419 | How Does it Feel to Be Coached – Gene Gets Coached by Cameron Herold

Have you ever wondered how it feels to be coached? The experience is not comfortable. You get insight into how you see the world and how you could see it. Your coach has a different perspective and is not emotionally attached to the way you currently are being and what you are doing. Today’s special guest is Cameron Herold who is the former COO of 1-800-Got-Junk, author of many books, founder of the COO Alliance and has many other accomplishments. I admire Cameron so much that I thought I would let him coach me on strategies for growth in my business. If you want to know how it feels to be coached, this episode shows you behind the scenes of the coaching experience. Cameron shares with me new strategies that are perfect for me.

Don't miss an episode. Subscribe to Growth Think Tank.

Share the LOVE and TWEET about this episode.

Target Audience: Cameron Herold, Founder of the COO Alliance & Second In Command Podcast (iTunes) is known around the world as THE CEO Whisperer. Founder of the COO Alliance. He is the mastermind behind hundreds of companies’ exponential growth. Cameron’s built a dynamic consultancy- his clients have included a ‘Big 4’ wireless carrier and a monarchy. 

Cameron Herold: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

This leaders in the trenches and your host today is Gene Hammett.

Gene Hammett: Hi, this is Gene Hammett. This is leaders in the trenches and my big question this week is what does it feel like to get coached? I have a very special episode. I’m smiling when I say this because I’m actually going to get coached on this episode of never done this after 420 something interviews. I have never, you know, invited someone to be on the podcast who I admire and to coach me around some of the things that are going on in my business. So I opened up about some of the things I’m working on, some of the direction I’m going that I haven’t made traction on and my guest today, which I’ll tell you about in just a second, it’s just someone who I have admired for years. His name is Cameron Herold. He runs the COO alliance.

Gene Hammett: He runs the second command podcast. He was the COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. He’s been a coach for decades. He has helped companies grow at an astronomical pace and he’s got a lot of experience in this. In many ways. He is much more experienced than I am. I have a different set of skills that I bring to my conversations when it comes to coaching than what Cameron does. Cameron is very strategic mind. He’s very tactical and that’s fantastic. What’s different between, I think me and what his style of coaching is. I work a lot with, um, the inner workings of leadership and how to really execute on those things. Not Quite as prescriptive as he is. And in case I, you know, I find that it’s really important for my clients to look at the choices they have and make some strong commitments to that and get really clear about those commitments, remove any obstacles.

Gene Hammett: So it is a different style, but I opened myself up to you guys here. This may not be exciting or good content if you’re not in the expert kind of business. If you are, then you’re going to find this interesting because you may look at me as someone who, as a professional speaker, as an author of a book running a podcast, writing for different magazines that has it all figured out. And I do. I’m really excited about what’s going on in my business, but I wouldn’t say I have everything figured out. I’m still learning and growing because things change so fast and we’ve got to really align our focus with what we want. So inside this episode we talk about the business of coaching and some of the things that happen there that need to be refined in some of the specific changes that I’m making in order to, you know, make the business pay for me, make it have more impact in all of those changes.

Gene Hammett: We talk about going to 12 month contracts. We talk about a lot of the details around how do you get there. We also talk about the dangers of speaking as a business model and is not my core business model. It is something I do. I do get paid for this now it’s been years putting in the time, getting good on stage, getting my experience out there, getting a demo reel, getting everything ready for the professional world. And now that I have all those things, I still speak only about 20 times a year. So all that being said, we talk about, you know, how do I best use a book if you have a book. We also talk about some of the other missing components of my business that if I did them and I were able to execute on them, it would build much more recurring revenue into the model that I have as an expert.

Gene Hammett: So I say all this knowing that I need to work on some things and Cameron helped me point out where I could see things differently. The value of that and I have begin executing on that. So when I have a new project with the podcast that is launching, you don’t know this shit, but I’m launching SMART CHRO is a new podcast for the company. My wife and I are doing this together because it really aligns with the work that we do. It’s focused on of CHRO’s, chief human resource officers, but also really creating what Cameron talked about inside here was extra revenue stream of ongoing recurring revenue, small micro payments, if you will. We haven’t defined exactly what it would be, but he’s probably most likely going to be about $7 a month, be a part of that. It’s only for specific audience.

