The Secrets The Wealthy Pay $100K For... Cameron Herold Just Gave Them Away

Cameron Herold: I always pay to be in business class because the number of people that I meet in business class that I do deals with far outweighs the number of people I've ever met sitting in economy. Entrepreneurs never tell the truth, not unintentionally, but we're not gonna go online today and say, oh, I'm worried someone is stealing from me or I'm worried I'm going bankrupt. Like, we decided to sign up for the roller coaster and they're sitting in a backpack and they have to ride it with us, and we don't tell them what's coming. Most entrepreneurs are bipolar and have ADD. If you get nine to eleven, you're usually medicated for bipolar.

Steve Trang: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode of Disruptors Where Millionaires Are Made. Today, we have Cameron Herold with COO, Elias, back again. And, Cameron flew in from Vancouver on the way to Greece Yeah. To share the secrets that the wealthy pay for. I mean, not just the wealthy, even royalty

Cameron: Yeah.

Steve: Pay for is is is is kinda wild. Guys, I'm gonna mission create millionaires. The information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years given with the way things are going with AI. Maybe even, like, two to three years. If you take consistent action, you'll become one.

Before we jump in, if you you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, hit that subscribe button because every week we're dropping lessons that can help you create your first or your next million. And right now, you have a 100,000, 250, maybe even more sitting in your CRM, resurrect all your old and dead leads with our objection proof AI calling agent, text cash to the phone number 33777 to unlock the money that's just hanging out inside your CRM. You ready?

Cameron: I'm ready. Alright. I heard a British guy the other day say smash that button below. Smash that. Yo.

Smash that subscribe button.

Steve: It's so weird when I hear it. Yes. Smash that button. So, you were here not that long ago.

Cameron: Yeah.

Steve: And you were our top show last year. And one of the things that might have helped is we had one Instagram reel, that went viral. 97,700 views. I just checked Oh. A moment ago.

Right. And ice I get notifications. This person shared your reel. This person shared So it's still hitting people's explore page.

Cameron: What did I say?

Steve: We were talking about and I wanna get your thought on this. We were talking about how you are making a lot of freaking money Yep. But your, but the CEO still needed to go get a loan from his mom.

Cameron: Oh, yeah. Alright. We're talking

Steve: about a story. So talk about this. Like, why do you think that struck a nerve?

Cameron: Yeah. I'll tell you I'll tell you about how we almost bankrupted the company. Mhmm. But I wanna go back to the fact that I've coached some royal families because I think you said that and we just pass over as well.

Steve: Pass over it.

Cameron: Yeah. So so the fact was, I met a woman on a flight from Vancouver to Phoenix Mhmm. Around ten years ago now, and we were sitting, chatting. I always sit in business class. There's a really good lesson here, by the way.

I always pay to be in business class because the number of people that I meet in business class that I do deals with far outweighs the number of people I've ever met sitting in economy. And it's just a numbers game. Anyway, so I I'm sitting with this woman. She goes, is your name Cameron Herold? And I said, yeah.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out my first book, Double Double. She goes, I was just given your book last week. I'm like, well, that's completely random. So we're talking. I'm like, what do you do?

She goes, well, I'm the second in command for a group of companies. And I'm like, well, you know, what kind of companies? She goes, well, we do some construction and some road building, and we build some hospitals, and we run some education, and and we run Build some hospitals. Yeah. And and I'm like, so what exactly?

And finally, she's like, she goes, I'm the second in command for the royal family of the country of Qatar. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, I'm the COO for the monarchy. They own the country. So Qatar is an absolute monarchy.

Mhmm. The royal family owns the country. She is their COO. So the the the education business is they own the school system. You know?

The medical business that she's in, they own the hospital systems. I'm like, fuck. That's crazy. So she said that she thinks that the Emer would want me to coach him and do some work with the royal family. I really didn't wanna go to Qatar at the time, so I doubled my coaching fees, my daily coaching fees.

And I said for me to come for three days, it would be a $100,000, and it would be five days travel, five star hotels, first class split. This was just over an email the following week. She goes, fine. I'll send you $50 now, $50 the day that you get here. We'll pay your hotel.

We'll put you up in the w for five days. I'm like, I guess I'm going to Qatar. So, yeah, so so that was how I worked with the royal family over there.

Steve: That definitely paid for your first class seats.

Cameron: Yeah. It was a $100,100,100 thousand dollars US for three days work.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: Five days travel, so, like, $20 a day.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not there yet, so I'm looking forward to that day.

Cameron: You should be.

Steve: But you you you

Cameron: should So yeah. So what happened? So so we had taken the company was called one eight hundred Got Junk. Mhmm. And Brian and myself were the CEO and COO.

I was the COO. He was CEO. We grew the company from 2,000,000 to 106,000,000 in six years. Yeah. Very rapid growth.

We were the number two company in Canada to work for, had gone from 12 locations to 330, from 14 employees to 3,100 employees, and we were kinda like nitroglycerin. We just blew it up, right, to be really big, really successful. But we didn't really understand how to run a big company at that size. So we've had 5,000,000 in cash in our bank, and we spent $800,000 of in on employee bonuses, $600,000 in taxes, had spent $2,000,000 on an office renovation, including a glass stairway that we built to connect the three, floors, 60,000 square feet, spent 6 or $800,000 on the office move to move all of the 240 employees to this new space. So we basically drained our $5,000,000 in cash.

We went to the bank. We said, hey. We need a loan. The bank said we can't loan to you. We're like, why not?

Number two company in Canada. Look at our growth. And they're like, you don't know how to run a company. We're like, yeah. We do.

Look at all these stats. We said, you know, we had $5,000,000 in our account last month. And they're like, well, that's the problem. We're like, we just didn't understand. Right?

They said if you'd come to us last month to borrow $5,000,000, we would have loaned it to you. Look. We didn't need it back then. They're like, see. You don't understand.

And their analogy that they gave us sitting in that meeting was you would never go out and buy a home for $5,000,000. Right? You might put a million down and get a mortgage for the 4,000,000. Mhmm. Right?

You don't take all your cash and drain it on those things. You spend some of your cash and you come to us for a credit line or a loan so that we can help finance your growth like a mortgage. So we were learning how to scale our company, but they wouldn't loan to us. Our payroll four days later was 420,000 for that two week period. So Brian went out and borrowed $420 from his mom Yeah.

So that we could meet payroll. Then we had to fire 20 employees and tell our suppliers we weren't paying them for ninety days, but we almost bankrupted the company.

Steve: Why do you think that message resonated so powerfully? Because, like, again, like, they're sharing it all the time. They're still commenting on that particular it's it's awful for sports players.

Cameron: I have to go back and rewatch it, but I know that that I I probably talked about cash being our oxygen. Mhmm. One of the big lessons I got was so our head of finance was this very quiet, very amiable, very analytical Filipino who kept saying, you know, are you sure we're not growing too quickly? I'm worried that we're not growing too quickly. I'm worried that we're spending.

And we're like, no. No. We got this. No. No.

We got this. The big lesson we got, if you're not willing to listen to your people, hire people you're willing to listen to. But God gave us two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio. Yeah.

We should have listened.

Steve: Well, the lesson the message that resonated, that I saw was the part that it's a business is a blood sport. It's not, like, all sunshine and rainbows all the time.

Cameron: Oh, yeah. It's dark. Yeah. Okay. So so you wanna talk about the dark stuff.

I just got paid to speak to a group of entrepreneurs in Austria, a month and a half ago. A guy named do you ever follow this guy Eli the travel guy? He's the points guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Yes. The points guy.

Cameron: So Eli and travel like Tommy brought me over to Austria to speak. It was Ben Greenfield and I were the two speakers. We spent a week with these guys, and I did a speaking event to them about all of the real lessons that I'd learned in business that I've never talked about before. I was actually crying on stage, like, real, true, vulnerable tears that started to come out. I don't know where the hell they came from, but entrepreneurs never tell the truth.

Mhmm. Not unintentionally, but we're not gonna go on on online today and say, oh, I'm worried someone is stealing from me, or I'm worried I'm going bankrupt. I don't have enough money to meet payroll, or, I don't know where my customers are gonna come from, or I don't have enough money to pay bills, or this ad campaign didn't work. We might talk about it two years later Mhmm. When we've fixed it, but we're not gonna talk about it in the moment because then our employees worry about us, the board worries about us, our customers get even more freaked out.

So we keep all the stressful stuff inside us until we've fixed it, and we go on social media and we go look at me and Bora Bora with the hut over the beach. Right? Yeah. So we talk about the good stuff and we keep all the silence. So maybe that's what resonated.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I think that part because, like, I maybe, you know, I think that that this business I think the reason why masterminds are so powerful is, like, we don't get to share what this burden we carry. Right. Right?

On the inside, it's like, we have to have this tough face. Like, we've gotta figure it out. Yep. And there are times when we can't sleep.

Cameron: You know when the real value in a mastermind comes is not from sitting listening to a speaker at that event, but sitting in the hot tub talking to a couple other entrepreneurs who are really struggling and they can't sleep and they're not meeting payroll and and they're getting vulnerable because now we finally have a peer group that are going through the same shit. Sadly, and this is a scary part, our spouses, whether it's our wife or husband and our kids, are strapped to our back. It's almost like we decided to sign up for the roller coaster, and they're sitting in a backpack and they have to ride it with us, and we don't tell them what's coming. No. Right?

We're so then they're wondering why is daddy so pissed off today? Well, I'm pissed off because I can't meet payroll, and I just recruited somebody. I'm not sure how I'm gonna pay him, and that ad campaign that I just ran didn't work. And meanwhile, I'm getting frustrated. I'm not really frustrated with them.

I just don't have a good outlet to to let that stress out.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, I can say my wife, she's awesome, and she's been ride or die. Yep. But I can say this at least once, if not more, her saying, I didn't sign up for this.

Cameron: Right. And you know what you know what else freaks your wife out? Yeah. There will be there will be minutes over dinner or over a day where you will open up and be vulnerable and be scared or be frustrated or be stressed. But then ten minutes later, you talk from some manic stage about how you're gonna take over the world because of this other new thing that you're thinking about that's gonna solve.

She's like, my husband is bipolar. Yeah. Right? We most entrepreneurs are, by the way, on the far right side of the spectrum of being bipolar. Oh, really?

Yeah. There's, if I read you the 11 traits of bipolar disorder Mhmm. I actually have them on my phone. Yeah. Most entrepreneurs would be nine, ten, or 11 of the 11 traits.

