kimball Musk at College Pro
660
00:29:55.240 --> 00:29:58.000
Painters in nineteen ninety three. College Pro is written up
661
00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:00.839
in Elon Musk's biography by Walter I because I was
662
00:30:00.839 --> 00:30:03.240
a reference for them in their first round of funding
663
00:30:03.279 --> 00:30:06.119
for Zip Tou. The mantra that I was given was
664
00:30:06.240 --> 00:30:09.279
a leader's core job is to grow people. I think
665
00:30:09.319 --> 00:30:11.680
it might have been Tom Peters who might have said
666
00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:13.920
that in Search of Excellence is the leader's core job
667
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:14.799
is to grow people.
668
00:30:15.319 --> 00:30:18.359
So if that's our job, how do we grow them? Well,
669
00:30:18.400 --> 00:30:19.039
we grow them.
670
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:21.799
Around situational leadership, We grow them around coaching. We give
671
00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:25.400
them the soft skills of leadership, time management, project management.
672
00:30:25.480 --> 00:30:27.559
So I packaged them all up in my invest in
673
00:30:27.559 --> 00:30:29.759
Your Leaders course. What I did at one eight hunder
674
00:30:29.799 --> 00:30:34.440
got Junk is I first showed all the management team
675
00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:37.279
that they didn't know the skills, so one by one
676
00:30:37.319 --> 00:30:39.680
I would give them a pre test and they'd fail
677
00:30:39.759 --> 00:30:41.680
to test. They're like, WHOA, I don't know this. Like,
678
00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:44.400
here's a test around delegation, and they'd fail it. It
679
00:30:44.440 --> 00:30:46.799
was gamed to show them that they didn't know this stuff,
680
00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:49.680
and then I would teach them the skills around delegation.
681
00:30:49.839 --> 00:30:52.720
I'd let them practice delegation. I would give them some
682
00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:56.559
exercises to try out in their area around delegation. We'd
683
00:30:56.559 --> 00:30:58.599
come back and talk about it again. We'd watch some
684
00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:02.240
videos about delegation. They would do a post test around
685
00:31:02.279 --> 00:31:04.799
delegation and they'd be like, Oh, I learned this stuff,
686
00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:07.599
and then six weeks later I would make them do
687
00:31:07.640 --> 00:31:10.039
a different post test to see if they retained it.
688
00:31:10.519 --> 00:31:11.920
So I'd kind of set the gap.
689
00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:14.680
Teach it, practice it, role model it, try it out,
690
00:31:14.920 --> 00:31:17.839
use it in the job, retain it, prove that they
691
00:31:17.880 --> 00:31:21.440
retained it, and then I would actually certify them at
692
00:31:21.559 --> 00:31:24.640
using that skill and training someone else in the skill.
693
00:31:25.119 --> 00:31:28.480
If they were able to use it, demonstrate that they
694
00:31:28.519 --> 00:31:30.880
could use it and they were able to train someone,
695
00:31:31.319 --> 00:31:33.759
then I certified them at gold in that skill. So
696
00:31:33.799 --> 00:31:37.079
I tried to create a viral training program inside of
697
00:31:37.119 --> 00:31:39.359
the organization with the twelve core skills that I put
698
00:31:39.359 --> 00:31:41.519
into my invest new leader's course. That's kind of the
699
00:31:41.519 --> 00:31:44.400
mindset I have. That tends to be what Ge does.
700
00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:47.240
You know with their six sigma and their lean training,
701
00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:50.039
tends to be what Starbucks does with their training. At
702
00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:53.119
McDonald's University, there's a lot of these train the trainer
703
00:31:53.160 --> 00:31:56.759
and viral training programs that if a new chief financial
704
00:31:56.759 --> 00:32:00.720
officer comes into McDonald's the frontline burger, I can teach
705
00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:01.799
them how to run a store.
706
00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:04.200
Well, you in part answered my question because you know,
707
00:32:04.200 --> 00:32:05.680
how do you scale that and how do you find
708
00:32:05.759 --> 00:32:07.759
the time to do it? So this viral approach is
709
00:32:07.759 --> 00:32:11.079
training to train our post certification. But even still, for
710
00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:15.000
an entrepreneur, you know this part of your job. It's
711
00:32:15.039 --> 00:32:17.480
not getting new leads, it's not closing deals. So it's
712
00:32:17.480 --> 00:32:19.960
not getting the product out the door. It's something you
713
00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:23.079
have to do with a little longer term payoff. Yeah,
714
00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:25.119
but if you're not willing to make the investment, you're
715
00:32:25.160 --> 00:32:26.039
digging your own grave.
716
00:32:26.079 --> 00:32:26.720
I would assume.
717
00:32:27.279 --> 00:32:29.759
Yeah, I see so many entrepreneurial companies, Like a fly
718
00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:31.200
is trying to get out the window. They're going to
719
00:32:31.319 --> 00:32:33.200
keep working hard and keep banging their head on the window,
720
00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:35.119
and they end up dead on the window. Still, this
721
00:32:35.240 --> 00:32:38.400
becomes your job. Your job is to get good at
722
00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:40.720
developing people. It is to get good at growing people.
723
00:32:40.759 --> 00:32:44.319
I remember sitting in Marcello Claret's office. Marcelo was the
724
00:32:44.359 --> 00:32:47.720
CEO of Sprint. He'd actually built and sold his first
725
00:32:47.720 --> 00:32:50.079
company for over a billion dollars to soft Bank, and
726
00:32:50.119 --> 00:32:53.400
then Masa, the chairman of soft Bank, appointed Marcello as
727
00:32:53.400 --> 00:32:55.759
the CEO of Sprint. I was sitting in his office
728
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:57.920
in Kansas City. We were talking about his team top
729
00:32:57.920 --> 00:33:00.839
grading his employees, and he turned to me, is like,
730
00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:02.960
when are people not going to be the problem anymore?
731
00:33:03.400 --> 00:33:05.559
And I started laughing. I said, you're the eighty second
732
00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:08.480
largest company in the United States. People are always the problem.
733
00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:12.039
Our job is to continually get better at growing people,
734
00:33:12.039 --> 00:33:14.720
and you can't automate that. You can't put a software
735
00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:16.880
tool in place for that. We have to get better
736
00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:19.640
at learning situational leadership. We have to get better at coaching.
737
00:33:19.640 --> 00:33:21.640
We have to get better at praise. We have to
738
00:33:21.640 --> 00:33:24.559
be better at helping to develop them and growing their confidence.
739
00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:27.559
I remember Howard bhar used to who was the CEO
740
00:33:27.599 --> 00:33:30.240
at Starbucks for a while, used to spend two hours
741
00:33:30.279 --> 00:33:33.480
every single Friday, handwriting thank you notes and praise notes
742
00:33:33.519 --> 00:33:36.319
to people in stores, Like he spent five percent of
743
00:33:36.359 --> 00:33:39.799
his week handwriting notes. There's not an entrepreneur at five
744
00:33:39.839 --> 00:33:42.200
million in revenue who's watching right now that spends five
745
00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:44.920
hours a week, you know, handwriting notes or two hours
746
00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:48.039
a week, I'm sorry, handwriting notes. So it's learning those
747
00:33:48.079 --> 00:33:51.279
systems and tools. I remember when I was sixteen, my dad,
748
00:33:51.279 --> 00:33:54.359
who was an entrepreneur. Both my grandfather's were entrepreneurs. My
749
00:33:54.480 --> 00:33:56.079
dad sat me down and he said, I want to
750
00:33:56.079 --> 00:33:58.759
tell you something about being in business. You'll never be
751
00:33:58.799 --> 00:34:01.480
smart enough to figure this out on your own. He said,
752
00:34:01.519 --> 00:34:04.119
your R and D should stand for ripoff and duplicate.
753
00:34:04.599 --> 00:34:07.559
Go find the best systems that the best people are
754
00:34:07.559 --> 00:34:10.320
doing and put those in place. Go find the best
755
00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:12.639
tools that they're using, and put those in place. So
756
00:34:12.760 --> 00:34:15.239
all the stuff I learned at college pro, all the
757
00:34:15.239 --> 00:34:17.880
stuff I learned at Boyd Autobody and Gerber Auto Collision,
758
00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:20.000
all the stuff I learned at Ubarter at one hundred
759
00:34:20.039 --> 00:34:22.760
got junk. I package that stuff up and those become
760
00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:25.800
my books, Those become my coaching, those become my you know,
761
00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:28.719
my investing, your leader's course. I have CEOs paying me
762
00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:32.039
four thousand dollars for an hour of coaching, and then
763
00:34:32.039 --> 00:34:33.960
I have an Investing your Leader's course for five hundred
764
00:34:33.960 --> 00:34:37.079
dollars forever. You know which do you want?
765
00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:37.400
Right?
766
00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:40.039
But that's where entrepreneurs have to spend the time on that.
767
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:42.559
They've got to join mastermind communities. They have to be
768
00:34:42.599 --> 00:34:45.360
a part of these online communities to learn. This is
769
00:34:45.440 --> 00:34:48.199
not taking time away from your business. This is the
770
00:34:48.199 --> 00:34:50.679
classic work on the business instead of in the business.
771
00:34:51.079 --> 00:34:53.320
Entrepreneurs don't have to be good at doing all of this.
772
00:34:54.079 --> 00:34:57.000
They have to know that these skills exist and bring
773
00:34:57.039 --> 00:34:59.760
them back to their company and tell their team learn
774
00:34:59.800 --> 00:35:00.440
this stuff.
775
00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:01.239
Right.
776
00:35:01.400 --> 00:35:04.519
I now know that situational leadership is a skill. We
777
00:35:04.559 --> 00:35:06.519
all have to learn this. They don't have to be
778
00:35:06.559 --> 00:35:08.320
good at teaching it. They just have to know what exists.
779
00:35:08.599 --> 00:35:09.239
That's helpful.
780
00:35:09.719 --> 00:35:11.440
And I love that R and D should be rip
781
00:35:11.480 --> 00:35:14.000
off and duplicate. I mean people have called that modeling.
782
00:35:14.360 --> 00:35:17.559
Tony Robbinson and others say successfully his clues. You know,
783
00:35:17.639 --> 00:35:19.559
you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And things are
784
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:21.000
changing so fast anyway.
785
00:35:21.480 --> 00:35:23.440
Well, and I was never the smart kid. I wasn't
786
00:35:23.480 --> 00:35:25.320
able to go to a smart business school, right. I
787
00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:26.800
was the one who had to figure out the cheat
788
00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:28.840
sheets and the shortcuts. I was the one who saw
789
00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:31.360
that people were going to study really hard, but I'd
790
00:35:31.400 --> 00:35:33.039
end up dead on the windowsill. I was like, Oh,
791
00:35:33.039 --> 00:35:35.239
the cheat sheets over here, I can have a TA
792
00:35:35.280 --> 00:35:37.559
that can show me all of the last five years exams.
793
00:35:37.960 --> 00:35:39.000
I'll just study those.
794
00:35:39.559 --> 00:35:42.960
So let's talk again about scaling. I suspect a lot
795
00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:44.599
of people in our audience are going to be in
796
00:35:44.639 --> 00:35:49.199
that three employees to ten employees, maybe six figures to
797
00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:52.000
a million to a million, five or maybe in a
798
00:35:52.280 --> 00:35:54.480
moving from a million to three million and ten to
799
00:35:54.519 --> 00:35:55.800
thirty employees and so forth.
800
00:35:55.840 --> 00:35:57.320
But a lot of ourns will be in that area.
801
00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.239
And you can be sitting there going, you know you're going,
802
00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:03.039
and maybe you've even going very quickly, and then you're
803
00:36:03.039 --> 00:36:05.239
looking at the horizon, Well, how am I going to
804
00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:06.840
keep growing like this? And how am I going to
805
00:36:06.960 --> 00:36:09.199
Because I can't just keep doing more of X, I'm
806
00:36:09.199 --> 00:36:12.000
starting to run into operational efficiencies.
807
00:36:12.079 --> 00:36:14.320
I can't scale. I've got to, you know, I just
808
00:36:14.360 --> 00:36:16.719
don't see where the growth is going to come from.
809
00:36:16.760 --> 00:36:18.559
Where is the property going to come from? So I
810
00:36:18.559 --> 00:36:21.920
wonder if you can simplify that process for a CEO,
811
00:36:22.079 --> 00:36:26.000
founder and maybe his second in command, figuring out that
812
00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:29.800
that track, that future track to continued profitable growth.
813
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:32.880
The first part is to not worry about stuff that
814
00:36:33.039 --> 00:36:37.119
is so far out there that it's just too far
815
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:40.800
out to worry about, right, control the controllables. I remember
816
00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:43.360
when my first son was born and I was like,
817
00:36:43.400 --> 00:36:44.840
oh my gosh, what's it going to be like when
818
00:36:44.880 --> 00:36:48.159
he's a teenager? And then I reminded myself, he's only one.
819
00:36:48.679 --> 00:36:50.840
By the time he's you know, when he's twelve, all
820
00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:52.440
my friends will have a bunch of twelve year olds.
821
00:36:52.519 --> 00:36:54.840
We'll talk about I won't worry about teenage years until
822
00:36:54.840 --> 00:36:56.880
he's twelve. I'm not even gonna worry about what he's
823
00:36:56.920 --> 00:37:00.280
like going to school in the first year until he's four. Right,
824
00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:03.280
so you can climb up the stairway in the total
825
00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:06.039
dark by just touching one stare at a time. So
826
00:37:06.119 --> 00:37:08.239
the answers that you need to run a thirty million
827
00:37:08.280 --> 00:37:10.320
dollar company will be all around you.
828
00:37:10.360 --> 00:37:10.760
When you're a.
