234: Cameron Herold Shares the Hiring Mistakes Costing Founders Millions

Today, Cameron Herold (Founder of COO Alliance) is back on the podcast to talk about one of the biggest reasons companies stop scaling: bad hiring.

 

We get into why impressive resumes can be misleading, how to tell if someone has actually done the work, and the hiring mistakes that quietly cost companies years of progress.

 

Cameron also breaks down why most entrepreneurs are never properly trained to interview, how he thinks about screening for culture, and what founders miss when they rely too heavily on resumes, references, and gut feel.

 

We also talk about the side of entrepreneurship people rarely admit in real time: burnout, loneliness, identity, alcohol, retirement, and what happens when the business stops giving you the same hit it used to.

Mic Drop Moments

• “If you get two A-players and pay them $200,000 each, or you have six C-players or B-players and pay them $100,000 a year each, your two As will destroy your six Cs or Bs.” – Cameron Herold

• “In the interview, a lot of people get enamored with people knowing how to do something. But they don’t really scratch into did they do it.” – Cameron Herold

• “If you get all the right AI tools and the wrong people, you’re screwed.” – Cameron Herold

• “We’re making entrepreneurship too trendy, but we don’t talk about the bad side. So, too many people think entrepreneurship is easy. It’s really fu*king difficult.” – Cameron Herold

• The Truth About Entrepreneurship
• Books as a Growth Channel
• 400% Gross Margin ROAS
• Marketing Agencies are Full of Shit
• What Real A-Players Look Like
• The Executive Hiring Trap
• The Biggest Hiring Mistakes to Avoid
• What’s Actually Moving The Needle?
• How to Source & Screen A-Players
• Cameron’s Video Screening Process
• Paid Projects Before Hiring
• Hiring for Behavioral Traits
• Wisdom vs. Intelligence
• Why Cameron May Retire
• Cameron’s Biggest Personal Failure
• When Stress Stops Serving You
• Why Cameron Quit Drinking
• The Loneliness Of Entrepreneurship
• Cameron’s Year Of Personal Growth

Brad Weimert: Cameron Herold, thank you for coming to Austin just to see me, man. I appreciate it.

 

Cameron Herold: You’re welcome. Call me daddy.

 

Brad Weimert: You’ve been on this show twice. We’ve covered lots of ground. My intention today, per your request, sort of, is to talk about all your failures in life. And we’ll also talk about your newest book, COO Alliance, the secrets that you don’t tell other people, and whatever the fu*k else we want to talk about.

 

Cameron Herold: Sounds good.

 

Brad Weimert: Love it. Well, why don’t we start with what you tell your COO Alliance members that you don’t put in your books?

 

Cameron Herold: Wow. What do I tell COO Alliance members that I don’t put in the books? I’m pretty open, strangely. So, that would probably start to appear in my books now, too, but I talk to them about my kids and the struggles that they’re having. I talk to them about the struggles that I had with it, with some addictions and marriage struggles, and burnout. I talk to them about how the entrepreneurial journey isn’t as fun and glorious as we all make it out to be, that we’re often struggling and scared and stressed and running out of cash. And so, I talk to them about that kind of stuff.

 

Brad Weimert: How do you think about… So, you’ve written, what, fu*king seven books now?

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: So, you’ve written seven books. How do you think about, like, how you market yourself and position yourself in a book versus how you communicate with your group, which fundamentally is kind of the same? It’s still you and your brand. But one is the marketing tool and content and whatever else, but then the other is the group.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. So, that changed over the years. So, my first book I wrote, I used a group out of Austin, called Greenleaf Books. So, I worked with Clint Greenleaf, who I think you know. And my first book was just there to elevate my brand as a speaker. I had kind of just started on my journey, post-1-800-GOT-JUNK? It was around 2011. And so, my first book was really just to give me a platform to say, “Hey, I’m important. Pay me more.” But there was no marketing. It didn’t lead into anything else. There was nothing to sell. And then the next few books after that, Meetings Suck, Free PR, Vivid Vision, were the same. It was just I need to go deeper on some content. Here’s more content.

 

So, I was really trying to help. My core purpose has always been to help entrepreneurs make their vision come true, so I was always trying to help them. Again, it didn’t sell anything. And then I did The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs with Hal Elrod, another guy from here. Didn’t try to sell anything. And then finally, with my sixth, with the book, The Second in Command, I’m like, “I need to actually use this book as a marketing tool to drive the COO Alliance.” So, it’s a community for the Second in Command. So, the whole way through the book, I was very cognizant of I want to help everybody, but I want them to know that by the time they get to the end of the book, every company should put their second in command into the COO Alliance.

 

Brad Weimert: If they’re a big enough size.

 

Cameron Herold: If they’re a big enough size, yeah. They have to be at least 5 million in revenue to attend. Then, like in the book, I put an entire chapter in about the value of growing your COO skills and putting them into a mastermind, and it was unabashedly talking about the COO Alliance in there as well. And then I even had quotes from Second in Command podcast guests, and I had quotes from COO Alliance members. So, the entire book, it was like pre-suasion. It was like definitely seeding the idea, and that’s proven out to be really, really strong.

 

Brad Weimert: Do you regret not doing that with your first five?

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, fu*king huge. Huge. I just didn’t know, right? I was very naïve.

 

Brad Weimert: Which is hilarious because we’ve both been a part of groups with authors for 15 years. And like we’re both friends with Tucker Max, who’s done this a thousand times.

 

Cameron Herold: He did three of my books. Tucker did three. He did them…

 

Brad Weimert: And he still didn’t push the envelope.

 

Cameron Herold: He didn’t explain it to me, and I didn’t ask.

 

Brad Weimert: He doesn’t care.

 

Cameron Herold: He doesn’t care. He’s fu*king killing animals and, I don’t know, raising sheep or something on his farm.

 

Brad Weimert: He is, yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: So, then what happened with the book was I then was like, “I want to get as many copies of my book out into the hands of people as possible,” which I was doing for years that grew my coaching and my speaking. So, I sent out 3,000 copies of the book, The Second in Command, for free. I even paid for shipping to a bunch of COOs. And for the first 18 months, it was crickets, like no one was joining. And I’m like, “I don’t know if I want to keep doing this.” That was $30,000 that I paid to get all the books out, about $10 each, and we weren’t really getting members. And then all of a sudden we got four.

 

Brad Weimert: Which paid for it all?

 

Cameron Herold: Close, because it was $6,000 per member, so I’d made $24,000. Lifetime value is probably more like 15,000, so it was paying for itself in lifetime value.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: But then I was like, “I don’t know, maybe it’s just more social media marketing, keep doing what we’re doing.” And then I asked my assistant. She’s been with me for nine years, to run some numbers on it, and she ran the numbers, and it had gone from 4 people joining to 26 people joining in six months. So, all of a sudden, it was like, “Wait, 26 people joining at $6,000 each is $144,000,” I think was the rough number it came in at. It was 5,900 times 26, and my cost of the books was 30, so I netted $115,000 on a $30,000 spend. That’s a 400 return on ad spend and gross margin alone, not even the lifetime value. I’m like, “Oh, sh*t, this is the marketing.” So, now we’re like, “How many copies of that book can I get out there?”

 

Brad Weimert: Wait, I think that was terrible math. What did you just say?

 

Cameron Herold: Sorry.

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, no, got it, $30,000 in, 120 out.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. So, we were getting a 400% return on ad spend. And that was gross margin return, not revenue.

 

Brad Weimert: It’s just when you said 400, it broke my brain for a second, and I was like, “I have to make sure this math adds up.”

 

Cameron Herold: I’m sorry. Yeah, 400. No, no, it adds up.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, it’s great.

 

Cameron Herold: And by the way, that’s the number that I’ve been pushing our members to understand. A lot of marketing agencies will say, “Okay, if you spend $10,000 and you get $20,000 in sales, you had a 200% return on ad spend,” maybe, but if you have a 70% cost of goods sold, you just went into the toilet.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, totally.

