Why working hard is not working smart by EntrepreneursRadioShow

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Episode 116: Cameron Herold In this episode, Travis speaks to successful entrepreneur and highly rated speaker, author, and mentor Cameron Herold. Cameron's philosophy of simplifying things and focusing on a single goal has transformed his businesses from a bootstrap to a multi-million dollar company that grew exponentially from a span of just a few years. Apart from the coaching sessions and lectures he has done all over the world, he has authored the best-selling book Double Double which has helped business owners achieve the growth and success of their business in just a short amount of time. Cameron and Travis share a wealth of knowledge and practical ideas that would certainly be valuable for entrepreneurs. Cameron teaches the value of learning from other successful entrepreneurs and find out what they did to become successful. Acknowledging that not knowing everything and learning every bit of information from the best people that you can learn from is something that Cameron also advocates. He also shares the key principles on how we was able to create a world-class environment in his companies such as aligning the goals and vision of all of your employees in your company; creating a real, world-class culture in order to attract the top employees; and leveraging free PR so that everyone will know who and what your company stands for. They also share the principle of working smart rather than working hard. These and so much more are what entrepreneurs can expect from this episode of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show.

Why Working Hard Is Not Working Smart TRAVIS: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 116 of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, where as always each and every week my focus is to connect you with rock star entrepreneurs that explain their journey to success including failures, and what's been the key principles to finding that high level of success as an entrepreneur. Now today I'm excited to introduce you to Cameron Herold. Cameron has help build a well-known business, a business that you probably would recognize, from $2 million in annual revenues, to $106 million in just 7 years with not debt and no outside shareholders, in other words bootstrap. Not to mention he's done this for multiple, other companies as well. So as always I'm confident that you'll find value in listening to the wisdom and advice that this guest shares with us during this interview. Now before we get started I want to say thank you to Robert Boden for the five stars and the written review on iTunes. Robert says, "Amazing content, the Entrepreneur's Radio Show is well worth the listen and the content was amazing. Will definitely leverage what I learned here in the future. I definitely recommend subscribing to the show." So, thanks a bunch for that Robert, I really appreciate you taking the time. If you have time and value in the show, I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know how we're doing. Write us a review, rate the show, give us a 1,

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

2, 3, 4, 5 star rating, whatever you think we deserve. And of course, I'll recognize you on air and say thank you if you take the time to do that. One last thing before we get started, remember there's three easy ways to take the shows with you on the go, through iTunes, Android, or Stitcher. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and click on the iTunes, Android, or Stitcher button right there on the menu bar. It will take you directly to the podcast where you can subscribe if that's something that you want to do. Now that we got that out of the way, let's get down to business. Without further ado, welcome to the show Cameron. CAMERON: Hey Travis, thanks very much for having me. TRAVIS: Oh man, it's a pleasure. Hey, you've got a pretty interesting story here, do you mind giving us kind of the background on your story and what brought you to your success today? CAMERON: Sure. In a lot of ways, I was raised as an entrepreneur. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. Both grandfathers owned companies, my dad owned one. Today, my brother and sister all run their own companies, even my wife and both her parents owned companies. So, I'm surrounded in that entrepreneurship world. I ran my first business when I was in my 20's. I had a number of entrepreneurial ventures prior to that which I actually talk about on my Ted Talk with ted.com about raising entrepreneurial kids. So I really grew up in that entrepreneurial world, not a formal education world. I got a lot of training running a house painting business when I was back in my 20's. Then I went on and I built out a chain of auto body collision repair shops with a couple of partners. I built a private currency company, and then I joined one of my good friends and we built out a company that we expanded across North America and into Australia called 1-800-GOT-JUNK. And I kind of got known really for that person, except the ones before all had really big household names, Gerber was the auto body chain, and College Pro Painters was the house painting company. So I've been involved in growing big, professional businesses that had amazing cultures, and strong profitability, and good growth, and lots of PR. And then I started being asked to a lot of speaking events. I'm doing a lot of the speaking events globally. I have now spoken in 28 countries. I started getting asked to write my content to do a book. So I wrote a book 4 years ago called Double Double. Seth Godin wrote the cover testimonial for that and it's been available all over the world for the last four years. So that's really what I've been doing and where I came from. And now what I do is I work behind the scenes coaching CEOs of companies that want to be more entrepreneurial and want to grow in a better and faster way. So I've got clients that are small, about 3 million in revenue and my largest current client 700 million in revenue, so all across the board. TRAVIS: Well, I'm curious. I've taken businesses through several growth stages myself. Although I haven't reached the $100 million mark. And so there's thresholds, there's 500,000, there's a million, there's 3 million, there's 5 million. Things change, even 10 million, things

