Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Greatest Leadership Lessons from the CEO Whisperer

Starting point is 00:00:00 Our job as leaders, whether we're managers, directors, VPs, or C-level, is to grow people, to grow their skills, to grow their confidence, to grow their connections. Very similar to being a parent. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hello and welcome to Right About Now. You know, I don't whisper much myself. My voice kind of

Starting point is 00:00:42 booms and carries, but we have a whisperer today of a different kind. He is the CEO whisperer. He is Cameron Harreld. What's up, Cameron? Hey, Ryan. Good to see you. Appreciate you coming on. I know you are a busy man and, hey, a world traveler. So where are we today, Cameron? Today we're in Kelowna, British Columbia. We've got a bunch of friends that live up here. So my wife and I decided that we would spend some time up in this part of the world. And so, yeah, we're in Kelowna. We'll be here for a month. But we've been in 54 countries in the last 36 months.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Jeez. It's really global. That is, hey, is that a bucket list thing? Pardon me? Is it bucket list? Yeah, we're calling it our bucket list dream life. So we both wrote our bucket list three years ago. We each put 150 things on them and we're just chasing them down.

Starting point is 00:01:30 So yeah, every week or two, we do another big bucket list item, sometimes with friends, sometimes on our own, and often in just different parts of the world. We sold our homes, sold our cars, sold our furniture. I have three long sleeve shirts. I can tell you my entire wardrobe now down to the item. I, you know, I actually liked that. I'll say this. I I'm wearing pink today, which is actually use. I'm usually black. I'm kind of like Steve jobs, but I mean, I don't know, like a black t-shirt every day. I've got three, three black, little lemon, three gray and three

Starting point is 00:01:59 white, all the same type. And I just recycle those every four to five months, two pair of shorts, the same type and I just recycle those every four to five months. Two pair of shorts, pretty crazy. So what makes you the CEO whisperer, Cameron? I was given that moniker by the publisher of Forbes magazine. So Rich Collegard has been the publisher of the physical print of Forbes and online for about 20 years now. He has seen me speak about four or five times and gave me the nickname, the CEO whisperer, because I'm often behind the scenes talking to CEOs of these kind of 50 to 500 person companies. And I've worked behind the scenes with CEOs in 28 countries now, including at the highest level. I coached the CEO and the second in command of Sprint. I coached a monarchy. They own the country of Qatar. So I coached the royal family on running their groups of companies.

Starting point is 00:02:48 So I've always worked behind the scenes teaching the CEO what has to happen and then often working with their COO on how to make it happen. The Sprint name rings a bell to me. I worked on wireless in the ad agency business for about 15 years, launching multiple phones. We kicked Sprint's ass for quite a bit. I was on Verizon wireless. Marcelo Claret was the CEO that I coached. And then Jamie Jones was his second in command. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a, that throws me back for sure. I mean, I,

Starting point is 00:03:18 I think I've, you know, the, the, the operating officer side, you know, of what you've got to, I think about this lens a lot because I own multiple companies, but like you have the grand visions of the CEO and you have them, you know, wanting to do things, but if you can't operate, you can't do or bring all that to life. Is it really boiled down to that? Yeah, it does. I mean, it was Thomas Edison that said vision without execution is hallucination. And I think so often entrepreneurs have the kind of trendy visionary title, but the only ones who actually are visionary and can actually make it happen are the ones that can either

Starting point is 00:03:54 execute or that they have that operations type person right beside them. I'll give a crazy example that I've never spoken about. The very first business that Elon Musk built was called Zip2. And in January of 1995, I got a phone call from his brother, Kimball, who had just finished working for me for a summer running a house painting business. And the company that was going to invest in Zip2 would not invest in Elon Musk because he was too visionary, too out of the box, had never done anything. I remember this is 1995, so it's 29 years ago. They actually backed Kimball Musk and put all the initial money into Zip2, which was what they sold for $350