If you're an accountant or a lawyer or a teacher or an employee, you're probably at two or three. If you get more than five or six of the 11 traits, you're clinically diagnosed as bipolar. If you get nine to 11, you're usually medicated for bipolar. But most entrepreneurs are bipolar and have ADD.

Steve: I knew about the ADD. Yeah.

Cameron: So ADD is a superpower. Yeah. Not if you're a teacher or an engineer or a doctor.

Steve: Right.

Cameron: So they think there's a problem with us. So the reason that most of us are bipolar, the mania, right, which is the manic side it's manic depression is bipolar disorder. Okay? So the mania is why people will quit their job to come and work with us.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: It's why we will do an ad campaign that we don't know the results yet. It's why we will start the business in the first place.

Steve: Why they'll follow us to battle.

Cameron: It's why they'll follow us into battle because they're excited. They don't even know where the battle is, but fuck yeah. Let's go do this. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: The stress and depression is because we have nowhere to release that outlet.

Steve: Right.

Cameron: So we end up at home. We end up scared. We end up trying to work harder. So the the crash comes. Right?

And people will be like, oh, yeah. But I have downs too. No. It's different. When you're an employee and you talk about being stressed, you can talk to your other employees.

You can talk to your boss. You can talk to your spouse. They understand that. But if you're the CEO of a company, you can't tell your board that you're scared. You can't tell your leadership team that you're scared.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: You probably can't tell your spouse that you're scared. You certainly can't tell your employees and customers. So you end up in this little internal world of, like, stress and that compacts, and that brings you down to the crisis of meaning. Yeah.

Steve: Well, there's two things that come to mind. Right? Like, one, I know, like, moments I've been vulnerable with my wife, then she's, like, freaked out. And now I have to, like, get her back put her back together.

Cameron: Right. Right?

Steve: There's that part. But other part too, I was talking to Ian. He's my, partner in our AI tool. And, we were having a conversation about how the marketing person we had on our team didn't quite understand the message. Right?

Cameron: Because our avatar are entrepreneurs Yeah. Or business owners. Yep.

Steve: And I was like, I don't think he understands. Like, basically, as a business owner, we have two states. Right? I am just crazy out of my mind, so hyped up Yeah. About how we're going to conquer and destroy oh, yeah.

Right?

Cameron: Take over the industry.

Steve: Yep. And then the next moment, frustrated that hasn't happened yet. Right.

Cameron: And there's a problem with the website, and this number is not right, and why can't we do that? And here's more exactly. Yeah. So they think we're nuts. Right.

But we're merely we're merely on that spectrum of bipolar. I gotta read you the 11 traits. Okay? This is gonna be this is gonna be really good for everybody who's watching. We can do this maybe as, like, a little clip too.

Yeah. I'm gonna get you the list of traits of bipolar disorder. Mhmm. And then I'm gonna read you the 11 traits, and I want you to count how many of the 11 that you have. Mhmm.

And we'll get you to count as well. How many of the 11 traits that you have? Oops.

Steve: I want to guess. I'm gonna be on a low side because I'm pretty even keel. Yeah. But this would be an interesting thought experiment.

Cameron: Maybe maybe you'll be on low, but may you might be at, my guess is you'll be at eight. Yeah. Right? I'm at eleven with eleven. K.

Are you ready? So you're gonna count the 11 things. You're gonna count the 11. Count them on your fingers. Are you often filled with energy?

Does your mind get flooded with ideas? Are you driven? Are you restless? Are you unable to keep still? Do you often work on little sleep?

Do you get euphoric? Do you get easily irritated by minor obstacles? Do you burn out periodically? Do you act out sexually, which is like flirting? Do you feel persecuted by those who do not accept your vision?

You're at eight. Eight. How many you at? I'm at 11. Yeah.

Now I've done that same list of traits for a group of actuaries, 600 actuaries, just to test my underwriters. Yeah. Underwriters. 10% of the audience stood up. I ran that exact list at a group called Breakthrough Academy.

It's a guy named Igor. 900 entrepreneurs that are in the home builders space. 85 to 95% of them stood up. Right? We are wired differently.

If you ran that those those traits to teachers, they don't identify.

Steve: Right.

Cameron: Our job as an entrepreneur is to learn how to navigate the highs and lows. We can't change ourselves. Right? So how do you how do you leverage the mania? Talk to the press.

Talk to the media. Run a sales rally. Get your team excited. Get people, you know, pumped up and motivated over over the goals. Run a daily huddle.

Yeah. But don't make any buying decisions. Right? Don't make any hiring decisions. Don't run the million dollar Super Bowl ad until until so so the curve, and I teach this actually in one of my books.

My final my very, very last book is gonna be the highs and lows of CEOs. Mhmm. I'm already working on it. I'm already working on it now. But this first stage of mania is called the uninformed optimism when you're so excited and you're not even sure what's really coming yet.

Yeah. Right? And then you kind of it's like a physical roller coaster. When you go up over the top, what do you say? You look down.

You go, oh, shit. Yeah. Right? That's the oh, shit moment. Mhmm.

That's informed pessimism. When you have a bit of that oh, shit moment, it's cautious. You're cautiously optimistic. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: You're a little bit nervous. That's when you hire someone. That's when you work on your planning. But if you're feeling a little bit of that oh, shit moment, don't talk to the media. Right.

Right? You don't wanna have the media talking to you and go, how's your business going? Well, I'm a little bit nervous. No. Don't say that.

Steve: Oh, it's not gonna be good.

Cameron: But that's when you wanna talk to your leadership team. Mhmm. Right? That's when you wanna talk to your board. Now if you're at crisis of meaning, when you're right at the very bottom and you're pretty sure you're gonna die, that's when you need to unplug.

Go to the golf course. Go to the park. Go hang out with your kids. Go talk to your pastor. Go do yoga.

Go to the gym. Yeah. Go breathe. Because you're not you're not doing anything that's productive anyway, and you need to remove all that negative energy and stress away from your employees. Right?

And then when you finally get some coaching, get some mentoring, go through a mastermind, and then you come out the bottom and you you go through that crisis of meaning and you hit that hopeful realization where you're like, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, and you start climbing back up? And that roller coaster goes forever. We never get off.

Steve: So we had made a decision to remove me from the hiring process. K.

Cameron: Because I There's a good down there because

Steve: I think everyone's gonna be awesome. So I'm good for, like, the finals. Okay.

Cameron: I'm over here. Yeah. You want you wanna be in on the culture side. Right? I like them.

They seem to live the core values. Yeah. Good. Okay.

Steve: Great. But, like, you know, I broke the process. Yes.

Cameron: Well, no. You don't broke the process. You don't follow the process. I don't

Steve: follow the process.

Cameron: Entrepreneurs want systems for everybody else, but not for us.

Steve: Exactly. Yep. So I didn't follow a process. Yep. I was like, hey.

This guy's good. Yeah. It's gonna be great. Blah blah blah. Been there.

Two weeks. Yeah. Last of two weeks.

Cameron: By the way, did you know so when you point your finger and go that guy was terrible, do you know there's three fingers pointing

Steve: back to you? I know.

Cameron: Yeah. So what were the three things? What did you do wrong that had you think that that person was so good? Didn't follow the process?

Steve: So I think the the thing I was looking for because we had someone else we have someone right now who's awesome. Like, an amazing operator in our in our organization. His job is to onboard new clients Mhmm. Do all the stuff on the back end to get their system connected to our system so they're up and running. Right?

So he was a COO, and he he he did the Salesforce for another big organization. Like, okay. Like, we know the magic formula. Right? Yep.

Someone that's got personality Yep. Who's driven, who's ran a company

Cameron: Yep.

Steve: Who's done the back end work.

Cameron: How big was the old company?

Steve: The old company is, like, 4,000,000 a year in revenue.

Cameron: That's much smaller? Yeah. K. And so

Steve: I was like, okay.

Cameron: And I asked that because I don't want somebody coming out of a $400,000,000 company into a small entrepreneurial because it's a cultural disconnect.

Steve: Yeah. So that guy was great. That guy's awesome. Yep. We we love this guy.

Yep. And so here's another guy who's social. He's built out his own CRM. He's done a he's all in on the AI stuff. Like Yep.

He sounds exactly the same.

Cameron: This guy's way entrepreneurial, though. Very entrepreneurial. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't wanna work for an entrepreneurial company.

Steve: Yeah. Well, he wanted to do He

Cameron: wants to do it his way. He doesn't wanna follow the systems.

Steve: He he wanted to bring in new ideas. He thought we need to innovate more. He's like, we're a fairly innovative company. Yeah. We're we're not stagnant.

Cameron: Yeah. When you're so you weren't hiring a COO, by the way. You were probably hiring more like a director level or or junior

Steve: or No. For this instance, no. This is more of the same role as, like, hey. Like, meet clients because you've been you've done wholesale and you've done the real estate. So you can connect them.

Cameron: So it's a frontline contributor role then. Yeah. Yeah. And this guy wanted to play more like senior level. Yeah.

Disconnect.

Steve: Yeah. So and then

Cameron: By the way, do you know that in the interview, the interviewer if you were to grade yourself, of the hundred minutes in the interview, how many of the hundred minutes were you speaking and how many were they speaking?

Steve: I would say he spoke more. I'm naturally more inquisitive and quiet. Good.

Cameron: How many minutes do you think you were speaking?

Steve: In in a hundred minutes? Thirty, forty? Because that's

Cameron: two that's double what you should be. So if you're you should be speaking 15% of the time.

Steve: In an interview?

Cameron: In the first interview.

Steve: Okay.

Cameron: Yeah. They should be speaking 85% of the time. The The other thing is in the first interview, when they ask you a question about your business, your response should be, I'll get to you after I'm done asking you questions. We'll have time at the end of the interview for ten or fifteen minutes for you to ask me everything. Yeah.

Because they haven't earned the right yet to waste your time to ask you questions about the business. And as soon as you start answering about the business, you're in sales mode. You're excited Yeah. And you're turning them away. So I like to reverse the sales process, and I make them sell me all the time.

Mhmm. And I make it harder for them to get through the hoops because they expect me to wanna sell the company.

Steve: Yeah. I'm

Cameron: not going to. You haven't earned that time yet.

Steve: Right. Yeah. So I'm no longer allowed to do the screening or the or interview. I'm allowed to do, like, I'm not sure about this.

Cameron: I call it the sniff test. At the end, you're allowed to go in and go, something doesn't smell right, something's a little bit off, culturally, there's a disconnect, the energy's wrong. That's the CEO's job. Yeah. And you should do that.