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

constantly change in a business model that you have to focus on especially when you're driving the growth of that business. How did you have that acumen, or where the acumen come from to grow businesses to these levels? CAMERON: Some of it came from a lesson my dad gave me when I was quite young and he just said, "You'll never be smart enough to figure this out on your own. Your R&D has to stand for rip-off and duplicate." All the best companies on the planet have been figuring stuff out for years and spending millions of dollars to figure it out. Just state what he problem is or state the opportunity and find out who's doing the best job and just do what they're doing. And it'll come to you a lot faster and a lot easier. So that was lesson one. And then lesson two came from an Olympic coach and he said you really need to visualize what the future of the business looks like. Lean out 3 years into the future and describe what the company looks and feels like 3 years from today. Or what a project looks like in its finished stage. And once you know what it looks like in its finished state, you can reverse engineer it and figure out what to do to get there. TRAVIS: Brilliant advice. And so, did you go through these processes on your own, or did you seek mentorship? How did you go about that? CAMERON: We were a part of an organization called EO, which was the entrepreneur's organization. And they bring entrepreneurs from around the world and they essentially mastermind, mentor each other on a monthly basis. They bring in guest speakers, but they also work on it in a forum, mastermind environment to learn from others that are already doing stuff and to hold yourself accountable. So it was a process from learning from them. And also again, taking the systems that are already there that are proven in doing it. Most people that I see out there, keep reading, keep reading, keep reading, but they don't do anything with their reading. Once you've read 3 or 4 of the best business books you probably have enough to double the size of your business. The problem is most people don't do it. They just get sucked back into email and being busy. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: So I was kind of taking the dumb approach. I was just like, "Well, if the experts say to do it I'll just do it, and I'll trust that it'll happen." And sure enough by doing it, it happened. TRAVIS: I think what happens is people get on a diet of consuming books and they never stop. And this is kind of exactly what you were saying but on a deeper level. They never implement. It's almost like an education junkie, right? And the true wisdom comes in the implementing. I think maybe that's what people are missing, is they want to make sure that they've got everything down perfect in the process. But doing and making mistakes, and then correcting it is where the hyper learning occurs, right?