Starting point is 00:04:32 million prior to selling PayPal. So their first company was funded based on the COO experience of Kimball Musk, not on the visionary. You really need to have both parts for anybody to believe in the company, quit their jobs, come or to just even scale. So it's safe to say that even Elon Musk, you know, like sometimes the CEO gets all the sort of buzz and the credit, but there's always a, but there's always a number two, right? There's always, it has to be. I just sent Guy Raz a note yesterday. He's the host of the How I Built This podcast. I'll see if I still have my note. But he had an episode on his podcast from the woman who started Smart Sweets, kind of the sugarless candies.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Yes. Oh, and he said, you know, every good CEO has a COO. And I just dropped Guy a note again. I've known him for years through the TED conference. And I said, I'm glad you continue to recognize that every good CEO has that second in command. Without it, it's really, really tough because the visionary role is so particular. It's almost like a homeowner who's building their dream home. I need to be able to visualize what my home is going to look like, how it's going to feel, what the cabin is going to be like, what the flooring is like.

Starting point is 00:05:50 But I don't have to be good at making it happen. I shouldn't be a good electrician or a plumber, but I should know how to get a contractor, the COO, who can hire all those people like the leadership team and frontline staff to make my vision come true. And I think that's where the beauty of the CEO-COO relationship is. It is. It took me a long time to put that together, but I have figured it out. I just, and it, I don't know, it clicked. Like, I think I knew it, but I don't know it clicked like I think I knew it but I didn't you want to believe that that's I don't know again not even being like a martyr to get it all done but I think it's difficult somewhat for the CEO to even like sort of get there like especially early CEOs but I'm sure the experienced ones and the successful ones that eventually clicks. But do you have to probably, I'm sure your job a lot of times is like getting that to click, right? Well, I run an organization called the COO Alliance. So I have second in command COOs that are members from countries all over the world.

Starting point is 00:06:36 My job is working with them to help them balance and become that real yin and yang with their CEO. So even in my book called The Second in Command, I talked about how do you find the right person? How do you build a relationship with the person? And a lot of it starts with understanding yourself as the CEO first. Where most CEOs go awry in their first couple of hires and trying to hire that second in command, regardless of the title, is they don't do a deep enough dive on themselves. What do I love? What do I hate? What am I really good at? Or what are my unique abilities? What do I suck at? Or what am I just okay at? What fills me with energy on a day to day and what drains me? And then how can I hire somebody who can do all the stuff that I hate, can do all the stuff that drains me of energy, can do all the stuff that I suck at. And they match

Starting point is 00:07:21 me in terms of core values. They match me in terms of the scale of the organization. Maybe they can bring in more strategic insight or P&L responsibility or autonomy. It's a very different hire than hiring ahead of any other functional area that just has to be good at that area. This, you're hiring your business spouse as well. I love that. I mean, it's like, where were you five years ago for me? But I'm here today and still ready to learn more. The COO Alliance.

Starting point is 00:07:49 I know you started this. Talk to me about what it is and how it helps people. Yeah. Well, five years ago, I was whispering in the ears of CEOs that were paying me. Now I'm hearing more of it publicly. All right. Well, I'll go read the old stuff again. I did my cheat notes because I wanted you on the show, but I got to go deeper on Cameron.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Go deep. Figure this stuff out. Yeah. So when I left the organization, 1-800-GOT-JUNK 17 years ago, I was the CRO of that business, and it was the fourth business that I built. And in building those four companies, I noticed that there were lots of organizations that were there to grow and mentor and give skills and confidence

Starting point is 00:08:30 and connections to entrepreneurs. We had YPO, we've got Entrepreneurs Organization, Vistage, Genius Network, Baby Bathwater, GoAbundance. There's so many organizations for the entrepreneur to go and learn from each other. And then there's lots of organizations for marketers and engineers. In fact, there's trade associations for virtually everything,

Starting point is 00:08:49 but there was nowhere for that second-in-command to go. So what happened was we kept going to these entrepreneur events, and we just didn't fit in. It's very similar to a husband that goes to a baby shower. It's like, you're not supposed to be there, even in this day and age. It's really there for the women. So even if we're showing up, we just know that we're in the wrong space. COOs are not more operational lensed CEOs and men are not hairy versions of women. So I created the COO

Starting point is 00:09:18 Alliance as a place for COOs to go without the entrepreneurs there, without the distraction of the visionary, and a space where they can connect with themselves, connect and grow their skills, grow their connections and network of people they can rely on so they're not as alone. And then also work on shedding that imposter syndrome and the confidence that many COOs and frankly, many CEOs have as well. Yeah, I love that. Talking to Cameron Herald, the second in command, but the first in our hearts.