829
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:13.800
Twenty five million dollar company, when you're going from one
830
00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:17.599
to three, worry about going from one to three. It's
831
00:37:17.599 --> 00:37:21.360
almost like everybody who just keeps reading business books is
832
00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:25.400
doing themselves a disservice. They're reading books just in case
833
00:37:26.039 --> 00:37:28.800
they need that information. What I think they should be
834
00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:31.920
doing is reading business books and devouring podcasts and attending
835
00:37:31.960 --> 00:37:37.039
masterminds just in time. Read something that helps you work
836
00:37:37.079 --> 00:37:39.639
on what you're working on this quarter. If you're hiring
837
00:37:39.679 --> 00:37:42.639
three people this quarter, read everything you can about hiring
838
00:37:42.639 --> 00:37:45.079
and interviewing. But there's no reason for you to read
839
00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:47.079
about interviewing and hiring if you're not going to hire
840
00:37:47.079 --> 00:37:50.199
anybody for the next two years or year. So turn
841
00:37:50.280 --> 00:37:54.000
your training to very much just in time training instead
842
00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:56.719
of just in case training. That's number one. Number two
843
00:37:56.800 --> 00:37:58.880
is to remember that you don't have to anymore be
844
00:37:58.920 --> 00:38:01.480
the smartest person in the world. You have to know
845
00:38:01.519 --> 00:38:05.159
a bunch of the smart people. So invest in mastermind communities,
846
00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:09.079
invest in online groups, get into online forums and online
847
00:38:09.079 --> 00:38:12.519
groups on Facebook and on LinkedIn. Surround yourself with lots
848
00:38:12.559 --> 00:38:16.039
of smart people, and be okay with being vulnerable and saying, hey,
849
00:38:16.159 --> 00:38:18.199
do they know how to do this? If you go
850
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:21.920
on my Facebook feed, you'll see me asking questions, probably
851
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.280
weekly about things I ask one the other day, Hey,
852
00:38:25.360 --> 00:38:26.480
do they know how to really grow?
853
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:27.480
A podcast audience.
854
00:38:27.519 --> 00:38:31.039
I have fifty thousand people every week listening to my podcast,
855
00:38:31.119 --> 00:38:33.480
and I'm asking how to grow a podcast? Still, like
856
00:38:33.519 --> 00:38:35.840
I'm always trying to learn and develop and grow. So
857
00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:38.000
I think it's a little bit of that, right, The
858
00:38:38.039 --> 00:38:40.400
growth will come. Remember that you don't have to be
859
00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:42.920
the smartest person in the room. And then the last
860
00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.159
thing is, none of this stuff really matters. We're all
861
00:38:46.199 --> 00:38:48.639
going to die, like just you know, chill out and
862
00:38:48.639 --> 00:38:50.440
relax and enjoy the journey of a little bit because
863
00:38:50.440 --> 00:38:51.719
we're all going to end up as a kabab.
864
00:38:52.079 --> 00:38:53.519
We're just going to be meet on a stick at
865
00:38:53.519 --> 00:38:57.599
some point. So let's just not shake ourselves so seriously. Right,
866
00:38:58.280 --> 00:38:59.239
I think one.
867
00:38:59.039 --> 00:39:01.440
Of the dangers is we're trying to grow our companies
868
00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:04.440
is we can get into the shiny ball syndrome. You know,
869
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:07.480
there's this gadget, there's that marketing trick, there's this tactic,
870
00:39:07.519 --> 00:39:10.119
there's that that, and we're focusing and we're so inundated
871
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:12.840
with all that today. And then also just a tendency
872
00:39:13.280 --> 00:39:15.599
because we're thinkers, right, we got a million ideas to
873
00:39:15.679 --> 00:39:18.679
overcomplicate things. So I wondered if you could talk about
874
00:39:18.760 --> 00:39:20.800
just you know, I mean, I like that just in
875
00:39:20.880 --> 00:39:22.320
time strategy we were talking about.
876
00:39:22.360 --> 00:39:24.760
I think that's partially the same answer to this question.
877
00:39:24.840 --> 00:39:27.320
But how do we keep it simple and keep that
878
00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:32.039
laser focus on our company, our product, our customers, our growth.
879
00:39:32.760 --> 00:39:35.239
Well, okay, you just hit on a couple of parts there.
880
00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:38.639
One is around simplicity and one is focusing on our
881
00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:41.239
product and our customers and our growth. I want to
882
00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:42.719
start with that one first. I'll go back to the
883
00:39:42.719 --> 00:39:46.280
simplicity one second October of two thousand, I walked into
884
00:39:46.280 --> 00:39:48.719
one under got junk. You know, I've been working with
885
00:39:48.719 --> 00:39:51.119
Brian for a few weeks, and he came in one
886
00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:52.960
morning and he was all excited that he'd been out
887
00:39:53.039 --> 00:39:55.800
the night before with our head of marketing knocking down
888
00:39:55.960 --> 00:39:58.559
signs of our competitors with a hockey stick. One of
889
00:39:58.599 --> 00:40:00.480
them was driving and one was sitting on the window
890
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:02.559
sill of the passenger seat, and they were knocking down
891
00:40:02.639 --> 00:40:06.079
street signs that our competitors put up. And I'm like,
892
00:40:06.159 --> 00:40:08.480
first off, if I ever hear you talk about that again,
893
00:40:08.679 --> 00:40:13.000
I'm leaving. Secondly, you don't beat our competitors by hurting
894
00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:16.159
their marketing. We beat our competitors by out marketing them.
895
00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:17.920
So now what I want you to do is drive
896
00:40:17.960 --> 00:40:20.960
around the city and look for their signs, leave them up,
897
00:40:21.400 --> 00:40:23.559
and every time we see one of their signs, put.
898
00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:24.679
Five of them around.
899
00:40:25.360 --> 00:40:27.239
I want to do what we call search and destroy,
900
00:40:27.719 --> 00:40:29.679
and we're going to cut off their marketing with a
901
00:40:29.760 --> 00:40:32.000
geometry of this whole destroy marketing.
902
00:40:32.480 --> 00:40:33.719
And I said, if I ever hear.
903
00:40:33.599 --> 00:40:35.400
You come in the morning talking about them ripping off
904
00:40:35.400 --> 00:40:37.880
our Yellow page ads, or ripping off our flyers, or
905
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:40.159
following our pricing, I will walk out the door and
906
00:40:40.159 --> 00:40:41.719
you're screwed, because I'm the only one who knows how
907
00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:44.320
to grow franchise. So Brian's like, I won't, I'll never
908
00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:45.199
talk about them again.
909
00:40:45.480 --> 00:40:46.119
He never did.
910
00:40:46.679 --> 00:40:49.199
The company was called trash Busters. They ended up becoming
911
00:40:49.280 --> 00:40:51.599
what was called rid of it, but trash busters. We
912
00:40:51.679 --> 00:40:54.679
used to call them trash bastards, so trash busters. He
913
00:40:54.760 --> 00:40:57.800
never spoke of them again that day. They were actually
914
00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:00.719
operating in seven cities, and Brian was operating in twelve.
915
00:41:01.360 --> 00:41:04.119
Six and a half years later, we were operating in
916
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:07.039
three hundred and thirty cities. They were operating in two.
917
00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:10.719
They're out of business today, and he's eight hundred and
918
00:41:10.719 --> 00:41:14.159
fifty million in system wide sales because he stayed focused
919
00:41:14.239 --> 00:41:18.920
on his vision, his strategy, his plan, and he ignored
920
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:20.800
what the customers are doing. It's one of the reasons
921
00:41:20.840 --> 00:41:23.719
why you can push your vivid vision out about where
922
00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:26.639
your company's going, because they're not going to be able
923
00:41:26.679 --> 00:41:28.360
to execute like you can execute.
924
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.880
Right. The second part of that is to really obsess.
925
00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:34.199
About one core metric, and one core metric more than
926
00:41:34.239 --> 00:41:38.760
all others, and that's employee net promoter score. How happy
927
00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:41.800
are your employees. If your employees are happy, they're going
928
00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:44.000
to take care of your customers. If your employees are happy,
929
00:41:44.039 --> 00:41:46.280
they'll jump through brick walls for you. If your employees
930
00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:47.760
are happy, they're going to work harder, They're going to
931
00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:50.039
be more productive. They'll say yes. And if they do
932
00:41:50.119 --> 00:41:53.039
all that, your customers are going to be happy. Your
933
00:41:53.039 --> 00:41:54.920
customers will be taken care of. But if you obsess
934
00:41:54.920 --> 00:41:57.639
about the customer, your employees are going to feel overworked
935
00:41:57.679 --> 00:42:00.639
and underloved. And if you've got really happymployees and really
936
00:42:00.639 --> 00:42:02.719
happy customers, you can charge whatever you want.
937
00:42:03.280 --> 00:42:05.000
We were a premium priced product.
938
00:42:05.320 --> 00:42:07.960
There were thousands of companies out there and still are
939
00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:10.000
today that can do junk removal for far less than
940
00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.840
we can At college pro painters. We were thirty percent
941
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:16.159
more expensive than every pro who had thirty years experience
942
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:19.280
painting houses. And we had a day or two days.
943
00:42:19.519 --> 00:42:21.880
But because we focused on us and we cared about
944
00:42:21.880 --> 00:42:24.480
our employees, that you know, that's our starting point.
945
00:42:24.920 --> 00:42:26.079
Around the simplicity.
946
00:42:26.760 --> 00:42:29.119
I believe that every system in a company should be
947
00:42:29.159 --> 00:42:31.159
able to be written down on a post it note.
948
00:42:31.320 --> 00:42:33.559
If you can't write it down on a post it note,
949
00:42:33.719 --> 00:42:37.039
you're not thinking clearly enough and you're over complicating things.
950
00:42:37.119 --> 00:42:38.320
I was not the MBA.
951
00:42:38.719 --> 00:42:41.079
I wasn't able to go to the business schools, but
952
00:42:41.199 --> 00:42:44.400
I could clearly come up with a short little idea
953
00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:47.159
that the worst employee in the worst market and the
954
00:42:47.159 --> 00:42:49.239
worst weather on the worst day, having the worst time
955
00:42:49.280 --> 00:42:52.840
at home could actually execute that system pretty darn well.
956
00:42:52.920 --> 00:42:57.360
That simplicity creates momentum, and momentum creates momentum.
957
00:42:57.400 --> 00:43:02.679
What is it other than compensation that keeps our employees,
958
00:43:02.840 --> 00:43:05.000
keeps that net promoter score really high?
959
00:43:05.480 --> 00:43:08.119
Well, and it's interesting. Compensation is the bottom of Maslow's
960
00:43:08.159 --> 00:43:10.239
hieracive needs. So you need to make sure that your
961
00:43:10.280 --> 00:43:12.840
base pay is at about the eightieth percentle of the
962
00:43:12.880 --> 00:43:15.000
Bell curve. It needs to be pretty darn good, not
963
00:43:15.119 --> 00:43:17.800
the best, but they need to feel safe and secure.
964
00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:20.320
They need to feel liked and cared for. They need
965
00:43:20.320 --> 00:43:22.360
to feel like their boss cares about them, that their
966
00:43:22.360 --> 00:43:24.840
team cares about them, they have friends at work. They
967
00:43:24.840 --> 00:43:27.519
need to feel like they're being developed, that their work matters,
968
00:43:27.519 --> 00:43:30.119
that they have meaning, which is driving towards that divid vision.
969
00:43:30.480 --> 00:43:33.039
They need to have that self actualization like they're growing
970
00:43:33.079 --> 00:43:34.760
in their career and what they're doing matters, and the
971
00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:38.239
company's core values. So it's kind of driving every one
972
00:43:38.280 --> 00:43:40.320
of the levels of maslows, hierarchive needs. That's what I
973
00:43:40.360 --> 00:43:43.559
focus on. I do think that North Americans kind of
974
00:43:43.599 --> 00:43:46.920
suck as employers because we don't give anywhere near enough
975
00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:49.559
vacation time to our employees. And I think that we're
976
00:43:49.599 --> 00:43:53.039
coming around to that more. But Europeans Asians, five to
977
00:43:53.079 --> 00:43:55.840
six weeks is normal for everybody, even in their first year,
978
00:43:56.199 --> 00:43:58.880
and I think every company should give every employee five
979
00:43:58.920 --> 00:44:02.320
weeks pay vacation, including their sick time. Make it a
980
00:44:02.440 --> 00:44:05.119
use it or lose it policy, and help them to
981
00:44:05.159 --> 00:44:07.960
stay happy and to have hobbies and have a bucket
982
00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:10.480
list and spend time with their friends and family. If
983
00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:14.079
we as employers care more about our employees personal lives
984
00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:17.199
and their dreams and their families than anybody else does,
985
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:20.239
they'll go through brick walls for us to build a company.
986
00:44:20.360 --> 00:44:21.519
It's not about pay.
987
00:44:21.639 --> 00:44:23.679
And I think that's such a I've read your books
988
00:44:23.679 --> 00:44:27.159
and I've read this philosophy, and it's really it's who
989
00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:29.840
I want to be, is especially around this vacation issue.
990
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:32.440
All the other thing I think we're doing everything else
991
00:44:33.239 --> 00:44:34.159
a vacation.
992
00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:36.679
Issue for North America. It's a big leap.
993
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:36.920
Right, you know.
994
00:44:37.119 --> 00:44:39.159
And once you do it, though, here's why it works.
995
00:44:39.599 --> 00:44:42.360
If you give five weeks vacation to every employee, including
996
00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:45.079
their sick time, no one will quit. So your training
997
00:44:45.119 --> 00:44:48.440
cost drops, Your retention goes up, your happiness goes up.
998
00:44:48.800 --> 00:44:52.639
Their productivity goes up because they're recharged, they're not showing
999
00:44:52.719 --> 00:44:55.719
up sick and getting everybody else sick. Your recruiting cost
1000
00:44:55.760 --> 00:44:58.039
goes down because everybody wants to work for you. The
1001
00:44:58.119 --> 00:44:59.960
press will write about you, you'll become one of the
1002
00:45:00.119 --> 00:45:02.000
US places to work, and you'll get press coverage.
1003
00:45:02.159 --> 00:45:03.440
It just pays off. Right.
1004
00:45:03.760 --> 00:45:05.840
The key is to teach your employees how to use
1005
00:45:05.840 --> 00:45:08.000
the time effectively. So what I like to do is
1006
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:09.800
take two weeks off in the summer because nobody wants
1007
00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:12.239
to be their working anyway. Take one week off around
1008
00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:14.639
Christmas in New Year's because everything slows down and grinds
1009
00:45:14.639 --> 00:45:16.920
to a halt. And then the government already gives us
1010
00:45:16.920 --> 00:45:20.480
a whole bunch of statutory holidays these weekends. Turn them
1011
00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:22.960
into four day weekends, you know, turn ten three day
1012
00:45:22.960 --> 00:45:25.679
weekends into four day weekends, and now everybody's got some
1013
00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:29.320
really good recharge time. Now the key is put systems
1014
00:45:29.360 --> 00:45:31.000
in place to make sure you got your butt covered
1015
00:45:31.039 --> 00:45:34.159
when you're not here, right, and make sure that you
1016
00:45:34.239 --> 00:45:36.400
actually get all your work done. But because they're going
1017
00:45:36.440 --> 00:45:38.800
away all the time and taking vacation off, they're not
1018
00:45:38.880 --> 00:45:41.360
on social media, they're not fried, they're not burned out.