Every entrepreneur should do that for two layers below them. So their direct reports and anyone that reports to that direct reports. Past that layer, though, you can't do that when you've got a 100 employees, 200 employees, a thousand employees.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: You need to make sure that a system is in place for everyone to interview two layers below them. K? So VP is two layers below, director is two layers below, and you have to make sure that there's a system that they know what to look for and how to grade people on things. So as an example, we would put in place for every one of the traits we were hiring for, we would have a definition in grade eight language. So one thing we always looked for was tenacity, and it was the dog like work ethic to get over, under, around any obstacle put in your path.

That was tenacity. Right? Well, we had this one interview, and then in the interview, you would grade people on on all the things you're looking for on a scale of one to five. 40% of the people could get a three out of five. 20% could get a two.

20% could get a four. 10% could get a one. 10% could get a five, like a bell curve. But you had to explain with three reasons why you gave them that number. So if I was gonna grade someone on tenacity, I'd give three reasons for the number, right, on a one through five.

Correct. That's this very simple system. Like, don't say you like the person. That's fucking irrelevant. Right?

And and they're good in tenacity. What's your proof? Well, I had this one candidate as a five out of five on tenacity. Sorry. I had them at a one out of five.

This other VP had them as a five out of five. So clearly, there's a disconnect. So I said, what's the definition? He goes, the dog like work ethic should over, under, round, and, you know, and and I'm like, well, wait. How do you have him as a five?

He goes, well, he's a hard worker. I'm like, hard worker is not the definition. And I said, he's actually not a hard worker. He goes, yes. He is.

He's a bricklayer. I said, no. He has a hard job. He quit school, dropped out of high school, quit every sport he ever did, told his coaches to f off because he didn't wanna get feedback on it. And the reason he's a bricklayer is not because he's a hard worker.

It's because he ended up with a shitty construction job because he's actually lazy. And the VP went, holy shit. You're right. Yeah. But he forgot to rate him on the definition and to have proof for his number.

So because we had that very simple system and we had at least two people interviewing for the same thing and then we debrief on the thing, the system prevented us from making that problem. Yeah. Right. I talked to

Steve: you a couple weeks ago. So it's been a few months, and this world's changing pretty fast.

Cameron: Oh my god. I just said to my wife this morning, do you know that open claw is no longer the hot thing?

Steve: It's not no one's talking about it so much. Now it's poke. Have you heard about poke? I've not heard about poke.

Cameron: Poke is more like a easier system to use to do what OpenClaw used to do. Yeah. And the the analogy was, remember twenty not twenty years ago, fifteen, seventeen years ago, people were hacking their iPhone or jailbreaking their Jailbreaking

Steve: their iPhones.

Cameron: Yeah. Right? Who jailbreaks their iPhone now? No one? Yeah.

Why? Because Apple got smart, opened up their AI, allowed people to do the stuff that we were all jailbreaking our iPhone to do. Yeah. OpenClaw was like the jailbreaking system to do stuff. Mhmm.

Poke is now doing it without having to do all that crazy shit.

Steve: Yeah. Without breaking all the parameters.

Cameron: So Open Claw was like the hot hot girl. Mhmm. Now she's like the the aged grandmother all of a sudden. Crazy. Like but that's only in four months.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Open Claw wasn't a thing when you were Yeah.

Cameron: I hear a lot. So the danger the danger of this technology is that you get so into it and so excited and so distracted about the new new thing that you're going all in on something without focusing on what you need to go all in on. Yeah. I think companies should be spending 20% of their time going all in on stuff, but 80% of the time on the core. Are you connecting with your customers?

Are you growing the confidence and the skills and the connections of your employees? Are you helping people remove obstacles? Are you focusing on on fixing the one key thing every single week? Like, are you focusing on the critical few things versus the important many? And are you learning to implement some of this new tech that's the easy to put in place tech?

Steve: Yeah. Right? Have you had any change of opinions? Like, you were something or anything you were gung ho on, and then, like, the last few months, you're like, wow.

Cameron: Well, that would that would be an example. Yeah. I think but I'm I'm probably the wrong person to ask on this because of my age. So I tend to swing I I just turned 60. So I tend to swing back a little bit to, focusing on some of those critical things versus deploying the newest new.

Yeah. I do, though, wanna make sure that everyone on my team is using AI to actually make their job better, to automate things, to to be more productive. I'm also not worried about job loss as much as I used to be. The the the real data right now is showing that most of the job loss because of AI is not actually AI doing people's jobs, is we're trying to automate work, and we're realizing that person didn't have forty hours worth of work on their plate. They're irrelevant.

Because the people that are using AI are getting more done and being more productive. We're now trying to put AI tools in the hands of everybody that is doing work.

Steve: So so I'm

Cameron: a little bit less worried about job layoffs currently.

Steve: Me too. So, right now in our organization, we have 11 cloud subscriptions.

Cameron: K.

Steve: Alright. So basically, every just about every person that's collecting a paycheck

Cameron: Yep.

Steve: Is using has their own cloud subscription. K.

Cameron: And have you looked at what they're using it for and how often they're using it?

Steve: I know that they're using it. I don't know specifically how they're using it yet. I'm sorry. I figured that out that one out. But I know for sure they are using it because I'm getting all the, like, hey.

Do you

Cameron: approve this usage? Know what level of subscription they're at? Because some people are using it at a fairly base level that they don't need the $200 a month subscription. They only need the 20 or or they can use the free No.

Steve: We have the so we have the team account. So everyone's on the on the highest not everyone. The people that are exceeding their usage are now on the higher usage. But, you know, I I had a conversation with my team, you know, we just had our quarterly meeting. And what I said was, like, you know, my job as the, visionary.

Mhmm. Right? Historically, it's been like, what obstacle can I remove for you? What connection can I make for you? What tool can we get Yep.

Cameron: To help you do your job easier?

Steve: But what I share with the team for this quarter, my job is to help you use AI better.

Cameron: K. So do you want do you want me to give you a cheat sheet for this?

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Cameron: Remember when we were in grade school, we were in, like, grade three, and we had to do a book report? Mhmm. Right. You had to read some book, whatever it was, because we all got to pick our own book, and then we had to stand in front of the class Yeah. And talk about the book for five minutes.

Every Monday, have all of your employees who are using Claude do a five minute book report on what they used AI for this week Yeah. And demo it to everybody else. So in a one hour meeting, everybody gets to see what everybody's using it for, and we're like, oh, didn't know it could do that. Woah. That's freaking cool.

Those ideas become a viral learning, a viral kinda internal learning that is more than you being able to come in and teach them. Yeah. That one hour a week will pay massive dividends. And one hour sounds like a lot, but one hour is point 2% of your week. Yeah.

Right? Four hours is 10% of your week. So, like, sorry, 2% of your week, it's a rounding error. You can still spend 98% of your time being busy doing whatever you guys do. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So have you done that or have you Yes.

Cameron: We do that with all of our employees. All

Steve: your employees? Yeah.

Cameron: Alright. That's where I'm learning now because I'm seeing, like, oh, you're using Nano Banana or, oh, you're using Manus or, oh, you're using good. That's cool. I didn't know it could do that. Because I'm not able to come in and say, here's all the stuff that you should be able to deploy with.

Steve: Right.

Cameron: I just want all of us being infected with automating and optimizing and saying no to some stuff. Like, why are we putting AI in place to do something that doesn't even need to be done anymore? Right? Like, you know, this building that you own, you could be constantly upgrading, painting, touch doing touch ups, but, like, you know Why? Yeah.

Exactly. But it's like Murphy Brown had that guy painting her house every single day, and every time she came home, Murphy Brown was still there doing touch ups. Like, it doesn't need to be done. Yeah. So you don't need an automated robot to keep painting a place that didn't need to be painted in the first place.

Steve: Right. It makes total sense. How many, you have the CEO Alliance. Yeah. How many people are in it now?

Cameron: We got about 800 members join total. We've got about 200 currently. We've got member over ten years. And we've got about, 17 countries of the members. Wow.

And they're all mid sized companies. Our average member is about 34,000,000 in revenue.

Steve: So two, is it 200 Yep. Current. What are you seeing right now as a trend? Because the COO like, you have the CEO and they're the visionary, they're the dreamer, this and that, but the poor CEO has to, like, execute.

Cameron: Well, then that's not their job. The c o CEO's job is to know where we're going Mhmm. And the COO's job is to know how to make that happen.

Steve: Right.

Cameron: It's kinda like if I'm building my dream home, I have to know what I want the home to look like, but the contractor has to know how to do the electrical and the plumbing and the drywall and put up the roof and hire the you know, and hire all the people to build my home. Yeah. I think so often entrepreneurs were trying to be the person to know where we're going and how to do it instead of just staying focused on where we're going. Yeah. What I'm trying to work on now is how do we get the CEO and COO to stay in sync?

How do I get the COOs to really know what their CEO wants to do? And how do I get the CEO to have the trust that the COO knows what they're doing and give them those skills and connections to do it. Right.

Steve: Well, where where I'm going with this Yeah. Is the CEO is seeing all the messages about AI. Yep.

Cameron: Right? Like, guys, we gotta AI our whole business. Yep.

Steve: What is what is the CEO doing right now with this message? Right? Like, okay. Like, here's this thing is happening. What do I go do with it?

Like, how how are you counseling or or or guiding your your your clients?

Cameron: K. So the first thing I always tell a COO is your job is to be the brake to the entrepreneur's gas, but not the parking brake. Your your job is to be the leash to the entrepreneur's dragon, but not choke them. K? So your job is to say, I love that idea.

Let me ask you a few questions to understand your idea even more. Just give me a couple minutes. Let's go for a quick coffee, and let me understand your idea. And then after I understand your idea, I either green light it, meaning we're gonna start it now, and it might bump something on the list. Which item do you want it to bump?

Or it's a yellow light, meaning we're gonna do it, but let's look at it next month or next quarter. Or it's a red light, meaning after I understand your idea more, we're just gonna kill it. And the entrepreneur goes, I'm so glad we're killing it. I like them to start there as the starting point. The same with AI.

Right? The CEO might hear. He might be at a mastermind like Genius Network. Here's about something new cool. Let's all put Open Claw in place.

The COO's job is to say, love that idea. Before I go buy Mac Minis for everybody, let me understand your ID even more.

Steve: Yeah. So are the are you seeing at all where some of your clients are nervous about what's happening right now with this AI movement?

