Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Unleashing Entrepreneurial Success with Cameron Herold: Vision, Leadership, and Personal Growth

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Esteemed business strategist and author Cameron Herold joins us to share the secrets behind his entrepreneurial success and how his unique upbringing shaped his outlook. Cameron sheds light on the nature versus nurture debate, emphasizing how real-world experiences trump traditional education when it comes to cultivating an entrepreneurial spirit. Through personal anecdotes, he discusses how he instills this mindset in his own children, valuing internships and networking as pivotal tools for navigating today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.   During our conversation, Cameron offers a wealth of strategies for business growth, drawing from his remarkable journey scaling 1-800-GOT-JUNK. By prioritizing experience over formal education, he reveals how charging premium prices and fostering a strong company identity can propel businesses forward. We explore the influential role of a vivid vision in aligning personal and professional goals, with Cameron sharing captivating stories that highlight the transformative impact of a clear vision and adaptable mindset in achieving success.   Our episode rounds out with an exploration of leadership dynamics and the power of personal responsibility. Cameron discusses the importance of maintaining professionalism in leadership while focusing on top talent, and he identifies key traits that define successful entrepreneurs. We celebrate the boundless potential of global perspectives in broadening horizons, and Cameron emphasizes the necessity of self-action in personal growth, encouraging listeners to take charge of their own lives and support one another on the path to greatness.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - Success, Entrepreneurship, and Education (12:07) - Business Growth and Pricing Strategy (19:42) - Adapting to Rapid Business Change (31:38) - Global Living and Visionary Planning (36:21) - Crafting Vivid Visions for Success (49:08) - Leadership and Entrepreneurial Insights (58:12) - Empowering Through Personal Responsibility   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #escapingthedrift #cameronherold #Entrepreneurship #Education #BusinessGrowth #PricingStrategy #Experience #Internships #Networking #RapidChange #GlobalLiving #VisionaryPlanning #VividVision #Leadership #PersonalResponsibility #PersonalGrowth #SelfReliance #Empowerment #Success #Hiring #Talent #Innovation #Adaptability

So why would I hire someone who knows how to do it versus someone that has done it? I would rather hire an Olympian who broke a world record, who set an, or won an Olympic gold, who competed in all events versus someone who knows how to do it. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the program.

And today, man, today we got a banger. And I mean, this is a dude that we have going on today. This guy, he wrote a book that I loved. And when I got the opportunity to have him on the show, I was like, wait a second, is that the same guy that yet to put it? It is the same guy. And I was so happy to see that it was his book. Vivid vision is a book that I've talked about on this podcast before. It's like, we've, we talked about it numerous times about how to establish and really it's,

it's so immensely important when it comes to getting you where you want to go. He is been called the CEO whisperer for his ability to get businesses to double profits in less than three years. He is just, he's done all kinds of stuff. He was the CEO at 1-800-GOD-JUNK. He has had built $200 million companies before the age of 35. This is a guy that definitely knows how to get you from where you are to where you wanna be. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program.

This is Cameron Harreld. Cameron, how are you, buddy? Hey, John, thanks very much for having me. Nice to see you. Yeah, I was so excited when you were coming on, man, that we could do this today. And, because I know that what you've done in your life, you had such a great amount of success at an early age and you spent now we're

spending so much of your life trying to help others get to that same place. And that is such the message of what we're trying to do here. So obviously was such young success, man. I like to, as the parent of somewhat, you know, as teenagers, you know, my biggest fear is always raising worthless kids. So I always, I always like to start these conversations out with super successful people, the nature versus nurture. And, you know, so tell me about you growing up, man. Tell me about that.

Yeah, it's interesting. And my two boys are probably a little older than your kids, minor 21 and 23. So I'm still at that same stage of trying to, you know, my legacy project, right, raising, raising our kids and helping them get out the door successful adults. I was raised as an entrepreneur. My father was an entrepreneur. Both sets of grandparents were entrepreneurs. We grew up in a family where we were told having a job was a bad idea, having a job was a bad deal. And that running your own business, you could actually have as much free time as you wanted to

have a great life. And it was never about the money. It was always about having a free time and the money would always follow. So really that's all we've ever done. I mean, I've, I've been the second command for a couple of different companies, but I've been running my own business for 17 years.

And then when I was 20 years old, I had 12 full time employees in my first company already. So really that, that was my, my journey. And then my employees in my first company already. So really that was my journey. And then my brother and my sister and myself. Real quick, did you go to college? Did you go to college, something you did? I did. I went to university and while I was in university, I was on the

university ski team for two years. I was the president of the first fraternity ever in the city of Ottawa. And I was running my own business from second year university. So in second, third and fourth year, I was running my own company with 12 to 16 employees for that full three year period. So I didn't go to as many of my classes as I should have. And I realized pretty early on that, um, you know, I, back in those days, a degree mattered, if I was that age today, I wouldn't go, I really wouldn't go to university today. I would opt out.

I would maybe apprentice with a few companies, but I would be out running my own business now and I wouldn't have the patience to sit in a classroom for four years. And I really struggle right now. My 21 year old son is already running his own company. He's making $6,000 a week profit running his own business. He's in fourth year university, doing an inter exchange in Singapore. And he even kind of looks at me going, Dad, why am I doing this? I'm like, you know, you're so close, just

check the box, get it done. But yeah, it's five oh and go at this point, just get 50% Has he has he made connections at university that you think will carry him through his life? Not really that. No, me is what I'm after. Yeah. No, he's made the connections by doing a couple of internships. So he talked his way into a company called Grow Rev two years ago. It's about a 60 person ad agency out of Vancouver, Canada, worked there and made some good connections.

Then did an internship in London in the UK and made some good connections and got some ideas on how to run his own company. So yeah, he's made some connections, but I think he would have made connections as a 21 year old hanging out with 21 year olds doing internships at companies. So I don't know, it's no as a Canadian, it's not as expensive, right? He's Canadian. So his university tuition is only $5,000 US a year. So there's a, there's a better ROI off that than, you know, going to a US college where you're spending five, six times up. Yeah. We're at that. We're at college visit age, right? And I've got, my son is, is incredibly talented when it comes to education.

He's just got it and he's got a four, six, five GPA. He didn't. I didn't even know that was possible. I didn't know you could get better than a four. My wife has like a four. You can't. I didn't know. He's to, he's taking, he's taking AP level. He's in college level courses in high school, which is how you can do that. And, um, you know, for me, my opinion on it is number one he's he's kind of built a little bit for academia and not granted.