Starting point is 00:09:50 Cameron, what, tell me about the makeup of a COO. Like, what does that person look like? Because, you know, as a CEO and very much of a more of a visionary and a dreamer and like I recognize, again, but what's the makeup? Well, and this is what's so hard about them is it's almost like saying what makes a great wife. What makes a great wife is a female,

Starting point is 00:10:17 a woman who matches the husband that she's marrying. Because, you know, my wife would be a horrible wife for lots of other husbands and lots of their wives would be a horrible wife for lots of other husbands, and lots of their wives would be a horrible wife for me. So the COO has to be the good match for the CEO. Most of my COO Alliance members would be horrible COOs for all the other members of the COO Alliance companies. So really what your question is, is what's the makeup of a COO for me? Because the common skills that they have are they're good at situational leadership, they're good at building consensus, they're good at fostering debate, they're good at project planning and team building.

Starting point is 00:10:58 They're often good at collaboration, but they need to be good at all of the functional areas that they're going to be reporting to them. And that's different on a CEO to CEO basis. I'll give an example of this. When I was the COO for 1-800-GOT-JUNK, I did not have finance or IT report to me. I had the product development team of IT report to me. I had sales and franchising and corporate operations and the call center and PR and marketing all report into me. And then I have other members of the COO alliance who don't have marketing and they have finance or they have legal, but they don't have IT because whatever the CEO is great at, they're going to keep. And in some cases, the COO is very outward facing like I was a lot of speaking, PR, marketing, business development.

Starting point is 00:11:46 And then in some cases, they're very inward facing. Even the current COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK never talks to the media, never does speaking, is a very inward facing process, operations, culture, and strategy COO. So there are these commonalities around leadership, but not around the functional areas they need to be strong at because that's the match to the CEO. Love that. And I love the characteristics part because you're right. Like the husband wife thing rang true to me. I've been divorced once and like hopefully never again. But finding that right partner is so crucial and so different depending on the person. So I love that. And I But I do think there's something like there's a lack of ego, I think,

Starting point is 00:12:30 that gets in the way of most COOs. Because as being willing to be the second in command, I think a lot of times, like we talked about, the CO might be out in front. But a lot of COs that I know don't let their ego get in the way. That seems to be a common thread. Yeah, very common. COOs tend to be that level five leader that Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great.

Starting point is 00:12:55 It's that drive to succeed, but humility. There's no need for most of them to actually be forward facing. Now, the only time that even I wanted to do it for 1-800-GOT-JUNK was it was good for the brand because I had built other franchise organizations already. We were leveraging off of that credibility, right? When I had already built out Boyd Auto Body and what became Gerber Auto Collision in the US or College Pro Painters, we were relying on some of that as the reason to buy into or believe in what we were doing. Right. So we were leveraging that.

Starting point is 00:13:26 Yeah. The current CEO of Shopify, as an example, is a very outward facing CEO. And then you take the current CEO of Facebook or the past, sorry, Sheryl Sandberg. She was a very inward facing CEO. She never spoke to the media until post leaving Facebook. Harley Finkelstein from Shopify is always talking to the media because his CEO counterpart, Tobias Luque, is a very inward-facing engineering and process-focused CEO. You know, for our audience listening,

Starting point is 00:13:55 I think there's a, you might think, even myself, like I said, admittedly late, I'm 47 years old. Finding out within yourself, you know, whether you're the idealist creative person and you're the dreamer and you're this. I think there's actually confusion that people have of where they belong. Like whether I'm, you know, that process, that operator, that whatever, sometimes what hat they wear. You know, what tends to happen for the CEO, you know, the visionary entrepreneur is they're worried if I delegate all this stuff to a second in command,