Gene Hammett: So we are executed in that. Another a change is going on here. It’s a little early for me to, to share with you, but I am changing the format of leaders in the trenches. I’m probably going to change the name of leaders in the trenches as well to better align with my ideal customers and the growth that I’m creating in this world and the impact I’m creating. So I don’t have the exact name yet, but things are coming with a change. So all this to say today is a very different episode. I get coached by Cameron Herold, someone I admire. You get to listen into it. You get to hear my doubt about things and me looking at the way I’ve always done it and I want you to really think about this from your business perspective. Like what strategies are you open to and what could you learn from this?

Gene Hammett: I’d love to know if this is valuable to you. Reach out to me either through Twitter @GeneHammett, sent me an [email protected] anything to let me know that this was helpful, how it was helpful. And if you love this kind of content, I’m willing to do it again. We’ve got some others and if you feel like you could guide me in some way, maybe we can figure out a way for you to be on the podcast. You coach me through a specific element of strategy that is your expertise, your business. That is something I’m open to. So with all that being said and done here is a very special episode of leaders in the trenches where I get coached by the one and only Cameron Herold.

Cameron Herold: So Gene, we were talking just before we decide to go live on this coaching and you give me a little bit of background on the business. Coaching, speaking, podcasts, writing with Inc magazine, you know, general marketing. I’m curious where you’re taking business rather than looking at what you’ve got today and trying to figure out how to make it bigger. Where does it, what’s it look like three years from now?

Gene Hammett: The overall business? I enjoy the coaching so I never want to like let go of that, but I want to be doing more speaking for sure. My wife who is speaking in a different arm of the business, we’ll be doing more speaking, more longer term engagements. Most of the coaching right now, it was probably six months on average, but I’d love to work deeper with clients, maybe only have a handful. One of the things I really love doing about this is developing what I call facilitated workshops, which is when instead of the coaching over six months, maybe you need to, I need to come into six person team or a 10 person team or an executive team and get facilitated workshops on the different areas at which they need the help and support on that in the next three years.

Cameron Herold:What are you charging for coaching right now? Most of my clients come in at six months. Okay.

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…

Gene Hammett: That was a really bad beep, but I didn’t want to broadcast what I am charging per month for my coaching. I wanted to protect you from that because if you think this is something that you want to do to coach with me, a really helps to understand the full context of what it is and how we’d worked together before I just throw out a price. But Cameron goes on with a few more questions that might help you understand how to better change Your coaching practice or your consulting business with the contracts and things that are going on. So here we are back with Cameron.

Cameron Herold: Okay. And what do they get for that?

Gene Hammett: So I, this is the way I describe it. You know, when you work with me, we’re going to work over six months. It’s two calls every month as a requirement. But if you need me in between those times checkins or anything else, it’s really unlimited. But one hard and fast rule I have is you have to fly to Atlanta for a full day experience with me in the beginning that will, we craft the strategy and then we execute that over the next six months.

Cameron Herold: Okay. And then the speaking, what do you charge for that?

Gene Hammett: I get too many times. I get 10,000 I’ve asked 15,000 before. Haven’t gotten that yet as a full experience. I spent most of my time speaking for free over the years.

Cameron Herold: And it’s speaking your lead Gen for you, is that what you’re generating most of your coaching clients from?

Gene Hammett: Yes.

Cameron Herold: So just some rough, rough thoughts around the coaching side of the business. First off, I know we mentioned before you wanted to have a little bit longer tenure with some of your coaching clients, some of the engagement and you’re charging in the right range. I mean I do a 12 month engagement, which I encourage you to just switch to. I just find that by the time we get to six months, we’re just starting to really get in with the client. And I do two, two 90 minute calls a month as well. But I think we’re just starting to kind of get our groove at the six month mark and it feels a shame to have to stop at that point and not be able to continue.

Cameron Herold: So I also get, my clients have to engage 12 months minimum and then they can go monthly afterwards. I let them drop down after 12 months to one coaching call per month with one group call. I’d say half of them dropped down to that half of them third stop, and then another third might continue with the normal engagement, but I would look at at just just telling him that’s what the deal, the deal is 12 months. The reality is you’ll probably get everybody anyway mentioned. It sounds like you really like to be on site with clients. Have you ever looked at, actually instead of having them come to you, just start and have you ever looked at going to them to start, but they pay for you to go?