 

Cameron Herold: Right? So, measure your gross margin return on ad spend and make sure that’s positive. But anyway, yeah, it’s working.

 

Brad Weimert: Or just don’t listen to marketing agencies because they’re full of sh*t most of the time.

 

Cameron Herold: So, there was a stat that…

 

Brad Weimert: Most of the time. Listen, I talk sh*t, but, like, listen, marketing agencies are one of the easiest, lowest barrier to entry business models. And they can be good business models, but generally speaking, my experience has always been that really good marketers only have marketing agencies if they’re going to take a percentage of the lift.

 

Cameron Herold: Correct. GiddyUp Marketing, Topher Grant, great example. Huge, unbelievable example. He takes a percentage of revenue, doesn’t charge you, and he buys the traffic. He pays for the ads.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, you get that offer.

 

Cameron Herold: It’s great because he’s experienced.

 

Brad Weimert: Exactly.

 

Cameron Herold: So, there was a survey that went out around 15 years ago, and it was the top advertising and marketing agencies in the US. It was like the big ones, right? Like the McCann Erickson’s, the Palmer Jarvis, whatever. And they asked the biggest ad agencies how much money or what percent of your revenue do you spend on marketing? It was 1 to 2%.

 

Brad Weimert: Whoa.

 

Cameron Herold: And they’re telling us 8 to 10, and none of them do it.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: It’s like the dentist who goes, “You have to come three times a year. How often do you go to the dentist?” “Once. Why the fu*k are we going three times a year?” We bought their whole story.

 

Brad Weimert: Yep.

 

Cameron Herold: Anyway.

 

Brad Weimert: No, I couldn’t agree more. Watch what people do, not what they say.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: What are you doing for marketing now?

 

Cameron Herold: So, really pushing on the book and then really pushing on our podcast, the Second in Command podcast.

 

Brad Weimert: Still the COO book or the newest book? Why did you write the newest book?

 

Cameron Herold: No. Well, I’ll talk to you about the newest book in a sec. The Second in Command book is the one I’m really pushing now.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that’s what I meant.

 

Cameron Herold: By the way, I want to introduce you to a podcast guest, Jon. He was the President of Tesla, and then he was the COO of Lyft.

 

Brad Weimert: Dope.

 

Cameron Herold: I just had him on our podcast two months ago.

 

Brad Weimert: Amazing.

 

Cameron Herold: Extraordinary leader. He was the president of Tesla for, like, I think three years, reporting directly to Elon. Solid, solid, solid guy.

 

Brad Weimert: He has to be.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: I mean, I don’t think that there are performers in Elon’s companies at that level that are around for three years that aren’t fu*king ridiculous.

 

Cameron Herold: I don’t think he has any C players ever. Most people say, “I’ve got A players.” No, you’ve got B players, because the A players are working for Elon and for Google. For real, right? The A players are working for the best companies. We get all the Bs and Cs.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I was actually talking to our internal recruiter today, and he was talking about a specific role, and we were talking about just sort of the dynamics of hiring, and somebody was missing a specific skill set. And I was like, “No, no, no, if they had all of the skill sets, they’d be out doing their own sh*t.”

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: Or they would be working for Elon.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: Right? And what I said was, “Or they’d be making several million a year in a high-paid role or a high-profile role for one of the big companies.”

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. I think it was the founder of Airbnb who said, “You won’t know it’s an A player until you’re sitting talking to them, and then you’ll know what an A player really is.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting,” right?

 

Brad Weimert: That’s like you won’t know you’re in love until you’re in love.

 

Cameron Herold: Right. Yeah, I guess. And I think Elon even said something about, “The only true A-players are the ones that I’m learning something from in the interview.” Like, when he’s interviewing them, and he’s learning, he’s like, “That’s an A.”

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I’ve heard him say that. I’ve heard him talk about sort… I’ve heard about his interviews actually from somebody that worked for him for a while, and he was like, “It was weird. We weren’t… I didn’t think we were in an interview initially.” And we were just talking, and then it went on for, like, three hours. He was going down, like, crazy rabbit holes about… And you know, Elon is so dynamic and knows so much about so much. And so, he was like, “What I found out was that he would go down to the end of the chain of his depth of understanding, and if I knew more, that was the trigger that this was an interesting proposition.”

 

Cameron Herold: That’s interesting. Yeah. You know, one other thing on hiring, and then I’ll talk about my last book, I was speaking at an event in Dubai last year, came off the stage. I’m six foot four, and I’m talking to this guy who’s taller. He’s like 6’7. I’m like, “What do you do for fun?” He’s like, “I play volleyball.” I’m like, “Do you still play?” He goes, “Yeah, I play pro beach volleyball.” I’m like, “Holy sh*t.” I said, “I played in college for a bit, and I played on my team in high school.” I said, “If I had five of my guys from high school…” And he starts laughing, and he goes, “We would beat the six of you every game, two on six.”

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, wow.

 

Cameron Herold: And I realized that if you get two A-players and pay them $200,000 each, or you have six C-players or B-players and pay them $100,000 a year each, your two As will destroy your six Cs or Bs.

 

Brad Weimert: All right, so…

 

Cameron Herold: But you have to hire really, really good people, not just pay more for your Bs and Cs.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, well…

 

Cameron Herold: I think a lot of people just pay too much.

 

Brad Weimert: Fu*k yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: Right?

 

Brad Weimert: Listen, there’s two big problems with that. There are two challenges with that. The first is how you find those people and how you actually discern whether or not it’s somebody that’s just been overpaid forever. Because the world is full of executives that are hiding inside of a Fortune 500 company or Fortune 1000 company, been getting paid 300, 400, $1 million a year.

 

Cameron Herold: And they’re sh*t.

 

Brad Weimert: And they’re sh*t.

 

Cameron Herold: And by the way, culturally, if you’re a big comp- or if you’re an entrepreneurial company, like a 10 to 100-person company, don’t ever hire a corporate person to come work for you. I made that mistake years ago. I hired this guy, Richard. He was going to be our director of marketing.

 

Brad Weimert: I make it every couple of years.

 

Cameron Herold: Dude, Richard came in. I was so enamored. He was the former VP of Marketing for McDonald’s Canada, former VP of Marketing for Dairy Queen Canada. He was going to come and run our marketing team of two. And he came in, and on the first day, he goes, “Who fills out the FedEx slips?”

 

Brad Weimert: Exactly.

 

Cameron Herold: I’m like, “Oh, fu*k.” You got to go. “I totally mis-hired.”

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: Culturally, they’re the wrong person. Like, skills are one thing, but culturally different.

 

Brad Weimert: I don’t know. I think that’s culture, but you’re also talking about… Maybe it is culture, maybe it’s a value-based thing, but it’s also just how close have you been to the ground recently.

 

Cameron Herold: Right. Like, rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty. I hired another woman, Allison Twyner, who had run the Google Analytics team for Canada, and this was 2005. And she came in to work with us to run our digital marketing. Oh, my God, unbelievable. But she was, like, this entrepreneurial, street-smart athlete that had… And Google was still pretty small back in those days. Like 2005, it was big enough, but we’d only been using it for five years. Like, it wasn’t hundreds of thousands of people.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, let’s address that then. So, how do you prevent that happening? How do you find the executive from a massive company that could actually work in a small company? What do you ask them? How do you think about that?

 

Cameron Herold: Okay, so I did an interview 10 years ago for Dave Asprey. You know Dave. He used to run Bulletproof Coffee.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, he’s a little crazy.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, he’s cray-cray. But we’re all cray-cray.

 

Brad Weimert: He’s special crazy, though. His event is in Austin right now.

 

Cameron Herold: I’m going to go see Steve Aoki with him tomorrow.