Starting point is 00:14:38 what's my job? What am I doing if I'm getting rid of all that stuff that used to report to me? And they forget that their role is to be the caretaker of vision, of strategy, of culture, of people, and really to be thinking about board and compliance and kind of the legal stuff as well. They really need to be thinking of the whole business more holistically. And if they don't have time to grow people, they don't have time to grow the confidence and skills and connections of their leadership team, they're really missing a huge opportunity. So getting that second in command that can take care of operations and the projects and the times and the people so the CEO can stay in their unique abilities, zone of genius, frees up their time, but then they often need some

Starting point is 00:15:19 coaching and ideas around what does my day entail now, right? How do I do? And otherwise they start meddling. Good word. Or, you know, seagull management, right? They fly in, they shit all over everybody and they fly away. That's often a bored CEO, right? It's a CEO that doesn't know what their swim lanes are and where to focus their time. So they get distracted instead of realizing, point out the problem, let the COO take care of that problem. But if the CEO wants to protect their brand and that cultural impact they have is that kind of cultural icon in the business, they can't be the one shitting all over everybody. And the COO can often do it in a much better way.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And then the CEO can make the COO look good good while the CEO is making the CEO look good. That is wisdom, my friend. If you're listening, that'll be a highlight clip. I can already tell you because there is so much truth in what you just said that I think it takes like experience that you have like to really reflect on that, especially or experience of someone like me, a young CEO that's been through it and seen like, you know, trying and I'm not a micromanager, but I think a lot of CEOs do like, you know, like they they go out of their lane to try to help, but it doesn't really help. Well, let me give you a sad example right now for most entrepreneurial CEOs. They've really never been trained on the

Starting point is 00:16:44 pure leadership skills that they actually need to run a team of people. They could be very good at the functional area of their business. Maybe they're great as marketers or they're great as salespeople or they're great with their engineering of the specific product. But I'll ask you a couple of questions as an entrepreneur. How much training have you had on running proper job interviews, like on interviewing and hiring people? You know, minimal, like I did it, you know, because I worked for a large ad agent. I mean, I'm, you know, but very little. Yeah. So you got some training with, and that's usually what's happened is if you're in a company of plus 250 people, you tend to start getting some training

Starting point is 00:17:19 from the leadership team or the HR team, right? When you're in a company of less than 250, have you ever had training on how to run effective meetings? Absolutely not. Or have you had training on situational leadership? Nope. Or running one-on-one coaching meetings, which we do every week with our team. Running, managing conflict or classroom teaching, all the skills that, time management, project management, delegation. And with running these businesses and not having those skills, the CEO needs to know, shit, this stuff has to be happening in our company, but I'm never going to be the one to teach it

Starting point is 00:17:51 because I don't even know how to do it. I need a COO that can come in and plug in stuff, right? Like I launched a course called Invest in Your Leaders, which covers all of those skills I just rattled off. But a COO has to be the one that's integrating and teaching that stuff inside of the organization. Otherwise, it's just, you know, you're herding cats, you're constantly trying to hold people accountable, instead of hiring accountable people, you're trying to clean

Starting point is 00:18:14 up messes, you're always frustrated with stuff not being delivered. That's usually an operational sign that the CEO really needs to free up and then work, you know, in their unique ability. How does I've always toiled with this, Cameron, like small companies, you know, like I ran 100 person teams in Manhattan and worked for a thousand person agencies. So I experienced exactly what you did. It's either a blessing or a curse sometimes because I got to see the resources and the team, like when you have thousands of people or hundreds of people, that training, those exercises, those processes, all those things that can get done when you have the resource. But a lot of small businesses, 10, 15, 20, I'm not my light mom and pop to person, but 10, 15, 20, how do we, how do we embrace some of the things that you're talking about with a true small business? The first part is, is creating a mindset that the leader's core job is to grow people, right? So if you're a CEO and you've got five people working for you, if you're an entrepreneurial company, you got 30 people for you, whatever it is, our job as leaders, whether

Starting point is 00:19:28 we're managers, directors, VPs, or C-level, is to grow people, to grow their skills, to grow their confidence, to grow their connections. Very similar to being a parent. Our job as a parent, yes, it's to show love to our kids. Yes, it's to be there for them, but it's to give them the skills and the confidence so that they can do all the shit that they need so they can move out of the house one day and become adults. Right? And if you don't teach them how to do laundry and do cooking and do some painting and do some basic car repairs, they're not going to have the confidence to get out of the house at 19 and 20. Our great grandparents were running companies at 14 years old because they had the confidence and the skillset set so our job is to grow the skills and confidence and connections of our people so one way to do that is create that mindset in your company a second way is to put a budget in