Gene Hammett: I’ve done that a couple of times. It makes sense when there’s more than three people that I might be starting those conversations with, but I would do it no matter what to for the right client.

Cameron Herold: What sizes are your clients? What size are their companies typically?

Gene Hammett: Typically between a million and 10 million.

Cameron Herold: Okay, so they’ve got employees, right? They’ve got kind of five to 50 employees probably.

Gene Hammett: Yes.

Cameron Herold: Yeah, so I just find that anytime I ended up all, I don’t like going on site with clients, so I’m actually trying to pull away from that. But it sounds like you really liked to be there. My suggestion would really be to look to go onsite with them because it really gives you a lot more visibility into their business, which then tends to translate into a longer term agreement or coaching agreement. I’m actually flying to Florida tomorrow to go to a 10th anniversary of one of my clients. I’ve been coaching he and his executive team for five years now, and he’s my longest term client, but they’re now, they’ve gone from 60 employees to 800 employees and it’s because I’ve been on site every year for five years that I really know that I can draw you a map of their offices and where people sit and there’s something about being on site that really builds tenure. So something to consider.

Cameron Herold: Why the focus on speaking other than it’s great lead Gene.

Gene Hammett: I love doing it. B, it works better than all the other strategies that I do, whether it be podcasting and writing and any other type of lead generation, any type of networking that I’ve done. It’s a bit different experience when you go to an event and you’re speaking versus nonspeaking.

Cameron Herold: Yeah. Do you have a book?

Gene Hammett: I do.

Cameron Herold: What’s your book called?

Gene Hammett: The Trap of Success.

Cameron Herold: And is it tied to your coaching model? Does it, does it sell into your coaching level?

Gene Hammett: You know, it could have done a better job with that in my next book. We’ll definitely do it. This book was something that I wanted to get out about the story that happened to me through my other business and the experience I had. Looking back that business about 5 million and losing everything, you know, a lot of people have appreciated my honesty and humility would saying, look I ran a company into the ground. Here’s what I learned about that and myself and all of the things I did rebuild that were a part of the model inside of it. And I use pieces inside my coaching all the time, whether it be fear or even today I had a client that was more reactive than proactive.

Cameron Herold: How many, how many copies of that book, Trap of Success or seating in inventory right now?

Gene Hammett: Because it’s on create space, I probably have four.

Cameron Herold: Right? So what I want you to do is look at doing a rewrite of that book as well as doing your new book. But there’s no reason why you can’t do, and we’ve a few little points into every chapter about your speaking about your coaching that they kind of move you into that model. What’s your cost per book with CreateSpace?

Gene Hammett: 432

Cameron Herold: Okay, so after our show, if you’re interested, I’ll introduce you to the group at scribe. It used to be called book in a box. I’ve done three of my books with them. I’m one of their advisors as well. But my cost per book with them hard copy is a dollar 60 and the reason I bring this up is every single speaking event that I do, every single person in the audience gets a book.

Cameron Herold: And the way that I do this is after I land the speaking event, not during negotiations, but right afterwards, about a week later I kind of send up this little odd gee shucks email. It’s like, oh crap, I totally forgot to ask you about books. How many people will be in your audience? I can give everybody a copy of the book for $10 including shipping. About half the groups come back and go, 300 people. That would be great. Then I get another three grand. Everybody gets a book of the 50% that say, no, we can’t afford it. I go back to them and I say, I’ll tell you what, how about $5 a book including shipping and because my cost per books a buck 60 and shipping is a dollar, I still make two 50 a book, so I voted no. The third say yes to that. The last group that says, no, we have no budget left.

Cameron Herold: I then say, you know what? Everybody in the audience is getting a book. My treat, how many are there? I’m shipping them out because now my real profit per book comes in at around $4 $5 per book, but every single speaking event to every audience, regardless of size, gets a copy of the book. That’s my biggest marketing and has been for the last six years. For the first three years that my first book double double came out. I didn’t do that. I would sell 10 copies of the book at the event, I’d make 200 bucks and I was thinking I was doing well, but it was really short sighted in that I heard a saying about six years ago and it tweaked me. All speakers die broke and it’s because most speakers don’t have a backend model, nor are they giving a marketing tool like a book to everyone in their audience, nor is a book really leading them to all of their programs and courses and coaching.

