The Secret of $100M CEOs – Cameron Herold
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What is the secret to building a $100M business?
Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today's guest is Cameron Herald. Cameron built two $100 million plus businesses by age 35 and later went on to drive 1,800 junk from 2 million in revenue to over 106 million in revenue. He now is known as the CEO Whisperer and runs the COO Alliance, helping some of the biggest names in tech and in business, create massive growth, create cultures that are self-fulfilling. You are going to absolutely love this conversation, I promise. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we are joined by Cameron Harreld. Cameron, by the age of 35, had already built two $100-plus million businesses. He later went on to take 1-800-JUNK.com From $2 million in revenue to $106 million in revenue, 14 employees to over 3,100 employees, he is known as the CEO whisperer. If you are in a leadership position, if you're an entrepreneur, a founder, if you love business, buckle up, get your notebook. You are going to absolutely love this episode. Let's get on to Cameron Herald.
How can businesses cut waste effectively?
in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
Cameron, dude, appreciate you taking the time, man. I'm glad we finally got a chance to hook up. I'm so excited to have this conversation.
Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate it. Looking forward to it.
Yeah. So dude, as it would happen, like two hours before we recorded, you put this video out on Instagram and it's where I want to start, right? Like breakdown, breakdown Doge and, and what is happening and, and kind of just let's, let's start to go there. I want to start with Doge because I'm so intrigued by this, but there are, if you're a, if you're just a business guy or gal and you're trying to run your business and you occasionally pop your head up into the conversation and there is almost no way to dissect what's really happening, what's truth, what's not. So let's start there and help people.
What budgeting lessons can entrepreneurs learn?
Okay, so there's a couple of interesting points here. One is, you know, I've been following Trump since probably 1989 as a business person and a negotiator and, you know, the way he operates and works with the press. I think I first read The Art of the Deal back in 1988 or 89. And then secondly is Elon. I've known Elon since 1995. Elon Musk's younger brother worked for me in 1993. I was a reference for Elon and Kimball in their first round of funding for Zip2 in January of 95. So I've known him as a business person before, you know, most people on the planet knew that he existed. And it's just because his brother worked for me at College Pro Painters and his cousin, Peter Rife, who built SolarCity.
So I'm particularly interested in what Trump is doing right now on the business side of politics. And look, I'm not necessarily a fan of him as a person. I'm Canadian. I'm a little less glossy. I'm a little more augie shucks. I'm You know, Canadians, we apologize before we can even hit on a girl. Like, sorry, I think you're beautiful. So I don't like the ego behind a lot of Trump. I never did. I don't like the gold faucets. I don't like the fancy ostentatious. Put all that stuff aside. He's doing something that absolutely needs to be done in politics and it needs to be done in every business. And there's a lot of waste. And I think a lot of business people miss how much waste there is inside of our company.
So when we were building 1-800-GOT-JUNK, I was the COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, took them from 14 people to 3,100 employees in six years. We had at the leadership team a financial review meeting every three months, and the leadership team reviewed the general ledger, which is every expense on the P and L. So we looked at every expense in entertainment, every expense in travel, every, we looked at all the credit card bills. And as a team, we discussed stuff that kind of jumped out at us. We looked at software licenses 24 years ago. So there's so much waste that they're cutting right now that I think both the left and the right have to look at that and go, yeah, it's pretty hard to argue. 95% of that waste is really waste. You know, we don't need a new embassy in South Sudan. And I think there's a good lesson in there for entrepreneurs is to be very ruthless and to inspect what you expect.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the secret to building a $100M business?
0:00–1:31
2
How can businesses cut waste effectively?
1:31–2:30
3
What budgeting lessons can entrepreneurs learn?
2:30–4:39
4
How does employee happiness drive business success?
4:39–5:25
5
What can parenting teach us about leadership?
5:25–6:37
6
How can entrepreneurs avoid burnout?
6:37–10:54
7
What is the role of automation in the economy?
10:54–12:05
8
How can we embrace AI for business growth?
12:05–54:15
Speakers
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