Soft Skills, Hard Truths: Building, Leading, and Letting Go with Cameron Herold and Joe Polish

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Jun 27, 2025

Cameron Herold, a serial entrepreneur and founder of the COO Alliance, shares his insights on scaling businesses and empowering second-in-commands. He reveals how he successfully hired 800 franchisees and discusses the transformative power of his Vivid Vision approach. Listeners learn the importance of hiring for cultural fit over skill, the hidden hiring mistakes that can derail even seasoned leaders, and the 12 critical soft skills every leader must master. Cameron also emphasizes the need for effective meetings and operational interview techniques that truly identify A-players.

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ADVICE

Flip Your Weakness List To Hire

Do list every task you hate or are bad at and flip that list to define your second-in-command's role.
Hire the person who will own the things that drain your energy so you can focus on your strengths.

INSIGHT

Vivid Vision Aligns Everyone

A Vivid Vision is a 3-year, 4–5 page narrative describing how your company looks, acts, and feels as if it's already real.
Sharing it publicly aligns employees, customers, suppliers, and partners toward the same future.

ADVICE

End Early And Require Agendas

Do end every meeting five minutes early and state that upfront to create buffers between calls.
Require agendas with purpose, outcome, and timed items so meetings stay short and productive.

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Cameron Herold shares how to find, hire, and empower a world-class second-in-command to scale your business. From Vivid Vision to the real reason meetings suck, Cameron reveals the systems and mindset shifts that create unstoppable operational teams.

Here's a glance at what you'll discover in this episode:

How Cameron hired 800 franchisees—and trained them to recruit 8,000 people—in just 4 months, year after year. (Including the obscure system that made it possible.)
The Hidden Hiring Mistake That Fools Even Seasoned Entrepreneurs: Why "knowing how" isn't enough—and how one candidate ran for his car mid-interview when Cameron called his bluff.
The 'Detail-Oriented' Test You've Never Heard Of: One question that reveals who actually lives what they preach.
Why most HR departments are wired to reject your best sales candidates—and what to do instead if you want to build a high-performing team.
Why vivid vision isn't a 'nice to have'—it's the missing piece in every operational system on the planet. (And how it transformed 1-800-GOT-JUNK into a world-class culture machine.)
The 12 soft skills every leader must master—and why almost none of them can be outsourced to AI.
How to spot, coach, and scale your second-in-command...even if you're not ready to give up control. (PLUS: Cameron's blueprint for the COO–CEO relationship that drives results.)
What almost bankrupted 1-800-GOT-JUNK at $100M—and how ego, not economics, nearly tanked the company.
Profit Sharing Gone Wrong: How Cameron's team accidentally created entitlement—and why true performance alignment requires more than incentives.
The Truth About Golden Handcuffs: Why the best retention strategy isn't equity, perks, or bonuses—it's understanding what each A-player truly wants.
How to stop being a 'Seagull CEO'—swooping in, crapping on the plan, and flying away. Here's Cameron's elegant system to keep founders focused without killing momentum...
The One Agreement Cameron Had With Brian Scudamore: How he gained decision-making power—without needing constant permission. (And how you can use it to scale leadership without losing control.)
Why the best COOs will drive you crazy—and why that's a feature, not a bug. (Plus: how to decide when it's time to upgrade your #2.)
The Tattoo That Reframes It All: "None of this sh*t matters." Why Cameron believes your job, your company, and your to-do list aren't what's important—and how to build a business that honors life, not escapes it.

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