1019
00:45:41.639 --> 00:45:43.800
They're actually getting their work done because they're so excited.
1020
00:45:44.199 --> 00:45:46.440
Brian at Oney under got junk this summer. He called
1021
00:45:46.440 --> 00:45:48.079
me at the end of May. He said, you know,
1022
00:45:48.119 --> 00:45:50.000
we still do five weeks vacation. I said, yeah, he goes,
1023
00:45:50.039 --> 00:45:53.519
I'm giving everybody Friday afternoons off. I'm like, what, he goes,
1024
00:45:53.639 --> 00:45:56.360
I just told them Friday at twelve o'clock, everybody globally
1025
00:45:56.400 --> 00:45:58.719
shut down and go home because nobody wants to work
1026
00:45:58.719 --> 00:46:01.719
in the summer after one o'clock on a Friday. I'm like, dude,
1027
00:46:01.719 --> 00:46:03.239
it's no wonder you're one of the best companies on
1028
00:46:03.239 --> 00:46:04.079
the planet to work for.
1029
00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:08.480
So you read in a book about meeting called meetings suck. Yeah,
1030
00:46:08.480 --> 00:46:11.679
so that's in abocative title. So let's talk about meetings.
1031
00:46:12.280 --> 00:46:15.639
You know, meetings don't suck. We suck at running meetings.
1032
00:46:16.039 --> 00:46:17.480
And it's kind of like if we were to send
1033
00:46:17.519 --> 00:46:19.440
our kid off to the little league baseball and not teach
1034
00:46:19.519 --> 00:46:21.239
him how to hold the bat and toss the ball
1035
00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:23.760
and catch the ball. Johnny would come home from baseball
1036
00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:26.760
and say, Daddy, baseball sucks. Like, no, you suck at baseball.
1037
00:46:27.480 --> 00:46:29.599
So we don't set them up for that failure. The
1038
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:32.440
reason most of us are frustrated with meetings is nobody
1039
00:46:32.440 --> 00:46:35.119
knows how to run a meeting. Nobody starts meeting on time,
1040
00:46:35.199 --> 00:46:37.880
nobody stops them on time. I actually stop all my
1041
00:46:37.960 --> 00:46:40.920
meetings five minutes prior to the scheduled ending time so
1042
00:46:40.960 --> 00:46:42.559
I can go down the hall, talk to my assistant
1043
00:46:42.559 --> 00:46:43.960
and get a cup of coffee. Go to the bathroom
1044
00:46:43.960 --> 00:46:46.880
and start every meeting in every phone call exactly on time.
1045
00:46:47.480 --> 00:46:49.639
I have a rule that says, no agenda, no INTENDA
1046
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:51.760
right if I don't know what we're covering and in
1047
00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:54.000
what order recovering it and how many minutes on each item,
1048
00:46:54.639 --> 00:46:57.159
don't come. I teach employees to say, you know what,
1049
00:46:57.199 --> 00:46:58.840
I looked at the agenda, I looked at the purpose
1050
00:46:58.840 --> 00:46:59.360
and outcome.
1051
00:46:59.599 --> 00:47:00.920
I need to be out it.
1052
00:47:00.920 --> 00:47:03.360
I'd rather stay focused on my core work. That's a
1053
00:47:03.360 --> 00:47:05.840
badge of honor to opt out of a meeting, because
1054
00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:08.400
we know that you're actually saying I'm not needed in
1055
00:47:08.440 --> 00:47:10.840
this thing. So the book Meeting Stuck teaches you how
1056
00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:13.800
to run effective meetings and all the different types of
1057
00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:17.159
meetings that every high growth company needs. Your annual planning meeting,
1058
00:47:17.239 --> 00:47:19.920
your quarterly meetings, your financial meetings, your L ten meeting,
1059
00:47:20.320 --> 00:47:23.360
your daily huddles, your coaching meetings. It teaches you how
1060
00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:25.639
to actually run all of those, and then it also
1061
00:47:25.679 --> 00:47:28.159
teaches employees how to show up and participate at them too.
1062
00:47:28.760 --> 00:47:31.360
So let me hit you with the last question, how
1063
00:47:31.360 --> 00:47:35.679
do we CEOs grow the companies without getting burned out?
1064
00:47:36.039 --> 00:47:38.320
One is to remember that none of this stuff really matters.
1065
00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:39.719
Right at the end of the day, we're all get
1066
00:47:39.800 --> 00:47:40.519
end up as a kebab.
1067
00:47:40.559 --> 00:47:42.280
I heard that recently. I thought it was so funny.
1068
00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:44.960
We're gonna be a meet on a stick, So don't
1069
00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:47.440
take ourselves so f and seriously, let's have fun along
1070
00:47:47.480 --> 00:47:50.199
the journey. Number two is to remember that you're never
1071
00:47:50.239 --> 00:47:52.760
going to catch up. So you're not allowed to work
1072
00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:54.639
nights anymore. You have to shut it down at five
1073
00:47:54.639 --> 00:47:57.679
point thirty six o'clock every day, and you're allowed one
1074
00:47:57.800 --> 00:48:01.800
night per quarter to actually cap on work. And you're
1075
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:04.280
not allowed to work Saturdays or Sundays. You're allowed one
1076
00:48:04.440 --> 00:48:08.440
half weekend day per month to actually catch up on something.
1077
00:48:08.519 --> 00:48:08.960
That's it.
1078
00:48:09.079 --> 00:48:12.079
Get a hobby, get a life, reconnect with your friends,
1079
00:48:12.159 --> 00:48:15.079
reconnect with your spouse, write a personal vivid vision, write
1080
00:48:15.079 --> 00:48:15.960
a vivivision with.
1081
00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:19.280
Your spouse, write bucket list with your kids. But this
1082
00:48:19.480 --> 00:48:20.559
to do list is.
1083
00:48:20.519 --> 00:48:22.159
Never going to get caught up on because you're going
1084
00:48:22.239 --> 00:48:23.920
to grow more, you're going to acquire more, you're going
1085
00:48:23.920 --> 00:48:26.400
to set more goals. And that last part is your
1086
00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:28.039
to do list does not have your name on it.
1087
00:48:28.519 --> 00:48:30.400
Your to do list does not say fleets. To do
1088
00:48:30.440 --> 00:48:32.280
list my to do list does not say Cameron's to
1089
00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:35.000
do list. It means we can delegate everything on our
1090
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:37.800
to do list to other people and we can grow
1091
00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:41.000
their confidence and their skills and their connections so they
1092
00:48:41.039 --> 00:48:43.119
can do more and teach them to have a life too,
1093
00:48:43.679 --> 00:48:45.159
and then just enjoy the journey.
1094
00:48:45.639 --> 00:48:46.360
Thank you so much.
1095
00:48:46.440 --> 00:48:49.559
Cameron Harold has been incredibly illuminating and there's so much
1096
00:48:49.639 --> 00:48:52.800
actionable wisdom and advice here where people find out more
1097
00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:55.239
about your work and the services and books and everything
1098
00:48:55.320 --> 00:48:56.320
you continue to offer.
1099
00:48:56.519 --> 00:48:59.320
Yeah, everything is at Cameron Harolds dot com. It's h
1100
00:48:59.440 --> 00:49:02.039
e er o so cameronherld dot com. All of my
1101
00:49:02.079 --> 00:49:05.039
books are on Amazon, Audible, iTunes. I've got a great
1102
00:49:05.039 --> 00:49:08.400
YouTube channel, my Second Command podcast, my invest In your
1103
00:49:08.480 --> 00:49:11.320
leaders course. It's all on the Cameron Herald website. Thank
1104
00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:14.599
you so much, appreciate it anytime. Thanks lete, take care.
1105
00:49:15.239 --> 00:49:19.079
Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember,
1106
00:49:19.159 --> 00:49:21.880
real change happens when we commit to our growth, face
1107
00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:25.440
our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If
1108
00:49:25.480 --> 00:49:28.760
you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe
1109
00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:32.159
and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.
1110
00:49:32.239 --> 00:49:34.960
Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you.
1111
00:49:35.159 --> 00:49:35.679
Take care
1
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:02.439
October of two thousand, I walked into one and under
2
00:00:02.439 --> 00:00:04.360
got junk. You know, I've been working with Brian for
3
00:00:04.360 --> 00:00:06.320
a few weeks and he came in one morning and
4
00:00:06.320 --> 00:00:08.160
he was all excited that he'd been out the night
5
00:00:08.199 --> 00:00:11.519
before with our head of marketing knocking down signs of
6
00:00:11.560 --> 00:00:13.640
our competitors with a hockey stick. One of them was
7
00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:15.800
driving and one was sitting on the windowsill of the
8
00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:18.679
passenger seat, and they were knocking down street signs that
9
00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:21.320
our competitors put up. And I'm like, first off, if
10
00:00:21.359 --> 00:00:24.519
I ever hear you talk about that again, I'm leaving. Secondly,
11
00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:28.239
you don't beat our competitors by hurting their marketing. We
12
00:00:28.359 --> 00:00:30.960
beat our competitors by out marketing them. So now what
13
00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:32.640
I want you to do is drive around the city
14
00:00:32.679 --> 00:00:35.280
and look for their signs, leave them up, and every
15
00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:37.280
time we see one of their signs, put five of
16
00:00:37.320 --> 00:00:39.679
them around. I want to do what we call search
17
00:00:39.679 --> 00:00:42.200
and destroy, and we're going to cut off their marketing
18
00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:44.719
with a geometry of this whole destroy marketing.
19
00:00:47.320 --> 00:00:51.240
Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Mall
20
00:00:51.359 --> 00:00:53.840
and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
21
00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:57.600
authentic transformation in each episode, I'll bring you insights from
22
00:00:57.679 --> 00:01:03.000
leading experts to explore traumrie, cuver ever, mindfulness practices, positive psychology,
23
00:01:03.039 --> 00:01:07.719
and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This
24
00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:11.400
is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change,
25
00:01:11.439 --> 00:01:14.280
helping you find alignment with the person you are always
26
00:01:14.319 --> 00:01:23.519
meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't
27
00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:27.959
just about thinking differently but feeling differently. Science shows us
28
00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:31.200
that true change happens when we align not just our minds,
29
00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:34.799
but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts.
30
00:01:35.400 --> 00:01:39.200
This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
31
00:01:39.239 --> 00:01:42.879
and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind
32
00:01:43.079 --> 00:01:46.519
All access, membership and community, a space designed to help
33
00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:50.680
you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live
34
00:01:50.719 --> 00:01:52.439
with greater clarity and purpose.
35
00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:54.799
With over one thousand.
36
00:01:54.400 --> 00:01:59.400
Hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs,
37
00:01:59.799 --> 00:02:05.079
You'll learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts
38
00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:09.560
in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift
39
00:02:09.599 --> 00:02:14.400
your mindset and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your
40
00:02:14.439 --> 00:02:19.159
full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit
41
00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:22.479
and course we've ever produced, a Treasure Trouble Wisdom worth
42
00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:26.280
over ten thousand dollars in growing, plus live gatherings and
43
00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:30.280
an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're
44
00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:33.000
ready to step into a more heart centered, connected and
45
00:02:33.080 --> 00:02:36.080
conscious life, I invite you to join us. Clip the
46
00:02:36.159 --> 00:02:40.479
link to learn more and start your journey today. What
47
00:02:40.599 --> 00:02:44.000
if scaling your business wasn't about working harder but thinking
48
00:02:44.039 --> 00:02:46.599
more vividly? In this episode, I sit down with the
49
00:02:46.599 --> 00:02:50.159
one and only Cameron Herald, founder of the COEO Alliance
50
00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:53.919
and the strategic mind behind the explosive growth of companies
51
00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.159
like one eight hundred Got Junk. He's not just a
52
00:02:57.319 --> 00:03:00.960
CEO whisperer, as he's been called. He's a vision a
53
00:03:01.319 --> 00:03:04.439
who believes your business needs a three year future.
54
00:03:04.479 --> 00:03:05.360
You can feel.
55
00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:09.280
Cameron takes us on a deeply insightful journey through the
56
00:03:09.319 --> 00:03:13.840
power of vision, delegation and aligned leadership. We explore the
57
00:03:13.960 --> 00:03:16.879
essence of what it means to build, not just scale,
58
00:03:17.199 --> 00:03:20.599
a company where people thrive and results speak for themselves.
59
00:03:21.199 --> 00:03:25.400
Whether you're a solopreneur breaking the six figure mark, or
60
00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:28.719
a leader aiming to grow from ten million to thirty million.
61
00:03:29.039 --> 00:03:32.680
There's gold in this conversation. Let's dive in miam is
62
00:03:32.719 --> 00:03:35.199
doctor Fleet Mall your co host for the session and
63
00:03:35.240 --> 00:03:37.599
I'm thrilled to be here today with Cameron Harold.
64
00:03:37.639 --> 00:03:40.400
Welcome, Cameron, Thank Fleet, Thanks very much for having me.
65
00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:41.000
I appreciate this.
66
00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:43.400
I want to jump in and talk about your books,
67
00:03:43.479 --> 00:03:46.240
Vivivision and Double Double in, both of which cover the
68
00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:49.080
idea of the vividvision, and really talk about the importance
69
00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:50.680
of that. But I wonder if you could give me
70
00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:53.319
just a really thumbnail sketch. I know it's hard to
71
00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:55.520
do it, just a minute or two of your kind
72
00:03:55.560 --> 00:03:57.400
of a little bit of your Orange story, because I
73
00:03:57.439 --> 00:03:59.719
know you played a major role in scaling we got
74
00:03:59.759 --> 00:04:01.680
you Oka, and I think everybody's seen that we got
75
00:04:01.759 --> 00:04:05.319
Junk Trucks franchise somewhere in their town or city, and
76
00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:07.280
I know you played a major role in scaling that.
77
00:04:07.439 --> 00:04:11.360
So how did you go from a successful second in
78
00:04:11.400 --> 00:04:15.439
command scaling big company to being the consultant, then coach
79
00:04:15.560 --> 00:04:16.600
and teacher you are today?
80
00:04:16.759 --> 00:04:17.000
Sure?