 

Brad Weimert: I find Dave Asprey fascinating. I always do. I’ve had a bunch of really interesting conversations with him. Also, I have a lot that fall flat, because he’s just out there.

 

Cameron Herold: He’s way out there.

 

Brad Weimert: And I’m like, “What are you doing right now?”

 

Cameron Herold: And he’s a space cadet.

 

Brad Weimert: “And what are you thinking?”

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. I mean, half the time I wonder, I’m talking to Dave, like, “Are you on something? Or are you just, like… Or are you even on the planet we’re on?” Like, which planet are you on right now?

 

Brad Weimert: That’s more where I’m going usually.

 

Cameron Herold: So, I was coaching Dave, and during our year of coaching him, he asked me to interview a potential second in command. Her name was Anna. And Anna was the former head of Amazon Prime, and she was going to leave Amazon Prime to go work for Bulletproof Coffee. I’m like, “Oh, I’m nervous, man.” Like, this is like corporate, running a division, big division, and coming to an entrepreneurial company, and you’re based in Nanaimo, and she’s in Seattle, like big disconnects.

 

Brad Weimert: Also, hold on, though. Frame of reference for anybody that doesn’t know this, but Amazon is notorious for having pods of entrepreneurship within the company.

 

Cameron Herold: And I didn’t know that.

 

Brad Weimert: Got it, okay.

 

Cameron Herold: So, when I started doing the interview, what I was scratching for was, “Do you have the skills to do what he’s hiring, right? Do you have the skills to lead people, to run these divisions? Have you worked in consumer packaged goods? Like, how are you going to work with an entrepreneurial leader?” Like, I was interviewing for behavioral traits and skill sets. But my worry was you’re going to be too corporate. So, I told her the story about Richard, who had worked for McDonald’s and Dairy Queen. She goes, “Oh, you don’t know what I did two roles before working at Amazon.” I’m like, “No.” She goes, “I ran my own marketing agency or business agency in the consumer packaged goods space, and I had 20 employees, and I did that for nine years, and I was the entrepreneur.”

 

I’m like, “Oh, you’re an entrepreneur.” She goes, “Oh, yeah, the only reason I’m even at Amazon is I’m like this entrepreneurial person to build something up, and the reason I’m leaving, it’s gotten too big now.” I’m like, “Oh, okay, so you’ve got the skills and the…” But I had to really scratch on that stuff. I wasn’t super enamored that she was from a big company. I was more worried about it.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I’m inherently worried about it, and that’s also, I think I… No, not inherently. I have developed the concern over a lot of time and mistakes.

 

Cameron Herold: Well, here’s another thing that happens. Most entrepreneurs have never had any training on how to do job interviews.

 

Brad Weimert: Of course.

 

Cameron Herold: So, they’ve interviewed 100 people. And maybe they’ve read a book. Maybe they read Who, maybe they read chapter two of my book, Double Double, but they’ve never done role plays. They’ve never practiced. No one’s ever videoed them doing an interview. They’ve never watched themselves. They’ve never done self-critiques. They’ve never practiced doing an interview. Like, they’ve never talked about their interviewing style. They’ve never studied open and closed questions and probing. Like, they don’t know how to write a resume. I’ve had at least 100 hours of training on doing job interviews. So, when people make mistakes, it’s often because they don’t have the skill to do it.

 

Brad Weimert: Got it. Okay. Well, I like that. So, what I was going to say is that I have lots of reason to be concerned from my history of trying to hire these people. I think the idea of, you said, behavior and values questions.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: And I like that a lot. The stumbling upon the reality that somebody’s been an entrepreneur is also helpful, although it’s also very common to find people… And now you got this diamond in the rough that was like, “Oh, I only got into it because of this, and I’m leaving because it’s too corporate.” But that does happen.

 

Cameron Herold: It’s very rare. It’s very rare.

 

Brad Weimert: It’s tremendously uncommon. What normally happens is people tell you a story about how they ran some sh*t, but then you have a concern that they escaped to corporate America, or they elevated to corporate America, and now they don’t want to go back, right, because they’re like, “Oh yeah, I can tell you that I can go back.” But really, I think it’s like most things in life, where you sort of get lifestyle creep.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, they’re out of water too. They’re out of their element.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, that too. You get acclimated to a new way of doing things, and then you’re like, “You know, I just tell somebody else to do that, and it gets done.”

 

Cameron Herold: You know where else a lot of companies make mistakes on hiring? And it’s around understanding how to interview for skillset.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, talk to me about those hours.

 

Cameron Herold: Let me give you an example for a sec.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. No, that’s what I want. I want to drill into that specific example, but I also want, like, you talked about training and role-playing for the interview. And that’s tremendously uncommon in entrepreneurial upbringing. It’s something that you hit on the head, which is maybe they read a book. And people usually read a book and get a framework, and they’re like, “This is how I’m supposed to do this. This is great.” And it is usually Who.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, it is, or Topgrading, which is 800 pages, 795 pages, and it’s just too overwhelming, right? It’s like you can do your thesis, your MBA thesis on that or PhD thesis. So, do you know how to win an Olympic medal?

 

Brad Weimert: No.

 

Cameron Herold: Yes, you do.

 

Brad Weimert: Just do a bunch of sh*t.

 

Cameron Herold: Be faster, be stronger, right? So, you know how, right? Do you know how to set a world record? Yes. Right? You could tell everybody how you…

 

Brad Weimert: Leading the witness.

 

Cameron Herold: No, but, okay. But I have to, because if you said yes, then we would’ve… So, the leading the witness is you know how to do it.

 

Brad Weimert: Yes.

 

Cameron Herold: Do you know how to manage people? Yes. Do you know how to delegate to people? Yes. Have you done it before? No, I’ve never won a world record. No, I’ve never won a gold medal. So, would you rather hire a swimmer who knows how to win an Olympic medal, or hire a swimmer who won an Olympic medal?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: Right?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: I remember having drinks one day with a guy named Alex Baumann, who’d won five gold medals at the LA Olympics.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: Clearly better as a swimmer than me. I know how to do all four strokes, but I would drown in a race.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: In the interviewing, a lot of people get enamored with people knowing how to do something. But they don’t really scratch into did they do it, right? Or they’ll show on their resume, “I grew revenue by 23%.” Really? Or did the whole company do it? What exactly did you do?

 

Brad Weimert: That’s like the most common mistake ever.

 

Cameron Herold: So, let me show you where it went sideways. At 1-800-GOT-JUNK? the call center at this point was not reporting to me yet. It did about six months after this incident. We hired a guy from Business Objects, a big, strong tech company who used to run the sales divisions at Business Objects. We brought him in to run our call center sales division, and he needed to hire 30 people to start May 1st, and he was way behind. And I talked to the CEO, and I said, “Do you want me to go talk to him? Like, something’s off. He’s not going to hit this goal. We’re fu*ked if he doesn’t get there.” He goes, “Please, can you go in there and chat with him?”

 

So, I started talking to him, and I said, “When you were at Business Objects, and you needed 5 more, 10 more people, what did you do? Like, how did your recruiting of people and your interviewing of people go?” He goes, “Well, I didn’t have to do that.” I’m like, “No, no, but you managed the whole sales team. If you had to recruit them and interview them, how did you do it?” He goes, “I didn’t.” He goes, “I would phone HR and say, ‘I need 10 more salespeople,’ and they’d be sitting at my desk on Monday.” I’m like, “So, you’ve never, you have no idea.” He goes, “I don’t know how to interview, I don’t know how to hire.”

 

Brad Weimert: Oh my God.

 

Cameron Herold: And we had this VP of a call center, 100-person business area, who had never done it before, because we assumed that because he’d managed people, he knew how to interview and hire them.

 

Brad Weimert: Yep.

 

Cameron Herold: Right? That’s where we often go sideways. So, it’s starting as, what are you looking for? How do you find it? And then, can you practice the skills of actually knowing how to find that stuff?