We're not going to go study the studies of past civilizations that get you nowhere. Right. For me, if you're going to go to college, get a finance degree. And if you want to get a law degree, get a law degree, because of that combination, you can literally be anything. Yeah. But don't go get a general arts degree, right? A bachelor of art. No, absolutely not. That is a waste because I want him to go like, we're talking about, yeah, there you go. Are those your grades?

Yeah, those are my grades, man. Those are not good grades. I love, dude, I just, well, see, again, I'm a guy that went barely to college, did not finish for much of the same reason you did because at 20 years old, I owned part of a college bar and I was in school for hospitality and I was like I you know I'll never forget the day when I was like I'm done which was a teacher we're talking about how to pay liquor tax in in Florida and how to pay beverage tax and they

were like for every quarter barrel you have to write you know you have to pay this much in liquor in say liquor tax and I was like raise my hand I'm like you can write off a gallon for spilling foam for every quarter barrel no you can't. And I was like, raise my hand. I'm like, you can write off a gallon for spilling foam for every quarter barrel. They're like, you can't do that. I'm like, I just did it. Like I'm already doing this. And so, you know, but with my son,

it's that's when I decided the institution had nothing further off for me. But with my son, it's like, look, if you can get into somewhere like Stanford, if you can get into one of those high level schools where you're gonna make generational type. Then yes, then yes, go. God bless.

Yeah, I'm not. We're not going to LSU to drink beer for four years and root for national championship football. That's not what we're doing. And I think I think the normal person that wants to be an entrepreneur. Yes. Unless you can get into the Stanford and you can even get like maybe you can get like a scholarship to be there. That one might make sense. But

if you're going to be an entrepreneur, I think you'd be better off going in apprenticing for four different companies, taking minimum wage. And here's what my friend did with his apprentice, he said, Look, I'm going to work for you for free for four months. But I want to be able to sit in on finance meetings, marketing meetings, sales meetings, board meetings, leadership team meetings, I want to be able to sit in on finance meetings, marketing meetings, sales meetings, board meetings, leadership team meetings. I want to sit in the corner of the room and I want you to allow me to observe stuff for

two hours a day and work for six hours a day and I'll do it for free." And they said yes. So he really came out of that with a real world MBA after four months. That's the style of learning that I think and then go online, do online courses, watch videos, you know, I think you can learn as much as going to do a general BA. Did you help him with his first apprenticeship? Is that something you kind of knew some people connected? I have helped my son in that I've done the same thing with them. Yeah, I've helped. I

gave him introductions to a number of different companies, but he set up his own interviews set up his own videos. Yeah, I gave him introductions to a number of different companies, but he set up his own interviews, set up his own videos. Yeah, I didn't say go hire my kid. He kind of talked his way in those doors for sure. But I definitely gave him some introductions. The one that he landed in the UK, he did all on his own. He found a guy in the UK that that ran a student promotions business, which is what he does in Montreal, and ran a digital marketing agency, sent the guy some videos scraped a bunch of LinkedIn emails from this guy's entire

leadership team, sent it off to 12 people at the company. And they said, Look, hire this kid. So that was all him. Yeah. Is there an age you think is because like, I think the cool thing about the modern digital era a little bit is There's no age anymore Like is there an age where you think you can't get an opportunity like that? Like you're too old to go ask for that opportunity like remember that movie There was a movie with Vince Vaughn where they went and worked at Google as interns

And Tim, you know Tim Ferriss, I've been friends with Tim since 2008 Tim Decided to not do his MBA Because it was gonna cost him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of actual cash Tim, since 2008, Tim decided to not do his MBA because it was gonna cost him $250,000 of actual cash and opportunity cost. So he earmarked 250,000 of his own money and invested 25,000 in 10 different companies back in 2008, 2009 as a way to get a board seat or an advisor seat or to be able to sit in the room.

So it was like, I'll invest 25,000 in Evernote, but let me come to some meetings. I'll invest 25,000 in Twitter, but let me come. So he bought his MBA by, so I think, no, I don't think it's too old. I think you should have to be creative, which is what Tim did. Well, I think if you look at Tim, I would also argue-

Well, no one really- Tools for Titans, the interview process for Tools at Tim, I would also argue. Well, no one really tools for tools for Titans. The interview process for tools for Titans. Yeah, I got an MBA. Well, no one really knew him when he did his investing one, right? And Michael Ellsberg did the, I think secrets of millionaires. Nobody knew Michael and he interviewed all these people.

So yeah, you could start your own podcast, interview all these people, you know, go to meetup groups, go to mastermind groups. You can get your way into room. You know, go to meetup groups, go to mastermind groups. You can get your way into room. You can apprentice. I've seen young students or even 30 year olds apprentice at the TED conference, the main five day TED. They're volunteers there that are putting themselves in the room. I've seen apprentices at the Genius Network. I've seen volunteers at Baby Bathwater and YPO events, Mindvalley events. So you can hustle. Anyway, I think that

the days of the normal traditional educational route are being massively disrupted because you can access all this information online. When I went to university, I still used a typewriter. We didn't even have personal computers yet. If you were going to write an essay, you had to go to the library to pull out the book, there was no Google. So those days are gone, man, they're over. Or you or you had just started fraternity. So you go to your test file, which is where I spent a lot of my time. There was nothing online.

No, just go to the paper file and your fraternity. Yeah, I need a paper on this. Well, but we didn't we didn't like we had to start the paper file because I was the first president of the first fraternity in the city of Ottawa ever. What fraternity was that? What fraternity was it called? Acacia.

Okay. So they, they'd started back in 1904 at university of Michigan. And they had about 50 chapters in the U S we learned about them and we got mentored by their head office. But I was literally the very first president and an, and an active member and the pledge at the same time, which was really weird. Yeah. I could see that.

It's, it's interesting. You were just talking about, uh, about now the educational system be disrupted. Cause I saw an interesting comment this morning and I don't know who said it. It was like, I just, it was on the background. I saw as a clip and they. It was on the background, I saw it as a clip. And they were talking about that the American society broke the promise to the blue collar workers when the housing bust went boom in 2008, nine,

when it crashed. You broke that, as long as you just go to the coal mines, go to the factories, do this, we're gonna take care of everything. And then they let them fail, and that's dang. And now what you're seeing is America is almost allowing that to happen to white collar because they're like, look, yes, you pay for this NBA, you pay for this blah, blah, blah.

And all of a sudden I have this machine that's better, smarter, faster that I can replace you with for 20 bucks an hour. Well, I just, I just saw some, some data points around that about a week ago that something like 25 or 30% of the current last two years MBA classes are still unemployed, that they haven't been able to find career jobs yet, which is pretty scary that you've invested in yourself and you can't get there. Yeah, the middle class is getting decimated sadly in North America. It is quite sad to see.