81
00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:19.240
Yeah, And actually the brand was called one eight hundred
82
00:04:19.279 --> 00:04:23.000
Got Junk, and we actually took a very fragmented industry,
83
00:04:23.399 --> 00:04:26.120
professionalized it, cleaned it up. I was the CEO of
84
00:04:26.160 --> 00:04:29.199
that company. My best friend Brian was the CEO, and
85
00:04:29.279 --> 00:04:31.839
I helped them go from fourteen employees to three thy
86
00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.639
one hundred employees in six years, from two million to
87
00:04:34.639 --> 00:04:36.839
one hundred and six million in revenue. That was the
88
00:04:36.920 --> 00:04:39.759
fourth company that I'd built. So I also was a
89
00:04:39.879 --> 00:04:41.920
behind the scenes as a second command for a private
90
00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:45.399
currency company. I was the VP of corporate development for
91
00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:48.480
another brand that became Gerber Auto Collision in the United
92
00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:51.160
States and Boyd Autobody in Canada is the largest collision
93
00:04:51.199 --> 00:04:53.279
repair chain in the world. And I'd opened up the
94
00:04:53.319 --> 00:04:55.000
West coast of the United States for a group called
95
00:04:55.040 --> 00:04:57.959
College Pro Painters back in the late nineties and or
96
00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.879
early ninetyes Storry in late eighties. In fact, got known
97
00:05:00.920 --> 00:05:03.879
for hiring Kimball Musk back in nineteen ninety three. Elon's
98
00:05:03.879 --> 00:05:06.439
younger brother worked for me and his cousin Peter Reeve,
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00:05:06.439 --> 00:05:08.519
who a w ontebuilt Solar City. So it was this
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kind of track record of having coached all these entrepreneurs
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thirty years ago, building four brands. When I left one
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to under got junk seventeen years ago. Now I started
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getting asked to do speaking events all over the world,
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and people that started using my systems and content started
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to really scale, getting ranked as best companies to work for.
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And I guess there was somehow this little magic dusk.
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Somebody said, how come everything you touch turned to gold?
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And I laughed and I said, I only touched gold.
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So I think that's the cheat sheet that I have,
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is that I only work with really great companies. I
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don't work with any bad ones.
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So I just really want to let our audiors know that,
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because what you're going to be sharing with us today
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is not business school theory.
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This is real world experience.
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So coming back to your books, Vivid Vision and Double Vision,
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which a guid to really contents leaders in setting a
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clear roadmap for their growth. What is a vivid vision
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and why is it critical to successfully scaling a business?
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So the concept of the vivid vision is one that
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I learned from an Olympic coach. Back in nineteen ninety eight,
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I was at a lunch that was run for a
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bunch of entrepreneurs in Vancouver, Canada. We were part of
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a group called the Entrepreneurs Organization. Back in the day,
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it was yeo and one hundred and twenty of us
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got invited to the lunch, and only sixteen of us
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showed up. And this Olympic coach was a sports psychologist.
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Talked about how athletes used visualization in their sport to
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become the best in the planet, and he said, if
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we could ever take visualization and bring it into the
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business world, we'd be able to succeed. So we talked
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a lot about different businesses that were good at visualization,
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you know, creative agencies, marketing agencies, and we came up
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with the idea of homebuilders who would talk to the
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homeowner and get the vision of what the homeowner wanted.
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The contractor would create the blueprints or the plans to
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build that home, and then they would hand the vision
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and the blueprints to the employees and the employees could
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build a home without ever talking to the homeowner. We thought, wow,
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Imagine if the employees and a company could build a
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company without the CEO having to be there every day
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to tell people what to do and hold them accountable
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and manage them. Imagine if vision could align. So I
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worked on a vision for the private currency company that
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we built out and took public Brian was building one
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out for his company called the Rubbish Boys, and we
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saw it being successful in our businesses. When I then
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joined Brian as his COO for what was now called
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one eight hundred God Junk, he had just taken twelve
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years to get to two million in revenue. He handed
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me his two thousand and three when I now call
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that vividvision document, he used to call it a painted picture.
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And he handed it to me, and I was so
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clear on what he wanted to build that I gave
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him the plan of how to make it happen.
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And he's like, I don't know how to do.
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Any of this stuff, and I'm like, no, I do,
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because I've already built two other franchise companies, so I
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can actually make it come true. You just stay focused
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on where we're going and let me focus on the
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execution and operations and culture and kind of building it
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all out. So we then saw it really come to
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scale well, and then from there again, I've been coaching
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CEOs in now in twenty nine countries. I've coached well
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over a few hundred entrepreneurs and all the way up
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to the CEO of Sprint Marcelo Claret and his COO.
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I coached them for eighteen months. I worked with the
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royal family that owns the country of Katar and worked
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with them around vision and core values and core purpose.
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So anytime I've worked with these brands, it starts with
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that vision, almost like a picture on the front of
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the jigsaw puzzle. We have no idea what we're going
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to build unless we can see that picture. So that
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was the genesis of where it came from. The vivid
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vision becomes a four or five page description, a written
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document that describes what the company looks like, acts like,
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and feels like three years in the future, Almost as
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if you were walking around your company and you described
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what you saw, the people can then figure out how
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to make that come true.
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So this division, it's a narrative document that not only
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includes the numbers, but what the culture will look and
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feel like, what your customer base will look and feel like. Really,
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it's a real like your former party used the term
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painted picture. It is a painted picture and narrative of
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what that company is going to look and feel and
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be like in three years.
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Yeah, And the reason I changed the terminology from the
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painted picture because I'm the one who really got that
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well known. In my first book, Double Double, that's what
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I called it, and was speaking all of the world
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on it was People thought it was like a vision board,
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the concept that John Ashraff popularized in the movie The Secret.
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So they thought it was a bunch of pictures. But
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the problem with a vision board is that's really good
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for one person. But a picture says a thousand words.
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You know, if I showed you the picture of my
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room that I'm sitting in right now, you might think
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that it's all about the picture of the COO Alliance.
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What I wanted to show you is the stairways and
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the white walls, So my picture might only illustrate the
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white walls, whereas you thought it was the picture hanging
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on the wall was important.
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Right.
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So a written document is impossible to misunderstand because it's
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all written in that description. So you're going to talk
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about what sales looks like and feels like, what operations
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is like, what it engineering customers, what your customers are
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writing about you on board, what the media is reporting
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about you, how you work with your partners, And again
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you don't say how it comes true because you don't
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know you're describing it in the finished state, and then
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the team can figure out one or two projects to
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make every sentence come true. And then you just build
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that vivid vision. Kind you reverse engineer it, so you
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plan your work and work your plan.
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So I like I talk just a little bit about
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operationalizing that, and you kind of begin to describe that
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just there. You know, in your early stage of entrepreneurship,
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a solopreneur or an entrepreneur with a small team may
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not have a COO. You know, they may be wearing
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three or four hats. So how do they begin really
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operationalizing this and then build a team that can make
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that vividvision happen and begin to make that transition into
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a true CEO role.
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So the first part is when the CEO or entrepreneur
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is very clear on what they're building, they can start
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to figure out the core components to build. First, much
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like buildilding your home, you have to build the foundation.
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Then you have to put in the walls. Then you
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put in the electrical and the plumbing. You don't hang
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the cabinets and paint the place and then pour the
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foundation later. There's an order of operations in building it.
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So the entrepreneur has to build their company in that
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right methodology. It starts with vision, with understanding core values,
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who your customer is. It starts with hiring one or
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two core people. And the first person that almost anybody
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should hire is a fractional or a part time executive assistant.
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Right if you don't have an assistant, you are one,
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and you need to get all that min work off
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your plate to free you up to work on the
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things that you're either really good at or that really
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feed you with energy, or that are at least worth
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the amount of money that you're doing. But there's no
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way that an entrepreneur should be doing five dollars an
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hour or ten dollars hour tasks that can be offshore.
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So it's starting with hiring those people. And then the
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first few key early hires tend to be the jack
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of all trades, master of none, the people that are
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really good at handling projects. They're really good to saying yeah,
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I'll figure that out, Yes i'll grab that, Sure, I'll
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try to work with this technology. You don't want the
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full time experts because you can't really afford them. The
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second layer, though, and where we are really nicely set
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up now in the kind of mid to twenty twenties
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is we have access to technology and to a global
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workforce of fractional people that can work from their laptop
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from anywhere in the world for five hours a week,
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ten hours a month, just on exactly.
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What you need them to be.
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Twenty years ago, we had to hire a full time person.
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They had to come to an office and they had
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to work on and we had to find stuff for
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them to do. Now you don't have to do that,
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So the early stage entrepreneur, you can hire some fractional
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freelance experts to work in little chunks for you. And
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then the last part of this is I always try
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to work on revenue generating ideas first and build the
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better products second, because there's not a single problem that
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exists that writing a check can't solve. So if you
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generate more revenue, you generate more gross margin. You can
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use that money to buy your way into better success
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as you scale. That would be some of the early
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starting points.
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Another way I've heard that said is there isn't a
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problem that sales can solve. So let's say the entrepreneur
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sorry has proof of concept, they have some momentum, and
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now it really is about scaling the business, whether it's
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growing up from six figures to seven or seven to
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eight or beyond, their role begins to change, and that
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can be a tough transition to make, and I think
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a lot of CEOs may falter or even fail because
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they don't make that transition.
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Yeah, one of the transition points is starting to delegate
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everything except genius. Right, so you're starting to hire people
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that are better than you that you can delegate some
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of those core roles too, so you can work on
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the stuff you're really good at and feeds you with energy.
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The next hurdle that happens to a lot of entrepreneurs
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is they've kind of delegated everything and now they have
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a team of people that are doing all the stuff
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that are reporting to them, and the entrepreneurs wonder what
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they're supposed to do, so they often try to break stuff,
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or they do what I call seagull management. They kind
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of swoop into an area, they shit all over everybody,
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and they fly away. None of that is really helpful,
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So the CEO needs to reinvent their role, or they
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stay focused on vision, they stay focused on culture, They
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inspect what they expect, they do skip level meetings. They
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understand that their role is to grow people and develop people,
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to be thinking strategically, to be meeting with partners, to
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plug themselves into a number of different mastermind communities. I
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know that you and I are both members of different masterminds,
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and I believe that everybody should be in at least two,
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because I think it's like ideas having sex. You'll take
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an idea from the Genius network and an idea from
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strategic coach, and those two ideas have an idea baby,
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and that's what you're looking for. But everybody should be
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in kind of a trade type of a group, like
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if it's a if you run a marketing agency, you
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should be at lots of events with other marketing agency owners,
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and then you should also be at one where there's
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no marketing agency owners or just other business people so
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that you can see your business from a different perspective.
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Well, I think you shared kind of the secret of
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making that transition there, because often the CE as entrepreneur,
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the one who's you know, built somewhat of the team.
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They started off being really good at product creation, or
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really good at providing a service, or just a really
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great salesperson. They were really good at the stuff they
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now need to replace, and they don't have any experience
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doing this other stuff you're talking about. So that idea
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of getting into a mastermind and it has been it
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has really been a huge value for me in my
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experience with it. You start rubbing shoulders, whether they' CEOs
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and other entrepreneurs, and you start learning what do entrepreneurs
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do at that next level.
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You get to experience it directly totally.
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I've attended ten different Mastermind events in twenty twenty four.
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Wow, I can name them.
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You know, I was in multiple other Mastermind communities over
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the last twenty five years. I started in the first
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one back at the Entrepreneurs Organization in nineteen ninety five,
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so thirty years ago is when I got involved in
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the first Mastermind.
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So my kind of MBA is.
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My mentor board of advisors or all these people that
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I've met from all over the world that I can
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tap into. You know, two of my friends, Dan Sullivan
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and Ben Hardy wrote a book called Who Not How,
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and they actually and I in multiple masterminds with both
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of them. They identified that in the old days, we
343
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had to be the smartest person in the room, right
344
00:16:12.039 --> 00:16:14.240
you had to know how to solve every problem because
345
00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:16.919
there was no way to connect with all these other experts.
346
00:16:16.679 --> 00:16:17.679
Nor know who they are.
347
00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:21.960
Now it's about understanding, well, there's a person somewhere who's
348
00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:24.600
probably online or in a freelance group or on a
349
00:16:24.600 --> 00:16:27.440
social platform that can solve this problem. I have to
350
00:16:27.480 --> 00:16:29.600
know where they are, how to connect to them, and
351
00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:31.279
then see if they can help me figure it out.
352
00:16:31.639 --> 00:16:34.279
So entrepreneurs' skills no longer have to be the smartest
353
00:16:34.279 --> 00:16:36.120
person in the room. We have to know how to
354
00:16:36.159 --> 00:16:39.080
connect with all these people. And it's really interesting watching
355
00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:41.440
gen Z right now. The kids who grew up playing
356
00:16:41.639 --> 00:16:46.279
multiperson playing video games are very used to solving problems
357
00:16:46.600 --> 00:16:50.559
with lots of other people over headsets and video and
358
00:16:50.679 --> 00:16:54.320
chatting and collaborating and problem solving, and that's actually the
359
00:16:54.360 --> 00:16:57.039
way business is being done today. Whereas you know, thirty
360
00:16:57.120 --> 00:16:59.039
years ago, you were the one person playing the video
361
00:16:59.080 --> 00:17:02.559
game by yourself. Maybe you'd talk to your friend at
362
00:17:02.600 --> 00:17:04.720
school and then you go back and try it out.
363
00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:07.319
That way of learning has accelerated things.
364
00:17:07.720 --> 00:17:10.880
It's really interesting to see that somehow serendipitously, young people
365
00:17:10.920 --> 00:17:13.400
are being prepared for these roles, or maybe it's somehow
366
00:17:13.480 --> 00:17:14.720
been co created that way.
367
00:17:15.079 --> 00:17:16.839
Remember when you and I were growing up that we
368
00:17:16.880 --> 00:17:19.400
had to learn how to type. We take typing class
369
00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:21.319
to learn and we had to learn the letters on
370
00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:24.240
the keyboard and over. When my son was four years old,
371
00:17:24.240 --> 00:17:25.599
I said to his mom, we have to teach him
372
00:17:25.599 --> 00:17:27.640
how to type. And I went into his bedroom and
373
00:17:27.640 --> 00:17:29.240
he was typing on the computer. I said, how did
374
00:17:29.279 --> 00:17:31.640
you learn how to type? He said, well, that's right here.
375
00:17:31.720 --> 00:17:33.400
I'm like, well, how did you learn where the letters are?
376
00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:36.400
He said, well, they're right there. Like I'm like wow,
377
00:17:36.519 --> 00:17:39.680
Like a four year old was typing as fast as
378
00:17:39.720 --> 00:17:42.359
I could type with it. So yeah, they adapt and
379
00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:44.599
learn these new skills, and our job is to now
380
00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:46.400
learn from them as much as think that we have
381
00:17:46.440 --> 00:17:49.279
the wisdom right often we have. We don't really have
382
00:17:49.319 --> 00:17:52.079
thirty years experience. We've got five years experience, six times
383
00:17:52.119 --> 00:17:52.599
in a row.