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

CAMERON: And it's also where the growth occurs. A lot of the truisms that come from science or even from our grandmother play out in business. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: One of the ones that we hear from science, from physics is that momentum creates momentum. So to get momentum you just have to start things and execute. And then you'll learn a little bit. But at least you're making forward progress. Perfectionism and procrastination is what slows everything down. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: No one really cares what any of your listeners ever got on their university transcript. There's not a single one of us running a company today, the A+ or the 94% added. 72% or 92% once you've been out for a month it's the same grade, no one's ever going to care. It's the same with that perfect marketing piece. You’d be better to just get the marketing piece out there and learn from it than to sit in your office waiting for perfect 3 months later. Momentum creates momentum. TRAVIS: Right. I've got a 14-year old daughter and recently I had mentioned to her mother. I said, "I'm not completely convinced you need to go to college." I would almost rather see you go down a path of learning skills of being a business owner and becoming an entrepreneur. And they both were offended by the idea. And I'm concerned that-- there's a preconceived notion that everybody needs to go through college. And I've come to realize that entrepreneurship is the best self-improvement program that I could have ever signed up for. CAMERON: Yeah. I think unless you're going to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, or a dentist where you need formal training, I don't think going for a university general arts degree makes any sense whatsoever. I think what makes a lot more sense is going in apprenticing for some companies like people did 100 years ago. You know, 100 years ago maybe 5% of the population went on to formal education but we've been brainwashed into thinking it's the only path. It's not the only path. It's just become a very successful business and government grant program in the United States. What people need to do is again lean out into the future and say, "What do I want to do? What are the different paths or different options I could do to get there? And if you wanted to go get some experience and some theory, and some networking, you're going to get a lot of that by just going and working for four great companies. So go and offer up yourself for fee, for minimum wage, for whatever they'll pay you for the next 4 years. Work for one company for a year and another company for a year, do that 4 times. And at the end of your 4 years you'll have more experience, more theory, more connections, and more fun than you will have by going to university. And you'll come out with no debt.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: In a university, you're going to come out with a lot of theory but not necessarily any connections for future work. And you're going to come out with a pile of debt. It doesn't make sense to me why everyone goes down that path blindly. TRAVIS: Right. It is a good choice for somebody like you said. Some people it's the right path, but we've been brainwashed in believing that it's the right path for everybody and it's just not. Now, one of the key things that you mentioned that I wish I would have changed is I had really good success in business and growing it early on to 100% 400% than just continual growth like that over the years. Although, I never sought true mentorship until about 15 years of being in business, 16 years in business. And it completely changed who I was, how I did things, and put me on a whole new level. And I don't think this is spoken often enough, or suggested often enough of getting in some type of environment mastermind the E organization that you described. Because you're around a group of people that can help nurture the positive attitude, and ideas, and give you some of the business acumen and support that you need to grow that business. There's just not enough emphasis on that. Do you find that to be true? CAMERON: I think a lot of people try to work hard instead of working smart. A lot of people, and we've been ingrained in the university system and the high school system, and grade school education is that it's about reading everything, learning everything, and memorizing everything instead of kind of finding a better way. Well, the better way is essentially cheating. Cheating in that everyone else already has the answers. In school we're told not to talk to anybody because you're supposed to do it all on your own so we end up building a bad habit. Or as a really good habit is everyone else already has the answers, go and talk to a bunch of other people and kind of absorb that at least into the crowds and do the best you're already doing. We have a bit of a vulnerability issue where we're taught to pretend that we're smart instead of pretending that we're dumb and putting our hand up and saying I don't know this. It's actually okay to put your hand up and say I don't know it because about 15 people that are around you that don't know it either. TRAVIS: Right. And I said this to a group of people recently. I said, "What we do in masterminds would be considered cheating in school." CAMERON: Right. TRAVIS: And they were all confused and somewhat offended by that, or had a perplexed look on their face. And most people never think about it like that. One has humility and one doesn't to say you don't know the answers and you'd like some help by others that have already achieved it is the way that I would prefer all my friends and family approach life rather than the opposite way. So I think that’s the core problem with school in itself.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