And the second part of that equation around the global financial crisis, or the housing crash was banks really were committing fraud in allowing people to get mortgages that they knew they didn't qualify for. And some people should be going to jail for that and they're not. And that's not okay. And yes, the taxi driver who knew he was filling out the paperwork kind of fraudulently should be kind of getting slapped on that one too. So everybody was complicit in this. Anyway, yeah. Well, it's interesting, you know, you said,

we were talking about MBAs not being able to find work, right? So you as somebody that was the CEO of a major company, because 1-800-GOT-Junk, that's a massive company and you were CEO of it, among other things. At what point, when you're looking at potential staffing needs, talk about education versus experience and how you would weigh those scales. Okay, so first 1-800-GOT-Junk was not a massive company when I joined them. I was employee number 14.

Oh, so you just made it a massive. I built it. Yeah. I took them from 14 employees. I took them to from 14 to 3,100 in six and a half years as their COO. So Brian has said that's exponential growth. Yeah. Brian, Brian was 12 years getting to 2 million in revenue.

So he started in 1989. I joined in 2000. He got it to 12 million or 2 million. And then I helped take them from two to 106 million in the next six years. So then it was a massive company. Um, your, your question around, around what was it around education or. Yeah. I said, I said, as somebody that has, that has higher top level talent companies, what's the scale look like with education experience? Yeah, I would not look for somebody who has education. I only want experience. So I'll give you an example. You know how to do breaststroke, front crawl, back crawl, and butterfly, right? You know how

to do them. Yeah. Do you know how to win an Olympic record or win an Olympic gold? No. Yes you do. Be faster than everybody. Okay, you be fat. Well, yeah, you get the coaching, I guess, would be the easy way.

You get a coach who can teach you how to be fast. Right, and you know how to win an Olympic or to set a world record. Yeah, just break the one that was there. And you know how to be in a team event, but you've never done any of those. So why would I hire someone who knows how to do it versus someone that has done it? I would rather hire an Olympian who broke a world record, who set an, or won an Olympic gold, who competed in all events versus someone who knows how to do it. It's really easy to read all the books. That's knowledge,

but I would rather hire someone that has actually done it before. And there's a real bias now against MBAs to hire people that have actually done it before. Most of the Bay Area tech companies are biased against education now, unless you have the education and the practical experience to back you. And that I think that explanation of the swimmer is a really good data point or a really good example that illustrates that. Yeah, it's funny. I was I was on the apprentice I was on Donald

Trump's reality show and my season was the one where they did street smarts versus book smarts. And I think it was to to shine a light on that very thing to see who was better. There you go. Now it worked. It's interesting to me when you're talking about building those companies from zero to 3000, being able to scale up in that way. Is that something that, I mean, look,

everybody talks about people process and the Marcus Limonis, if you will, recipe, people product and process. When you go in and you're looking to scale, is it the same system used for every bit? Every business is it, is it your special formula or is it company and product specific? No, it's, it's very similar in terms of my formula. And my formula is the street smart entrepreneurial kid.

That's the way I was groomed. Right. And that's the, the focal point that I grew, how I grew 1-800-GOT-JUNK, it's how we grew Gerber Auto Collision, it's how I did the private currency, it's how I've coached people for the last 17 years, I give them the same three-step formula, roughly. Number one is you have to charge more of a premium price. So I raised the prices at 1-800-GOT-JUNK by 40%

within the first month of being there, because no one was making money. Brian wasn't, the company wasn't, franchisees weren't, guys in the trucks weren't. So we became the Starbucks of junk removal or the FedEx of junk removal. We discharged more so we could deliver on our promises. That was number one. Number two was we had to make the company into a little bit more than a business, a little bit less than a religion. We had to get into this zone of a cult. So we made all the, put all the cultural systems in place, and that's not the free perks, right?

Culture was alignment with a vivid vision, alignment with core purpose, alignment with a BHAG. It was having the right people systems in place and firing the jerks and the toxic underperformers. So I really worked with a lot around companies around culture. And then third was leveraging free press, right? I actually wrote one of my six books was around called Free PR and it's how we landed 5,200

individual unique stories before social media existed. We were on Oprah. If you look up me in the physical magazines of Forbes, entrepreneur, American Airlines, like I've been in the actual real magazines. So it's how do you leverage free publicity? That's probably my formula is kind of doing that course, but it's how do you leverage free publicity? That's probably my formula is, is, is kind of doing that, that course, but it's all around culture.

You know, when you talk about scaling in that way, it's interesting. A couple of things. Number one, you talked about the pricing matrix, you know, Neil Patel said, put something up the other day. I thought was really interesting. And it was showing the Google searches over time. And there was a one Google searches over time.

And there was a one line on one data set where it showed searches for the word free. And then another data set searches for the word best in all things, products and services. And in 2018, I mean, when it first the internet first came out free was like way up here and best was way down here. And then those lines slowly converged at about 2018 and now best is by far dominant over free when you search. So I think that a lot of people that have products or services are terrified of pricing

themselves out of the market with whatever they do. But I think you saw that as almost a necessity. So if you're coaching somebody that has a product, business or service, how do you get them over that hump? Well one is it's just easier to deliver on your promises when you charge more. And I was talking to somebody in Dubai last week, I was talking to talk about that time. Wait to go stop. That was, that was amazing. Talk about that. So I was in Dubai, I was speaking to a group of 2,500 people, a big conference called mind Valley.

I was the opening keynote and I was off the stage chatting with somebody who was much taller than me. I'm six foot four. He was about six, seven. And I'm like, what, what's your favorite sport? And he's like, volleyball. I'm like, okay, cool. So if you can, he plays professional volleyball,

professional beach volleyball player. I'm like, if you and one of your volleyball, professional beach volleyball player. I'm like, if you and one of your buddies played against me and five of my friends, and I played at the college level, kind of social, but high school competitive. I'm like, if me and five of my friends played against you and one of your buddies, you'd kill us.

He goes, every day, we would destroy you every day. So I'm like, okay, so if I paid two people $200,000 a year each, or I got six people $200,000 a year each, or I got six people $100,000 a year each, now I got 600,000 versus 400,000, the two people would destroy the six. You hire the best people, you pay the best people, you buy the best talent, you'll destroy a bunch of B's and C's. So I need to charge more of a premium price to hire the best people, but I don't need more people.