Cameron Herold: So I think what you want to do with, with trap of success is go through and take a look, grab a copy off Amazon of this book. It’s something around podcasting by Paul Culligan. I can find it for you afterwards. If you need to just grab his book. It’s an average book on podcasting, but it’s an unbelievable book on how he in every chapter has you going to landing pages to get all these free resources he’s giving away and he’s building his list. He’s building his marketing and it’s selling all of his stuff, but you might have an opportunity with Trap of Success to weave some of your stuff into it and then you use it as a friend and marketing tool but get a copy of every event that I would look at flipping from crate space into book in a box or in described for sure. The next thing I would look at doing is really looking at each audience as do you use a text back, your audiences when you speak also to text a code in?

Gene Hammett: I do. I did it last week. It worked pretty good.

Cameron Herold: Yeah. I usually get about 30-35% of the audience. If you pitch them in the right way, you’ll get 35% of them will sign up to your list and you get your email address and their phone number. It’s all now the key is to put them into a funnel and then dripped to them on the other things that you’re offering.

Cameron Herold:Do you have any kind of an online course or any other products or is it just, is the difference, is it Your Book and then coaching?

Gene Hammett: So recently I’ve done products before, but I thought about increasing the value of the speech and everybody wants the speech to last longer than the hour on stage. So I have created what I would call growth leadership is what I call what I’m doing. I focused on studying fast growth companies and I focused on the leadership and culture aspect of that. So the book will probably be something related to growth leadership. The course I offer from this really is, I’m gonna say this and maybe, maybe I should shift it a little bit, but I offered to the audience, what’s your number one thing you’re taking out of today? And we discussed that a little bit. And I go, I find that a lot of people want support with that one thing. They want to help be accountable. They want, they want more content to go deeper with it.

Gene Hammett: What if you, what if I could help you individually? And they would like, oh yeah, of course we’d love that. And so I said, well text this number gimme your your email address and then I will get your number one issue. So like one guy said, I want to take, I want my employees to take more ownership. It’s a big part of my message. And so literally he gets six emails over the next three days about increasing more ownership and it’s a video and an article that I’ve gotten just for them. I do record the videos individually, not in individually by person, but individually by event. Right? So if I have the people

Cameron Herold: Are they paying for this?

Gene Hammett: No it’s just a a value ad, get them on the list, drip out content. Hopefully they appreciate it, but they also are there.

Cameron Herold: But when they’re on your list, what are you selling them?

Gene Hammett: The first 30 days is really just about that one, whatever that one issue is,

Cameron Herold: Right? But know what are you selling them? What are they paying you for? Like when you’ve got them on your list, like you’ve done your speaking. Pretty in list and you’re giving them all this content is the only other thing you can sell them a book or your coaching.

Gene Hammett: Yes.

Cameron Herold: You need some other stuff. It needs some other stuff. How many downloads do you get per episode? Right now? Between 1 thousand to 2 thousand.

Cameron Herold: You have to find some ways to monetize some stuff. Otherwise that trap of every speaker dies. Broke is the future, right? Like we have to find them. And the other part is how many coaching clients can you have at once? What’s your cuban cop?

Gene Hammett: I’m right now at eight I think I could do more but I feel like I feel the stress of having eight and speaking and…

Cameron Herold: Yes, I’m at 17 and I used to do about 35 speaking events a year and I brought that down to 12 and I met 17 coaching clients right now and I’m like shit. Like I’ve got to really be careful with getting too many, especially when I go away on vacation. And it’s like, now I’ve got to give away a whole month, but really, really, really, really, really look at your, what’s your business look like when it’s bigger because, and how can you build in some extra extra components? I think you might have some opportunities. You know, Jay Conrad Levinson wrote Guerrilla marketing.

Gene Hammett: I’ve met him before.