CAMERON: Right. It's teaching very, very bad habits that only one person can know, and don't work around with other people, and sit and try to memorize everything. Well, it's crazy, the answers are either on Google, or someone's already done it. So, for the most part, unless you're trying to do a PhD and invent something, you don't to be the only person in the room. TRAVIS: Right. So, one of the things that I want to highlight is the epic amount of success that you had with the 1-800-GOT-JUNK. You helped the company grow from $2 million to $105 million in 6 years, that's crazy growth. What was the key principles to making that happen? CAMERON: There are three. One was really getting everyone completely aligned with the same vision so that everyone could see what the CEO could see. And we use the concept that I teach now called the painted picture where people literally lean out into the future and describe the company in its finished state 3 years out into the future. I covered in-depth in chapter 1 of my book Double Double. The second thing that we did was we created a real great, world-class culture that attracted people to our company like a magnet. We were just an amazing place to work. Not because of the foosball table and the Wii room but because we had people aligned, we had people in the right rules, we had amazing people there, we coached and mentored people, and we hired amazing, driven, A-level players. So people just wanted to be around that. And then the third was we leveraged free PR. We really worked hard to get the media talking about our company. And what we got them to talk about was our culture and their future. So the more that the press talked about how great we were, the greater we became. And it was really those 3 things, leveraging vision and alignment of people, making sure that culture was fantastic, and leveraging the free press. TRAVIS: So what part of the organization were you involved with, or how does all-- some of those steps deal with the growth of the business, some of it deals with the acquisition of talent. And the other deals with I guess making sure that everyone's on the same page. What was some of the underpinnings and all of those completely make sense and a brilliantly simple, succinct way of doing it. What were some of the underpinnings of how you were able to ignite the growth once you got all of these three core things in alignment? CAMERON: So I was the chief operating officer. I came in as the 14th employee and when I left we had 3,100 employees system-wide. I ran everything except IT and finance. At the end of the day that was what ignited it. When you get as Jim Collins' Good to Great said, "When you get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus, and everybody in the right seats, that's the first step." The next part is making sure that all those people are aligned so that they're all pulling in that same direction. So if everyone can see the same movie that the CEO can see, you don't have to hold anyone accountable but they're holding themselves accountable. So the systems that we used to do that, the painted picture is what aligned with the vision. I covered that in great detail in my book Double Double. The second thing that we used were the systems from top grading around getting the right people into the company, very

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

rigorous interviewing process. We made sure that we hire people that both culturally fit and had the skill set to do their job. There's that old adage of hire for attitude, train for skill. And that's not going to work. That never, ever, ever is enough. What you really, really need is to hire the people who have done it before and have that theory, sorry, the cultural fit. The oust Herb Kelleher from Southwest Airlines, how do you get all your people to smile so much? We hire smiling people. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: You can train a grumpy person to be happy so you hire happy people. So I think most people miss out on that. They hire the really smart person who's done it before. And they're like, "I know he's a bit of a jerk but he's really smart." Great, now you've got a cancer inside your organization. TRAVIS: That's an interesting way of looking at it and that definitely makes sense. CAMERON: I was asked by Fortune Magazine years ago, they said, "How do you motivate your employees?" And I said, "I don't, I hire motivated people." When you hire motivated people you don't have to hold them accountable, they hold themselves accountable. TRAVIS: Right. And 3 A-players can replace 7-8 regular players. CAMERON: Correct. TRAVIS: Very few people realize that. Now, was all of your marketing the earned media stuff, or was there any paid traffic? And then you guys also slid a franchise model also didn't you? CAMERON: Yeah, the franchising was one of the vehicles for our growth. It was the way that we could grow quickly and really have people invested in the growth, really having skin in the game. Again, hiring accountable people. When we had a franchisee in the market it allows us to grow quickly because they were very, very keen to grow their market. TRAVIS: That's skin in the game, right? CAMERON: The PR for us was really the core of our marketing strategy. We did a lot of guerilla marketing, just even things like parking our tracks in high profile locations. A lot of people are afraid of doing guerilla marketing; they think paid is the only way to grow. Not necessarily. And then we became very, very good at understanding in the early days areas that people are just figuring out today. I had a client that I was coaching recently and he's still doing Yellow Pages advertising. And I'm like, "No one uses Yellow Pages." And he goes, "Well, 75-year olds do."