Right. I need the jack of all trades, master of none, early stage. I need to be able to pay more or charge more with clients so I can deliver on my promises. Because if I charge more than I can show up better, I can have a better website, I can service them better. I also believe in really blowing my employees away, having really good, happy employees, because they will take care of my customers. So if I have really happy employees that have done this before, then I have really happy customers,

which means I can charge more. It becomes a bit of a circular loop. How important, obviously it's incredibly important. I'm not gonna ask, I'm gonna ask a different question than I was gonna say, because what I was gonna say was dumb and redundant. I was gonna say, how important is innovation in business today? That's incredibly important. I'm not being asked. I'm going to ask a different question than I was going to say, because what I was going to say was dumb and redundant. I was going to say, how important is innovation in business today? That's just stupid.

Well, no, that's actually, no, let me, let me touch on that. Go ahead. I don't think that to build a great company, you need to be innovative. My R and D stands for rip off and duplicate. I go out and find what the best companies are doing and I just do that. I don't think I've ever been innovative. I think I've spotted the trends and I've spotted the system. So I don't have to create companies have spent millions of dollars figuring everything out, I'll

just do what they're doing. You know, McDonald's, would you like fries with that? That's an upsell, right? Going and copying the best landing pages and the best sales letters. That's just, so no, I don't think you have to be innovative. In fact, I think the days of innovation were when you had to hire all the smart people because there was no access to all the best and all the best information is on the online right now for free. Ask Chad GPT to create stuff for you and it will. So I don't think, I think innovation was in 1980s, 1990s, 1970s thing. I think now it's about being ability to problem solve,

able to collaborate, ability to find the people who can do stuff for you. Yeah, I see what the point that I was going to make is you were talking earlier about what we're talking about education versus experience. And then you add innovation to that. Like, for example, I have an employee, one of our companies, and this came out of this person's mouth, which was they said, I can do what this other salesperson can do. And I have 20 years experience.

Now, the business that we were referring to in that moment, that we were having this conversation has pivoted tremendously a lot. It was the equivalent of somebody saying, well, I, I I've been using a rotary telephone for 30 years. I know how to dial the rotary telephone like nobody's business. Well, nobody uses a rotary telephone anymore. So the, the years of experience become irrelevant.

It's the quality of what that business does now and how adept you are in doing that now. So when I say innovation, I don't necessarily, I wasn't really necessarily referring to coming up with the next best mousetrap. I was saying being able to identify what is the mousetrap and being on top of it. So I love the, like rip off and duplicate is easily the best business method.

I like to think that a lot of people try to do what we do here in our market and they can, or just in a little plug for me real quick. Yeah, hit, we're officially number one in the market now here, which is great. Very happy with that. So there you go. Congratulations, Simply Vegas for hitting number one in the market yesterday.

So I'm very, very happy with that little development. But but yeah, I think what I mean is I think people gets they don't they stop learning, right? Just because they're not in college. I know we're going kind of going back and forth between growth and innovation and companies and education still. But I think all of it's kind of intertwined in a weird way. Cause I think that I think as a company or as an employee or as anybody,

education is so key and staying on top of the trends that are there. So when you're, when you're dealing with your companies, you're in, are you looking for different trends in the business? Are you trying to adapt to new customer demand? I'm looking for people first that are able to adapt, that are able to problem solve, that are self-driven learners, that are able to collaborate,

that are problem solvers. Those are the people that I want in the company because again, 20 years ago, you hired a person, they did a job and they did the same job for five years. Now the job is iterating and changing every three to six months. So I need a person that can adapt that quickly. I need a person that can realize

that if the rate of change outside their business is greater than the rate of inshines or business they're out of business, right? I need somebody who can adapt or die. I need somebody that realizes that all the information that they knew yesterday is gonna be outdated in six months. So they need to be that, not looking for their boss to give them the PDP, they're always growing and learning.

I want people that are able to go, who knows this information and can help me, right? It's kind of like the multiplayer gamer who can collaborate with people all over the world and they've never even met. I'm looking for that more. Yeah, I think it's so funny you say that because one of the pitfalls of people now

in the workforce, I think, is they get, they understand people get hired for a job and they think this is my job, it becomes my identity. But their boss, But their boss the CEO their supervisor whoever it may be is looking to put the right people in the right seats all the time And now with with the speed of innovation the speed of change the speed of customer demand It's almost become like musical chairs. Yeah, and people get too married to wanting to sit in the seat They were hired for I had some of the works for me the day say, I just want to do what I was hired for. Well, it was like that doesn't exist anymore. We don't need that anymore.

And that's very much a Gen X and baby boober mindset. And even the first half of the cohort of Gen Y is that I want to do what I was hired to do. The younger part of Gen Y and Gen Z realized that what they were hired to do will be very different in six months, which is partially why they're moving so quickly. You know, a baby boomer joined a company and they were there for five to 25 years. Gen X joined a company and they were there for kind of three to ten years. Gen Y joined and they were there for one to seven years.

Now they're looking to join for six months to a year and a half. You know, when my youngest or my oldest son was 16, which was seven years ago, got his first job at a grocery store. Six months later, I said, Hey, you should start, you know, getting ready to quit and looking for another job. He's like, why I just got here. I'm like, no, it's time for you to hop, right?

You're going to gain more experience by moving around. You're going to get paid more by moving around. So I was coaching him to quit six months after he got hired. My dad, my dad. Remember your dad, like you had one year minimum on the reservation. You're like, I'm going to get paid more by moving around. So I was coaching him to quit six months after he got hired. My dad. Remember your dad, like you had one year minimum on the resume, because it'll scoop your resume. Right. Whereas, but someone who was my age, it was more about

give in the company and then get promoted to the next job in the company, get promoted to the next job. That's not the mindset of this, this new cohort. Yep. I tell my kids all the time, if you just can stay focused and develop the ability to connect with other humans in person, right? Cause so many of their friends are just, you know, heads down in the phone and they just, well the interpersonal skills and they are just out the window. There's no EQ on these kids. I'm like, if you can do that, you will run over just generations of people because of, like you said, the flexibility that

they seem to almost crave in the new generation versus that stability of why I just want to do what I got hired for. And I just want to do this. And I don't, I want everything to just stay the same when it just can't. That was, that was a very kind of formational turning point for my son. Who's 21, the one who's running his own business, just ran his own sub four hour marathon for four months ago.