384
00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:53.559
Absolutely.
385
00:17:53.680 --> 00:17:55.799
So let's talk a little bit about you know, some
386
00:17:55.880 --> 00:17:58.799
of the challenges as we begin to scale, cash flow
387
00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:01.640
can become a real issue. Profit really gets squeezed. You
388
00:18:01.680 --> 00:18:03.920
start building your team and suddenly got a much bigger
389
00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:07.160
cost structure and what you thought you had, you know,
390
00:18:07.240 --> 00:18:10.200
this really profitable business that was almost like printing money,
391
00:18:10.200 --> 00:18:13.240
and suddenly you know you're looking for profit. So operational
392
00:18:13.319 --> 00:18:16.400
efficiency becomes really important managing cash for all these kind
393
00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:16.680
of things.
394
00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:18.000
So I wonder if you could talk a little bit.
395
00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:21.160
Yeah, you know, I talk about cash being like oxygen.
396
00:18:21.480 --> 00:18:26.160
Right, Cash is the entrepreneurial in every business's oxygen. Brian
397
00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:28.880
and I almost bankrupted one eight hundred got junk when
398
00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:30.960
we were one hundred million dollars in revenue and we
399
00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:34.440
were earning big profitability because we didn't understand cash flow.
400
00:18:34.960 --> 00:18:37.039
So I remember when I was about four years old,
401
00:18:37.079 --> 00:18:38.880
my dad threw a penny in the swimming pool and
402
00:18:38.920 --> 00:18:40.640
I kind of ran down or dove down to get
403
00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:43.000
the penny, and I came up gasping for air. He's like,
404
00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:44.839
you're not going to die. You were down three feet,
405
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:47.359
you know you're okay. And then I go scuba diving
406
00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:49.160
for the first time and I run out of oxygen
407
00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:51.640
at eighty feet. Well, I'm not going to die, but
408
00:18:51.680 --> 00:18:54.359
I got pretty sick. But if I go scuba diving
409
00:18:54.359 --> 00:18:55.599
and I run out of air at one hundred and
410
00:18:55.680 --> 00:18:58.759
forty feet, I will die. So the way that you
411
00:18:58.839 --> 00:19:01.680
run a one person company changes when you get to
412
00:19:01.759 --> 00:19:04.599
three to ten to thirty to one hundred to three hundred,
413
00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:06.960
right or a million to three million to ten million
414
00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:07.480
to thirty.
415
00:19:07.319 --> 00:19:08.160
To one hundred million.
416
00:19:08.680 --> 00:19:12.480
Your cash flow statement becomes critical when you're a small company.
417
00:19:12.519 --> 00:19:14.720
If you need some money, you borrow some money from
418
00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:16.799
your bank account. You don't pay yourself, you don't submit
419
00:19:16.839 --> 00:19:19.359
expenses for a few months. Maybe you max out a
420
00:19:19.359 --> 00:19:21.400
couple credit cards. All good, you make it up and
421
00:19:21.400 --> 00:19:23.000
you figure it out in a month. A couple months later,
422
00:19:23.079 --> 00:19:25.880
you pay yourself back. That doesn't work when you're a
423
00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:28.839
twenty million dollar company anymore. You can't not pay just
424
00:19:28.960 --> 00:19:32.599
yourself to meet payroll. You know, you can't just max
425
00:19:32.640 --> 00:19:35.279
out a couple of credit cards. We actually had no
426
00:19:35.400 --> 00:19:38.559
credit line and no loans, and we went to a
427
00:19:38.599 --> 00:19:41.400
bank after spending five million dollars of our cash on
428
00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:45.480
renovations and an office move, some new technology, some bonuses,
429
00:19:45.559 --> 00:19:48.039
some taxes. We spent all this cash and we thought,
430
00:19:48.119 --> 00:19:49.720
let's just go to the bank and get a credit line.
431
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:52.440
We have number two company in Canada, worked for six
432
00:19:52.519 --> 00:19:54.839
consecutive years of one hundred percent revenue growth hundred and
433
00:19:54.839 --> 00:19:57.319
six million. They're like, no, we can't loan your money.
434
00:19:57.319 --> 00:19:58.880
We're like why. They're like, because you don't know how
435
00:19:58.920 --> 00:19:59.599
to run a business.
436
00:19:59.599 --> 00:20:00.519
We're like, yeah, we do.
437
00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:02.759
They said, no, you would have come to us last
438
00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:04.759
year when you had five million in the bank. But
439
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:06.480
the fact that you're one hundred million dollar business with
440
00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:10.039
no credit line means you don't understand cashflow management. Brian
441
00:20:10.119 --> 00:20:12.559
had to borrow four hundred and twenty thousand dollars from
442
00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:15.119
his mom that night to meet payroll. We had to
443
00:20:15.160 --> 00:20:17.920
fire twenty two people. The following week, we had to
444
00:20:17.960 --> 00:20:20.240
call all of our suppliers and tell them they weren't
445
00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:22.880
being paid for sixty to ninety days until we could
446
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:25.599
turn the company around. And we had our new CFO
447
00:20:25.640 --> 00:20:29.039
generating cash flow statements on a daily basis and at
448
00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:30.160
times twice a day.
449
00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:32.640
So companies need.
450
00:20:32.440 --> 00:20:36.640
To hire a fractional CFO to come in and help
451
00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:40.960
them actually understand how to run the business financially when
452
00:20:40.960 --> 00:20:44.640
they're small. A controller and a director of finance sometimes
453
00:20:44.640 --> 00:20:48.240
don't have those right skills, nor does the entrepreneur often
454
00:20:48.319 --> 00:20:51.720
know what skills are even needed. But getting a fractional
455
00:20:51.759 --> 00:20:53.640
CFO to come in and help you with some of
456
00:20:53.640 --> 00:20:56.839
those systems around cash is really critical. And a big
457
00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:58.400
opportunity for smaller companies.
458
00:20:58.839 --> 00:21:01.279
At what stage would you say that needs to happen.
459
00:21:01.319 --> 00:21:03.880
I'm kind of at that place myself, and I'm reading
460
00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:06.960
by a fractional CFO and learning what I can from her.
461
00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:09.359
But at what stage do you think that's necessary?
462
00:21:09.759 --> 00:21:11.960
Sure, I talk about the ones in the threes a
463
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:14.720
lot where a company changes, when it goes from one
464
00:21:14.759 --> 00:21:17.240
employee to three, from three to ten, ten to thirty
465
00:21:17.319 --> 00:21:18.960
thirty to one hundred, three hundred. We can talk about
466
00:21:18.960 --> 00:21:20.880
that in a second. This stage is when you go
467
00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:23.400
from three million to ten million. When you're a company
468
00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:25.920
going from three million in revenue to ten million in revenues,
469
00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:28.759
when you need a fractional CFO to give you the
470
00:21:28.799 --> 00:21:31.559
proper budgets, the proper cost flow, to look at your
471
00:21:31.559 --> 00:21:34.240
financials on a quarterly basis and pick holes in them
472
00:21:34.279 --> 00:21:37.079
for you to help you, you know, optimize, to help
473
00:21:37.079 --> 00:21:39.240
you go through your general ledger, the stuff that nobody
474
00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:41.559
knows how to do. Once you get to ten million
475
00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:44.200
in revenue, you've probably got a proper VP of finance
476
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:46.759
as you're scaling to thirty million, but it's usually that
477
00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:49.599
three million to ten million zone that is the death
478
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:52.400
trap for the you know, oxygen starved entrepreneur.
479
00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:56.880
That's extremely helpful. So how about operational efficiency and to
480
00:21:57.240 --> 00:22:00.000
as you grow up so your profit isn't getting squeezed
481
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:01.440
out by inefficiencies.
482
00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:05.279
And yeah, I didn't realize when I launched my online training.
483
00:22:05.319 --> 00:22:07.839
I launched an online training course that I've got thousands
484
00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:10.119
and thousands of companies going through. It's called invest in
485
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:12.839
Your Leaders. And I didn't realize that when I launched
486
00:22:12.839 --> 00:22:15.640
it that the reason for it was actually going to
487
00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:18.920
help companies on their operational efficiency. I thought all I
488
00:22:18.960 --> 00:22:21.119
was doing was helping them grow the skill sets of
489
00:22:21.160 --> 00:22:23.920
their people. What happens when you're a company in the
490
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:27.920
three employee to ten and ten employee to thirty zone
491
00:22:28.680 --> 00:22:30.559
is that your managers.
492
00:22:30.279 --> 00:22:32.160
Have never really run companies before.
493
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:35.000
They're the jack of all trades, master of nuns their
494
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:38.519
director level, So they don't necessarily know how to say no,
495
00:22:39.279 --> 00:22:41.599
They don't necessarily how to get more done with less
496
00:22:41.599 --> 00:22:45.680
people faster, they don't necessarily think about optimization and automation
497
00:22:45.799 --> 00:22:49.200
and AI now, and their answer to every problem tends
498
00:22:49.240 --> 00:22:51.559
to be hire more people. So when you go in
499
00:22:51.599 --> 00:22:54.559
this trap from ten to thirty and thirty to one hundred.
500
00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:57.319
You often get all this bloat. Once you get to
501
00:22:57.359 --> 00:22:59.680
one hundred employees. You tend to start hiring your first
502
00:22:59.799 --> 00:23:03.279
LEADLeadership team and they can start firing thirty percent of
503
00:23:03.319 --> 00:23:06.359
the company. That's not really necessary. I heard an interesting
504
00:23:06.440 --> 00:23:08.839
number the other day, and this is kind of scary,
505
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:12.720
but fifty percent of a company's output is produced by
506
00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:15.359
the square root of their number of employees. So I'll
507
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:17.799
explain that to you that if you've got one hundred employees,
508
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:20.279
the square rood of one hundred is ten, so ten
509
00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:22.759
times ten is one hundred. So fifty percent of a
510
00:23:22.799 --> 00:23:25.480
company's output is produced by ten percent of the one
511
00:23:25.559 --> 00:23:28.839
hundred people. That's scary to think about. If you've got
512
00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:31.880
twenty employees, the square it of your number there would
513
00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:35.599
be four and a half, right, So four and a
514
00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:39.119
half people producing fifty percent of your output. A lot
515
00:23:39.119 --> 00:23:41.680
of the early stage managers don't know how to fire people.
516
00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:43.680
They don't know how to say no, They don't know
517
00:23:43.720 --> 00:23:48.319
how to say not now. And often the entrepreneur isn't
518
00:23:48.359 --> 00:23:50.880
good at saying no either. So somebody will come to
519
00:23:50.960 --> 00:23:53.519
them and say, oh, we need to hire XYZ. Oh
520
00:23:53.559 --> 00:23:56.279
how much is it going to cost? Eighty grand. Oh crap, Okay,
521
00:23:56.319 --> 00:23:59.000
go do it. They make a one minute decision on
522
00:23:59.039 --> 00:24:02.440
an eighty thousand dollars expense. If a marketing manager went
523
00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:04.279
to that same entrepreneur and said I want to do
524
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:07.400
a marketing campaign for eighty grand, they'd have to sit
525
00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:09.319
down for an hour and a half and pitch them.
526
00:24:09.519 --> 00:24:11.279
They'd have to show them the plan and the budget
527
00:24:11.279 --> 00:24:13.039
and the numbers and what the ROI was going to
528
00:24:13.079 --> 00:24:16.279
be like. But because the entrepreneurs often think the solution
529
00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:18.920
really is more people, we end up with all of
530
00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:22.359
this kind of operational debt. And that's an early stage
531
00:24:22.359 --> 00:24:25.720
company problem. It also magnifies again when you go from
532
00:24:25.759 --> 00:24:28.960
three hundred to one thousand, when you start becoming very corporate,
533
00:24:29.240 --> 00:24:32.240
when there's politics and silos, and that's kind of starts
534
00:24:32.279 --> 00:24:32.920
to happen again.
535
00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:34.480
Well, that points to something else.
536
00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:36.880
When you're going from one to three, three to ten,
537
00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:39.880
ten to thirty pretty early on, the people that got
538
00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:41.960
you to one point aren't necessarily the people that are
539
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:43.599
going to take you to the next level. I want
540
00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:45.200
if you could talk, because that could be a painful
541
00:24:45.240 --> 00:24:49.200
process for a founder a CEO to have people that
542
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:51.720
have really helped you get to one place and you
543
00:24:51.759 --> 00:24:53.680
suddenly realize they're not the people they are going to
544
00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:54.799
take you to the next level.
545
00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:55.720
It's funny.
546
00:24:55.720 --> 00:24:57.279
You and I were chatting before we went live, and
547
00:24:57.279 --> 00:24:59.160
you mentioned that you're in a masterminder or friends with
548
00:24:59.240 --> 00:25:01.880
Jeff Walker from Product Launch Formula. I was sitting beside
549
00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:05.319
Jeff Walker, and I was watching a speaker, Clayton Mask,
550
00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:07.960
who built Infusionsoft, and I spoke with Clay at lunch
551
00:25:08.039 --> 00:25:10.640
that day and he and I both agreed on this number.
552
00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:13.960
A mid level manager, like an early stage manager in
553
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:18.240
a company, a director junior VP ish can usually only
554
00:25:18.279 --> 00:25:20.839
stay in that role as the head of that area
555
00:25:20.960 --> 00:25:23.559
through two doubles of revenue of the size of the
556
00:25:23.559 --> 00:25:26.519
company before it's too hard to stay in the third double.
557
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:29.119
So let's say your company does two million in revenue
558
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:31.599
today and you're the director of marketing. You can probably
559
00:25:31.640 --> 00:25:34.240
be the director again at four million. You can probably
560
00:25:34.279 --> 00:25:36.680
be the director again at eight million. By the time
561
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:39.680
it gets to sixteen, it's too substantially different than it
562
00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:41.480
was when you came in his director at two million.
563
00:25:42.119 --> 00:25:44.400
Ben Horowitz, who wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things,
564
00:25:44.680 --> 00:25:47.839
said the person camely go through one triple so I'd
565
00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:50.119
be from two million to six, but it's too hard
566
00:25:50.119 --> 00:25:54.000
to go from six to eighteen, right, So that tends
567
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:56.839
to be the death zone is after two doubles. When
568
00:25:56.880 --> 00:25:59.160
I was the COO at one A under god Junk,
569
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:02.079
we went through six doubles in the size of the
570
00:26:02.079 --> 00:26:04.039
company over six and a half years. We went from
571
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:07.079
two million, we doubled six consecutive times. I was the
572
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:10.079
last of the six leadership team members to get replaced.