Starting point is 00:20:14 place i suggest a minimum of one percent of their annual compensation or a thousand dollars whatever is greater so if somebody's getting 120 grand a year, put $1,200 into a budget to grow them. You could have one person come in and do a speaking event to 15 people. So you got the one person's fee covering over 15. You could have a book club on a monthly basis. You can send out videos for them. You could put people through by investing your leader's course, which is only $740 a person. So you can do it in lots of ways. The key is to create that mindset and the budget, and then remember that if you're always trying to grow their skills

Starting point is 00:20:51 and confidence and connections, they're going to be able to take on more, which means you can continue to delegate, and that actually buys back your time, scales up the entire organization. Talking with Cameron Herold, he is the second in command author and look, I know he's a true COO because he's got solutions to every question. I've built a few companies.

Starting point is 00:21:13 There's something I don't. If you ask me deep finance questions, I'll take a pass. If you ask me anything about technology, I will bow out. But if it's on the operations, execution, culture, people, meetings, and even a fair amount around PR and marketing, I'm pretty conversant. What are we doing these days, Cameron? What's your passions now?

Starting point is 00:21:36 You've had a great career. You've had these successes. You've built the alliance. What are we up to and what makes your bell ring these days well you know a big one is that it's a it's a remembrance that none of this shit actually matters right i had a very very close friend of 17 years passed away two days ago wow yeah super close friend we met in the entrepreneurs organization back Organization back in 2007. And when I watch a friend at 45 years old, a father of four little girls, drop dead without having any prior illnesses,

Starting point is 00:22:12 losing a couple of family friends, both my parents passing away in the last 20 years, my dad dying 18 months ago, you realize that this is just what we're doing to make money. This isn't a reason for being as a human. So it's about having hobbies and having bucket list items and spending time with friends and family and spending time with kids and spending time with ourselves and remembering that we got to enjoy the journey. And I think so often people, especially North Americans, one thing I've known or know by traveling, my wife and I again sold everything three years ago. We've been in 54 countries in the last 36 months. When you spend so much time in other parts of the world, you recognize that no other parts of the world spend their entire focus on work. Nobody in Italy says work is my hobby. You know, nobody in Thailand says, oh, you know, I love what I do for work. Like they have freaking hobbies and they take

Starting point is 00:23:00 more than six weeks vacation every year. And I think that's been very reinforced to me right now is that I can still grow a successful business by delegating more, by growing people more, by getting stuff off my plate. So my team is doing it. And then I give them five weeks paid vacation and I take vacation. Two years ago, I took 11 weeks vacation. I think that's really becoming more and more reinforced in the last few years is you can actually build a much more successful company by taking time off, by having hobbies, by saying no more, by delegating everything except genius instead of getting caught up in the busy work all the time that we tend to get caught up in. There's your insights, my friends. That's true wisdom. And I have heard of John, and I I didn't know he's that young that is just I mean I have yeah I'm a father of four boys and young I did not know yeah his girls were

Starting point is 00:23:54 the same age as your boys so like imagine that today tonight when you go see your boys when like and and you know what yeah go give every single one of those kids a hug and a big freaking bear hug and drop them to the floor and wrestle with them and tell your wife what same stuff you know like it's i had a friend in in an event in turkey three months ago he said at the end of the day we all end up as kebabs we're just going to be a meat on sticks right and i think i think we often take everything so seriously and stay so focused on it for no reason. And again, this isn't in the absence of building great companies, but I don't think that we should. We have to remember our employees are showing up with problems and struggles and real life.

Starting point is 00:24:38 And if we care more about them and the humanity of what they're going through, they'll care about our business, right? When you become that truly empathetic leader and care about people, they work way harder than holding them accountable and managing them and telling them what to do. Thousand percent. Talking with Cameron Herold. Cameron, so what types of people come to you for advice these days? All types? They sign up for my group coaching. They sign up for one-on-one coaching. They're putting, I have one of my clients has 59 of his management team going through my invest in your leaders course. He signed up 59 people at 740 bucks a person because he wants to grow them.