I took him at 16 years old to an annual Genius Network event, one of Joe Polish's events, and Connor being in the room with these 350 entrepreneurs who are all adults for four days, that fundamentally changed him. And I think he I think he just saw something different in himself and he got inspired. And I think more I think more more people adults as well need to remember that they need to get themselves into these other rooms, right? You paid pay to be around these other people, or volunteer to be at these other groups. And you

don't have to go to the super expensive ones to start, just go to any of them, right? Go surround yourself with these other smart people. And yeah, get off your device, go connect with other humans. It, you know, people always talk about, you know, cause I'm a member of several high level masterminds. I spend a lot of money and really just the conversations are different, right? If you're always in the same room,

listen to the same people, you're just gonna never gonna be in the same place, right? And there people. You're just going to never give me the same place. Right. And there's so many people. And I remember I talk about this a lot when I, you know, I lived in Detroit, lived there for a while in my early twenties. It was very difficult to make friends there because the people that lived in Detroit at the time, you have marriage, your high school girlfriend, you bought a house, three houses down from dad. You got a job at the Ford plant on the line next to him, washroom,

interpiece, generation, generation, generation, generation. They don't want to know anybody new. And I see so much of that mentality in people that just seek comfort. And I just don't think, what are your thoughts on, are we living in an age where it is safe at any time to seek comfort? Wow. I think there's a couple of groups there. I mean, I'm not, my wife and I sold everything three and a half years ago to travel around the world. We've been nomads. We've been in 56 countries together. You know, we've literally been seeking, you know, seeking, I'm in Sydney, Australia right now. I was in Dubai last week. So we're, we're probably outside of the normal comfort zone.

I think you're a financial outlier though. I'm talking about your everyday Joe. Well, yeah, I'm definitely a financial outlier now too, because I'm actually based legally in a tax free zone, right? My company is now based in Dubai. I'm a resident of Dubai and I don't pay tax on worldwide income as a Canadian. So I'm definitely a financial outlier there. And that's all legal. That's legal above board. Yeah. No capital gains tax, no dividend tax, no personal income tax. It's pretty sweet. Are we...

I don't know. That's a really interesting question. I think we're probably the first generation in four generations that is starting to pick up and move. You grew up where your parents were raised and your grandparents were raised, but your great-great grandparents moved from somewhere You know mine came from Ireland and from Scotland. Yeah, where does your family come in from to North America hungry hungry? Yeah, my grandparents moved here from Budapest. Okay, so they came from Budapest Yeah, so they came from Budapest, but then you moved is but your parents your parents were raised in Detroit and stayed in Detroit

Right. No, no cle, my mother in Cleveland, my father in North Florida. Okay, so- My mother, they picked up and moved to Florida, and then me, and I've been all over the place. Okay, well, you're kind of more of the unusual. Our age group is the first group, and then Gen Y now, we're starting to move everywhere,

and Gen Z, but for the most part, three generations were really growing where they were planted. You know, most Americans and most Americans' parents and most Americans' grandparents have always lived in the same state that their great-great-grandparents moved from Europe or Asia or wherever to. I think now with the advent of the internet, with Wi-Fi, with laptops, and then with COVID, people are literally just saying, I don't want to live here anymore. I want to move to Lake Tahoe, or I want to move to Napa, or I want to move to Florida, or I want to move to Dubai, or I want to move to Portugal, or Bali,

or Austin, Texas. People are definitely unplugging and moving, which isn't the normal kind of comfort grower you're planted. And I think it's really isn't the normal kind of comfort grow where you're planted. And I think it's really exciting for the youth these days to decide where they want to be and be more intentional. It's one of my good friends, Brent Pivick is doing something amazing right now. If you're listening to this, follow him on Instagram.

Cause it's an amazing thing that he's done. Sold his house in LA, sold everything in LA, took his kids, took his wife, 52 countries in 52 weeks. Amazing. Just going around the world, living in, in watching it, watching it. And they're not just going and like, here's our Airbnb. I mean, everywhere they go, they're doing it.

They're doing it all. It's so interesting. I have a friend of mine, Adam and Jessica Daley, from San Diego, took their three kids under eight years old and did 12 months around the world, and each of them had to carry on suitcase. Yeah. Same thing. You got to carry it on your back. That's all we're carrying. That's it. We're doing, and your kids will learn,

students will learn more from traveling the world and living globally than they ever will from being in a university or high school education. Yeah. I just, one of my favorite quotes and I don't even remember who said it, but somebody said, I've never met a well-traveled racist. No, it's impossible. It's impossible. Well, and it's also like, let's even put that part aside because that's certainly you're going to learn from that. You're going to learn empathy. You're going to learn creativity.

You're going to learn about history and geography and art and entertainment and food and fashion. Um, you're're gonna connect with different mindsets. Just even the news, like some, I was, remember I was on a boat up in Portugal this summer. We went up to the North Pole with 180 entrepreneurs for 10 days. And someone was talking about the election. And I kind of put my hand up as a joke and I went,

193 countries, which one are we talking about? And he goes, oh God, you're right. Because there were like 60 countries worth of people on this boat. And we and this person was like a very American centric kind of mindset. And all of a sudden, he realized, yeah, you're you know, why we could be talking about the UK election or the one in Indonesia, like, you become very global. Yeah, which is kind of cool. And then and then zoom

out a little bit. And then you then you see the benefits of North America, but you see the downsides, right you see the benefits of North America, but you see the downsides, right? You see the benefits of Canada, but you see the balance the downsides. So yeah, I was telling anybody that wants to bitch about our particular country and situation, just go, go walk around downtown Cairo a little bit and just take a peep. I was in Cairo until I was in Cairo in 1991. And then I was

there two years ago, and it's just turned upside down. It's terrible now It's wild. It is it is Downtown Cairo is a wild place just to go for me to be is is definitely a crazy place to your square Let's talk about some of your let's talk about some of your other stuff, right? I do want to talk about vivid vision. Let's talk about that first cuz cuz that book again I've talked about it so much and the importance of having that and And I literally did a podcast yesterday. I don't know if you know him, you may. If you go to Joe's thing, you may know him. One of my good friends, Steve Sims. Do you know Steve? I know Steve very well. Yes. I've spoken at one of his distillery events. He and I

were in the Genius Network together. We spent a day in a maximum level four state penitentiary prison system together. Yes. I was supposed to go to that. I was supposed to go to that. I was supposed to go to that. I was at the one that he went to for the first time eight years ago. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I had the day he did it. My wife got in a car wreck and I had to cancel last minute and see if anybody wanted my spot. I couldn't make it. But anyway, then you know, Steve, you know what he's dealing with probably. Yeah, he's fighting cancer right now and it's an uphill battle. And he had done a, he had done a piece yesterday and I do a solo pod every, every Tuesday where it's just me and I'm sorry, every Thursday, the solo pod.