573
00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:13.319
The reason I was able to go so long was
574
00:26:13.359 --> 00:26:16.519
I'd already built two other franchise companies before, so it
575
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.519
kind of gave me a head start. And Brian was
576
00:26:19.559 --> 00:26:21.559
my best friend and the best man at my wedding
577
00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:24.519
before I even started working for him, so he had
578
00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:26.599
this huge amount of trust and relationship.
579
00:26:26.920 --> 00:26:28.400
So I think that gave me a bit of a
580
00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:30.680
maybe a buffer by about a year or so.
581
00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:33.480
But I probably should have left the company when we
582
00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:36.960
were at fifty million. It got operationally very complicated for
583
00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:38.440
me by the time we got to one hundred. The
584
00:26:38.559 --> 00:26:41.480
key is keep growing the skills of your people at
585
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:44.039
the rate that your company is scaling. Right again, my
586
00:26:44.119 --> 00:26:48.200
investing in your leader's course covers things like situational leadership, interviewing,
587
00:26:48.559 --> 00:26:53.160
running effective meetings, coaching, one on one coaching sessions, delegation,
588
00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:57.319
time management, project management, the core executive functioning skills that
589
00:26:57.359 --> 00:26:59.680
people need to not only be trained in, but they
590
00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:02.200
need to be certified in those skills. And if you
591
00:27:02.240 --> 00:27:05.000
can train them in those skills and grow them, you're
592
00:27:05.039 --> 00:27:07.839
giving them a chance to stay. But if you expect
593
00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:11.000
that in the nineteen seventies, if you joined a company,
594
00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:14.680
the company didn't grow that quickly the business climate. Even
595
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:18.039
if it grew, the business climate didn't change. God, we
596
00:27:18.119 --> 00:27:21.279
only got introduced to chat GPT two years ago and
597
00:27:21.319 --> 00:27:23.519
the stuff that it's doing right now is blowing our mind.
598
00:27:23.559 --> 00:27:27.039
And we're just getting started. So companies are changing so quickly.
599
00:27:27.079 --> 00:27:29.200
The skill sets need to change to it. There's a
600
00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:31.000
quote that I heard years ago that if the rate
601
00:27:31.039 --> 00:27:33.799
of change outside your business is greater than the rate
602
00:27:33.839 --> 00:27:36.799
of change inside your business, you're out of business. And
603
00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:38.279
I think that we need to be mindful of that
604
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:40.680
with our executives. We have to keep investing in them
605
00:27:41.039 --> 00:27:44.200
and growing their skills or the company will outgrow them.
606
00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:46.319
So you're pointing something really critical.
607
00:27:46.400 --> 00:27:48.279
Investing in our people so they can grow with the
608
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:51.480
company and when we need different people, or we need
609
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:53.400
to move people, or we need to you know, we're
610
00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:56.240
not doing somebody a service by keeping them in the
611
00:27:56.240 --> 00:27:59.599
wrong seat, you know, to use John Allin's idea getting
612
00:27:59.599 --> 00:28:01.079
the right pla people on the bus and the right
613
00:28:01.119 --> 00:28:04.680
seat some of the bus. If we're reluctant to transition
614
00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:06.720
to get the right people on the right seat, we're
615
00:28:06.759 --> 00:28:08.759
really not doing them a service in the long run,
616
00:28:09.079 --> 00:28:09.279
you know.
617
00:28:09.319 --> 00:28:11.759
And it's interesting, I have not seen a company yet
618
00:28:11.799 --> 00:28:14.720
in all of my years at advising and coaching companies globally,
619
00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:18.519
I can't think of a single company that I've seen
620
00:28:18.599 --> 00:28:21.519
or really worked with that works hard enough at finding
621
00:28:21.559 --> 00:28:24.359
the wrong people and getting them out of the company
622
00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:28.160
fast enough. We talk about recruiting and interviewing and selection
623
00:28:28.319 --> 00:28:31.440
and onboarding and training and rights like, but we never
624
00:28:31.480 --> 00:28:34.079
talk about how do we identify the underperformers, how do
625
00:28:34.119 --> 00:28:37.359
we identify the cultural cancers, how do we top grade faster?
626
00:28:37.519 --> 00:28:39.319
How do we actually have those tough and how do
627
00:28:39.359 --> 00:28:41.640
we top grade like it would be our mom leaving, like,
628
00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:44.279
how do we top grade with some empathy and care,
629
00:28:44.519 --> 00:28:46.480
you know, just because they.
630
00:28:46.359 --> 00:28:47.880
Don't fit in our company? Anymore.
631
00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:49.720
It doesn't mean you kick them to the curb, but
632
00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:54.160
you can have really strong outplacement, or you can grow
633
00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:56.319
them to a point and go, you know what, you're
634
00:28:56.359 --> 00:28:59.359
so good, you should go somewhere else for five years
635
00:28:59.559 --> 00:29:01.880
and maybe come back, or just go somewhere else anyway,
636
00:29:01.880 --> 00:29:04.000
because we're not gonna be able to keep promoting you.
637
00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:06.200
You've outgrown us. It's kind of like I love my
638
00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:08.279
two kids, they're twenty one and twenty three. I would
639
00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:09.799
love to have them around all the time, but my
640
00:29:09.960 --> 00:29:11.920
job is to kick him out of the house so
641
00:29:11.960 --> 00:29:14.839
they can become successful adults and you know, go on
642
00:29:14.880 --> 00:29:16.440
in their life. And sometimes we have to do that
643
00:29:16.480 --> 00:29:17.400
with our employees too.
644
00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:20.160
So you were speaking about leadership, let's go there.
645
00:29:20.240 --> 00:29:23.119
So, as a company grows, even in your early stages
646
00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:26.400
as a founder of CEO, you're transitioning.
647
00:29:25.839 --> 00:29:27.880
From being a doer to a leader. You have to
648
00:29:27.920 --> 00:29:29.079
transition from being.
649
00:29:28.920 --> 00:29:30.839
A doer to a leader, and then you have one
650
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:33.720
people to grow leaders right, So, and you can't do
651
00:29:33.799 --> 00:29:35.839
that if you don't understand how to lead yourself. So
652
00:29:35.880 --> 00:29:38.440
if you could talk a little bit about embracing leadership
653
00:29:38.440 --> 00:29:40.079
and learning leadership, how do you learn it?
654
00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:41.000
Where do you learn it?
655
00:29:41.599 --> 00:29:44.960
Yeah, I was taught a mantra back in nineteen eighty
656
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:47.480
six at a company called College Pro Painters. That's where
657
00:29:47.519 --> 00:29:49.720
I really learned. I call it my real world MBA.
658
00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:51.960
I opened up the West coast the United States for
659
00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:55.200
College Pro Painters. I hired Kimball Musk at College Pro
660
00:29:55.240 --> 00:29:58.000
Painters in nineteen ninety three. College Pro is written up
661
00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:00.839
in Elon Musk's biography by Walter I because I was
662
00:30:00.839 --> 00:30:03.240
a reference for them in their first round of funding
663
00:30:03.279 --> 00:30:06.119
for Zip Tou. The mantra that I was given was
664
00:30:06.240 --> 00:30:09.279
a leader's core job is to grow people. I think
665
00:30:09.319 --> 00:30:11.680
it might have been Tom Peters who might have said
666
00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:13.920
that in Search of Excellence is the leader's core job
667
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:14.799
is to grow people.
668
00:30:15.319 --> 00:30:18.359
So if that's our job, how do we grow them? Well,
669
00:30:18.400 --> 00:30:19.039
we grow them.
670
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:21.799
Around situational leadership, We grow them around coaching. We give
671
00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:25.400
them the soft skills of leadership, time management, project management.
672
00:30:25.480 --> 00:30:27.559
So I packaged them all up in my invest in
673
00:30:27.559 --> 00:30:29.759
Your Leaders course. What I did at one eight hunder
674
00:30:29.799 --> 00:30:34.440
got Junk is I first showed all the management team
675
00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:37.279
that they didn't know the skills, so one by one
676
00:30:37.319 --> 00:30:39.680
I would give them a pre test and they'd fail
677
00:30:39.759 --> 00:30:41.680
to test. They're like, WHOA, I don't know this. Like,
678
00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:44.400
here's a test around delegation, and they'd fail it. It
679
00:30:44.440 --> 00:30:46.799
was gamed to show them that they didn't know this stuff,
680
00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:49.680
and then I would teach them the skills around delegation.
681
00:30:49.839 --> 00:30:52.720
I'd let them practice delegation. I would give them some
682
00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:56.559
exercises to try out in their area around delegation. We'd
683
00:30:56.559 --> 00:30:58.599
come back and talk about it again. We'd watch some
684
00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:02.240
videos about delegation. They would do a post test around
685
00:31:02.279 --> 00:31:04.799
delegation and they'd be like, Oh, I learned this stuff,
686
00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:07.599
and then six weeks later I would make them do
687
00:31:07.640 --> 00:31:10.039
a different post test to see if they retained it.
688
00:31:10.519 --> 00:31:11.920
So I'd kind of set the gap.
689
00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:14.680
Teach it, practice it, role model it, try it out,
690
00:31:14.920 --> 00:31:17.839
use it in the job, retain it, prove that they
691
00:31:17.880 --> 00:31:21.440
retained it, and then I would actually certify them at
692
00:31:21.559 --> 00:31:24.640
using that skill and training someone else in the skill.
693
00:31:25.119 --> 00:31:28.480
If they were able to use it, demonstrate that they
694
00:31:28.519 --> 00:31:30.880
could use it and they were able to train someone,
695
00:31:31.319 --> 00:31:33.759
then I certified them at gold in that skill. So
696
00:31:33.799 --> 00:31:37.079
I tried to create a viral training program inside of
697
00:31:37.119 --> 00:31:39.359
the organization with the twelve core skills that I put
698
00:31:39.359 --> 00:31:41.519
into my invest new leader's course. That's kind of the
699
00:31:41.519 --> 00:31:44.400
mindset I have. That tends to be what Ge does.
700
00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:47.240
You know with their six sigma and their lean training,
701
00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:50.039
tends to be what Starbucks does with their training. At
702
00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:53.119
McDonald's University, there's a lot of these train the trainer
703
00:31:53.160 --> 00:31:56.759
and viral training programs that if a new chief financial
704
00:31:56.759 --> 00:32:00.720
officer comes into McDonald's the frontline burger, I can teach
705
00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:01.799
them how to run a store.
706
00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:04.200
Well, you in part answered my question because you know,
707
00:32:04.200 --> 00:32:05.680
how do you scale that and how do you find
708
00:32:05.759 --> 00:32:07.759
the time to do it? So this viral approach is
709
00:32:07.759 --> 00:32:11.079
training to train our post certification. But even still, for
710
00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:15.000
an entrepreneur, you know this part of your job. It's
711
00:32:15.039 --> 00:32:17.480
not getting new leads, it's not closing deals. So it's
712
00:32:17.480 --> 00:32:19.960
not getting the product out the door. It's something you
713
00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:23.079
have to do with a little longer term payoff. Yeah,
714
00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:25.119
but if you're not willing to make the investment, you're
715
00:32:25.160 --> 00:32:26.039
digging your own grave.
716
00:32:26.079 --> 00:32:26.720
I would assume.
717
00:32:27.279 --> 00:32:29.759
Yeah, I see so many entrepreneurial companies, Like a fly
718
00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:31.200
is trying to get out the window. They're going to
719
00:32:31.319 --> 00:32:33.200
keep working hard and keep banging their head on the window,
720
00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:35.119
and they end up dead on the window. Still, this
721
00:32:35.240 --> 00:32:38.400
becomes your job. Your job is to get good at
722
00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:40.720
developing people. It is to get good at growing people.
723
00:32:40.759 --> 00:32:44.319
I remember sitting in Marcello Claret's office. Marcelo was the
724
00:32:44.359 --> 00:32:47.720
CEO of Sprint. He'd actually built and sold his first
725
00:32:47.720 --> 00:32:50.079
company for over a billion dollars to soft Bank, and
726
00:32:50.119 --> 00:32:53.400
then Masa, the chairman of soft Bank, appointed Marcello as
727
00:32:53.400 --> 00:32:55.759
the CEO of Sprint. I was sitting in his office
728
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:57.920
in Kansas City. We were talking about his team top
729
00:32:57.920 --> 00:33:00.839
grading his employees, and he turned to me, is like,
730
00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:02.960
when are people not going to be the problem anymore?
731
00:33:03.400 --> 00:33:05.559
And I started laughing. I said, you're the eighty second
732
00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:08.480
largest company in the United States. People are always the problem.
733
00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:12.039
Our job is to continually get better at growing people,
734
00:33:12.039 --> 00:33:14.720
and you can't automate that. You can't put a software
735
00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:16.880
tool in place for that. We have to get better
736
00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:19.640
at learning situational leadership. We have to get better at coaching.
737
00:33:19.640 --> 00:33:21.640
We have to get better at praise. We have to
738
00:33:21.640 --> 00:33:24.559
be better at helping to develop them and growing their confidence.
739
00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:27.559
I remember Howard bhar used to who was the CEO
740
00:33:27.599 --> 00:33:30.240
at Starbucks for a while, used to spend two hours
741
00:33:30.279 --> 00:33:33.480
every single Friday, handwriting thank you notes and praise notes
742
00:33:33.519 --> 00:33:36.319
to people in stores, Like he spent five percent of
743
00:33:36.359 --> 00:33:39.799
his week handwriting notes. There's not an entrepreneur at five
744
00:33:39.839 --> 00:33:42.200
million in revenue who's watching right now that spends five
745
00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:44.920
hours a week, you know, handwriting notes or two hours
746
00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:48.039
a week, I'm sorry, handwriting notes. So it's learning those
747
00:33:48.079 --> 00:33:51.279
systems and tools. I remember when I was sixteen, my dad,
748
00:33:51.279 --> 00:33:54.359
who was an entrepreneur. Both my grandfather's were entrepreneurs. My
749
00:33:54.480 --> 00:33:56.079
dad sat me down and he said, I want to
750
00:33:56.079 --> 00:33:58.759
tell you something about being in business. You'll never be
751
00:33:58.799 --> 00:34:01.480
smart enough to figure this out on your own. He said,
752
00:34:01.519 --> 00:34:04.119
your R and D should stand for ripoff and duplicate.