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

And I'm like, "Yeah, you just told me that 35-year old females are your target market. So what do you care if an 80-year old is using the Yellow Pages?" TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: They don't go to you. So, it's just following the real basic advice and just sticking to it. A lot of people are always looking for that silver bullet; they're looking for that magic pill; they're looking for the easy way out. Well there isn't an easy way out. What works is working smarter, not working hard. TRAVIS: I completely agree. I consider myself a good soldier. So at times in my career of building businesses I've been guilty of working hard instead of smart and I paid the price for years for that. Several other things that I noticed about the business that are just brilliantly simple that allow the business to grow is the name's just straightforward, easy, simple, 1-800GOT-JUNK, right? Multipurpose name, right? It's the name and also the phone number. CAMERON: We got that basic marketing rule from a book called the The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries. Al Ries is really one of the godfathers of marketing and branding. And we just followed the 22 rules. And if you read the 22 rules of marketing or branding you'd realize that our name literally follows the rules that you laid out for us. Where most people don't spend any time on that. They try to pick something unique and creative. And we just realized that if our name was our phone number people would call. And then as we started to grow-- We created that brand back in 1999 so the internet wasn't even that strong at that point. But it became our URL and then we worked really hard at creating 30% of our customers to book online. So it just became a way to decrease our expenses, and grow our brand, and grow our recurring revenue. TRAVIS: Yeah, plus the trucks are clean, good-looking, and the signs, it reflects an image. Before this company, I don't know if you guys were the first one to do this, I want to say that you were the first ones to really come up with a business model for hauling off junk from the house. CAMERON: There were actually 17,000 independent junk removal companies the day we started. What we did was we professionalized and cleaned up an industry. So I used to be with College Pro Painters, which is the largest residential house painting company. I helped build that group across North America. And we did the same thing with the house painting industry where it was used to be the house painter with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and showing up all dirty. We just professionalized it. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: Think about Starbucks when they really kind of got going in the early 90's. People were walking around the city with a white coffee cup. No one had white coffee cups with their

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

brand on it, and no one played jazz in their coffee shops, and no one charged 50% more than everyone else. So that's what we did. We put the clean and shiny trucks on the road with friendly, uniformed drivers. We charged a premium for our service but we blew people away on the customer service side when they expected a grumpy, greasy, old guy that hauled garbage shows up at their house, and we showed up with a bunch of fraternity boys in golf shirts. TRAVIS: And that's exactly was the choice was prior to that is some really grungy looking guys that were kind of scary looking. Beat-up trucks, torn up trailers that would come haul of the junk. Although I felt like I needed to be home when they come to get the junk because I didn't want them to be home with my wife by herself. So, exactly what you were saying. CAMERON: Yeah. And it happens in all kinds of industries, it happens in dentistry, it happens in medical offices. When we created our auto body location we decided to paint the walls white and then have all of our marketing to be female-friendly because we knew that females would tell other people about it, guys wouldn't tell anyone. We painted the walls white because it would force us to keep the location super clean. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: At the end of the day it's about making very conscious choices and deciding to set yourself out against the industry. TRAVIS: So you sit down and actually engineer the entire experience out. And pay attention to-CAMERON: We pay attention to what Jim Collins said, "Critical few things versus the important many things. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: So what are the critical few things in your product or your service, what are those critical few things that really matter? I was talking to a guy who owns dental clinics today down in California and he's doing some orthodontic work. And I said, "Who are your customers?" And he said, "Well, it's women and typically 35-45 and they've got kids." I said, "Well, why does all your marketing read like it's focused to me?" And he's goes, "Geez, I never thought about it." He never thought about his target audience was. So nothing happens fast and always reverse engineer it. Think about what you want your clients to say and then tell them those things and they'll say those things. TRAVIS: Right. Ultimately, it's 80-20 principle, right?