Starting point is 00:25:33 So there's that group. And then there's definitely the group that are, you know, inspired and learning and they're trying to ping me for information. So I just, I try to send them over to the YouTube channel where everything's free and to Instagram where everything's free. And I try to put a lot of content out there. And then my books, right? I've written six books now, so I've got a lot.

Starting point is 00:25:51 And then now I'm dealing with speaker. I don't know what's happened again. Somehow all these groups are starting to hire speakers in person. I guess COVID, they went on siesta for a little bit. Yes. I have a group that today was booking me to go over to India to do two speaking events in India. Another group looking to have me speak in South Carolina and another one booking me in Australia. So, yeah, I'm dealing with having to say no to some speaking events I don't want to go to and trying to move somewhat with Zoom.

Starting point is 00:26:16 What part of South Carolina are you going to, Dino? I don't. That's where we are. That's where you guys are. Yeah. Stop in if you were in greenville uh yeah yeah it might be usually charleston columbia or greenville would be charleston i gotta look that one up all i knew was it was south carolina and it was the entrepreneurs

Starting point is 00:26:34 organization chapter it was the eo chapter yes yes yes how does a company build culture in your mind that's a great question question. So I'm actually very well known globally for having built world-class company cultures. So I've coached companies that have gone on to rank number one in their country to work for, number one in their state, multiple countries, two companies that went on to rank number one year after year in Australia. I coached both of them. Culture is not all of the free massages and free lunches. Those are perks. Perks are fine, but that's not where culture comes from. Culture comes from an alignment with four things. The first is your core values.

Starting point is 00:27:12 It's a deeply ingrained system around four or five core values that you're willing to fire people if they break them. You hire people based on them. They're easy to understand. They don't need any explanation. And again, the CEO lives by the core values, right? That's culture permeates off core values is number one. Number two is that focus on core purpose. It's the why we exist. It's like Simon Sinek talked about in his book, Start With Why. Simon was on our board of advisors five years before he wrote that book. So we were indoctrinated in this core purpose idea by him. And then you go into your BHAG, that Jim Collins term, that big, hairy, audacious goal. It's that long-term driving stretch. At 1-800-GOD-JUNK, ours was building a globally admired brand. My BHAG today is to

Starting point is 00:27:57 replace vision statements with vivid visions worldwide. So that driving BHAG is culture permeates from that. And then the fourth is all the people systems. And that's the recruiting, the interviewing, the hiring, the onboarding, and the leadership development of people. Because when you obsess about happy people that are connected, that are growing, your high employee net promoter score drives customer engagement, drives how much more you can charge, drives profitability, drives everything. So it's really an obsession with those four things. Culture comes from that. That might be the most succinct, best description of culture building I've ever heard. It's like a true, that's a COO's culture building. Like it's tangible.

Starting point is 00:28:40 Cause the CEO knows they can describe it. Like I can describe what it is. I don't know how describe what it is. I don't know how to make it happen. And my whole world has been, because I've played the entrepreneur since my entire life or the CEO of these entrepreneurial companies my entire life. I always see the vision and I reverse engineer that. When you can describe to me what your culture looks like, what your core values look like, what your BHAG is,

Starting point is 00:29:01 I can help you reverse engineer that, right? That's the core of all of my work. In fact, my core purpose that Simon Sinek helped me write in my kitchen of my home in Vancouver back in 2007 or 8 was to help entrepreneurs make their visions come true. That's why I do what I do is to help entrepreneurs make their visions come true. My CEO Alliance helps them, my speaking helps them, my books help them, my group coaching. Everything I do is aligned with helping them make their vision come true. I want to close here, Cameron.

Starting point is 00:29:32 I know your time's limited as we close out. You're a good storyteller. I want you to tell our audience, maybe a story, maybe a time growing up, maybe a company you worked with. You've done that already. I'd love to just close with maybe a good story or a lesson or something or maybe your favorite thing to talk about. Let me give you a failure story because I think there's something around that you're a good storyteller.