And then this one with guests comes out on Tuesday. And Steve did that post the other day. We talked about losing his identity through chemo, whereas identity was really based in. I drink old fashions. I ride motorcycles and I have a goatee. And now unfortunately my goatee has fallen out and I can't drink and I can't ride a motorcycle. So I've got to kind of reframe who I am to myself.

And so I literally just two days ago did something on developing core values and understanding what you're doing. And I think your vivid vision book takes, and all of the stuff I do, my business planning course, all of that stuff that I have that I do with people that work for us, you take the vision setting part of it so far beyond

anything that anybody else has ever done. So please talk about that. I don't wanna try to put color on it. No, no, this is great. And this is interesting. And it's actually tied to, you know, innovation. The idea of the Vivid Vision was not my idea. It was sitting and meeting with an Olympic coach back in 1998 who was a high-performance sports

psychologist and he talked about how athletes used visualization in their events to perform at the highest level and he said if we could take that same concept and bring it into the business world then we would win. So the idea of the vivid vision is this. It's leaning out into the future. Let's say that you lean out three years from now, no more than three years. So you lean out to December 31st, 2027, and you describe everything about your business. You describe what your business looks like, acts like and feels like three years from now. Or you do one for your personal life. You describe yourself as a human and what you as a human are showing feels like three years from now. Or you do one as for your personal life. You describe yourself as a human and what you as a human are

showing up like three years from now. So if you were describing your company's vivid vision, you might describe how operations acts and sales and marketing, how your company interacts with customers and suppliers, what your employees are writing about you online, what the media is writing about you and covering you. You describe your office environment and your meeting rhythms, almost like you're walking around your company writing down what you see.

Then you take all of those rough notes and you kind of craft the first draft, like a word document draft, and you pop it into chat GPT and polish it. And then you can get a designer to add some design elements to it so it looks and feels like your brand. Basically, it takes all the ideas that the entrepreneur has for their company, and it lets everyone read and see what the entrepreneur can see. It gets

us all on the same page. If I'm writing one for myself, which I've done, I write what I am as a dad and a friend and a husband, a lover, what I do for fun, where I travel, what my vacations are like, what my hobbies are like, how I interact with fitness and health and diet. And I describe all of those things without knowing how I make them come true. If you were building a home, you know what you want your home to look like, but you don't have the skills to do the electrical and the plumbing and the design and put in the cabinets, but you can describe the finished state and then you can get a contractor

to come up with the plans to make your dreams come true. So the vivid visions is the dream. And then you get the team and the people around you to come up with the plans to make it come true. You know, I think something you said that I really want to really want to drive home is nothing you said about your personal vivid vision for yourself. Nothing you said has anything to do with an external force that could change your life. For example, there's no, like I am the best architect at ABC Smith company because they be Smith company could go out of business. And if you tie your identity to what you do,

you're gonna have a problem. Everything you said was really things that you can control or you can control the perception of for the most part. You're not tying that vivid, that your vivid vision for yourself to anyone else. Right. It's just things that you can control. And I think that is so clutch in that stuff.

Well, and what's interesting is when I share my vivid vision for my company or for myself, or even the one that my wife and I have written for our marriage, when we share that with more people, when we share it online, when we share it on our websites, when we share it from speaking event stages, the more people that can see

what we're trying to make happen, the more they end up trying to help us make one or two of those sentences come true. I had a friend recently and they said to me, hey, I was reading your vivid vision that says you like to golf and go hiking. So instead of going to get together for dinner, do you want to go golf together? Like, yes, that's exactly what I would do. Right. Because so often we default to, hey, do you want to get together for a coffee? Not really. No, like I would rather go for a walk or go for a hike or go spend time with you exploring the city, especially when I'm a nomad traveling the world.

Like I'd actually rather go and let's go for a one hour walk through the city together. That would be cooler than just sitting in a coffee shop. Well, what's, what's funny is part of the, part of those little things can have such a profound effect on other people for what, like what you just said, like part of my vivid vision, if you will, was, you know, my mom is, is 80 years old and I'm like, you know, when I would go over there, I would say like, you know, it's like, Oh, that call the doctor, my knee hurts. And now my shoulder hurts.

And I like, finally I was like, I just, I can't do the doctors anymore. So I put on my little vision board of things I want to accomplish. I want to, I want to know everything there's to know about my family history. So I told my mom, this is what I want to do. This is part of what I'm what I'm trying to get. I'm a guy that knows everything about our family. I really don't know a lot. Have you spent much time in Budapest? I have that for me, greatest city on the earth greatest city on the world because a if you're listening to this and you've

never been there and you don't understand why it's great I'm gonna give you three great reasons to go to Budapest. Number one it is gorgeous. There's like a commercial for today's episode is brought to you by the Hungarian government. There you go. Number one it's the most beautiful city if they call it the Paris of Eastern Europe. Number one. Number two it is on its own currency. No euro. It's on the foreign, which is its own currency, which goes forever against the American dollar. So you can do some really elaborate, amazing things that don't cost a lot of money. And number three, the Hungarian people love Americans.

They love Americans there. I have never been treated as traveling more warmly than I was by the Hungarian people. And this was even before like, you know, I said, you know, my grandparents moved here, you know, in the forties and I have a lot of Hungarian blood in me before I even talked about they were just so warm and so nice. But I will say this, it was one, it was funny because that was one of the first places when I started world traveling. I went and talk about getting your eyes opened on a trip.

We went for hung if we just happened to be there during Hungarian Independence Day. And I'm like, sweet, this is gonna be great. It's gonna be a blast. We're here for Independence Day. And then you realize they haven't been independent very long. Haven't been free very long. And there are a lot of people that had parents killed

by the communist. And that's where my dad got stood against the wall and shot. And it was, they did what's called the Million Man March, where there was a million people that marched through down what is essentially the Champs-Élysées of Budapest to what they call Heroes Square. And it's a million people and it's dead silent. Like dead silent for a mile,

you do this walk with all these people. Wow. That's when you're like, that's when you're like, that's when you're like, that's cool. Maybe maybe maybe Independence Day isn't about hot dogs and, and far now that we saw about that. What a super cool experience that is right to really truly understand instead of just like celebrating with madness. Yeah, Budapest, Budapest is on my list of cities. I have a long list of cities that I want to be able to spend, you know, one or two months in and it's on my list of cities. I have a long list of cities that I want to be

able to spend, you know, one or two months in and it's on the list for sure. We've been there for just a short, short few days, but, um, not, I want to know these cities, right? I want to go in, like we're in Sydney, Australia for a month and we're staying in four separate areas of the city just to really immerse ourselves and get to know a place in Budapest on that list. That's like the Anthony Bourdain. Like you want to go deep, not wide. I want to, I'm going to get in this one. Those take me to a neighborhood. If I lived here, where would I go get a pint at four o'clock? Like where would I go get? I was at the local coffee shop this morning at six 45 in the morning before my first call. And I shook hands with the owner of the coffee shop. I said,