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

CAMERON: Exactly. Think about what you want them to see and tell them they're going to see it. TRAVIS: Yeah, it's so simple it's surprising on some levels. That's a common problem I see is most people really never get a clear understanding of who their most ideal client is. Everyone feels like they could serve-- well, I could serve everybody. Well, you can serve everybody but who, would be your dream? Who could you deliver the absolute best experience for? CAMERON: I had a client that I started coaching and mentoring about two and a half years ago. And when I first started coaching and he was talking about opening up in the United States, now he was going to expand all through the United States. I was like, "Wait, let's look at what your goals are for your company 5 years out, 3 years out." And then he realized that he could be 3 or 4 times bigger than his 3-year goals just being in Canada alone. He didn't have to overcomplicate it by going into second country. Most people aren't focused. If you think about light. If you just disperse light it'll light up a room. But if you highly concentrate that light it becomes a laser and it can cut through steel. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: How focused are our people, how focused is our marketing, how focused are we with our time? TRAVIS: Yeah, excellent point. So I think that cut you off when you were explaining some of the other aspects of the marketing. Did you say you guys did start using paid traffic, or paid marketing for Got Junk also? CAMERON: We did but not in the early days. In the early days we started to tell all of our offline customers that they could book online. We started to tell all of our offline customers where to book online. We started to put as a P.S. on all of our emails that people could book online. So we started to convert all the people who had moving them online and then asking them to refer people. Once we started to move that group then we started to look for other new customers in an online space. But we wanted to leverage the group that we already had, and convert them over and get them to tell everyone. And it's easier to get the group you have talking than it is to attract a whole new group of people. TRAVIS: Right. So, focus on grassroots stuff then first? CAMERON: Yeah, you think about every one of your clients. Does every email that goes out from every single employee of theirs at least contain some kind of a P.S.? Probably doesn't. And does the P.S. contain want you want people to tell? It probably doesn't.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about that. Interesting. As you ask that question I'm reflecting on the emails that I read, even the emails that I send. I'm a big P.S. user. CAMERON: It's an easy form of marketing. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: We've been told that our whole lives that the most read part of a letter is the P.S., and yet most of us don't do it. We sit around waiting for the magic bullet but we miss out on the hundreds of perfect bullets that we have. TRAVIS: Right. Let me ask you, what are some of the key performance indicators; KPI's that you look for typically in the business. Do they change or do you have a core set of KPI's for practically every business? CAMERON: Yeah, they absolutely change, they change based on what the core focus of the organization is. What I look for is also more of an economic denominator. So I look for the "per" something as a KPI. Is it per employee, is it per revenue, is it per location, is it per what. So often you measure a lot of things per something versus just measuring a lot of things. So the way I figure out the KPI's is both looking for lagging and leading indicators because I take each business area and they'd come up with 10 things that they would have to measure so that they would know that they're on-track to hit their goals for their business area which would in turn help the company hit their goals. Once each business area comes up with the 10 things that they would need to be tracking, then we look at what would the top 2 or 3 things be from each business area. And then what can we look at that is going to be a leading indicator to show us where we're going. Or to forecast and what can we look at based on our past numbers to kind of pull out that data. For me in my business, it's how many paid speaking events do I have on my calendar. Because that shows me how many books I'll sell, how much my digital content people will buy to download, how many coaching programs I'll be able to sell. It's all predicated off the number of speaking events I have booked currently going forward. TRAVIS: So, let's take one of the service businesses, just a random service business. Give me feel of what some of those KPI's would be for one of the service businesses and you don't need to give us the name, as a great example for people to kind of get their arms around. CAMERON: Again, it depends. If your core goals are revenue profit, customer engagement, employee engagement, and some kind of a strategic initiative, that will determine what your KPI's or your core few KPI's are going to be. In the early days of 1-800-GOT-JUNK we wanted to be in the top 30 metro markets by 2003. So we leaned out into 2003 and started to figure out how to do that. So it was always how are we doing towards that track of 30--

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: ...30 markets, yeah. CAMERON: If it was being in 30% of our clients booking online, we would then be tracking data around that. Are we getting click-throughs, what's our balance rate like, what's our conversion rate like, what's our new topic like? We would be looking for marketing activities, like remarketing to be able to leverage that and drive more. But if it was in the early days we're looking at our revenue. And we knew that one way to get our revenue up was to get our full load rate up, to get our average job size up. So we taught people how to sell more and how to identify bigger jobs, and how to go up to commercial work. So it just depends what is you're driving. We note 3 years and look at what your goals are and then figure out how do you make that happen? TRAVIS: Right. So example could be average, maybe it's opt-ins, maybe it's conversions, maybe it's average ticket price. So if you're wanting to-- maybe one of the things you were, and using the example that you just gave, you guys were wanting to increase revenue and so maybe you were getting a lot of half in quarter, low loads. And so you taught the guys how to upsell. And that way they could get a full load, the difference between maybe $300 and $500, right? CAMERON: Yup, that's exactly what we did, is we thought about what the goal was. And then we came up with a few strategic initiatives or projects to make that goal come true. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: Again, what most people don't do is they don't lean out into the future, so they simply work harder instead of figuring out where they're going, and one of the different things they can do to make it happen. TRAVIS: Yeah. I like to break examples down like that because a lot of times people get lost in the theory. And every time I want to accomplish something, we work in Basecamp. And so, we may set up an objective to accomplish A, B, C. Working with this one doctor, he's wanting accreditation. And we break all of the pieces down, all the steps down so that we can start knocking those out. And it's really emblematic of what you're talking about is you get a clear picture of what you want, break it into pieces, reverse engineer it, and you know if you're not accomplishing those steps then you'll never accomplish the goal. Ultimately, the micro creates the macro, right? CAMERON: Exactly right. TRAVIS: Okay, excellent example there. Let me ask you, what book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why would you recommend it?