753
00:34:04.599 --> 00:34:07.559
Go find the best systems that the best people are
754
00:34:07.559 --> 00:34:10.320
doing and put those in place. Go find the best
755
00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:12.639
tools that they're using, and put those in place. So
756
00:34:12.760 --> 00:34:15.239
all the stuff I learned at college pro, all the
757
00:34:15.239 --> 00:34:17.880
stuff I learned at Boyd Autobody and Gerber Auto Collision,
758
00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:20.000
all the stuff I learned at Ubarter at one hundred
759
00:34:20.039 --> 00:34:22.760
got junk. I package that stuff up and those become
760
00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:25.800
my books, Those become my coaching, those become my you know,
761
00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:28.719
my investing, your leader's course. I have CEOs paying me
762
00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:32.039
four thousand dollars for an hour of coaching, and then
763
00:34:32.039 --> 00:34:33.960
I have an Investing your Leader's course for five hundred
764
00:34:33.960 --> 00:34:37.079
dollars forever. You know which do you want?
765
00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:37.400
Right?
766
00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:40.039
But that's where entrepreneurs have to spend the time on that.
767
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:42.559
They've got to join mastermind communities. They have to be
768
00:34:42.599 --> 00:34:45.360
a part of these online communities to learn. This is
769
00:34:45.440 --> 00:34:48.199
not taking time away from your business. This is the
770
00:34:48.199 --> 00:34:50.679
classic work on the business instead of in the business.
771
00:34:51.079 --> 00:34:53.320
Entrepreneurs don't have to be good at doing all of this.
772
00:34:54.079 --> 00:34:57.000
They have to know that these skills exist and bring
773
00:34:57.039 --> 00:34:59.760
them back to their company and tell their team learn
774
00:34:59.800 --> 00:35:00.440
this stuff.
775
00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:01.239
Right.
776
00:35:01.400 --> 00:35:04.519
I now know that situational leadership is a skill. We
777
00:35:04.559 --> 00:35:06.519
all have to learn this. They don't have to be
778
00:35:06.559 --> 00:35:08.320
good at teaching it. They just have to know what exists.
779
00:35:08.599 --> 00:35:09.239
That's helpful.
780
00:35:09.719 --> 00:35:11.440
And I love that R and D should be rip
781
00:35:11.480 --> 00:35:14.000
off and duplicate. I mean people have called that modeling.
782
00:35:14.360 --> 00:35:17.559
Tony Robbinson and others say successfully his clues. You know,
783
00:35:17.639 --> 00:35:19.559
you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And things are
784
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:21.000
changing so fast anyway.
785
00:35:21.480 --> 00:35:23.440
Well, and I was never the smart kid. I wasn't
786
00:35:23.480 --> 00:35:25.320
able to go to a smart business school, right. I
787
00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:26.800
was the one who had to figure out the cheat
788
00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:28.840
sheets and the shortcuts. I was the one who saw
789
00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:31.360
that people were going to study really hard, but I'd
790
00:35:31.400 --> 00:35:33.039
end up dead on the windowsill. I was like, Oh,
791
00:35:33.039 --> 00:35:35.239
the cheat sheets over here, I can have a TA
792
00:35:35.280 --> 00:35:37.559
that can show me all of the last five years exams.
793
00:35:37.960 --> 00:35:39.000
I'll just study those.
794
00:35:39.559 --> 00:35:42.960
So let's talk again about scaling. I suspect a lot
795
00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:44.599
of people in our audience are going to be in
796
00:35:44.639 --> 00:35:49.199
that three employees to ten employees, maybe six figures to
797
00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:52.000
a million to a million, five or maybe in a
798
00:35:52.280 --> 00:35:54.480
moving from a million to three million and ten to
799
00:35:54.519 --> 00:35:55.800
thirty employees and so forth.
800
00:35:55.840 --> 00:35:57.320
But a lot of ourns will be in that area.
801
00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.239
And you can be sitting there going, you know you're going,
802
00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:03.039
and maybe you've even going very quickly, and then you're
803
00:36:03.039 --> 00:36:05.239
looking at the horizon, Well, how am I going to
804
00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:06.840
keep growing like this? And how am I going to
805
00:36:06.960 --> 00:36:09.199
Because I can't just keep doing more of X, I'm
806
00:36:09.199 --> 00:36:12.000
starting to run into operational efficiencies.
807
00:36:12.079 --> 00:36:14.320
I can't scale. I've got to, you know, I just
808
00:36:14.360 --> 00:36:16.719
don't see where the growth is going to come from.
809
00:36:16.760 --> 00:36:18.559
Where is the property going to come from? So I
810
00:36:18.559 --> 00:36:21.920
wonder if you can simplify that process for a CEO,
811
00:36:22.079 --> 00:36:26.000
founder and maybe his second in command, figuring out that
812
00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:29.800
that track, that future track to continued profitable growth.
813
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:32.880
The first part is to not worry about stuff that
814
00:36:33.039 --> 00:36:37.119
is so far out there that it's just too far
815
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:40.800
out to worry about, right, control the controllables. I remember
816
00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:43.360
when my first son was born and I was like,
817
00:36:43.400 --> 00:36:44.840
oh my gosh, what's it going to be like when
818
00:36:44.880 --> 00:36:48.159
he's a teenager? And then I reminded myself, he's only one.
819
00:36:48.679 --> 00:36:50.840
By the time he's you know, when he's twelve, all
820
00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:52.440
my friends will have a bunch of twelve year olds.
821
00:36:52.519 --> 00:36:54.840
We'll talk about I won't worry about teenage years until
822
00:36:54.840 --> 00:36:56.880
he's twelve. I'm not even gonna worry about what he's
823
00:36:56.920 --> 00:37:00.280
like going to school in the first year until he's four. Right,
824
00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:03.280
so you can climb up the stairway in the total
825
00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:06.039
dark by just touching one stare at a time. So
826
00:37:06.119 --> 00:37:08.239
the answers that you need to run a thirty million
827
00:37:08.280 --> 00:37:10.320
dollar company will be all around you.
828
00:37:10.360 --> 00:37:10.760
When you're a.
829
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:13.800
Twenty five million dollar company, when you're going from one
830
00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:17.599
to three, worry about going from one to three. It's
831
00:37:17.599 --> 00:37:21.360
almost like everybody who just keeps reading business books is
832
00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:25.400
doing themselves a disservice. They're reading books just in case
833
00:37:26.039 --> 00:37:28.800
they need that information. What I think they should be
834
00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:31.920
doing is reading business books and devouring podcasts and attending
835
00:37:31.960 --> 00:37:37.039
masterminds just in time. Read something that helps you work
836
00:37:37.079 --> 00:37:39.639
on what you're working on this quarter. If you're hiring
837
00:37:39.679 --> 00:37:42.639
three people this quarter, read everything you can about hiring
838
00:37:42.639 --> 00:37:45.079
and interviewing. But there's no reason for you to read
839
00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:47.079
about interviewing and hiring if you're not going to hire
840
00:37:47.079 --> 00:37:50.199
anybody for the next two years or year. So turn
841
00:37:50.280 --> 00:37:54.000
your training to very much just in time training instead
842
00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:56.719
of just in case training. That's number one. Number two
843
00:37:56.800 --> 00:37:58.880
is to remember that you don't have to anymore be
844
00:37:58.920 --> 00:38:01.480
the smartest person in the world. You have to know
845
00:38:01.519 --> 00:38:05.159
a bunch of the smart people. So invest in mastermind communities,
846
00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:09.079
invest in online groups, get into online forums and online
847
00:38:09.079 --> 00:38:12.519
groups on Facebook and on LinkedIn. Surround yourself with lots
848
00:38:12.559 --> 00:38:16.039
of smart people, and be okay with being vulnerable and saying, hey,
849
00:38:16.159 --> 00:38:18.199
do they know how to do this? If you go
850
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:21.920
on my Facebook feed, you'll see me asking questions, probably
851
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.280
weekly about things I ask one the other day, Hey,
852
00:38:25.360 --> 00:38:26.480
do they know how to really grow?
853
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:27.480
A podcast audience.
854
00:38:27.519 --> 00:38:31.039
I have fifty thousand people every week listening to my podcast,
855
00:38:31.119 --> 00:38:33.480
and I'm asking how to grow a podcast? Still, like
856
00:38:33.519 --> 00:38:35.840
I'm always trying to learn and develop and grow. So
857
00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:38.000
I think it's a little bit of that, right, The
858
00:38:38.039 --> 00:38:40.400
growth will come. Remember that you don't have to be
859
00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:42.920
the smartest person in the room. And then the last
860
00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.159
thing is, none of this stuff really matters. We're all
861
00:38:46.199 --> 00:38:48.639
going to die, like just you know, chill out and
862
00:38:48.639 --> 00:38:50.440
relax and enjoy the journey of a little bit because
863
00:38:50.440 --> 00:38:51.719
we're all going to end up as a kabab.
864
00:38:52.079 --> 00:38:53.519
We're just going to be meet on a stick at
865
00:38:53.519 --> 00:38:57.599
some point. So let's just not shake ourselves so seriously. Right,
866
00:38:58.280 --> 00:38:59.239
I think one.
867
00:38:59.039 --> 00:39:01.440
Of the dangers is we're trying to grow our companies
868
00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:04.440
is we can get into the shiny ball syndrome. You know,
869
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:07.480
there's this gadget, there's that marketing trick, there's this tactic,
870
00:39:07.519 --> 00:39:10.119
there's that that, and we're focusing and we're so inundated
871
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:12.840
with all that today. And then also just a tendency
872
00:39:13.280 --> 00:39:15.599
because we're thinkers, right, we got a million ideas to
873
00:39:15.679 --> 00:39:18.679
overcomplicate things. So I wondered if you could talk about
874
00:39:18.760 --> 00:39:20.800
just you know, I mean, I like that just in
875
00:39:20.880 --> 00:39:22.320
time strategy we were talking about.
876
00:39:22.360 --> 00:39:24.760
I think that's partially the same answer to this question.
877
00:39:24.840 --> 00:39:27.320
But how do we keep it simple and keep that
878
00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:32.039
laser focus on our company, our product, our customers, our growth.
879
00:39:32.760 --> 00:39:35.239
Well, okay, you just hit on a couple of parts there.
880
00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:38.639
One is around simplicity and one is focusing on our
881
00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:41.239
product and our customers and our growth. I want to
882
00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:42.719
start with that one first. I'll go back to the
883
00:39:42.719 --> 00:39:46.280
simplicity one second October of two thousand, I walked into
884
00:39:46.280 --> 00:39:48.719
one under got junk. You know, I've been working with
885
00:39:48.719 --> 00:39:51.119
Brian for a few weeks, and he came in one
886
00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:52.960
morning and he was all excited that he'd been out
887
00:39:53.039 --> 00:39:55.800
the night before with our head of marketing knocking down
888
00:39:55.960 --> 00:39:58.559
signs of our competitors with a hockey stick. One of
889
00:39:58.599 --> 00:40:00.480
them was driving and one was sitting on the window
890
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:02.559
sill of the passenger seat, and they were knocking down
891
00:40:02.639 --> 00:40:06.079
street signs that our competitors put up. And I'm like,
892
00:40:06.159 --> 00:40:08.480
first off, if I ever hear you talk about that again,
893
00:40:08.679 --> 00:40:13.000
I'm leaving. Secondly, you don't beat our competitors by hurting
894
00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:16.159
their marketing. We beat our competitors by out marketing them.
895
00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:17.920
So now what I want you to do is drive
896
00:40:17.960 --> 00:40:20.960
around the city and look for their signs, leave them up,
897
00:40:21.400 --> 00:40:23.559
and every time we see one of their signs, put.
898
00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:24.679
Five of them around.
899
00:40:25.360 --> 00:40:27.239
I want to do what we call search and destroy,
900
00:40:27.719 --> 00:40:29.679
and we're going to cut off their marketing with a
901
00:40:29.760 --> 00:40:32.000
geometry of this whole destroy marketing.
902
00:40:32.480 --> 00:40:33.719
And I said, if I ever hear.
903
00:40:33.599 --> 00:40:35.400
You come in the morning talking about them ripping off
904
00:40:35.400 --> 00:40:37.880
our Yellow page ads, or ripping off our flyers, or
905
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:40.159
following our pricing, I will walk out the door and
906
00:40:40.159 --> 00:40:41.719
you're screwed, because I'm the only one who knows how
907
00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:44.320
to grow franchise. So Brian's like, I won't, I'll never
908
00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:45.199
talk about them again.
909
00:40:45.480 --> 00:40:46.119
He never did.
910
00:40:46.679 --> 00:40:49.199
The company was called trash Busters. They ended up becoming
911
00:40:49.280 --> 00:40:51.599
what was called rid of it, but trash busters. We
912
00:40:51.679 --> 00:40:54.679
used to call them trash bastards, so trash busters. He
913
00:40:54.760 --> 00:40:57.800
never spoke of them again that day. They were actually
914
00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:00.719
operating in seven cities, and Brian was operating in twelve.
915
00:41:01.360 --> 00:41:04.119
Six and a half years later, we were operating in
916
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:07.039
three hundred and thirty cities. They were operating in two.
917
00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:10.719
They're out of business today, and he's eight hundred and
918
00:41:10.719 --> 00:41:14.159
fifty million in system wide sales because he stayed focused
919
00:41:14.239 --> 00:41:18.920
on his vision, his strategy, his plan, and he ignored
920
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:20.800
what the customers are doing. It's one of the reasons
921
00:41:20.840 --> 00:41:23.719
why you can push your vivid vision out about where
922
00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:26.639
your company's going, because they're not going to be able
923
00:41:26.679 --> 00:41:28.360
to execute like you can execute.
924
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.880
Right. The second part of that is to really obsess.
925
00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:34.199
About one core metric, and one core metric more than
926
00:41:34.239 --> 00:41:38.760
all others, and that's employee net promoter score. How happy
927
00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:41.800
are your employees. If your employees are happy, they're going
928
00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:44.000
to take care of your customers. If your employees are happy,
929
00:41:44.039 --> 00:41:46.280
they'll jump through brick walls for you. If your employees
930
00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:47.760
are happy, they're going to work harder, They're going to
931
00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:50.039
be more productive. They'll say yes. And if they do
932
00:41:50.119 --> 00:41:53.039
all that, your customers are going to be happy. Your
933
00:41:53.039 --> 00:41:54.920
customers will be taken care of. But if you obsess
934
00:41:54.920 --> 00:41:57.639
about the customer, your employees are going to feel overworked
935
00:41:57.679 --> 00:42:00.639
and underloved. And if you've got really happymployees and really
936
00:42:00.639 --> 00:42:02.719
happy customers, you can charge whatever you want.
937
00:42:03.280 --> 00:42:05.000
We were a premium priced product.