Starting point is 00:29:56 I want to make sure that you understand that I'll also talk about anything with an open book. So I'm going to talk about when we almost bankrupted 1-800-GOT-JUNK as it was approaching $100 million in revenue. So I had coached the company, been the COO from 14 employees to 3,100 employees in six years, from $2 million to $106 million in six and a half years. As we were approaching the six-year mark, we were kind of coming into the $106 million in revenue, We had just hired a new head of finance, a CFO. And Trish basically pulled the fire alarm and said, holy shit, the company's running out of money. And we said, well, let's go to the bank and ask for a credit line. So we did.

Starting point is 00:30:39 And she came back and she goes, yeah, they're not going to give you a credit line. They're not going to give you a loan because you don't have any cash. Well, that's stupid. We were just the number two company to work for in Canada. We've had massive profitability six years in a row, 100% revenue growth six consecutive years in a row. We're just on Oprah. Like, we're the shit.

Starting point is 00:30:57 And we're cash flow positive. We just spent $5 million on our office renovation and our office move. And we spent $800,000 in cash and bonuses and $600,000 in taxes. Like, show them we just spent $5 million of our money so that we don't have any debt. She goes, that's the problem. Because you spent $5 million of your money, they won't loan you any money. If you'd bonded them with $5 million, they would have loaned you $5 million. We're like, we didn't need it.

Starting point is 00:31:20 She goes, no, what you need is to understand how to run a company that's not small anymore. You need to understand the financial acumen. And we didn't know that. The big lesson that we got, because our head of finance prior to her had been warning us for a year. Do you think we're going too quickly? Do you think we're opening up too many corporate locations? Are you worried that we're going to drain our cash flow? And we just kept saying, no, no, we got this.

Starting point is 00:31:43 Yeah, we're good. And he was so quiet and so kind of diminutive to very aggressive, dominant type, you know, Colby quick starts like Brian and I were, and I was a 98 I on disc, like a hundred miles an hour. We didn't listen to him. And the big lesson that we got, or I got from this was if you're not willing to listen to the people that reporting to you, if you're not willing to listen to the senior team, replace them with people you're willing to listen to or learn how to listen to them. He was giving us the signals to be careful and to be cautious. And we weren't listening. And we almost lost the company. Brian had to go out and borrow $420,000 from his mom to meet payroll.

Starting point is 00:32:24 And we had to do a round of layoffs of 20 people. And we started calling some, anyway, brutal, but we had all the signs. We just weren't listening. Yeah. So simple, but yet hard, hard lesson to learn. Open your ears, baby. Like, yeah, we've got, we got two ears and one mouth. We should use them in the ratio. We got them, right. We should listen twice as often as we speak. My mom told me that a lot. She said, you got two ears and one mouth for a reason, baby. You got to listen more.

Starting point is 00:32:55 Oh, Cameron, I could talk to you for a long time. I know we got short. You got stuff going on. But let me give, let's give all the shout outs where people can find the book, the Alliance, everything you're doing. Sure. So the COO Alliance is cooalliance.com. Easy to find. We, uh, it's 2 million or greater to qualify. And then we've got members from 17 countries. So it's an easy one. The invest in your leaders course is that invest in your leaders.com. People can go to my name, Cameron Harold's.com and it's H E R O L D. And it shows all of my coaching and speaking and everything else. And then all of my books

Starting point is 00:33:30 run Amazon audible and iTunes. He's a true whisperer folks. I'm, uh, I was sitting here literally, I haven't done this in a while, Cameron, but I was literally like, as you were talking, making, uh, marks at the timestamps that I'm going to go back and listen to this weekend for this, especially the culture building because your wisdom is appreciated and we need to close our mouths and listen harder. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And of course you're welcome.

Starting point is 00:33:59 I'm still growing too, right? At the end of the day, we're all still growing. If you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you're rotting.

Starting point is 00:34:04 That's right. And remember, time is short. Time is limited. Take that lesson, Cameron. Give us. You know where to find us, ryanisright.com. You'll find all the highlight clips from today. You'll find links to Cameron's stuff. And look, go buy his book. Go get your leadership. It is courses. I'm telling you, this guy is a legend and knows what he's doing. And we appreciate you. We'll see you next time on Right About Now. This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Greatest Leadership Lessons from the CEO Whisperer

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