I won't see you again, probably cause I'm moving to a different area of Sydney today, before my first call. And I shook hands with the owner of the coffee shop. I said, I won't see you again, probably because I'm moving to a different area of Sydney today, but it's been really cool getting to know you and your story and getting to hang out here every day. So it's kind of nice to be able to drop into a neighborhood that way. I want to talk about this because you have written so many books, right? You've written so many. So when did you realize that, cause you don't do, you don't do this much work, unless it's

a joy for you unless you find genuine joy and and passionate when did you decide that man, maybe I really want to write. Well, I never wanted to write a book. I had a speaker's bureau that asked me to write a book because they said they could get me a higher speaking fee for my speaking. So I asked them what they could get the fee up to and when they told me, I said, okay, I'll do it. So I didn't really want to.

Then once I wrote the first book and I saw the leverage off of it, then I realized there was a system to get more out. So I've written six, but yeah, I didn't wanna be a writer. I just understood the power of actually getting one written and getting it out the door and doing it. It was all though, completely aligned

with my core purpose. Do you know the name Simon Sinek? He wrote the book, Start With Why. Of course, of course. It's in my office. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So Simon used to sleep on my couch. Simon was on our board of advisors for four or five years before he wrote the book, Start With Why. He was on our board at 1-800-GOT-JUNK, did a bunch of marketing for us for a year when he ran his marketing agency.

And Simon was at my home for dinner about a year before he wrote the book, two years before, and helped me figure out my core purpose. And my core purpose has always been to help entrepreneurs make their visions come true. So everything I do helps entrepreneurs make their visions come true. Whether it's writing the book, Vivid Vision, writing my six books, that helps entrepreneurs. Doing my speaking events helps entrepreneurs and their companies. My online leadership course, which is called Invest in Your Leaders, that's how they grow their people, it helps them make their visions come true. My COO Alliance grows their second in

command, so everything I do is aligned with that. That's why it's easy for me to do things that is in alignment with my core purpose. So even being on your podcast, it helps people with an entrepreneurial mindset, not necessarily all entrepreneurs, but that entrepreneurial mindset where they're not waiting for the government to hand them something.

I was invited to go speak to a government agency recently. And I just said no to it. Even though they wanted to pay my full fee. It's not has nothing to do with the alignment with my core purpose. I'd rather actually spend time with my wife or my friends or family, then go and do something that's not aligned with my core purpose. How often when you walk in to coach CEO, see, you know, big company CEOs, whatever it is you do, do you find that that's a huge problem where people are just not operating in alignment

with their core values? I've only ever coached one big company. Most of the of the companies I coach are in the entrepreneurial small to medium size of the 50 to 500 person company. The only corporate kind of enterprise level company I coached was Sprint. And it was because Marcelo Clare, who is the CEO of Sprint had built his own company from zero to a billion dollars he sold to masa at SoftBank. And then he was appointed as the CEO of Sprint to turn it around. So because he was an entrepreneurial CEO, I said yes to coach him. And I coached his second in command Jamie Jones for 18 months. But that's the only big

company corporate because it's not aligned with my core my core purpose. My core purpose is to help entrepreneurs make their visions come true. Not to help talk about those guys not to help portion. That's about to come up guys. Yeah, let's talk about the come up guys. Yeah. How often has that been a problem with them? What's that? Where they're not operating with their core values you You walk in. I coached the Royal family that owned the country of Qatar and I did not continue coaching

them after a while because they weren't aligned with core values and I wasn't allowed to keep bringing up core values with their email and the team. The COO said, you can't talk to them about this. I can't talk to them about this, I can't talk to them about this. So that was a problem. I've definitely seen entrepreneurial companies that are so focused on revenue and profitability that they forget that it's actually about your people,

that the number one core metric inside of any organization is your entrepreneur, your employee net promoter score. That's the number one metric, how happy are your people? The number two metric is how happy are your customer? So your customer NPS, and then it's profit and revenue. And I think if they have that upside down, that doesn't tend to be in alignment with me. How happy are your people?

How happy, how, then how happy is your customer? Then how happy, then what's your profitability? And the reason for that is that if you have really, really happy employees, they'll go through brick walls for you to take care of your customers. So if you have really happy employees that are engaged and they don't feel like they're the second thing to think about, they're going to work harder. And if your customers are then happy, then you can charge a lot. But if you focus on how happy are your customers, your employees feel burned out,

your employees feel taken advantage of, they feel like they're coming second rate But if all you care about is them you care about their home life you care about their problems their insecurities their fears You care about their dreams you care about their work you help coach them you develop them you care I'll coach their their kind of confidence They'll be like they'll go through brick walls for you to take care of your customers. And when your customers feel that much love, you can charge a lot. You know, I'm curious what you say about this, because I have my opinion on obviously we use EOS to operate all of our businesses. We're very big with that.

Yeah, good friend. As far as system do it. Yeah, it's a great met by great methodology. We love it. How do you because this is such a problem for a lot of people that have a handful of employees, when they get into the they get get into the space of, I would rather be friends than boss. And how do you effectively manage and give like, how do you effectively

manage and give criticism and make better and still maintain employee happiness? I want to hear what your thoughts are. I don't focus on being their friend. I focus on caring about them. And that's a very distinct line. I'm not friends with any of my employees, but I care about their home life. I care about their kids. I care about their insecurities.

I care about their dreams. I care about their financials. But I have a very fine line between friends and caring. I'm also firm but fair. So I'm very kind of focused on our goals. I'm focused on our promises. I'm focused on our core values, but I don't cross the line with just hanging out and being their friend. That's a distinction. Yeah, I think that's a lot of leaders that I have dealt with in the past of trying to coach or whatever. The problem they've had is they're more concerned about what their employees think about them, the quality of work product that comes out.

Yeah, that's a very entrepreneurial distinction to entrepreneurs often care about being liked. And so they don't want to make the tough decisions. They don't want to deal with conflict. They don't like firing people. Often entrepreneurs carry the wrong people for too long because they're trying to be liked and sometimes they'll then offload that to their COO and they'll have their second command make the tough decisions of their second command fire people. That is definitely an entrepreneurial kind of downside or

weakness that many entrepreneurs have that I've had to coach people through to get them okay with firing people and realizing that just because you gave them five years working for you doesn't mean you owe them the next five. You know that we really, I've always believed that your A players are your racehorses, your B players are your workhorses and the C players have to go to the glue factory. And I think entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and here's, here's what's important. Man, I have to say Cameron, next time I'd let somebody go on to like Cameron Harold told me to tell you this, that unfortunately you have to go to the glue factory.