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

CAMERON: I think for a lot of businesses it goes right back to the E-Myth which is about putting the systems in place to grow the business and looking for missing systems, or broken systems versus blaming people for mistakes. A lot of people are too quick to blame people instead of looking for the missing system. I'll give you a very big company example of how this small system works so perfectly. One of my mentors was being groomed as the chief operating officer at Starbucks. And he got a phone call from Howard Schultz one day and this is about 10 years ago. And Howard said, "Why is the letter B on the sign at 50th and Wallingford location in Seattle, why is the letter B on the sign not working?" And my mentor started to laugh, and he said "Are you kidding? That's not the question you're allowed to ask me." And Howard got pissed off and he goes, "Well I care." My mentor said, "Well, I care too. But the question you need to ask is what system do we have in place to ensure that all letters on all signs, at all locations are always working. So that's the question I'll answer. But I'm not going to tell you why the letter B is out because I don't give a shit why the letter B is out. What I do care is that we don't have a system in place to ensure that all letters, on all signs, at all locations are always working." TRAVIS: Excellent point. CAMERON: So that's a basic system idea comes from Michael Gerber's book the E-Myth. But again, most of your listeners will get off the call. And as soon as something wrong happens they're going to blame one of their employees instead of saying, "What system was it?" It could be an interviewing or hiring system that allowed the wrong person to get in to the company. It could be a missing system that has people carrying too many projects, or has too much on their plate. So always look for the missing or broken system. TRAVIS: Well said, excellent point. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? CAMERON: I think one of the most basic ones and it's been around forever, we probably only have about another 12 months of being able to use it before everyone's using it. And this would sound silly, but it's Skype video. Just basic Google video, or Skype video, or Zoom video, any kind of normal video conference. If you can speak to all of your customers or all of your employees that are-- you have video and build a huge relationship. Much stronger than audio, much stronger than over the phone, but the video face-to-face connection is extraordinarily powerful. And when you do that you will hold on to those customers forever. TRAVIS: So you really feel like there's that big of a difference between turning the video on?

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

CAMERON: Oh, it's absolutely huge. Again, the face-to-face connection you developed from the video itself is what will build the relationship. If you own the relationship, no one will take that customer or prospect away from you. TRAVIS: You know, I've never thought about it like that. I guess reflecting on it aligns with what happens naturally anyways, right? CAMERON: Exactly. When you're having the face-to-face discussions of people it's powerful. But imagine if you a potential customer, all of my clients are all over the world. The CEO's that I coach are everywhere. I just signed a client yesterday and when I start coaching in August he was based in Saudi Arabia. I have a client today that I've been coaching for about 6 months who's based in Australia. I have another who's based in the U.K., I have them all over the United States. But I don't ever go and meet with them, or rarely do I go and meet with them in person. But I feel like I know them intimately because we're able to talk on video for 90 minutes every 2 weeks. TRAVIS: And you always use the video. CAMERON: Yeah, it's huge and it's free. It doesn't cost us anything. It cost you nothing to have a relationship with someone face-to-face. TRAVIS: And so why do you feel like that we're going to have this for another year, are you saying you think they're going to go to a pay model? CAMERON: No, I think it's going to become ubiquitous. I think that all of the phone calls are going to include videos so it literally won't have a chance to take that away from your competitor. TRAVIS: Okay. CAMERON: It's not that it's fee so much as the fact that video builds a relationship. But if everyone's using video then you've lost that strategic advantage. TRAVIS: Okay. I'm going to take your advice, I'm going to shift because I'm guilty, I'm a very auditory person, and I'm guilty of not doing the video aspect of that with my coaching clients. And I'm going to make that change because it just makes too much sense. CAMERON: Yeah. I was coaching a guy who's based in the U.K. years ago, we've been coaching for about 18 months. We're having breakfast one morning in Hong Kong at a conference we're both at. And after about 20 minutes into our breakfast, he jumped up, practically left across the table and gave me a hug. And I started to laugh, I'm like, "What was