 

Brad Weimert: Okay, so I think about this in terms of a number of different skill sets. And I’ve talked about this before, and we might have talked about this before in a previous episode. But I think about sourcing, screening, interviewing, and onboarding.

 

Cameron Herold: Correct.

 

Brad Weimert: Right? And that’s sort of my framework for this.

 

Cameron Herold: The offer is actually a part of that, too. People mess up, they screw up the offer.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, okay.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, so let me… I’ll back up and give my experience so people know where it came from. So, there used to be a company called College Pro Painters. College Pro became the largest residential house painting company on the planet. And every year, we’d have to go out and recruit, hire, and train 800 university students to be franchisees.

 

Brad Weimert: Yes, yes, and you had Elon Musk’s brother as part of one of your employees.

 

Cameron Herold: No, no, let me say that. But then in six weeks, those 800 franchisees had to hire 8,000 students to paint houses.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I should have teed this up for you. So, we have talked about this before.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. So, our business had to become operationally world-class at the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding of people, right? So, we got so much training around… We got almost no training on how to paint a house. Because that didn’t matter as much as having 8,800 people with the ability to do something at a basic level. But we were really fu*king good at the interview.

 

Brad Weimert: Okay. Well, let me say a couple of things there. So, a huge takeaway for anybody listening now that doesn’t give a fu*k about hiring is, and there are tons of entrepreneurs that are like, “Yeah, yeah, tell me how to generate revenue,” that are listening. Here’s, I think the biggest takeaway of what you just said is they didn’t bother to teach you how to paint a house. They taught you how to recruit, which is smart as fu*k.

 

Cameron Herold: Because if you had the right people, they’d figure out how to paint a house.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, I think, or because what actually generates revenue for that company is recruiting.

 

Cameron Herold: Is the right people.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, is recruiting. And so, I think one of the things that is, and this is fresh for me mentally, but one of the things that you need to stop, pause, and think about inside the scope of your own company consistently is, “Am I actually investing in time and optimizing the things that are moving the needle on the company or focusing on the things that make the company look pretty, make me look pretty?”

 

Cameron Herold: AI.

 

Brad Weimert: A vanity metric. Yeah, right.

 

Cameron Herold: If you get all the right AI tools and the wrong people, you’re screwed. So, let’s go through the life cycle of the employee, then. So, if you’re recruiting people, if you want to find a bunch of people, how do you find them? Well, first off, your business has to look like a good cultural beacon to attract good people.

 

Brad Weimert: Ideally, it also is a cultural beacon to attract people.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. But like an A player or a B player aren’t going to go work for an average company.

 

Brad Weimert: Right.

 

Cameron Herold: Right? An A player or a B player aren’t going to go work for a company filled with sh*tty people. So, one by one, you got to get rid of your bad people to attract the good people. Your job postings have to be like a marketing letter or a sales letter, and a sales letter has to attract people like a magnet, and it has to push some people away. If it’s flat, if it reads like a government document, if it’s boring, you’re not going to attract the good people in. A-players want to be challenged right at the interview process. So, I start them off by going, “This is going to be the hardest job you’ve ever fu*king had. It’s going to challenge you like no tomorrow. If you don’t live these core values, don’t apply, because you’re going to get fired if you break these core values.”

 

So, I’m not going to sell them on how wonderful we are. I’m going to sell them on how challenging we’re going to be. And an A player’s like, “Oh my God, I want in.” I put the salary and the comp right at the top. Like, I tell them right away how much it is. I don’t want a $250,000 person applying for an $80,000 job, and I don’t want an $80,000 person applying for a $200,000 job. But the recruiting part starts in there. I cast a very wide net. I push that job posting out through search firms on social media. I pay all my current employees a strong bonus to share it with their network, so they get a huge bonus for recruiting the right candidates. So, that’s kind of the recruiting part. Okay? Then you’ve got all these candidates, and they all come into the company.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, sort of. So, we’ve got Hormozi would be proud because you’re starting with the offer.

 

Cameron Herold: He’s a former client of mine 10 years ago.

 

Brad Weimert: Yep, like him. Good dude. Starting with the offer, which is the job post, which also fits into the screening process.

 

Cameron Herold: It’s the top of your funnel.

 

Brad Weimert: Which is where you’re going, right?

 

Cameron Herold: Yep.

 

Brad Weimert: So, you’re actually creating some friction on the front end so that while you source, it funnels through, and you restrict some of that already. So, you’re already into screening here with the interview.

 

 

Cameron Herold: So, I only want the people applying who actually really want to be a part of something, okay? Or at least some of the bad people aren’t even applying. So, yeah, so they’re top of funnel. So, then what most companies do is they read every resume that comes in. I don’t want to read every resume. I don’t even know if you’re that serious yet. Most people are just fu*king clicking a button, and I’m getting applications. So, what I do is I kick back an auto-reply, and I’ve done this for 25 years. The auto-reply comes back and goes, “Thanks for your resume. I’m not going to read it yet. Please read this five-page description, our vivid vision of what our company looks like, acts like, and feels like in the future, and read this recent article of us in the media, or watch this podcast of me being interviewed, and reply and send me a three-minute video of why you want to work here and how you can help us make our vivid vision come true.

 

If I like your video, I’ll read your resume, and we’ll bring you in for a group interview.” So, I don’t look at a single resume. When I get the videos, I look at them, and you can tell very quickly in the video if the person’s the right cultural fit or not.

 

Brad Weimert: I’m going to tie this back to the second question that I have about mis-hiring really valuable people. The question is related to this, and I’ll get there. The question is, do you do that for every role?

 

Cameron Herold: Yes.

 

Brad Weimert: Even the ones that are $250,000, $300,000 a year?

 

Cameron Herold: 1-800-GOT-JUNK, we did this exact process for our head of HR, head of people. Very senior director of people role. Helen Sheridan was this woman’s name, and Helen came back and goes, “I’m not sending you a video, and I’m not coming for a group interview.” And I replied, “We’ll miss you.” And she replied going, “What do you mean you’ll miss me? I’m amazing for this role.” I’m like, “You said you’re not going to send a video and come for the group interview. We can’t interview you.” She goes, “Fu*k it, I’ll send it in.” So, she sends it in. We loved her video. She comes for a group interview where we’re interviewing five candidates at the same time.

 

She goes, “This is so unusual, but I’m doing it because I really want to work here, and I know I can scale 1-800-GOT-JUNK?” She walks into the group interview wearing a blue wig, a clown wig, which was one of our marketing things. And I’m like, “I love her.” She walked out of the group interview, and she pulled me aside, and she goes, “Even if I don’t get this job, this has forever changed my role of recruiting people.” And she was the former head of HR for a 1,300-person company that was a cultural magnet in Vancouver. We hired her. We did the same thing for our head of finance people. So, the only thing you have to be careful of is you’re hiring people, and you’re recruiting them away from public companies. There are risks to their roles. You have to be a little bit careful around that.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, how does that…

 

Cameron Herold: But most entrepreneurial companies aren’t hiring former public people.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, how does that intersect with an actual recruiting process, right? So, look, if you have job posts out, if you get people referred in, okay, they all started that funnel.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: But if you have a recruiter that’s going out to do that…

 

Cameron Herold: They come through my funnel, too.

 

Brad Weimert: But after?

 

Cameron Herold: So, even if you’re using an executive search.

 

Brad Weimert: Right. But after they’ve picked up the phone and had a conversation with a recruiter, yeah?

 

Cameron Herold: That’s fine, yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: Okay, got it.

 

Cameron Herold: I don’t care what happens on that end. If I’m using executive recruiters…

 

Brad Weimert: So, it’s not necessarily the first point of contact for a higher-end person.

 

Cameron Herold: No, I just want to know before I waste time looking at your resume or reading all the notes from the search firm, I want to see a video of you. I had a guy one time apply…

 

Brad Weimert: With you on that.