Cameron Herold: Do you remember the book? Right? Guerrilla marketing. When he died, he had 180,000 people paying him $2 a month to be on his fax list to get a weekly facts. Now, it sounds small, but 180,000 people at $2 a month is $360,000 a month.

Cameron Herold: It’s $4 million a year with one person running it. You might have that opportunity because of your podcast to be marketing this $2 a month or $4 a month or $5 a month thing because of your texting to sign up for this $5 a month thing and you’ll do a speaking event and like 12 people sign up and they’ll be like, this is dumb, but that’s 60 bucks and then you’ll do another one next month and we another 60 bucks. Like if you start it now, an ad like this, 12 people a month or a hundred people a month signing up. It seems really stupid until all of a sudden it’s like rice on the checkerboard, but that might be what you can build out and then you market to it on your podcast. I would take your 400 podcast episodes, have them transcribe using rev.com and send those out as your weeklies.

Cameron Herold: You got eight years of content right there.

Gene Hammett: Yeah, we do get it transcribed right now and we just put it down there as a part of the SEO.

Cameron Herold: You’re right. So imagine if that can be your emails that go out now, but people, but it’s a paid list to be done. Gene’s list, right? The trap of success email list. It’s amazing. I have a former client of mine who I coached for a couple of years, Bob Glazer, who’s got 65,000 people that subscribed to his Friday forward email right now. If you could kind of morph into that being your offer and you have to make it this irresistible offer that people can’t like, it’s almost dumb not to sign up for five bucks a month. You don’t go to 27 bucks a month because then it’s a decision but and then you just have them on your auto.

ADVERTISEMENT: Before we jump into the content, let me just remind you that today’s podcast is brought to you by audible. If you like to listen to podcasts, you probably liked to listen to audible books and I want to give you a free 30 day trial and all you have to do is use this URL, which is audibletrial.com/leadersinthetrenches. That’s the name of the podcast. Just go there. You can buy any book you want and love for you to buy the trap of success. That’s my book that came out earlier this past year, and if you want to get the 30 day trial, just go to audibletrial.com/leadersinthetrenches and back to the show.

Gene Hammett: Now, when I think about, I mean, we’re overloaded with content, right? I’m overloaded up…

Gene Hammett: When you don’t create new content, get all that content you’ve got and repurpose it. Now, I would also look to say, why are you doing some of the content you’re doing? Like is the Inc, what do you, what do you pay to contribute for anchor? What’s it costing you to be a writer and have a copywriter or a person helping with you?

Gene Hammett: I’ve got a special relationship. I don’t pay anything.

Cameron Herold: We’ve got a writer who helps you, correct?

Gene Hammett: Yup.

Cameron Herold: What’s it costs you monthly to have somebody help you with your six articles a month?

Gene Hammett: Nothing. They wanted the experience and it’s a strategic relationship and so it makes sense.

Cameron Herold: Okay. So there’s no cost there, so the Roi is fine.

Gene Hammett: Yeah, and I make a little bit of money, but it’s not enough to have date night on.

Cameron Herold: Right. But imagine if that ink articles also led to your email list. Imagine if your podcasts led to your email list. Imagine if your podcast transcripts, podcasts, shownotes led your email list. You’re speaking led your email list, and that email list was a monetize list?

Gene Hammett: Yeah.

Cameron Herold: That’s where it, because what happens is speaking gets old, like being on the road gets old. I’ve done paid speaking events now in 28 countries on six continents and it, it’s just, it’s fun, but you get to a point where it’s like, I don’t know, unless maybe I didn’t have kids and I can just travel around the world, right. In the coaching clients. But it gets in the way of stuff too, right?

Gene Hammett: Yeah. I never want to be like 50 or 60 I think 20 is about the right number for me.

Cameron Herold: 20 is the right number of the problem with it though is when you have 20 it’s hard to have 10 or 15 coaching clients.

Gene Hammett: Yeah.

Cameron Herold: And if you’re, if you’re making 60,000 a hundred thousand per year per coaching client or 30 let’s see, you’re making 60,000 a year for coaching client, you can get them to 12 months. You want to have more coaching clients and less speaking events cause you’re only getting or you gotta raise your speaking fee.