Cameron: Not as much as they were twelve months ago. Now my group my cohort's a little different because I've got a whole group of COOs that are being exposed to a new AI speaker every single month. We have an AI Slack channel that they're all connecting with each other. Like, every CO Alliance member talks to all the other CO Alliance members about AI in the Slack channels at our two in person events every year at our monthly masterminds over Zoom. So they're not in this very lonely, scary vacuum just watching what's happening on social media.

They're talking to all these other COOs. I think a year ago, they were probably a lot more nervous. Now they're a lot more focused on executing on tools that are starting to work for them, and they're not distracted on the new new thing. Gotcha. Yeah.

Steve: I saw something you posted on on Facebook. You created your own AI clone. Yeah. What's the story with that?

Cameron: And you can go there. It's called askcameron.ai. It's free. It has so and you can literally ask me anything you want, either audio, like, ask me chat over over video or, sorry, over audio or, you can type it in and I respond to you. It has all of the content from my seven books.

It has all of the content from about 500 blog posts that I've written over the last seventeen years. It has all of the content from my few 100 YouTube videos. It has hundreds of hours of speaking events and podcast interviews all uploaded, including my personal. So the reason for doing it was all that data is there. I may as well give that away.

You know where I first heard this done? Ray Kroc, who built McDonald's Uh-huh. Thirty years ago went into studio for months and filmed all the questions that he could think that people would ever ask him about the growing of McDonald's Wow. So that his employees would have on VHS tape the ability to access and and pull that out. Isn't that cool?

Steve: That's great.

Cameron: Clunky as fuck. Like, clunky clunky. Right? Yeah. But that was the idea for doing it.

So now I give that away so anybody can use that.

Steve: So two questions.

Cameron: Not to monetize it. Just it's there. Yeah.

Steve: So the first question Yeah.

Cameron: Why? Because as an example okay. I get paid $40,000 for a ninety minute speaking event

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: To stand on a stage and speak to hundreds of entrepreneurs. Right? Tommy Mello has hired me to come and speak at his conference.

Steve: Very impressive gentleman, by the way.

Cameron: I coached Tommy for a year. Great guy. Yeah. I coached his COO, Luke, who's a member of the COO Alliance. So so Tommy's paying me $40 to come to his event, to stand on stage, and speak to all these entrepreneurs and give them the tools to run their company.

And you know what'll happen? They'll all pay me to coach them to do what I just told them to do. Yeah. So anything that I give away on AI, even though I'm telling you how to do it and all the answers are there, is still gonna lead to people having me come and stand on the stage to talk about what's already there. Uh-huh.

All anybody who's paying me to speak on their stages, it's all on my YouTube channel, but but you lose that human connection. Mhmm. So, yeah, I'll give I'll always give away my systems. They're all in my books. Yeah.

Right?

Steve: So, the stuff I talked

Cameron: to you about interviewing has been in my book Double Double for fifteen years in the chapter on people. Yeah. It's free.

Steve: So where do you see this going with AI then and coaching?

Cameron: I see coaching being obliterated in the next three to five years for about 99% of the business coaches. K? Most of the business coaches out there are just using questions to get you to figure out what to do. That's something that ChatGPT or Plod or Grock can do. Have you ever done a therapy session with any of them?

I have not. Dude, it's so good. I did a one hour session with Grock. I didn't use unhinged mode. I used normal mode.

Okay. And I said, act as a therapist, Ask me 10 questions about my marriage to have me become a better husband in these areas. Ask me one question at a time. And then after you I answered the 10 questions, take all my responses and start giving me feedback. It was a one hour audio session as I was driving my car that blew my mind.

I sent the audio to my therapist. She's like, I'm out of a job. That's what's gonna happen to the business coaching world. Yeah. Right?

For the most part, those business coaches are not gonna be necessary. Yeah. But there will still be other ways. The I don't think anyone's ever gonna replace the in person events. Right?

Me taking a group of 20 COOs to go drive Porsches in Europe together and hang out over breakfast, lunch, and dinner can't be replaced by grok. Yeah. So I think something will shift and will and and will change there. But, frankly, 99 of the business coaches should be put out of work.

Steve: So I was for many years, you know, we ran our our in person events and it was the blueprint. You came here for our blueprint. Here's how we run our business. Right? Here's our meeting templates.

Here's all these documents Yep. Onboarding, this and that.

Cameron: Yep. Same.

Steve: Right? A lot of value there at that time. Yep. We hired or we're hiring actively hiring a new role, and we just went to Claude. And just say, hey.

Here's who we wanna hire. Give me a ninety day onboarding plan. Right. Boom. Done.

And it was way better than what I used to sell for a lot of money. Of course.

Cameron: Look at look at the book. You know the book Traction by Gino Wickman?

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: So Gino wrote the book Traction. He created what he called the entrepreneurial operating system, which is EOS. Right? EOS is a system used by tens of thousands of companies in North America Yeah. And they pay implementers, former CEOs, to come in and run their quarterly sessions to help them implement the systems that are for free in the book, like, including the worksheets.

His whole system is in a $20 book, and people pay $50,000 for someone to help help them do it. Yeah. So I think there's always gonna be companies that wanna pay for someone to help them. Another example is if you go and tell your employees all of my stuff, they won't listen to you. Mhmm.

They're tired of listening to you.

Steve: Yes.

Cameron: But they'll listen to uncle Cameron. Mhmm. Now if I gave all my employees my stuff, they're not gonna listen to me. No. But if Steve came in and gave them my stuff, they'd listen to uncle Steve.

Like, I should actually coach your employees. You should coach my employees. We'd both win.

Steve: We we definitely win. So over in my bookshelf, there's a few copies of Ninja Selling.

Cameron: Right?

Steve: And I bought that book, for at the time when I had my brokerage. Because even though a lot of money a lot of people paid me a lot of money to coach their sales teams. Mhmm.

Cameron: Right?

Steve: I come in, I coach the sales team, get them real good, get them performing. Right? My team wouldn't listen to

Cameron: me. Right.

Steve: So I hired an external coaching, like, organization that I vetted. Yep. It's like, okay, their message is consistent with my message. Right? There's a lot of overlap.

I paid them to coach my team. And my team is like, oh, this is great. This is awesome. It's like, yeah. I know it's great.

It's awesome. Like, you say the same stuff.

Cameron: Dude, my wife called me on it a couple years ago. She's like, you've been talking about this guy and wanting to fire him for a year now. Why haven't you done it? Mhmm. You sit on all your coaching calls saying slow to hire, quick to fire.

Yeah. You you'd call all your entrepreneurs on their own shit, and you're not doing it. I'm like, oh my god. So guilty. Yeah.

Right? Business running a business is hard. Right? Running a business even if you have all the right systems. Right?

That again goes back to your comment around masterminds. It's why being in a mastermind is so important. I've told all the CEOs of our COO Alliance members they should all join the Genius Network in addition to whatever mastermind they're in.

Steve: Yeah. Okay.

Cameron: If you're in if you're in Vistage, join the Genius Network as well. If you're in YPO, join them as well. Everyone should be in an industry mastermind, like a sales mastermind or a real estate mastermind and be in something like the Genius Network, which is across all these other industries because then you have ideas having sex. When you're just in your industry mastermind, it's like a, it's like the filter bubbles. It's like an echo chamber.

Mhmm. But if you're not around your industry enough, then you're getting too many random ideas. So you kinda need to be in both. Yeah. I've spent about a million dollars.

I can actually write the list for you right now, probably over a million dollars, on mastermind groups that I've been a member of over the last thirty years. I was in the Genius Network for nine years. I was in strategic coach for seven years. I was in the entrepreneurs organization for five years, five years at mastermind talks, five baby bathwater events, two war room events, four wayfinders events. I'm missing some big ones I know.

Plus the travel. Oh, nine years at the main five day TED conference, two intelligent change events. Like but because I've been all in all those events, my network is huge, and now I know all the right people to talk to. Yeah. I come back from the events really inspired, which brings really good energy into my group.

I come in with all these random ideas, but they're usually plugged into things that I need. It's huge for for entrepreneurs to be involved in those things. There are a

Steve: lot of events I have.

Cameron: And not just for entrepreneurs too, but, like, get your key employees in. Like, entrepreneurs should be in those, but you should also get your second in command into the CEO alliance. You should get your head of IT into, seven CEOs. You should get your head of marketing to go to the, inbound conference. Mhmm.

Right? Yeah.

Steve: Well, there was a few that you mentioned that on on your list that, I've not, heard of before. Which ones? Baby Bathwater.

Cameron: So good. A huge fan of baby bath water. So baby bath water is have you ever heard of the phrase, don't throw out the baby with the bath water? It was for the the the drunk husband two hundred years ago coming home from the pub, and the wife would say throw the bath water, but take the baby out before you throw out the bathwater from the third story window of our little house. Right?

So what Hollis Carter did Mhmm. He was a part of the Summit Series group. He left Summit Series and started this event called baby bathwater. He kept the good stuff of conferences, and he threw out the bad stuff. What's the bad stuff of events?

Name tags, shitty hotels, bad food, speakers that are boring, terrible venues.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: Right? All the crap. Assholes that come in, sleazy salespeople showing up.

Steve: Present contests.

Cameron: Yeah. The good stuff is cool music, fun activities. Hey. There's a speaker on sexuality. There's a speaker on psychedelics.

There's a speaker on marketing all at the same time. Pick your own adventure. Cool venues. Diverse. Very diverse.

Very cool venues. Only a 180 people. No name tags. People get fired every year, and they're never allowed to come back. Awesome.

Yeah. I've been to five. I went to three of them in at Powder Mountain in Utah. Mhmm. I went to one in Croatia, and then I went to one in, Hilton, South Carolina.

And I'm going to his new one in Boulder this summer. Yeah. Yeah. You'd love baby bathwater. It's definitely your tribe.

Steve: Alright. I'll have to check it out. One thing is, you know, we're talking about just a moment ago, you know, AI and, like Oh,

Cameron: Dan Martell's ski trip. You had Chandler Bolt on your podcast recently. Chandler and I met at well, Chandler and I have known each other for years, but we got to hang out, cat skiing with Dan Martell up at his Bald Face skiing event. We went cat skiing together. Like, every time I put myself in those rooms inspired connections and ideas.

Steve: Well, Chandler told me about that, when we were done recording last time. I was like, wait. There was you went skiing with Cameron.

Cameron: 48 guys.

Steve: Yeah. It's like Yeah.

Cameron: Brock Johnson. Some it's like some real ballers.

Steve: Like Eric Zimmerman. Let me know next time you you you do that.

Cameron: What level do you ski at?