 

Cameron Herold: And he sent a video, and he goes, “Sorry about the laundry behind me. It’s kind of COVID time.” Dude, you can still take the laundry off the counter, you idiot. Are you kidding me?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: Like, I’m okay if your kid walks through, but the dirty laundry means you don’t care about details.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: I need a detail-oriented person. So, that’s the second stage of the funnel. Then the stage is I do a group interview, either over Zoom or in person. I have five or six candidates come in at the same time for a one-hour interview, and all I’m looking for is who’s sparkling, whose eyes are vibrating, who’s excited about the role? Who do I like spending time with? I’m looking for the cultural fits in the company, not entirely about skill set yet. If they go through the group interview and I’m like, “I really like you. There’s something here. I don’t entirely know what it is yet, but I want to know more,” then we give them a project. And the project is paid. It’s paid at the normal comp that they’re going to do, and it’s about an eight-hour project.

 

So, I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m going to pay you.” I might pay you $500. Normally, the output that I’m getting for the project I can still use inside of the company, but it’s a good test for me to see if they can get the work done. And it’s a very specific project that I need you to do. It could be review my website and come back with 10 areas that we can improve it. It could be, do a market research study. It could be whatever, right? That hoop is only going to show you who the candidates are, and because you’re paying them, if they have a problem with it, you don’t want them anyway. Like, if somebody’s going to start arguing with me before they have the job, they’re going to certainly argue when they’re working for me.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: So, they go through the test. If you like the test, you like the video, you like the group interview, then I bring them in, and I follow the really strong CIDS interview from Topgrading and from Who, where I really go through every little thing in their webs- or everything in their resume.

 

Brad Weimert: You say CIDS interview?

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, it’s a style of interview.

 

Brad Weimert: Got it.

Cameron Herold: So, I go through a very in-depth interview about every stage of their resume, and I’m looking for skills, skills, skills, skills, skills. I already know they’re a cultural fit. I already know that I like them, but I’m going to interview like crazy. At the start of the interview, I’ll say, “Oh, by the way, I know you’ll probably have some questions. We can answer those at the end of the interview because right now, I need to know if you’re the right fit.” And then I will grill the crap out of them for at least an hour, and I will challenge them, and 95% of the time, I have them talking.

 

If I’m talking, it’s not an interview, it’s a sales pitch. And if I’m selling them, they’re running away, right? So, it’s like playing hard to get a little bit. I’m going to grill them, I’m going to grill them, I’m going to grill them until they want it, and then sometimes, I’ll reverse the sell, and I’ll get them to start selling me a little bit. At the very end, I’ll answer their questions, right? And then you go from there into the– they call it the, not top grading, but TORC, the thread of reference check. So, I use the TORC process, and then we go into a final interview. So, that’s the interview process.

 

And we show people, like, how do you know what behavioral traits to look for? How do you define a behavioral trait? We were interviewing franchisees, and one of the five behavioral traits we were looking for was tenacity. So, we describe tenacity as the dog-like work ethic to get over, under, or around any obstacle put in one’s path. You’re a five out of five on tenacity. You’re like a 12 out of 5 on tenacity, right? You’re a very tenacious. You never give up, grind it out, figure it out, find a way kind of person.

 

So, we’re interviewing this franchisee, and I knew that he was a one out of five. He was a sloth. He just wasn’t that hard of a worker and wouldn’t grind it out. One of the other VPs rated him a five out of five on tenacity.

 

Brad Weimert: Did you fire him?

 

Cameron Herold: No, no, but yeah. But I was like, hang on, so on the debrief, you have to have two people interviewing, and then you meet and talk about your numbers to make sure that you’re on the same page and I didn’t miss something. I’m like, “I gave him a one. You gave him a five. What did you see that I missed?” He goes, “Oh, he’s a hard worker. He’s a bricklayer.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. Tenacity does not say you’re a hard worker. It doesn’t say you have a hard job.”

 

And I went back to the definition, I said, “What do you find that supports that definition?” He goes, “Yeah, not much.” I’m like, “Because he’s not a grind-it-out kind of person. He’s quit every job. He quit in school. He hated his coaches. He told his coaches to fu*k off. He ended up with a hard job because he was lazy at everything he ever did. He was a quitter who ended up on a construction site.”

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, there’s also a difference between somebody that will do a difficult thing and somebody that will excel in anything. And there are people that will do a difficult thing, but do the minimum because that’s what they have to do to keep their job.

 

Cameron Herold: Yep. I don’t want somebody who’s excelled at everything and never had to work hard because they’ve never experienced failure. They’ve never had to grind it out.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I want some of those. Some of those people are, there are some people that have innate skill, so everything has come easy.

 

Cameron Herold: Which is fine.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, and then there’s chip on the shoulder and I have to do well with it.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. But the key part is let’s train our people on this stuff. Like, I remember back, this is going back to 1993, I was interviewing someone.

 

Brad Weimert: Damn, you’re old.

 

Cameron Herold: I’m really old. I talked to someone today. I’ve been running my own business. I started at 20, and I just turned 60. So, 40 years ago, I had 12 employees.

 

Brad Weimert: That’s so crazy. It’s crazy that you can say every five-year increment in life, when you can be like 25 years, 30 years, every five-year increment, there’s a new realization of how old you are. You’re like, “Whoa.”

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I know. It’s really crazy.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, there’s sometimes, I actually don’t– do you have the sensation of, I’m old, or do you have the sensation of like– how do you internalize that? Because I internalize it most of the time, almost all the time, as like a privilege to have been able to go through enough things and have that context and experience.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I have…

 

Brad Weimert: And I think that was a deliberate wiring. I don’t think, it didn’t happen by accident that I look at things that way.

 

Cameron Herold: I feel I have the wisdom of some time now that a lot of younger entrepreneurs maybe don’t have yet, because they just haven’t been doing it long enough. I don’t think I’m smarter at all. There’s people that are 30 years younger than me that are mind-blowingly smarter, but I have some wisdom of having been around it longer and hiring people and managing people and companies.

 

Brad Weimert: Smart’s a weird word, man.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, it’s wisdom versus smarts. How do I think about age? When I was about 45, I remember looking in the mirror and going, “Oh, you’re older.” And that was the first dawning that I wasn’t young anymore. And then I became very cognizant at around the same age, when I was with Kim, so about the same age, 15 years ago. I was now married to someone younger than me, and I was like, “I can’t get old.” And she joked with me one day that I’d made an old man noise. I kind of stood up grunting, and she’s like, “You can’t make old man noises.” And that was a coming of age for me that I was going to stay young, I was going to act young, I was going to…

 

Brad Weimert: Is that when you got rid of her and got a younger wife?

 

Cameron Herold: No. That was eight years after that, yeah. Yeah, you’re only as old as the woman you feel. There’s a marketing quote for you.

 

Brad Weimert: Great. That’s going to be our headline clip.

 

Cameron Herold: A little snippet headline, right? Cameron Herold said. So, how do I think about age? Now, I’m at another stage. I’m very cognizant now that I no longer am running a business for– I’m not getting anything more out of running a company anymore, which is a strange feeling.

 

Brad Weimert: What do you mean by that?

 

Cameron Herold: You only start a company for one of three reasons. To have a feeling of accomplishment, pride, like, “Look at me, I am smart, teacher. I am smart, mom and dad. I have done it,” like a, “I did this,” a feeling of accomplishment. Or to give us free time so that we can enjoy our hobbies and our life and do stuff, or to have enough money. I’ve hit this economic escape velocity. I’ve got enough money. I live in a tax-free zone. So, I don’t need that much more. If I want to fly private, sure, but I’ve got lots of…

 

Brad Weimert: That is the jump. Isn’t that annoying?