The government and the post office are always going to hire your sea players, right? The government will always hire your seas, the post office will hire your seas, but entrepreneurs should give more time to their A players. Entrepreneurs should be coaching and developing their A players and not spending all this time with the sea players that you should just get rid of. It's the two volleyball players versus six. If you get rid of your bottom performers and spend your time with your two a playing professional beach volleyball players, your company goes to the moon. Let's talk about personality traits that help you or harm you. Let's, let's play a game. Okay. I'm going to put you in a room with, you don't know anything about their education. You don't know it.

You don't know how smart they are. You don't know anything. We're strictly looking for personality traits, put you in a room. You're at, you have, you got five people in there, all shades, shapes, colors, sexes, whatever. You got to pick the one that you got a bet on is going to be the best CEO, entrepreneur. What personality traits are you looking for? A person who is curious about others, a person who can lead others, a person who can kind of gather the energy around them.

So I'm looking for somebody who can get others listening to what they say, who kind of grabs the energy of the room, and then is just curious about the other people to learn about their strengths and their fears and insecurities, so someone who can build that kind of trust. So I'm looking for that strong leadership. You know, the three core things I look for in entrepreneurs, really strong leadership,

really strong goal orientation, and then really strong tenacity. So it's the leadership to lead yourself, to lead others, to lead suppliers, to lead bankers, to lead employees, that's key. The goal orientation of always driving forward, right? And then that tenacity, that dog-like work ethic to get over, under, around any obstacle put in your path.

Those are the three things you need to be good as an entrepreneur. Love it. All right. Well, one last question and I'm gonna let you go. If they, if you could give advice to anybody, the best short piece of advice to level you up, what would it be? None of this stuff matters. This is just what we're doing to make money, right? To remember that we need to enjoy the journey. We're all just walking each other home. Let's have fun along the journey because if you get so focused on this, you forget that at the end of the day, we're all gonna end up as a kebab.

You know, we're just gonna be meat on a stick, right? Let's enjoy the journey, man. Brother, I just literally, I just, you know, you're a poor gentleman of the same age, we'll say. I don't know, I'm about to be 53. How old are you?, you're, you're, we're, we're gentlemen of the same age. We'll say, I don't know. I'm about to be 53. How do you 59? Are you 59? So we're the same thing. So what are that age that when our friends die, they in a candlelight vigil, there's

no letting balloons go at the park. It's like, ah, man, I could see that guy didn't do whatever. But I just had literally my eighth person that at one point, I would consider a best friend or top two of a solid network of guys. I just had the eighth one pass away recently. So my wife was very thoughtful. I got this, which is I have a memento Mori dog tag. It has all of their initials on the back. And every time I don't want to do something, I rub this and I think, man, these guys would give anything to do this. And anytime I'm thinking, maybe I shouldn't do that. Because it's a little

crazy. I rub this and think these guys would give anything to do that. I do it anyway. Well, I mean, you're right. You know, you mentioned you mentioned in the middle of the podcast about our friend, Steve Sims having cancer. Yeah. And while I was talking to you, I instantly sent him a message. He's already replied. I've replied to him. I sent another mutual photo while I'm being interviewed with you. This interview, this interview matters, but not as much as Steve Sims

and my relationship with him matters. So even though I was being interviewed by you, I was allowing myself to care about what really mattered. Yeah. Did you tell him you're wrong with me? I will as soon as we're done. So I'll do it. I'll do it.

I'll do a screenshot and I'll share it with them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I've got to go home. Apparently the, uh, state of California, by the time this airs, it'll, it'll be done and handled so they can't do anything about it, but apparently the state of California has made certain perfumes illegal in California

and the one that Claire wears is on that list. So he's fixing this perfume to my house today at which I have to say, for all I know, it's like four keys of Columbia Bam Bam. I have no idea. I'm assuming that it's, I'm assuming it's the perfume. Steve would not to be wrong, but yeah, I get to do that. I've just sent Steve a screenshot of you and I both

and he said, John's a good lad. So, um, but that's what I mean by none of this shit matters, right? This is just what we're doing to make money. And I think that that's a really important lesson for everybody as an entrepreneur or a leader is that if you care more about your employees, if you care about what they're struggling with, you care about their relationships, you care about their home life, they will go through brick walls for you and build your company, right? You'll get to the result that you want to get to by caring about people and enjoying

the journey with them. You know, I just, I just had speaking of that and just the conversation that we just had and the one you just had with Steve, while we're doing this, all I can think of is somewhere out there somewhere, there's probably somebody struggling to get through life and was literally sitting 12 feet away from you and Simon Sinek in a house having late night conversations about business and life. And they were 12, 20 feet away from it and had no idea. Oh yeah. There's yeah. No, I mean, yeah. Well, that's one of the reasons why you got to put yourself into these rooms, right? Go invest

in yourself, go to these mastermind events, go to the conferences unplugged from your normal network is that, you know, we've heard that out is where the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So that's, you know, your mindset is your health is your fitness level is like, yeah, go spend time with cool people doing cool stuff. All those things. Well, speaking of speaking of cool people, if they want to find you, how do they find you, Cam?

How can they connect with you more? Wow, and the only people that call me Cam are my friends and family. So welcome to my friends and family network. There it is. Yeah, I guess I'm gonna just, I weaseled my way in there. See how I did that?

There you go. All good. How do they find you? Yeah, so my main website, cameronherald.com, and it's H-E-R-O-L- website, cameronherald.com and it's H E R O L D cameronherald.com has links to my online training. It has links to the CEO Alliance links to my six books. It has links to my second and command podcast. That would be the best place for everybody to go to. Perfect. I love it. Well, dude, thank you so much. This was this was such a treat for me, man. It was lovely to meet you. And I'm, I'm sure we will be in a, in the room together at some point. I'm sure we, I'm just sure that's going to happen. So we will for sure. John, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thanks so much guys. If you didn't get anything from that, man, there's a look,

I'll admit there's tons of stuff wrong with me, but if you didn't get think from that, there's something wrong with you. And I cannot recommend enough going and reading cams book. It is incredible. Go buy that thing, go get it. Plug into him. Cause remember man, nobody's coming to save you. You gotta do it for yourself. We'll see you next time.

What's up everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor.

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