Steve: I mean, when I was younger, I could snowboard blacks. Yeah. When I was younger. I don't know. I haven't done it in a long time.

Cameron: You're you can't go. No? No. You have to be skiing blacks and double blacks to be able to ski it. It's the most I I raced until I was 21.

I've skied all over the world. I just did twenty days in Europe this month or the last two months. Wow. It's the most insane skiing I've ever done. It's the hardest skiing I've ever done.

Steve: Oh, then numb. I mean, I've worked my

Cameron: way up. And I was I was not one of the best in the group. Dan Martell is doing backflips. Mhmm. He's, like, shredding down doing backflips.

I'm like, what the and he's not the only guy doing backflips.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah. There's a couple of guys that have been in Warren Miller movies. It was it was intense. I got some Chandler's a legit Chandler's a very legit snowboarder.

Steve: He looks like a very

Cameron: legit snowboarder. I didn't peg him as that good. I'm like, whatever, pretty boy. Come on. You can't do that.

He's good. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, all I

Steve: had was I would go to Tahoe once a month when I was living back in in Sacramento.

Cameron: No. Alright. But I'm gonna run a I'm gonna have an event in Europe where I'm just gonna bring some entrepreneurs and we're gonna go ski, you know, Val Gardena or go ski in Verbier or Saint Maritz. We'll bring you over to that one because we're gonna ski on the normal mountain. Dan's shit was fucked.

That's crazy.

Steve: So going back to what we're saying earlier, with AI, like Yeah. How has the role changed for the COO? Like, what's different today?

Cameron: I don't think it's changed that much. Okay. The COO has always been there to ensure that all business areas are communicating with each other, that everyone is figuring out how to make the entrepreneur's vision come true. They're always working on the virtual bench. They're putting the right systems and processes and tech tools in place.

So the CEO has been working around leveraging technology tools since 2000, you know, '90 when when the SaaS world started. I would say it hasn't charged changed that much.

Steve: And then one thing

Cameron: I saw world has changed, though? Who's that? Is the head of IT, the CTO, or the chief engineering officer

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: Here's why. They never used to have to worry about budget. It was like, I'm hiring Fred, and I need this SaaS tool. Easy. Yeah.

But now they have to protect the amount of tokens that all these people are burning through and the rate they're burning through and what ROI we're getting for all those tokens, and they have to be able to present those budgets and those forecasts for cash flow purposes to the head of finance, and that's starting to scare the shit out of engineering. Yeah. Because engineering people are such geeks, and I love them for it. But they're always like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

No. It does matter. Mhmm. Because now you're burning through a lot more cash than you ever used to burn through at a rate that we can't forecast for. So they have to get really good at forecasting and understanding ROI of the utilization of their of their tokens.

Steve: So we're running that exactly right now.

Cameron: That's why I asked you how many of your 11 are Yeah.

Steve: Deaf. Because, like,

Cameron: up until And the mania of the entrepreneur says go all in Yeah. Until the bill comes in ninety days later, you're like, woah. I didn't mean that.

Steve: Yeah. Well, that was I I posted this on Facebook. So, like, up until beginning of the month, right, it's like, guys, like, we gotta go, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Cameron: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I looked at

Steve: the token users, like, yeah. Then I looked at the token users, like, yeah. Alright, guys. I have to be responsible. Sure.

Cameron: You said you you basically said all 11 of us are going to Vegas for a conference. We all need the best hotel rooms we can get. Yeah. So they all went out and booked at the Bellagio, and they booked the presidential suites.

Steve: Mhmm.

Cameron: You just meant it's okay being at, like, the Mirage. Like, just get us five hotel rooms on the just off the strip is gonna work. Right? Yeah. So they're spending a thousand dollars a night on hotel rooms, but you know you could have gotten them for 200.

Yeah. Yeah. We need to learn how to delegate better. Yeah. See so this that's probably the only area that COOs need to be better at.

Steve: Mhmm.

Cameron: Because, yeah, the the cost can get big real quick.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Getting the the the

Cameron: I'm excited because I'm a shareholder in OpenAI and Anthropic. I got I got Oh, okay. Yeah. I got in early through AngelList. I also have a bunch of SpaceX allocation I'm excited about.

Steve: Oh, man. That's huge. Huge. And I saw something about the Wanna

Cameron: talk about that for a sec? Yeah. Please. So if you're an if you're an entrepreneur and you you're building a business and you have money coming in, don't keep pushing all your money back into growing your company. Take some money out of your business every year and invest into so I have 15% of my net worth is in Bitcoin.

Mhmm. I have 85% of my net worth is in my 10 core stocks. And now because I live in Dubai, I took 30% of what I used to pay in tax, and I put that into deals on AngelList. So AngelList is where you can get early round allocations before companies go public. So I have allocations in SpaceX, Anthropic, FIGUR, Figma, Canva.

I have five five or six allocations in SpaceX. Yeah. So I have about 28 different allocations in the last two years, in in pre public companies that are all getting ready to start going public. I go to know SpaceX at an $85,000,000,000 valuation. So I can get I can get a 12 time return in two years.

Steve: And even 85,000,000,000, not that long ago, it felt like, are you sure that was the right choice?

Cameron: Yeah. Well, that's and and I didn't push all in. I didn't go big onto a couple of them. Like, I have two allocations on OpenAI that one was at 80, billion and one was at 400,000,000,000. Yeah.

At 80 bill now you would have said, why didn't you push more in? Well, because we didn't know. We just didn't know. Right? And Anthropic, my wife asked me last night, why did we not put more into Anthropic?

Because we've only got, you know, we got a good amount. We got 5 figures in, but I'm like, because we didn't nobody knew Anthropic. And she goes, yeah. We did. I'm like, no.

We only knew Claude Code Mhmm. In January. Yeah. It's only been around for four months. It feels like it's been in our lives our whole life.

Steve: Claude Code became a big deal in January.

Cameron: In January. Yeah. So I got into Anthropic back in September. Yeah. When people thought I was crazy.

Steve: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because at that point, you're like, yeah. Like, why is this better in Chat GPT?

Cameron: Right.

Steve: There's nothing there's nothing fancy about it. It just looks better.

Cameron: Right. It's just when it when we weren't we didn't even know what it's being used for. Like, perplexity. Remember perplexity? Mhmm.

Where the fuck are they? Yeah. They were a big thing two years ago. Yeah.

Steve: That was

Cameron: when I was invested, but I didn't get in on them. But I

Steve: think that's a good point, though. Diversifying. How would someone get onto the AngelList?

Cameron: You sign up. You just have to be a normal accredited investor. So I think you need a minimum net worth of a couple million bucks, and you just go on the AngelList website and you sign up, and then you can add a wish list. Mhmm. So I I actually just added Polk, the one that's starting to replace OpenClaw.

So whenever Polk has allocations or insiders that have stock options or selling, then I get asked through an SPV to to invest. So I just keep adding any cool companies to my wish list and

Steve: I just

Cameron: keep going.

Steve: That's the first thing I'm doing after this is over.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. You're at a good stage where you could I'll show you my portfolio if you wanna go through it.

Steve: Okay. And then, something about a laptop test is something that was I was noticing when I was I was looking. I was like, hey. What should I be asking Cameron about?

Cameron: Yeah. Laptop test. So this was this was one this is gonna date me, but 2001 or 2002, I was sitting on a plane, and I saw this CEO sitting in business class, and he was typing like this with two fingers. I'm like, man, if I was on your board, I would fire your ass. Like, you can't be the CEO of a company tie typing like this in 2002.

But I realized that how did I know if the employees we were hiring into the company were proficient at using a computer? Yeah. Right? We would assume that people would know how to use it in 2002, but maybe they didn't. So we did a typing test, and we literally had a laptop, and we made them sit in front of us.

We had this typing a word it showed how many words per minute you could type, and we'd give them, like, a a book, and they had to type all the the words in the book. And as soon as we saw that they could type at 75 or 80 words a minute, then we knew they were proficient. Mhmm. So now what I do, I go forward, and I'm saying, so tell me how you use AI. Tell me all the tools you use AI.

Get them to talk about it in the interview. I'm like, oh, by the way, I told you to bring your laptop. Get your laptop out. They go, why? I want you to show me everything you said you're doing.

The c players will excuse themselves to go to the bathroom. They'll take their laptops. They'll never fucking see them again. The b players will open it up, and they'll use AI a little bit, but not really. The a players will be like, let's do this, man.

And they're in, and they're showing you all their cool shit and all the agents they built. And you're like, wow. You actually use AI. Yeah. So don't tell me you know how to do it.

Show me what you're doing with it. And the only way to do that is get them to open their laptop and show you.

Steve: Yeah. There you go. So for us doing it virtually where you have to share your screen

Cameron: Open your screen. Show me. There you go.

Steve: And then you got an event coming up, in September.

Cameron: Yeah. At MIT. So every year, we have two in person events. We're doing our third. We're actually gonna do one in Barcelona in October as well.

The one in September is held at MIT's Endicott House. It's where the entrepreneurs organization partners with MIT every year, and they run the Gathering of Titans and the entrepreneurial master's program. We're now doing our fourth event there four years in a row, and we're gonna have 65 COOs from all over the world. Some of our sponsors that come in and sponsor the CO Alliance will be there as well, and we're gonna mastermind there for the three days.

Steve: What What do you guys mastermind about?

Cameron: Sometimes the crazy entrepreneurial CEO that we work with, right, that entrepreneurial dragon and how to be the leash without choking them. Sometimes it's about how to be a build a better leader. Sometimes it's about the problems of being a COO and how we can show up and build our teams. So we we run some external speakers that we bring in to speak and present. Then we sometimes have our members presenting, and then we do these hot seats.

So what we do in a hot seat is you'll take a group of six. You go off for thirty minutes, the member presents for ten minutes on a problem that they're having, and then all the other members that are there are able to ask questions for six or seven minutes to understand the problem even more. And then they're able to give experience share, not advice, but they're able to share their experience of having dealt like a similar problem that they've had. And we run a number of those hot seats so that every member gets to be in the hot seat once and getting feedback. And then we also have some group discussions, and then we do some fun stuff like we, yeah, we have the COO Olympics where we all get into onesies and play all these crazy games and have a good time.

Steve: I think there's something important you said there. Share your experience, not advice.

Cameron: Yeah. So I learned that back in the entrepreneurs organization, EO. It's called the Gestalt Protocol. So opinions are like assholes. We all have one, but they're very irrelevant.