Gene Hammett: Right. And which I would do if I, as I get traction,

Cameron Herold:I think you just do, I think you just start charging 15 and started like 15 plus travel. Do you charge plus travel?

Gene Hammett: Yes.

Cameron Herold: Did you have a fixed travel or do you invoice them on what you exactly we spent,

Gene Hammett: I usually go into it knowing will about what it is and I can just do a fixed,

Cameron Herold: I do a $2,000 fix travel by boat and then if it’s international they paid my flights and hotels. But I would look at, I would look at building in some other continuity and really extending your coaching out.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. I mean I’ve, I’ve tried to think about how best to do that to provide the value. I do give away so much stuff and I think it really is valuable. So yeah, and it takes time to create more content.

Cameron Herold: Well, I think what’s hard when you’re a thought leader is people come to us for advice and it’s hard for us to say no to them because we want to help them. Have you signed up for clarity, clarity.fm

Gene Hammett: I did a long time ago and I got a few calls out of it. Nothing ever turned into any kind of longterm.

Cameron Herold: Here’s how you use clarity. I felt him. Yeah, we sign up for your account, raise your price so that it’s like $100 an hour or whatever, $200 an hour, whatever you want to charge. 500 bucks an hour. I’d even priced yourself at like 500 bucks an hour on clarity. Anyone who comes to you with those quick random questions say, sure, here’s where you can sign up for me, and you send them to clarity link.

Gene Hammett: Yeah.

Cameron Herold: Half the people will sign up and pay and the other half will run away and it just makes it real simple. You don’t have to negotiate your prices anymore, or your EA, your assistant send to that and goes, yeah, Gene left to talk to you, here’s where you sign up for his call. Sure. And then if they balk at the price, you go, Dude, my, My coaching price is 1200 bucks an hour. Like you’re getting me for half price for this quick call. So yeah. And then it, it really, it just, it frees up time, but it also allows us to get paid.

Gene Hammett: I don’t do a lot of that right now. I have offered whatever it is for people to engage with me. I look at that as more of a kind of a get to know person, but also moved them into a more of a sales conversation works. But it doesn’t work as efficiently as I want it to.

Cameron Herold: Yeah. I think we’ve got to start to value our time differently where we look at, you know, you are good, you’ve got coaching clients, you’ve got track record, you’ve got a podcast with great, great success. Now it’s just you just have to honor yourself and charge for it. I never had the confidence when I was strict first starting this 12 years ago to actually charge for some of the things I charged for now. In fact, even my first speaking events I was doing for free and somebody like, you should put her a bureau. I’m like, why would a bureau represent me like nobody would pay? So I went and talked to a bureau and they’re like, what? What’s your speaking fee? I’m like, I dunno, five grand. And they’re like, yeah, we can’t represent you. And I’m like, see, I knew you wouldn’t. They were like, yeah, you don’t charge enough.

Cameron Herold: You have to charge 10 grand or we won’t represent you. I’m like, if you can get someone to pay 10 grand for me, let’s do it. A week later they came back, we’ve, yeah, we got someone for 10 grand. I’m like, Shit, you’re kidding. Now I’m 30 right. So you, but I think you have to get to a point where you just decide, just decide to charge and then you build your marketing to support that. Everyone gets a book. That’ll be the big one for you when every single person at every single speaking event gets a hard copy cover of your book. That’s what starts to grow your brand as real.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. I give, I give away a lot of the books that for gigs like that and I mean I’ve factored into the fee sometimes. Sometimes they just want to buy it, so I do that. It’d be just not every time.

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I would flip it. Flip your model so that you don’t build it into the fee anymore and you go back to them a week later and try to sell it to them and then you reduce the sales price. Then you’d give it to them.

Gene Hammett: Okay.

Cameron Herold: Again, there’s value that right, they should pay for that.

Gene Hammett: What about the whole course thing? Cause that’s pretty interesting because I’ve done different kinds of courses before and in this, this space we work with similar types of companies. You said something like the trap of success program or something.

Cameron Herold: I’m nervous about courses and I can’t speak from experience with it. Although I’m working, I’m working with the guy, Johnathan Levy to actually get one produced. I’m going to use the platform Thinkific. That’s the model I’m going to go towards, but I’m not sure that, could I rewind the clock and go back 12 years would have built in this weekly email.