 

Cameron Herold: I know. But I don’t care any– like, I really don’t care. Like, I fly business class everywhere. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to buy nice watches because I like them. Like, it doesn’t– and then free time. I took 13 weeks’ vacation last year, so I’ve got lots of free time. The feeling of accomplishment, I’ve been running my own business since I was 20. So, it’s like, what am I doing this for now? And so, I’m really starting to check in around when…

 

Brad Weimert: Well, there’s the fourth too.

 

Cameron Herold: What’s that?

 

Brad Weimert: Which is that you don’t know what else to do.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, but I do know what else to do. So, this is what I’m checking in on right now.

 

Brad Weimert: I say it in jest, but realistically, it is something to address for tons of entrepreneurs. You condition yourself to be working all the time, and then you have to learn, you have to unlearn that and learn how to play again or do whatever else.

 

Cameron Herold: I’m considering retirement. I’m considering being done. I’m considering having someone buy the COO Alliance and continue it. It’s the first time I’ve ever said it publicly. And it’s not like it’s imminent, but– so I’m checking in with myself, going, “Do I have enough hobbies to keep myself busy?”

 

I talked to somebody a couple years ago and he said, “Oh, I tried retirement and I had to go back to work after, like, a year.” I’m like, “Well, what were you doing?” He goes, “I got tired of it. I couldn’t golf all the time.” I’m like, “So, what other hobbies do you have?” He goes, “Nothing.” That’s the fu*king problem. The problem isn’t that retirement’s bad, the problem is that the only thing you have is one thing. But I like golf. I want to play padel. I want to play pickleball. I want to play tennis more. I want to hike more. I want to go skiing more.

 

Brad Weimert: Okay, let me argue at this point.

 

Cameron Herold: I want to go travel. I got bucket list activities. I want to read. I want to learn how to play guitar. I want to do sex courses, like…

 

Brad Weimert: Look, if you want to do all that, I love the last one, and we can talk about that. But if you want to do all that, great. But there is an argument to be made that business is a game. And so, if you can let yourself out of this idea that the business has to grow and has to expand, has to be better, and I have to do the three things that you mentioned, which were the things that you get out of a business, if instead you reframe that and say, “In retirement, I want to participate in business because my hobby that I’m doing, if I can also simultaneously monetize it–”

 

Cameron Herold: I would still do some. I would still speak.

 

Brad Weimert: Then it’s a fun game.

 

Cameron Herold: I would still speak. I would still coach some people a bit. I would still have my course.

 

Brad Weimert: You will like all that stuff. Most people are terrified by that sh*t.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I like that stuff. But here, I had two very good role models who were– I had three, actually. My one grandfather was the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company.

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, right. You’re an entrepreneur family.

 

Cameron Herold: And he died at 52. So, it didn’t matter. He was dead. My second grandfather built his own business and sold it and retired at 52, and lived until he was 96. Man, did he have hobbies and friends? He was always doing stuff and he was always happy. And then my dad retired at 60 and died at 80, but had all kinds of hobbies and passions and fun and hung out. So, I saw them do stuff. And yes, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. I just don’t know if–I don’t think running a company is my hobby. I think my hobbies are my hobbies. I like what I do.

 

Brad Weimert: Love it.

 

Cameron Herold: But I really like my hobbies, too.

 

Brad Weimert: I love it. But you also just told me, so the way that that was framed was very binary. It was like, well, I’m working while I’m working, and then I’m retired and I get to do my hobbies. But you also simultaneously, in almost the same breath, said, “I take 13 weeks off every year. And I’m fu*king.” And you’ve been nomadic for four years or something.

 

Cameron Herold: But I get like 40 weeks off.

 

Brad Weimert: So, okay, but I’d say that the…

 

Cameron Herold: You’re not 60 yet.

 

Brad Weimert: No.

 

Cameron Herold: How old are you now?

 

Brad Weimert: 45.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, dude, I’m telling you something. You asked about age and how do I see it? Something changed.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, look, I’m not going to argue that point.

 

Cameron Herold: Something changed. I was in Nepal at the start of my 60th birthday in October. In November, I was hiking the Himalayas, loving it, and something, it was like a light switch went on, and I was like, “I think I just– I think I’m there.” And I can’t explain it.

 

Brad Weimert: Fu*king woo-woo bullsh*t. Look, what I’m saying is that everybody’s got their own journey. You can look at it different ways. You can condition it for yourself, or life conditions you.

 

Cameron Herold: Agreed.

 

Brad Weimert: Right? And so, you’ve gone down this path where you saw these people that worked, worked, worked, and then got time to just explore their hobbies. And you have in your head that you want 40 weeks to do it. And then I have deliberately throughout my life said I want integration versus balance.

 

Cameron Herold: Correct.

 

Brad Weimert: Right? Or alignment versus balance, right? And I, at the same time, it is not a clear path. It is a journey. It is a challenge to do that, and I have to recalibrate all the time to do it and make sure I’m not going too deep in one end or the other because I have an addictive personality, and when I do something, I want to fu*king do it.

 

Cameron Herold: I think seeing my dad die three years ago probably hit me pretty good, too.

 

Brad Weimert: That makes sense.

 

Cameron Herold: Right? And I think I’m becoming very, very aware of we’re only here for a certain amount of time.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

 

Cameron Herold: I want to spend time with my kids.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Oh, you have those?

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I’ve got two kids, 25 and 23. Yeah, it’s just something’s different, and I can’t explain it.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I can see that. The exclamation point that I want to put on this is only that you get to pick how you want to live your fu*king life.

 

Cameron Herold: I agree. Do you know what my worry is? My worry is that if I wasn’t running the business, would I still be accepted with my friends? Will my friends accept me as me? Or do they only accept me because I’m running a business? Because all my friends are entrepreneurs.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, man.

 

Cameron Herold: Like, will you still like me?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I think identity’s a real thing, and I think it’s part of, it isn’t why I started doing it, but after I started doing it, when I started doing significant adventures, endurance athletics, etc., I saw how the entrepreneurial community, but also other people around me, perceived that, and that created a different identity, right? And so, leaning into this idea of integration, alignment, etc., leaning into that created a different persona that connected with different people for different reasons. And it really, I think, fueled, it fanned the flames of making sure that I did cool sh*t throughout the journey and I made a point of saying every year or a couple times a year, I was going to make sure I did cool sh*t, because it is what creates the story.

 

Cameron Herold: Maybe that’s what I got to do, is hire a second in command to run my COO Alliance so I can just have my 40 weeks’ vacation. I can have somebody else scale it for me.

 

Brad Weimert: You can come in and speak.

 

Cameron Herold: Maybe I’m getting there.

 

Brad Weimert: Come in and speak. We already do cool sh*t.

 

Cameron Herold: I know. It’s fun.

 

Brad Weimert: We’ve done a bunch of cool sh*t.

 

Cameron Herold: It’s fun.

 

Brad Weimert: In fact, we’ve been doing cool sh*t long enough that the first interview that we did, you were Interview 14 on this podcast.

 

Cameron Herold: Okay. And we’ve done now?

 

Brad Weimert: And we were 250. And you were also Interview 100.

 

Cameron Herold: Wow.

 

Brad Weimert: Oddly. And we were drinking wine back when you had alcohol in Santiago.

 

Cameron Herold: Chile.

 

Brad Weimert: In a wine room for Interview number 14. So, people go look it up. You’ll probably hear a bunch of the same sh*t on hiring. Probably not, actually.

 

Cameron Herold: Wow, that was a long time ago.

 

Brad Weimert: Crazy. Yeah, crazy. We had left Antarctica and went to go stomp around Patagonia for a couple weeks almost.

 

Cameron Herold: Oh, that was where the pool table was. We played pool that night, too.

 

Brad Weimert: Played pool and cracked open a bottle of wine in a wine room of the W in Santiago.

Cameron Herold: Yep. Wow. Oh, that’s right. Yeah, I remember that.