You don't wanna hear from me what I think you should do. If you're having a problem with something, you don't want me telling you what I think you should do. What would be beneficial for you is go, oh my god. I mishired somebody too. The guy that I mishired was a guy named Richard Bender.

He'd been the head of marketing for Burger Care for, McDonald's Canada and Dairy Queen Canada, and I was so excited to hire him as our head of marketing. But when he joined, he was the wrong cultural fit. He was a great person, checked all the boxes, but he was corporate. He was a VP of corporate. Do you know how I found out he was the wrong guy?

On the first day he walked in and said, who fills out the FedEx slips? I'm like, oh my god. And you know why I made that mistake? Because I didn't follow the process either. Yeah.

So what I learned was put a process in place to ensure that the person not only has the skills, but they culturally fit the role that you're hiring them for. So if I share that experience, there's value in that for you. But if I just tell you what to do, it's not coming from a safe place.

Steve: Yeah. And I think it's we see this from time to time. Not from time to time. More way often than than we like is you're sitting in a hot seat room And he's like, oh, here's what you should do.

Cameron: Right. It's mostly because the entrepreneurs haven't been trained in this Kushal protocol, so we train our our, CEO alliance members in it. I was a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization for five years. So a lot of people speak from you. Right?

You know when you are walking down the street and you stumble over a crack. Well, you, Steve, could be going, no. I never stumble over a crack. What I meant to be saying was when I walk down the street, I often trip over cracks, and here's why I often trip over the cracks. But someone who doesn't speak from the eye never lands their point.

The person who speaks from the you often gets misunderstood. That's a trained skill. Yeah. So I try to train them in these skills that that I learned as being in that mastermind in EO. So, as an example, you said, you know how we often do these things.

I'm I I don't actually do those things. Maybe in your world you do those things, but I'm not a part of that we. Right.

Steve: Yeah. So the protocol, how do you say it?

Cameron: I speak from the I.

Steve: No. The

Cameron: It's called gestalt.

Steve: Okay.

Cameron: It's a YPO EO communication. It's used in therapy.

Steve: Okay. So the I so what you explained earlier, that's the process or is

Cameron: that more? The process.

Steve: Got it. Yep. Okay.

Cameron: And that's why what happens often at these mastermind groups is entrepreneurs with the best intentions are showing up trying to help the other people without having the skills as to how to help them in the right way. Yeah. So what often happens is the entrepreneur who's receiving those opinions and those ideas doesn't feel safe, feels judged, feels you should instead of gaining that experience. Yeah. And it's just it's not it's not an on purpose thing.

It's just because they've never had the skill set.

Steve: Yeah. Well and the reason why I was asking this question, is that, I've been in rooms, right, Where I actually made this point to, an organizer event. It's like, never put me in this room with this person again. Right? Because, you can tell in a conversation who's ran a successful business

Cameron: Mhmm.

Steve: And who has ideas about how to run a successful business. Correct.

Cameron: So that's something that we try to do at the Seal Alliance is we try to actually structure our breakouts for the size of the company. Mhmm. So on the opening night, what we do is I call it a lifeline, and I get all the 60 members from our we cap our in person events at 60, and I get all 60 people to line up first by age, youngest to the oldest. We had a 21 year old in the room, 21 year old COO of a $12,000,000 company. He was fucking good at tech.

He wasn't that good at the leadership yet. He hadn't done it enough. Yeah. Then we had 62 year olds in the room who were really good at leadership. They really sucked at tech.

Then we did size of company. 5,000,000 is the smallest to come to the in person events. We had 1,200,000,000 in real revenue, in a real real p and l, not over ten years, like that year

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: Right, in the room. And then we did number of employees, then we did the number of events they've been to. And you start to gain an idea as to who's the norm. So we try to do breakouts based on some of that. We also have had members saying, you know, I only wanna learn from people in my industry.

And with respect, I'll say, I understand that because you wanna get the experience of people who have run a business like yours. But what if I run a nursing home and I can give you the experience that I've had running a nursing home and you can take my idea plus the idea from your industry, plus the idea from some marketing guy, and those three ideas have a little idea baby and give you exactly what you're looking for. Because if you only get ideas from people that are the same size as you and in the same industry of you, you're in an echo bubble.

Steve: And you're not gonna have

Cameron: a chamber.

Steve: It's harder to grow.

Cameron: Correct. Yeah. So you need to so you need to be we need to be open. I think entrepreneurs need to be more open from so you might be okay with learning from someone who has never run a business of your size as long as they're not telling you what you should do. If they're actually gonna share something that they did, even if they're a small company, that might be relevant.

Yeah. Right? But often, it's because they have the wrong person in the room. That's why we have a floor. You need 5,000,000 in revenue just to come because I don't want somebody running a, you know, a company that's small.

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Cameron: You should also I don't know where do you have laser or contact lenses or something? No. The font that you're reading off is, like, six point font. Dude, you you should see this the font. He's on he's on this, like, Kindle or paper thing.

I can only read, like, letters this big. He's reading, like, it's crazy. I I'm I'm like, how are you doing this?

Steve: I did have LASIK, some time ago, and I had a

Cameron: You did? I

Steve: did about ten years ago.

Cameron: We had the guy who, started the business, LASIK Eye Care. Mhmm. We had him come his name is Warren Rustin. He's from Tucson. You need Warren Rustin on your podcast.

Steve: Okay.

Cameron: Oh my god. He's good. I'll introduce you. I gotta make a note. One of the best he he was an advisor to three presidents.

He's worked inside of the White House. Wow. Played played tennis on the lawn of the of the White House with Gerald Ford. Happily married. Has all of his kids living on a compound.

Like, fucking genius. But he was the founder of of LASIK eyecare.

Steve: Wow. Wow. I'll introduce you to an honest end. For sure. Yeah.

So one thing that, you know, we've gone through this transformation. You know, you said you got 200 clients right now. We have 200 clients right now. And, I am, you know, an entrepreneur. I believe in extreme ownership.

I took I've taken multiple, you know, personality assessments, this and that. Right? I took positive intelligence, and I found on that one, I'm a zero victim. On a scale of zero to 10, I'm a zero on victim. Right?

I just own

Cameron: Yep. Same.

Steve: Everything. Yep. On the another test.

Cameron: I rarely blame anybody else because there's three fingers pointing black at me.

Steve: Exactly. And on another test, I'm a 99 grit. Meaning, like Tenacious. Yeah. Tenacious.

Like, we're gonna figure this out.

Cameron: Yeah. There's the danger in that, though. When you're a 99 on grit and you blame yourself for everything, you you will tend to, I think, go very inward on you having to fix it. Yeah. Where what what works better for entrepreneurs is realizing we don't have to be the one to know how to do it.

We need to be the one who can hire the people who can do it, hire the consultant, hire the freelancer, hire an employee, delegate more, and not be that radically self reliant person. Yeah.

Steve: Well Are you hard on yourself? Not anymore.

Cameron: That's good. I used to be. It's a learned skill.

Steve: Yeah. I used to be. And I've learned to, like, bring I have some amazing people right now. Amazing, amazing people.

Cameron: Because our job as an entrepreneur is to protect our confidence. That's one of our core jobs. Yeah. And when we're so hard on ourselves, it can really hurt our company.

Steve: Yeah. I've I've learned to stop doing that. But here's what I figured out. So I was a realtor, you know, back in the day, and, I was you know, I got all the awards, top performer. Right?

Like, we had 1% market share in this whole market at one point. Like, this is really cool.

Cameron: I actually see you on buzz ads, by the way. You have the you have the buzz ad personality and face. It's great.

Steve: Yeah. But what happened was I ran a very transactional business. It was not a relational business. Right? So I was Shit.

Killer at marketing.

Cameron: Right.

Steve: Killer at, I had a killer salespeople. Right? But I didn't have a very good referral business.

Cameron: You needed Bonnie Love Baker to be with you. Bonnie is like the relationship person.

Steve: Yes. Yep. And so here's what I've learned in our business right now is that we're we have an amazing tool. People that are using our tool love our tool.

Cameron: K.

Steve: We're got really good marketing. We got people coming in. We got great salespeople. We can close. K.

Right? The other part of software is the onboarding, the connecting. And we've got the connection part too. Where we're struggling right now is that because of how I'm wired

Cameron: Mhmm.

Steve: I hire people that are the same way. Right. Sourceful, gritty. K. Right?

Extreme ownership. We're bringing on clients who don't have that same level. K. And, what I realized, this is something I shared with my team yesterday or the day before, is, like, what got us here is not gonna guess where we wanna go.

Cameron: You so you're you're wondering about how do we get the software easier for our clients to onboard?

Steve: I'm I'm trying to get this I'm trying to get my, company to love on our clients more. Be less like me, but Yeah.

Cameron: More of the oh, you say Bonnie. What is it? Bonnie Love Baker was a realtor here in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was very much about the relationships with customers. Everybody loves her, but she wasn't as good of the transactional.

Right.

Steve: Yeah. Like, how do I now add this element, which is very antithetical?

Cameron: So is it and so I'm gonna give you an opinion. Mhmm. Right? I think it's easier to tell you what I think you should do here, but one is, what's the easiest technology that you've ever been able to, like, take out of a box and use or download and use?

Steve: I mean, I guess, for example I've used for my for my team is the iPhone.

Cameron: Exactly. The iPhone. Why is that? It's because Steve Jobs and Apple obsessed about the ease of use of technology that a two year old could use an iPad. Right.

Now what did Microsoft do?

Steve: Not that.

Cameron: They did the incredibly engineered, unbelievable tools that could do all this incredible shit that we don't even know how to do the shit that it does. Right. It's technically better, but they lost their eye of who was using it.

Steve: Right.

Cameron: I think you wanna make sure that you and your company and your your tech people and whoever building your software are really, really connecting with your customers to make it easier for them, watching them, stripping out some of the stuff that nobody even needs in the first place. Like, making it more like Apple and less like Microsoft is number one.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: The other one is making sure that you and your employees really actually listen to your customers. Make the phone calls, talk to them, get to know them, ask them questions. And don't action everything that they do, but just at least listen to it and stay close to the customer.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the you know, what I do

Cameron: It's like Henry Ford used to say, like, if I was if I was listening to my customer, they would say make a faster horse. Mhmm. Right? So you need to stay close to them, but not do everything they ask for.

Steve: Yeah. That's a tough lesson.

Cameron: But make the car really easy to use.

Steve: Right. Rosanna go with this. So that I've said before, you know, eating my own words. I said before, like, you know, with the way things are going with AI, I'm not gonna fire anybody. I'm probably not gonna hire anybody anymore.