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

that all about?" I just realized we've never met in person. Because we've been talking on video 90 minutes every 2 weeks for a year and a half. I felt like I knew this person better than I knew my parents. TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: Right? That's really powerful, and it's free. Again, the critical few things we can do versus the important many. TRAVIS: Excellent point. Thank you for that I'm going to use it. CAMERON: You're welcome. TRAVIS: So what quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business? CAMERON: "Vision without execution is hallucination." That was Thomas Edison. "Vision without execution is hallucination." TRAVIS: So true. CAMERON: You can have all these great goals and these great ideas. But if you don't actually start working on it it'll never happen. TRAVIS: It's so true, that's why it's laughable to me. CAMERON: It's just so darn simple, right? TRAVIS: It really is. I've come to realize that that's kind of the underpinning of your brilliance is a lot of the things that you talk about are brilliantly straightforward and simple. CAMERON: See, I was never smart enough to go to a normal MBA program; I couldn't go and get a formal education because I didn't have the grades, I didn't have the ability to sit and focus like that. So, I had to learn kind of by finding all the shortcuts. I almost wish that my grandparents wouldn't have fooled me to work hard; I'd wish they'd told me to work smart. TRAVIS: Right. I think you need to become comfortable with yourself. Because I have found that a lot of people that speak and make things much more complicated than necessary. Or a lot of times just trying to convey their intelligence rather than help you.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

CAMERON: Exactly. I had a mentor 25 years ago and he said, "If you can't write it down on a half a page of paper, you haven't thought about it clearly enough, don't talk to me about it until you can." TRAVIS: Right. CAMERON: It was really powerful because now I realize that people over complicate everything. TRAVIS: Yeah, cut the BS and get to the point, right? CAMERON: Exactly. TRAVIS: Hey, let me ask you, how do people connect with you? CAMERON: So my website is doubledoublethebook.com, and it's got all my contact information right there.

End of Interview TRAVIS: Excellent, thank you for that. Remember that you can find all the links to the books and resources mentioned in the show, in the show notes. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. Now while you're there opt-in and you'll get my personal email. And it would just take a few minutes and tell me what you feel like is holding you back in your business right now. What do you feel like the major thing that's holding you back from accomplishing your dreams. And I'll give you my feedback on air to help you move your business forward right now. I've helped businesses grow their profits by more than 2,000% with the giving them advise on what to do with overcoming those obstacles. And increasing your bottom line, your net profits by 2,000% is life changing. So I want to encourage you to take a little time and send me that. And let me help you overcome what's holding you back and start moving you in that right direction. All that's going to cost you is just a little bit of your time. Before I close the show today I want to read a quote to you that I feel like really speaks to that suggestion earlier of overcoming the obstacles, and the quote comes from William Durant. So the quote reads, "Forget past mistakes, forget failures, forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and what's holding you back. To your incredible success my friend, take care.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

How We Can Help You We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That’s exactly why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at a fraction of its normal cost. Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever! We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats within your business. This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons are. As the 'Business Owner' it’s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you’re in the middle of a daily management. And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial. This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-man army, or an army of 150, the problem is still the same. Travis Lane Jenkins Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show “Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

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