 

Brad Weimert: Rooftop in the W.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Super cool. We went for a great Michelin star dinner one time, too. Here’s an example of tenacity, by the way. It’s a four-hour dinner. It’s like nine courses. And we’re like, “Hey, we got two hours. Can we come for dinner?” They’re like, “No, it’s a four-hour.” We’re like, “We’ll tell you what. We’ll, Brad pays them 50 bucks.”

 

Brad Weimert: We also just showed up.

 

Cameron Herold: Oh, did we just show up?

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, we just showed up to a three Michelin star place. There was no reservation. We just walked in.

 

Cameron Herold: And they let us in.

 

Brad Weimert: Yep, they did. We were like, “We don’t have time.” They were like, “Four-hour dinner.” We were like, “We’ve got two and then the airport.”

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. Give me the food, take a picture, give me the next dish.

 

Brad Weimert: Yep. It was great. All right, so well, we failed on all accounts to address failures, which is how I started this conversation, said we were going to do that. So, why don’t you tell me about a failure that you feel like you had as a person, but not as a businessman? And how that formed decisions in business?

 

Cameron Herold: The big one that comes to me first is 25 years ago is when it fell apart. And I was running a business. We had 900 employees. And one of my VPs tapped me on the shoulder to say, “Are you okay?” And I turned around and collapsed on the floor of the elevator and started sobbing, and I was having a nervous breakdown. I weighed 40 pounds heavier than I do today. I was smoking. I was starting every meal four days a week with two Manhattans and red wine and Grand Marnier at the end. I was smoking. I was a complete workaholic. I had no hobbies, whatsoever. It was just business.

 

Brad Weimert: Is that when you realized you were gay when you were drinking the Grand Marnier at the end?

 

Cameron Herold: No, it was before.

 

 

Brad Weimert: It was before that?

 

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, before that. I used to like Grand Marnier.

 

Brad Weimert: Case in point.

 

Cameron Herold: I was sucking on the cigarettes. It’s very kind of Freudian. God, you’re bizarre. So, yeah, that was that. That was a period where I then went to a doctor and found out that I was clinically redlining and had this metallic taste at the back of my neck.

 

Brad Weimert: What does that mean, clinically redlining?

 

Cameron Herold: So, I had this weird taste at the back of my neck. The only way I could describe it was like a metallic taste, like I was chewing on aluminum foil or tin foil. And my neck and shoulders were always tight, like always super, super knotted and tight. And the doctor asked me what was going on. I’m like, “No, not much.”

 

I was at the doctor to get a physical because we were getting a mortgage for our house, I needed to get insurance. So, I wasn’t there because of the nervous breakdown I’d had two weeks before. Just ignored that and had more to drink. So, he goes, “What’s going on?” I go, “Not much. My mom’s got cancer. I just got married three months ago. I realized I’m not in love, and I’m not sure how to get through this. My wife just told me she’s pregnant.” The company that we were selling for $64 million is almost bankrupt because the stock market crashed by 78%, and we couldn’t get out in time. So, we’re only at $3 million instead of 64.

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, this is before 1-800-Got-Junk?

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, yeah. This is running Ubarter.com in Seattle. And I’ve just quit my job as the head of corporate development. I’m moving back to Canada. And we just bought a house, so that’s kind of cool. And so, he’s like, “What do you mean? Like all of this right now?” I’m like, “Yeah, but it’s fine. I’m fine.” So, he gave me this test and you fill out the test, and if you get 150 points on the test, you have a 50% chance of a heart attack. If you have 250 points on the test, you got a 95% chance of a heart attack. I had 435 points.

 

Brad Weimert: That’s a lot of points.

 

Cameron Herold: So, I was clinically, what he said, clinically redlining. And what was happening was there was a chemical secretion being caused by stress in the back of my neck that I was physically tasting. And it’s almost like an animal can just tell something’s up. It was the animal in me telling me, “Slow down.” And I was ignoring it because I was just working harder.

 

Brad Weimert: I get it.

 

Cameron Herold: And so, that was probably my first big failure was crying in an elevator at 35 years old, thinking I was completely fine.

 

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, there are probably millions of entrepreneurs out there that are stressed, that are grinding, that feel pressure. And for a lot of them, it’s probably fu*king good because it drives them and makes them go. So, where’s the line? And how do you decide when you are not using it and it’s not productive and it’s not helping you or when you need to keep going?

 

Cameron Herold: I think there’s a bit of all of it, right? One is to have some integration, have some hobbies, have some passions, spend time with your kids and yourself and your friends, like, stay balanced. Have some aspect of that in your life because this is only what we’re doing to make money. We are going to die, so you got to enjoy some of the journey a little bit.

 

Another one is there’s a Latin saying, “mens sana in corpore sano,” which means a healthy mind in a healthy body, and I think there’s something there. You’re currently fit. You’ve always been fit. Staying balanced with that, right? Eating healthier. Having a drink, but not having 12, right? Smoke a joint, but not seven. Go to yoga, but not every day of the week. I think somehow, people sometimes get off balance with, like, go to the gym, but not two hours a day, seven days a week. But stay in shape. Eat healthier.

 

But as Tim Ferriss would say, “But have the chocolate cake on Saturday.” But I was having the chocolate cake every day, smoking every day, drinking heavily every day, and having no hobbies and no– so it wasn’t that I was working hard because I had to. It was working hard because it was the only thing I was feeling good about in life. I was in a marriage I wasn’t happy with. I didn’t have any hobbies or friends. I was working because it was the only thing that gave me a good boost. So, I’ve done some work around that and some childhood trauma stuff, and I’ve always been that way since I was a little kid.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, man. I have a fairly firm belief that, what you focus on is what pulls your attention, right? And I don’t think that’s anything groundbreaking. But what I think people fail to recognize is that very often, you have to condition yourself to focus on the thing consistently. And this is where I go off the rails, or on the rails, depending. But if I want to get in ultramarathon shape, in order to get my head in that space, I need to be doing it every day and thinking about it every day. I need to be focusing on it every day. Now, after some period of time, my head gets there, right? But I need to lead my belief. Before I can get to belief, I need to establish some routine and focus, and sometimes it’s a little maniacal to get myself to the point of belief to drive.

 

Cameron Herold: I could have eaten healthier six or seven days of the week. Not obsessively healthy, but not burgers and fries constantly.

 

Brad Weimert: Sure.

 

Cameron Herold: Right? Not steak and red wine all the time. I could have run around the block. Dude, I was 220 pounds. I’m 182 now. So, I just wasn’t healthy.

 

Brad Weimert: Dude, when I met you, you were much bigger.

 

Cameron Herold: But I also wasn’t happy. Like, I really, really wasn’t happy.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, what I’m getting at is just that I think that for a lot of people, it’s– I shouldn’t say that. I know for me, moderation is more difficult than abstinence.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. And I’m not even saying more moderation, I’m just saying be mindful. I needed to be more mindful of all the other aspects of life. There was no integration. It was all work, and that was it.

 

Brad Weimert: Why’d you stop drinking?

 

Cameron Herold: I had a problem with it. I was drinking every day. I was drinking a full bottle of red wine every day by myself. During COVID, it really showed me that I was just grabbing the next bottle and just drinking it.

 

Brad Weimert: I know, we had a Cinco de Mayo over Zoom on COVID. It was great. And I sent everybody little tiny bottles.

 

Cameron Herold: You sent everybody a half bottle, but me, the whole bottle, the big one.

 

Brad Weimert: I sent everybody little bottles of Clase Azul, and they were, like, half a fifth. And in Canada, the liquor stores are annoying, and all they had was, like, a liter. So, you got a liter of Clase Azul, and everybody else had a tiny bottle.

 

Cameron Herold: I drank almost all of it because they were almost, me, like, “Hey, we’re almost on the bottle and I had to catch up.” I like drinking. But the problem was I was drinking just because it was there. I would tell my kids to stop the movie so I could go get another glass of wine, but then I wasn’t working out and I was tired, and I was doing it for the wrong reasons. And it was never a sip more than a bottle, but it was a full bottle of red wine every single day for seven years.