Cameron: Well, anybody you do hire though has to be really good and proficient with AI Yeah. And be a cultural fit and accept to become additive. So I like raising the bar. Mhmm. You probably will because you'll scale and you'll scale into wanting more people at some point.

Steve: Well, what I'm realizing is I just need to hire more people that just love on clients.

Cameron: Correct.

Steve: Like, the that's the human experience is the only thing we're hiring now.

Cameron: And that means and you can you can test for that. Do you know that so there's a a company out of, India called, the Taj Hotel Group. Remember ten ten years ago, it was ten years ago now, I think, when, the bombings happened over in India at the the Oberoi and the Taj Hotel Yeah. Yeah. Where the guys came in and blew it up and the people were getting killed.

Yeah. They interviewed the head of the Taj Hotel, the very historic old building in Mumbai and Bombay right on the water. And they interviewed the head of that chain, and they said, your employees never ran out of the of the hotel. They never left. They said, well, no.

Our our job is to to be there for our guests. Now, yeah. But there were there were guys in there bombing the place. No. But, like, our our job is to take care of our guests.

And they said, how did you train your employees to be that way? He said, we don't. We hire people who are that way. And he said, well, where do you find employees like that in Bombay? He said, we don't.

We hire people from the villages and the small towns. Because if you're in a big city like a Scottsdale or a Houston or Miami, you've lost connection with the core values. But if you still live near grandma and you're from a small town in a small environment, you're you're still connected with what matters. Right? It's one of the biggest benefits I've had from traveling around the world.

For the last five years, I've been to 80 countries. I've been all over the world. I've been to every single continent in the last seven years. 99.9% of the people are just good people Yeah. Regardless of their religion, their race, their culture, their age, their status, their their money, there's some really freaking good people on the planet.

Hire them. Yeah. But the only way you're gonna get employees Herb Keller here from Southwest Airlines, he said, how do you get all your employees to be so happy? Do you know what he said? Hire happy people.

Hire happy people. So how do you get employees who are gonna love bomb your customers? Hire people who love bomb people. Yeah. Hire happy people.

Hire smiley people. Hire people who live core values because that's just how they show up. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And that's I saw

Cameron: my son walking down the street. This is a crazy story. My son is now 24, Aiden. He was about eight at the time. We were in Vancouver.

We were walking home from a baseball game, and he saw a homeless man. And he said, dad, stop for a second. He walked up to the homeless man, and he gave him a $2 coin. In Canada, we have these toonies. So he handed him a $2 coin.

And as we were walking away, I'm like, Aiden, that's really nice. I'm really proud of you. I didn't give the guy $2, so I, like, didn't even notice him. Right? But my son noticed.

We got about a block or two away, and he said, wait a minute. And he ran back, and he went to the homeless man, and he handed him $5 out of his out of his wallet. And he came back to me, and I said, what did you do? He said, I realized I had $5 in my wallet still, and it would probably mean more to him than it would ever mean to me. Do you know what my son is like today?

Same. Same. He's never lost it. I make comments about people and be like, why would you do that? You don't know that person.

Yeah. Because he's never lost those core values. Like, I'm even choked up thinking about it. Yeah. You need to hire those people, which means then ask Rock, how do I interview to make sure that I'm hiring those people?

What are the questions that I ask to hire those people? What are the reference checks I would do to make sure that people line up to those things that they haven't lost, the 10 year old Aiden's? You know?

Steve: Yeah. As you say that, my kids call me out on my crap.

Cameron: They're our biggest they're our biggest mirrors. Right?

Steve: Yeah. Well, because especially, I think, you know, being in business for twenty years, particularly in sales and having people lie to your face all day every day. Right? Just they'll sell they'll tell you things that are blatantly untrue. I'm not saying they're all liars, but

Cameron: My my son asked me. My 22 year old runs his own business in Montreal. He said to me last year, he said, why do you travel like you're traveling? Like, why are you traveling around the world for the last five years? I said, I love going to all these events and meeting all these people and seeing all these new places.

He goes, all these people that you're meeting, how often do you see them? I'm like, oh, fuck. Not as often as because I'm always moving to the next place. Yeah. He said, so why are you really doing it?

Are you running from something or you're running to something?

Steve: Twenty two year old asked you this.

Cameron: I'm like, oh, man. You're like, I wanna shake you, you little bugger. Like, why are you so insightful? Yeah. But it's really given me pause to think about, like, why am I doing and where so now my wife and I are making very conscious choices about where we're spending our time.

Mhmm. Right? Where are we going next? Why are we going? Where will our hub start to

Steve: be? Yeah. Well, I know, like, when when you were here last

Cameron: By the way, if you ask if you wanna sorry. If you wanna ask something about yourself and learn, go ask each of your employees over coffee, over video, whatever. Hey. I wanna give you I I need to learn from you today. Can you tell me something about me that you think I might be nervous to hear, but I'm giving you permission to tell me?

I I tell me the real shit. Tell me where I'm naked. Yeah. They'll tell you. Give them the space.

Yeah. I do it with mine.

Steve: What's the biggest thing you found out?

Cameron: Years ago years ago, I asked four of my direct reports. We we did it in a session together, and then we we gave everybody feedback. I went first. They all said take more time off, take more vacation time, because I didn't back then. I was a workaholic.

I weighed forty pounds more than I do. I had no hobbies, and I was burning out and I was burning them out. And they were stressed and I was showing up stressed because I wasn't taking they're like I'm like, wow. The biggest feedback you have for me is take some time off. Alright.

Let's do this. Yeah. But then I was scared. So I'm like, what am I what do I do? But you did it.

Oh, yeah. I've learned a lot. That was nineteen years ago. I've learned a lot since then.

Steve: Alright. So I went ahead and go do that exercise. You know, you're talking about the traveling quite a bit. One thing that, you know, and I hope hopefully, I'm not poking a sore spot here.

Cameron: No.

Steve: But, you know, when we spoke last, you were or I was asking what's your biggest challenge. You're like, you know, like, things aren't where I wanted to be with my wife right now.

Cameron: Yep. Oh, we're in a really good place. Yeah. I was

Steve: gonna ask how that's going because I shared that with my wife. I was like, man, like

Cameron: Wow. I gotta open.

Steve: He's got well, it wasn't that. I appreciated that part. And, it it was a part that, like, this guy has everything. Right? Like, I think you said, you know, I have more money than I'll ever need.

Cameron: Yep. Well, then I'll overspend. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And you have so many people look up to you. Right? I mean, I said it and I still mean it. Right?

Like, you met you've had multiple meaning impacts in my life.

Cameron: Thank you.

Steve: Right? Between the second in command and vivid vision. Mhmm. You dramatically impacted my life. So to hear is, like, it's not where I wanna be.

It's like, how is that possible?

Cameron: Yeah. Well, I think it's because as a human, we have a lot of areas of our lives to work on. Yeah. And we can never have perfect balance. We're kinda like an elephant on a teeter totter.

Right? Focus on on finance and fitness and faith, but then your relationships go out or your business goes out. So now you wanna focus a little bit on your kids and your wife and and, you know, going to the gym more, but then you're taking time away from the business. So it's kind of figuring out all those things.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: So I wrote a a personal vivid vision for my for who I am as Cameron Herold. It's a six page document, and it's a paragraph about my fitness. It's a paragraph about travel, a paragraph about my wife, a paragraph of my kids, all these different paragraphs of me in my future state three years from now, and I've really started to think about that. And then my wife and I started to revisit some of that as well. So, yeah, we're off to Greece tomorrow to do a one week tantra event together, a week around tantric sexuality, which is all around connection.

We're doing a couple of other sexual courses that are incredible. Yeah. Doing some stuff around BDSM. We're doing, like, with coaches. Like, we're getting some really cool.

But we're, like, we're we're talking and we're connecting and we're going deep and it's nice.

Steve: Does your wife do the vivid her own vivid vision?

Cameron: She did. And then we also did one for ourselves as a couple that just finished, and we're now getting ready to do our next three year vivid vision.

Steve: Gotcha.

Cameron: Yeah. So we talk about how we show up together, how we communicate, our use of substances, our use of going to events, you know, where we're growing. We used to do all these business events, then we realized those felt lonely after a while. So now we wanna do events that are around our shadow side. I'm going to do landmark forum.

I'm going to a Tony Robbins event now in September, like, stuff that I've never done

Steve: that I've always wanted to do. What's shadow side?

Cameron: Who are like, our childhood traumas that are showing up? Like, who who are the the the parts of us that we know are there, but we never really work on or, you know, that stuff?

Steve: No. It's, so I I still do the sales coaching. I love it. You know? Part of me that just loves

Cameron: There's there's a shadow for you. Yeah. A shadow is that you're salesy.

Steve: Yeah. But I wasn't good. But I wasn't. I had to learn it.

Cameron: Okay. Okay. But but now that sale so so it's like everything that we're good at is also our weakness.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: So my tenacity is one of my biggest strengths and one of my biggest weaknesses. So it's me examining how is tenacity hurting me. Right? How is my drive? I'm very driven, very goal oriented.

That's a that's a a that's also a shadow. Yeah. Right? I'm very open. Well, that's also could be a negative.

So it's examining all of your negatives and all the shadows and then working on those and and accepting those and growing through those.

Steve: Well, so I was so I was coaching, this group, and I was sharing with them, like because we have the some somewhat avatars. Right? And our avatars are business owners.

Cameron: Mhmm.

Steve: The the group I was coaching with. And I share with them, like, you know, what's not spoken about a lot, I haven't heard anyone else talk about it, is that the the shadow, the greatest fear of every entrepreneur, if you're trying to sell them something, their shadow is the fear of

Cameron: getting left behind. Of course.

Steve: Right? Yeah. The reason why they're so driven is they wanna be so successful that they make so much money that they'll never be irrelevant again. They'll never be forgotten.

Cameron: And so the shadow is where does that come from as a child? Do you know where it comes from as a child for most entrepreneurs?

Steve: I don't know. I mean, I'm thinking single parenting, parents working too hard.

Cameron: Possibly. So we're alone. We're trying to get praise from parents that aren't around. That could be a shadow. A lot of entrepreneurs didn't do very well in school.

Tommy Mello, myself. I don't know. What were your grades like in school?

Steve: I was really good at school.

Cameron: Okay. Tommy wasn't. I wasn't. Brian dropped out of school. Like, I have lots of friends that didn't do very well in school.

It's very common. So we're still waiting for the praise. You got the gold star from the teachers. Yeah. I didn't.