938
00:42:05.320 --> 00:42:07.960
There were thousands of companies out there and still are
939
00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:10.000
today that can do junk removal for far less than
940
00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.840
we can At college pro painters. We were thirty percent
941
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:16.159
more expensive than every pro who had thirty years experience
942
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:19.280
painting houses. And we had a day or two days.
943
00:42:19.519 --> 00:42:21.880
But because we focused on us and we cared about
944
00:42:21.880 --> 00:42:24.480
our employees, that you know, that's our starting point.
945
00:42:24.920 --> 00:42:26.079
Around the simplicity.
946
00:42:26.760 --> 00:42:29.119
I believe that every system in a company should be
947
00:42:29.159 --> 00:42:31.159
able to be written down on a post it note.
948
00:42:31.320 --> 00:42:33.559
If you can't write it down on a post it note,
949
00:42:33.719 --> 00:42:37.039
you're not thinking clearly enough and you're over complicating things.
950
00:42:37.119 --> 00:42:38.320
I was not the MBA.
951
00:42:38.719 --> 00:42:41.079
I wasn't able to go to the business schools, but
952
00:42:41.199 --> 00:42:44.400
I could clearly come up with a short little idea
953
00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:47.159
that the worst employee in the worst market and the
954
00:42:47.159 --> 00:42:49.239
worst weather on the worst day, having the worst time
955
00:42:49.280 --> 00:42:52.840
at home could actually execute that system pretty darn well.
956
00:42:52.920 --> 00:42:57.360
That simplicity creates momentum, and momentum creates momentum.
957
00:42:57.400 --> 00:43:02.679
What is it other than compensation that keeps our employees,
958
00:43:02.840 --> 00:43:05.000
keeps that net promoter score really high?
959
00:43:05.480 --> 00:43:08.119
Well, and it's interesting. Compensation is the bottom of Maslow's
960
00:43:08.159 --> 00:43:10.239
hieracive needs. So you need to make sure that your
961
00:43:10.280 --> 00:43:12.840
base pay is at about the eightieth percentle of the
962
00:43:12.880 --> 00:43:15.000
Bell curve. It needs to be pretty darn good, not
963
00:43:15.119 --> 00:43:17.800
the best, but they need to feel safe and secure.
964
00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:20.320
They need to feel liked and cared for. They need
965
00:43:20.320 --> 00:43:22.360
to feel like their boss cares about them, that their
966
00:43:22.360 --> 00:43:24.840
team cares about them, they have friends at work. They
967
00:43:24.840 --> 00:43:27.519
need to feel like they're being developed, that their work matters,
968
00:43:27.519 --> 00:43:30.119
that they have meaning, which is driving towards that divid vision.
969
00:43:30.480 --> 00:43:33.039
They need to have that self actualization like they're growing
970
00:43:33.079 --> 00:43:34.760
in their career and what they're doing matters, and the
971
00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:38.239
company's core values. So it's kind of driving every one
972
00:43:38.280 --> 00:43:40.320
of the levels of maslows, hierarchive needs. That's what I
973
00:43:40.360 --> 00:43:43.559
focus on. I do think that North Americans kind of
974
00:43:43.599 --> 00:43:46.920
suck as employers because we don't give anywhere near enough
975
00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:49.559
vacation time to our employees. And I think that we're
976
00:43:49.599 --> 00:43:53.039
coming around to that more. But Europeans Asians, five to
977
00:43:53.079 --> 00:43:55.840
six weeks is normal for everybody, even in their first year,
978
00:43:56.199 --> 00:43:58.880
and I think every company should give every employee five
979
00:43:58.920 --> 00:44:02.320
weeks pay vacation, including their sick time. Make it a
980
00:44:02.440 --> 00:44:05.119
use it or lose it policy, and help them to
981
00:44:05.159 --> 00:44:07.960
stay happy and to have hobbies and have a bucket
982
00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:10.480
list and spend time with their friends and family. If
983
00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:14.079
we as employers care more about our employees personal lives
984
00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:17.199
and their dreams and their families than anybody else does,
985
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:20.239
they'll go through brick walls for us to build a company.
986
00:44:20.360 --> 00:44:21.519
It's not about pay.
987
00:44:21.639 --> 00:44:23.679
And I think that's such a I've read your books
988
00:44:23.679 --> 00:44:27.159
and I've read this philosophy, and it's really it's who
989
00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:29.840
I want to be, is especially around this vacation issue.
990
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:32.440
All the other thing I think we're doing everything else
991
00:44:33.239 --> 00:44:34.159
a vacation.
992
00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:36.679
Issue for North America. It's a big leap.
993
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:36.920
Right, you know.
994
00:44:37.119 --> 00:44:39.159
And once you do it, though, here's why it works.
995
00:44:39.599 --> 00:44:42.360
If you give five weeks vacation to every employee, including
996
00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:45.079
their sick time, no one will quit. So your training
997
00:44:45.119 --> 00:44:48.440
cost drops, Your retention goes up, your happiness goes up.
998
00:44:48.800 --> 00:44:52.639
Their productivity goes up because they're recharged, they're not showing
999
00:44:52.719 --> 00:44:55.719
up sick and getting everybody else sick. Your recruiting cost
1000
00:44:55.760 --> 00:44:58.039
goes down because everybody wants to work for you. The
1001
00:44:58.119 --> 00:44:59.960
press will write about you, you'll become one of the
1002
00:45:00.119 --> 00:45:02.000
US places to work, and you'll get press coverage.
1003
00:45:02.159 --> 00:45:03.440
It just pays off. Right.
1004
00:45:03.760 --> 00:45:05.840
The key is to teach your employees how to use
1005
00:45:05.840 --> 00:45:08.000
the time effectively. So what I like to do is
1006
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:09.800
take two weeks off in the summer because nobody wants
1007
00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:12.239
to be their working anyway. Take one week off around
1008
00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:14.639
Christmas in New Year's because everything slows down and grinds
1009
00:45:14.639 --> 00:45:16.920
to a halt. And then the government already gives us
1010
00:45:16.920 --> 00:45:20.480
a whole bunch of statutory holidays these weekends. Turn them
1011
00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:22.960
into four day weekends, you know, turn ten three day
1012
00:45:22.960 --> 00:45:25.679
weekends into four day weekends, and now everybody's got some
1013
00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:29.320
really good recharge time. Now the key is put systems
1014
00:45:29.360 --> 00:45:31.000
in place to make sure you got your butt covered
1015
00:45:31.039 --> 00:45:34.159
when you're not here, right, and make sure that you
1016
00:45:34.239 --> 00:45:36.400
actually get all your work done. But because they're going
1017
00:45:36.440 --> 00:45:38.800
away all the time and taking vacation off, they're not
1018
00:45:38.880 --> 00:45:41.360
on social media, they're not fried, they're not burned out.
1019
00:45:41.639 --> 00:45:43.800
They're actually getting their work done because they're so excited.
1020
00:45:44.199 --> 00:45:46.440
Brian at Oney under got junk this summer. He called
1021
00:45:46.440 --> 00:45:48.079
me at the end of May. He said, you know,
1022
00:45:48.119 --> 00:45:50.000
we still do five weeks vacation. I said, yeah, he goes,
1023
00:45:50.039 --> 00:45:53.519
I'm giving everybody Friday afternoons off. I'm like, what, he goes,
1024
00:45:53.639 --> 00:45:56.360
I just told them Friday at twelve o'clock, everybody globally
1025
00:45:56.400 --> 00:45:58.719
shut down and go home because nobody wants to work
1026
00:45:58.719 --> 00:46:01.719
in the summer after one o'clock on a Friday. I'm like, dude,
1027
00:46:01.719 --> 00:46:03.239
it's no wonder you're one of the best companies on
1028
00:46:03.239 --> 00:46:04.079
the planet to work for.
1029
00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:08.480
So you read in a book about meeting called meetings suck. Yeah,
1030
00:46:08.480 --> 00:46:11.679
so that's in abocative title. So let's talk about meetings.
1031
00:46:12.280 --> 00:46:15.639
You know, meetings don't suck. We suck at running meetings.
1032
00:46:16.039 --> 00:46:17.480
And it's kind of like if we were to send
1033
00:46:17.519 --> 00:46:19.440
our kid off to the little league baseball and not teach
1034
00:46:19.519 --> 00:46:21.239
him how to hold the bat and toss the ball
1035
00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:23.760
and catch the ball. Johnny would come home from baseball
1036
00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:26.760
and say, Daddy, baseball sucks. Like, no, you suck at baseball.
1037
00:46:27.480 --> 00:46:29.599
So we don't set them up for that failure. The
1038
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:32.440
reason most of us are frustrated with meetings is nobody
1039
00:46:32.440 --> 00:46:35.119
knows how to run a meeting. Nobody starts meeting on time,
1040
00:46:35.199 --> 00:46:37.880
nobody stops them on time. I actually stop all my
1041
00:46:37.960 --> 00:46:40.920
meetings five minutes prior to the scheduled ending time so
1042
00:46:40.960 --> 00:46:42.559
I can go down the hall, talk to my assistant
1043
00:46:42.559 --> 00:46:43.960
and get a cup of coffee. Go to the bathroom
1044
00:46:43.960 --> 00:46:46.880
and start every meeting in every phone call exactly on time.
1045
00:46:47.480 --> 00:46:49.639
I have a rule that says, no agenda, no INTENDA
1046
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:51.760
right if I don't know what we're covering and in
1047
00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:54.000
what order recovering it and how many minutes on each item,
1048
00:46:54.639 --> 00:46:57.159
don't come. I teach employees to say, you know what,
1049
00:46:57.199 --> 00:46:58.840
I looked at the agenda, I looked at the purpose
1050
00:46:58.840 --> 00:46:59.360
and outcome.
1051
00:46:59.599 --> 00:47:00.920
I need to be out it.
1052
00:47:00.920 --> 00:47:03.360
I'd rather stay focused on my core work. That's a
1053
00:47:03.360 --> 00:47:05.840
badge of honor to opt out of a meeting, because
1054
00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:08.400
we know that you're actually saying I'm not needed in
1055
00:47:08.440 --> 00:47:10.840
this thing. So the book Meeting Stuck teaches you how
1056
00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:13.800
to run effective meetings and all the different types of
1057
00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:17.159
meetings that every high growth company needs. Your annual planning meeting,
1058
00:47:17.239 --> 00:47:19.920
your quarterly meetings, your financial meetings, your L ten meeting,
1059
00:47:20.320 --> 00:47:23.360
your daily huddles, your coaching meetings. It teaches you how
1060
00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:25.639
to actually run all of those, and then it also
1061
00:47:25.679 --> 00:47:28.159
teaches employees how to show up and participate at them too.
1062
00:47:28.760 --> 00:47:31.360
So let me hit you with the last question, how
1063
00:47:31.360 --> 00:47:35.679
do we CEOs grow the companies without getting burned out?
1064
00:47:36.039 --> 00:47:38.320
One is to remember that none of this stuff really matters.
1065
00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:39.719
Right at the end of the day, we're all get
1066
00:47:39.800 --> 00:47:40.519
end up as a kebab.
1067
00:47:40.559 --> 00:47:42.280
I heard that recently. I thought it was so funny.
1068
00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:44.960
We're gonna be a meet on a stick, So don't
1069
00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:47.440
take ourselves so f and seriously, let's have fun along
1070
00:47:47.480 --> 00:47:50.199
the journey. Number two is to remember that you're never
1071
00:47:50.239 --> 00:47:52.760
going to catch up. So you're not allowed to work
1072
00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:54.639
nights anymore. You have to shut it down at five
1073
00:47:54.639 --> 00:47:57.679
point thirty six o'clock every day, and you're allowed one
1074
00:47:57.800 --> 00:48:01.800
night per quarter to actually cap on work. And you're
1075
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:04.280
not allowed to work Saturdays or Sundays. You're allowed one
1076
00:48:04.440 --> 00:48:08.440
half weekend day per month to actually catch up on something.
1077
00:48:08.519 --> 00:48:08.960
That's it.
1078
00:48:09.079 --> 00:48:12.079
Get a hobby, get a life, reconnect with your friends,
1079
00:48:12.159 --> 00:48:15.079
reconnect with your spouse, write a personal vivid vision, write
1080
00:48:15.079 --> 00:48:15.960
a vivivision with.
1081
00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:19.280
Your spouse, write bucket list with your kids. But this
1082
00:48:19.480 --> 00:48:20.559
to do list is.
1083
00:48:20.519 --> 00:48:22.159
Never going to get caught up on because you're going
1084
00:48:22.239 --> 00:48:23.920
to grow more, you're going to acquire more, you're going
1085
00:48:23.920 --> 00:48:26.400
to set more goals. And that last part is your
1086
00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:28.039
to do list does not have your name on it.
1087
00:48:28.519 --> 00:48:30.400
Your to do list does not say fleets. To do
1088
00:48:30.440 --> 00:48:32.280
list my to do list does not say Cameron's to
1089
00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:35.000
do list. It means we can delegate everything on our
1090
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:37.800
to do list to other people and we can grow
1091
00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:41.000
their confidence and their skills and their connections so they
1092
00:48:41.039 --> 00:48:43.119
can do more and teach them to have a life too,
1093
00:48:43.679 --> 00:48:45.159
and then just enjoy the journey.
1094
00:48:45.639 --> 00:48:46.360
Thank you so much.
1095
00:48:46.440 --> 00:48:49.559
Cameron Harold has been incredibly illuminating and there's so much
1096
00:48:49.639 --> 00:48:52.800
actionable wisdom and advice here where people find out more
1097
00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:55.239
about your work and the services and books and everything
1098
00:48:55.320 --> 00:48:56.320
you continue to offer.
1099
00:48:56.519 --> 00:48:59.320
Yeah, everything is at Cameron Harolds dot com. It's h
1100
00:48:59.440 --> 00:49:02.039
e er o so cameronherld dot com. All of my
1101
00:49:02.079 --> 00:49:05.039
books are on Amazon, Audible, iTunes. I've got a great
1102
00:49:05.039 --> 00:49:08.400
YouTube channel, my Second Command podcast, my invest In your
1103
00:49:08.480 --> 00:49:11.320
leaders course. It's all on the Cameron Herald website. Thank
1104
00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:14.599
you so much, appreciate it anytime. Thanks lete, take care.
1105
00:49:15.239 --> 00:49:19.079
Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember,
1106
00:49:19.159 --> 00:49:21.880
real change happens when we commit to our growth, face
1107
00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:25.440
our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If
1108
00:49:25.480 --> 00:49:28.760
you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe
1109
00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:32.159
and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.
1110
00:49:32.239 --> 00:49:34.960
Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you.
1111
00:49:35.159 --> 00:49:35.679
Take care