 

Brad Weimert: It’s a long time and a lot of wine.

 

Cameron Herold: Do you know, when I was– right before I finally quit, I pulled a bottle of white wine out of the fridge because we were selling everything and getting ready to travel, and I pulled a bottle of white wine out of the fridge. And I hate white wine, but I always had one there in case someone showed up at the house. And I pulled out the bottle and I opened it up, and my self-talk was, “Cameron, you don’t have a problem with drinking. You can even drink white wine. If you had a problem, you’d only be able to drink red.” That’s what I was telling myself.

 

Brad Weimert: That’s strange logic, bro.

 

Cameron Herold: It was bad.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, before we shift gears to go hit the sauna…

 

Cameron Herold: Oh, and then I also poured wine into a coffee cup one day so that I could drink it on a coaching call with somebody and pretend that I was drinking coffee. That’s a problem.

 

Brad Weimert: I understand. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that in the journey of entrepreneurship, we didn’t talk about sort of any of the loneliness considerations of entrepreneurship and what that journey looks like, but I think the more successful you get, the tougher it is to find people that understand and the easier it is to rationalize any behavior you want, because nobody gets it anyway. So, who’s to say that my rules aren’t the right rules?

 

Cameron Herold: I want to speak to the loneliness for a second. I have not seen a single entrepreneur yet, not one, who when they’re struggling, like in the moment of an employee stealing or almost going bankrupt or not meeting payroll or scared about growth or whatever, stress with all the people, whatever the stress is that you’re going through in the moment, I’ve never seen a single entrepreneur yet who will talk about it that day on social media. They’ll talk about it three months later when it’s solved, or two years later when it’s done, or almost…

 

Brad Weimert: Do you think they should?

 

Cameron Herold: No, but my point is that we’re making entrepreneurship too trendy. We’re all talking about, here I am on the beach in Maui. Here I am in Santiago. Here I am in Antarctica having fun, but we don’t talk about the bad side. So, too many people think entrepreneurship is easy. It’s really fu*king difficult. And entrepreneurs that have an outlet like a mastermind…

 

Brad Weimert: They’ll figure it out.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah. But we will talk about it a lot later, but it’s a lot tougher. The journey is a lot harder than we let people know. Because we can’t because if we tell everybody how scared we are, then we’re going to lose our employees or we’ll lose our suppliers or we’ll lose our customers. So, we don’t talk about it until it’s solved.

 

Brad Weimert: I mean, okay, but the other side of that is that you’re going to normalize whatever situation you’re around long enough. And so, you walked into my office and you immediately wanted to go deep with what was wrong with me right now, and I was like, “Pump the fu*king brake, dude.” Like, there’s just a whole bunch of sh*t going on, and there’s always good stuff and there’s always fu*ked up stuff. And I say this often, but the line for me is, like, people are like, “Oh, how’s it going?” And what happens in my head is, “Shut the fu*k up.” Like, “What do you mean?” Like, you want me to talk about– you want to spend the next seven hours talking about the 12 crazy things that are going on right now?

 

Cameron Herold: But I think for entrepreneurs, they need to have an outlet for that, whether it’s a coach or a mastermind community because their spouse is strapped to their back and they’re driving their spouse crazy, their kids are dealing with their bipolar stress. And the entrepreneur, they are. Kids often will think their entrepreneurial parent is crazy because one day, they think they’re going to take over the world, and the next day they have to fire somebody and they’re coming up to the kids, and the kid’s like, “I didn’t fu*king do anything wrong.” So, we need to have some outlet, and that’s why physical fitness is good. That’s why health is good. That’s why a mentor and a coach is good. Being in a mastermind community is good. Entrepreneurs that don’t have that will implode.

 

Brad Weimert: Okay. I don’t know. I just have a hard time with, I think it plays better in most marketing to have definitive takes on things, but everybody’s fu*king different. And now, I wouldn’t argue with the general idea that people need an outlet of some sort, and you kind of broadly defined it, which I like, which is exercise or community or whatever.

 

Cameron Herold: And you spend time with your boyfriend, so you have that.

 

Brad Weimert: I was waiting for that to come back.

 

Cameron Herold: I haven’t for a while.

 

Brad Weimert: I was waiting for it to come back. Finally, we can make gay jokes again.

 

Cameron Herold: Right?

 

Brad Weimert: Jesus.

 

Cameron Herold: I thank God. Thank you, Elon, for buying X.

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, exactly.

 

Cameron Herold: Want to go to the sauna?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Yeah, we can go in the sauna. That seems like an easy adjustment. Let me end on this. You have now done hundreds of podcasts with some wildly impressive guests.

 

Cameron Herold: Oh, on my podcast?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah. You’ve also been on hundreds of others.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, we’ve had 580 guests now on the Second in Command.

 

Brad Weimert: Crazy. Of the ones that you’ve been on or your own, what have you never said on any of them? What’s off limits or what have you been afraid to say?

 

Cameron Herold: I don’t know. I’ve pretty much gone places. Like, I’ve talked about my use of some drugs. My dad said, “It’s nice that you’re vulnerable, but the immigration might not like the truth.” I’ve talked about…

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, the Canadian immigration’s rough.

 

Cameron Herold: I talked about failure with marriages, talked about– I think I’ve been pretty there. I think I’ve been pretty there.

 

Brad Weimert: You did a bunch of drugs last week. Why’d you do that?

 

Cameron Herold: I did ayahuasca. I’m doing a lot of growth this year. I’m doing landmark forum. I’m going to a Tony Robbins. I just did a seven-day…

 

Brad Weimert: Damn.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I’ve done two seven-day Tantra courses. I’m going on a course on BDSM. I’m going to Austria to do a Dominatrix training course. I did ayahuasca to do some self-growth. I’ve done ketamine infusions with a doctor. This is kind of my year of growth just because.

 

Brad Weimert: That’s awesome. Well, listen up, 25-year-olds, 35-year-olds, 45-year-olds, Cameron Herold…

 

Cameron Herold: 55-year-olds.

 

Brad Weimert: 55-year-olds. Cameron Herold’s been playing this game for 40 years, and he is dedicating this year to personal growth. I know you’ve already done the Tony stuff before.

 

Cameron Herold: No, I never have.

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, you haven’t.

 

Cameron Herold: No, that’s why I want to go. I’ve never seen him.

 

Brad Weimert: Oh, crazy.

 

Cameron Herold: I want to see him before he dies.

 

Brad Weimert: Well, then never mind. I reject everything I just said. No, what I was going to say is that you’ve been on your personal growth journey for your whole life.

 

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

 

Brad Weimert: In different ways, and certainly, in the last several years, but…

 

Cameron Herold: Dude, I’ve spent over a million dollars, and I had a list on all the masterminds I’ve been a member of over 30 years.

 

Brad Weimert: I saw you post that.

 

Cameron Herold: It is crazy, right?

 

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love it. And you’re doing it now, so I commend you for that. And I think the question for me is, so this is, again, an all or nothing thing. You were like, “This year I’m doing all this sh*t.” And/or you figure out how to integrate that into your life on an ongoing basis. And I think that both are really good approaches to it. Mine is that I need to kickstart things with a grand gesture to create the habit. I don’t need to, but it’s my preferred method to do that.

 

Cameron Herold: Mine is a bucket list that I share with everybody because as soon as I write it down and I start sharing it, they start helping me make it come true. Like AfrikaBurn last year, I went to Burning Man in Africa.

 

Brad Weimert: Awesome. That’s crazy. Oh, God, that’s a whole ‘nother story. All right, Cameron, let’s hit the sauna, man.

 

Cameron Herold: Thanks, buddy.

 

Brad Weimert: Love you, buddy.

 

Cameron Herold: Appreciate it.