Soon that I never got an a until first year university on a course that I actually talked my way into going to one that I knew was below me. True story. Yeah. I pretended I wasn't good in French to get into beginner French. I've done French in high school.

Yeah. It's the only time I got an a. Yeah. I was so used to getting a c minus and a d plus and a c that that failure was normal for me. So I'm starving for that outside praise.

So the reason I'm trying to, like, do speaking events and be on stages is because I'm starving for that childhood validation of somebody saying good job, kid.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I remember, Darren Hardy is another mentor.

Cameron: I met him at TED.

Steve: Yeah. I spent a lot of money with that guy. Mhmm. And I remember, like, one of his things that he loves, he brags about, like, talks about it every once in a while as Darren Daley, is that, he is a, New York Times best selling author.

Cameron: Mhmm.

Steve: Because his in school, the teacher says that you'll never be good at writing.

Cameron: And Darren's childhood traumas still show up in his need for that persona that he has. Right? Right. Very normal.

Steve: Yeah. But that's a good point.

Cameron: Polish, a friend of mine here in town. Dad died when he was two. Mom was an addict. He was an addict. Joe's striving for so he he's starving for community.

What's his business? The Genius Network community. Like, it's so and then once you're aware of it, it just allows us to settle in because at the end of the day, none of this stuff matters. We're all gonna die anyway. Yeah.

Right?

Steve: Yeah. Eventually.

Cameron: So a 100%. Every single one of it, the death rate is still a

Steve: hundred percent. Towards a longevity thing.

Cameron: Peter Peter DeMondis would say would tell us that, yeah, the singularity is

Steve: I'm I believe in Peter and the and and the and the longevity. Yeah.

Cameron: I do too.

Steve: We'll see where that goes. Yeah. You have another book

Cameron: Yes. You're you're writing. Grandma no. It just came out in January. It's called Grandmother's Business Secrets.

Steve: Okay. What's that?

Cameron: It's all the little sayings that our grandma would have given us when we were young. Mhmm. What was the saying that you maybe heard from your grandma or your Hmong? Like, a a saying or a phrase?

Steve: I think. I didn't I didn't have as as good with her. I mean, mostly caught it from my dad. Okay. Was like, you know, honor your word because

Cameron: There's an example. Yeah. K. So honor your word. So that would that might have been one of the 60 business sayings that my grandmother would have always said.

And then how does that apply to business? It means deliver on your promises.

Steve: Show up with integrity.

Cameron: Show up with integrity. It means if you tell someone you're gonna deliver a project, deliver your project because here's what happens. So the entire book, Grandma's Business Secrets, is a drawing. So one is, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right?

Yeah. That's a grandmotherism that every grandmother has said. How does that apply to so it's a picture of this grandma tripping and falling and her eggs breaking. Mhmm. And then the saying is don't put all your eggs in one basket.

And then the page is me explaining what that means in business. I had a client that I was coaching that was so proud of this one business that was paying 80% of his revenue. He was getting $8,000,000 a year, and then that client ended up leaving. And his business went from 10,000,000 in revenue to 2 because he had all of his eggs in one basket. Right?

Yeah. So that's what grandma's business secrets is about.

Steve: I like it.

Cameron: So you can find on Amazon. On Amazon. Yep. It's great. Cool.

It's solid. It's a good book. And then It was it was written in a way because my grandparents both ran companies. So I I yeah. Grandparents?

Yeah. I I grew up in a really weird family, dude.

Steve: Okay.

Cameron: My dad was an entrepreneur. My brother, my sister, and I have all been entrepreneurs. My sister is gonna be thirty years running her company to and she's only 55. My and my both sets of grandparents were entrepreneurs. One was a CEO of a big pharmaceutical company, and the others ran a hunting and fishing resort that was quite well known.

So so that's all we knew. Right? But my one grandfather retired at 55 in 1975 and day traded stocks out of the newspaper. Right? But he was on the golf course four days a week.

He was hunting and fishing all the time. He was cross country skiing. He was, like, act he was curling. So I grew up with this entrepreneurial grandfather who role modeled that business isn't about running a business forever. He lived modestly.

He didn't live in a castle. He lived in the same home from when my mom was born until when he died at 96, but he role modeled all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Mhmm. He role modeled for me to go have fun. He told me one day, you're going golfing today.

Leave your cell phone in the car. I said, why? He said, I was able to golf and my business was just fine. You can do it too. I needed someone to teach that to me.

True. So that's what's in the book.

Steve: Yeah. Awesome. Alright. Well, definitely check that out. And then we also have, so I I I shared, you know, my coach is the one that got me connected with you.

So she had this book sent, and she was asking if you wouldn't mind signing it.

Cameron: I'd be happy to.

Steve: So, my coach, Amanda Dean

Cameron: Yeah.

Steve: She's been on the show twice. If you guys haven't connected, I reached out to Amanda Dean with Sharper, Process. But she's made a tremendous impact in my business. And so, I

Cameron: love it. I'm gonna go check out those podcasts too.

Steve: Yeah. If I had not, if not for her, we may never have even

Cameron: Amazing. Crossed paths. Well, thank you for sharing. Yeah. I'm writing share your vision and make it come true.

Oh, the pen is dying.

Steve: Well, we're gonna have to just get

Cameron: a new pen. Well, we'll finish it later.

Steve: We'll finish it later. And then, real quick, guys, we are having, an REI Tech Unlocked event, coming up in September, September 19 through the twenty first in Dallas, Texas. Stephanie Betters was left in REI, Jordan, Fleming with smartphone, and myself. Right now, it's kind of a crazy time with AI. Some people are kinda getting lost in the noise.

What's going on? Which tool should I use? Will this tool still be relevant in a month from now if I implement this tool? We're putting this event together. It's not watch a bunch of speakers on stage.

It's gonna be a workshop. Bring your laptop. Bring your second in command. And we're going to show you if you're a client, show you how to continue using our our tools more effectively. If you're not sure which tool to use, you can demo, meet all the people that are serving all the big operators in this country, see See the tools, experience it, figure out which one makes sense for yourself with the hopes that by the time you leave, you know, which tool, what to execute, what to implement in q four.

Save a killer 2027. Reitechunlocked.com. You wanna check it out. We'd love to see you guys in Dallas, Texas. What have we not talked about that you think is important for the listeners to hear?

Cameron: One of the most common mistakes I've seen is entrepreneurs will join a mastermind. Mhmm. They'll get a business coach. They'll read lots of books. They'll watch lots of videos, and they'll work really, really hard at growing their skills and their connections and their confidence, and they're not the ones running the company.

Mhmm. Yeah. You need to get your COO into an event like the CO Alliance. You need to extend your COO to an event like yours. You need to get your head of IT, a coach.

You need to get your head of marketing to go to an event. You need to take your entire management and leadership team and grow their skills, and then you need to get in all their direct reports. Like, our job is to almost flip the org chart upside down so the CEO is at the bottom supporting the management, supporting the the employees, supporting the customers, and to give everybody in our company the skills and confidence and connections to do more. So it's to become that learning organizations, I think, is really important. Yeah.

It's you know, McDonald's, again, strange that I would bring this. I haven't eaten at McDonald's in ten years, but McDonald's really was the one to popularize this. They had they had Hamburger You. Yeah. And every employee went through Hamburger You, and the managers went through training.

Starbucks had a great training program. General Electric had a great training program. IBM and Xerox had great training programs. There were really, really these companies that built those training programs and grew their people are the ones that scaled, and we need to do more of that.

Steve: Yeah. Well, there's a reason why they're, multibillion, if not trillion dollar businesses. Mhmm.

Cameron: Because they get results through people. Yeah. And the the the problem that's attached to that, if anybody's hearing their manager say we need to hire more people all the time, it's usually because those managers aren't good at saying no or not now or they're not good at helping to remove optimizing workflows. They're not good at helping their team automate. So their answer to every problem tends to me hire more people, which causes your business to make less money and have more overhead.

Yeah. But if you give the skills to them to become better leaders, and they're good at situational leadership, coaching, delegation, managing projects, interviewing, hiring, running meetings, hand like, the the executive functioning skills, that's what'll scale your company.

Steve: Which I happen to learn a lot of those things from Invest In Your Leaders.

Cameron: My course. Yeah. I wasn't gonna just say it. Yeah. Invest In Your Leaders.

But that's what like, my core job at one eight hundred Got Junk was growing the skills of our team. But I learned them at College Pro Painters. I implemented the McGerber Auto Collision. That's that's, I think, where a lot of companies are missing.

Steve: Gotcha. If someone wanted to reach out, connect about COO Alliance or anything else Yeah. What's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Cameron: Easiest place is my my core website cameronherald.com. It's herold, but cameronherald.com. It has links to the CO Alliance, my invest in your leaders training, all my books. It's almost set up like a Linktree. It's actually worth going to check out just how I structured it, but it has stuff for my YouTube channels, my podcast.

It's all on there.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, I know, obviously, there's tremendous wealth of knowledge. I have only gone through through your books. I missed Double Double, so now I'm gonna go check that one out.

Cameron: And by the way, don't read Double Double front to back.

Steve: Okay.

Cameron: Here's a good tip, by the way. 99% of business books are not like a novel. It's not 50 Shades of Grey. You're not gonna miss anything if you skip chapter eight.

Steve: Yeah.

Cameron: Right? Read the chapters that are most important for what you're working on right now. If you have a board meeting coming up, read chapter 16 about board of advisers. But if you don't have a board, don't read it. Right?

If you're hiring somebody next month, read the chapter on people. But for you to start, read chapters one, two, four, six, and 12. Those are the core six. Like, the PR chapter, read it if you want to. Mhmm.

But those are the six to start with. And don't bother about the technology chapter. The book was written twelve years ago. You'll laugh. Or have but read it as a comedy.

Like, I talk about it. It's pretty funny. Like, in 2011, when I wrote Double Double, I talked about doing video calls over Skype with clients that now seems well, of course. No one was doing video calls in 2011. Of course not.

No one was. Yeah. But, like, I think I said, like, use a Bluetooth headsets. Like, the tech tools I talked about were pretty funny.

Steve: Well, they were leading edge at the time.

Cameron: They were very bleeding edge.

Steve: Never mind. You wrote a book on Open Claw. You couldn't even publish it today.

Cameron: Right. They're yeah. It's gone. It's pretty funny. I should just remove the chapter and go outdated.

Steve: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure.

Awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Cameron: Thanks, Steve. Thank you

Steve: guys for watching. See you guys next time. Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.