Gene Hammett: So it’s not a course, it’s just a weekly email that…

Cameron Herold: Oh, I would, if I could, I would go back and do a weekly email versus of course. I think because there’s so much content available online now and so many other courses we’re competing with that I think unless our brand is strong enough, I worry that we’re not going to get the pickup on it and we’re going to spend 30 grand building at all. You know, going into studio green screen, postproduction paying for a platform, doing the marketing to it.

Cameron Herold: You know what I’ve done in terms of a pivot and I hate that term, which is weird that I even used it, but what I’m doing in my long game is realizing that one to one coaching is great and very profitable, but it doesn’t scale. Right. And speaking is great and it can be profitable and it gets greatly agenda. It doesn’t scale. So I’m building out the COO alliance right as this network of second in commands cause everyone’s targeting entrepreneurs. So I’m targeting the second in command. And then I’ve also got this second in command podcast where I’m now interviewing only the second in commands and companies. Everyone wants to interview the CEO. I want to, I want the rest of the story. So I’m trying to build that network out where it can operate without me so that I can continue to do coaching and continued to speaking. But they don’t have to be the whole reason for waking up in the morning.

Gene Hammett: When I first saw that with you, because I’ve been following for a long time and we engaged, we, I don’t know if you remember, we did an interview that one of the only ones that didn’t publish because of the technology failed. But I, when I first heard you doing the COO alliance, I immediately thought, what a smart idea because everyone, like, I know you say it and you’ve said it before, but I pick up over an immediately, everyone’s going after CEO, including mate. He went after a different group with his experience. And I’m just like, what’s that for me? And I haven’t come up with it.

Cameron Herold: Well, what’s interesting is I also recognize, well it might be these onsite course kind of things that you’re talking about it, there might be something there. But what I started to recognize was we’re training the CEO. And I even had my, one of my newest coaching clients the other day, he said, are you going to try to train me to be a CEO? And I said, no, I’m going to train you so that you know what needs to get done and then I’m going to train your COO on how to do it. And I think we’ve been trying to teach entrepreneurs to be operators and they’re not, they’re not supposed to be. It’s like taking me when I was in grade 10 and I sucked at French and getting the a French tutor, that was stupid.

Cameron Herold: I don’t even like French people now. Right? Like it’s so, but if they’d said, well you’re a good cause. I wasn’t public speaking competitions in grade school. Imagine if they got me a public speaking coach instead of a tutor. And I think we’re trying to train these CEOs to be something they’re not. Instead of saying, let’s teach you what needs to happen in your company at a high level, but then let me get to your team and teach them. And maybe that’s where your coaching engagements go from six months to two years for the same price. I’m going to be coaching people how to build your company and I’m going to teach you what needs to happen.

Gene Hammett: That’s kind of what I’ve been building in with the facilitated workshops. So one of them I have is called the ownership workshop because I didn’t have a fancy name for it. But

Cameron Herold: All you need is a brand on it was great. I don’t know. I don’t, I hate fucking names on my shit. I should, but that’s good.

Gene Hammett: But I delivered it to one of my clients who need it. We’re account managers to take more ownership to the work. And they’re not used to sales, but they’re still responsible for growing the value of an account. And so I came in there and talked about what those issues were and we, I facilitated it. They were creating the content for me. I just provided a framework and it worked fantastically. And so I did that like five or six more times. Love it. And then I’ve added other pieces to it that make that more powerful. But that’s, and I want to be able to do, create those facilitated workshops and have other people deliver them.

Cameron Herold: Right? And that can be scalable, right? So I think that’s where I want you to think about your business is less about how do we make what we have bigger and more. Let’s lean out into the future and look at a company that we want to build and then let’s reverse engineer that. And how do we leverage what we have to make that happen? Because again, you need to leverage your book better. You need to get your second book and have it as a marketing tool. You need to look at your speaking events and you’re texting as a platform for something versus, wow, I did a speaking event and I made 10 grand. Let me do 20 speaking events. I’ll make 200 that’s so shortsighted for us in terms of what we really could get out of it, right? Instead, if we could say, wow, we’re going to, we’re going to speak to 20 events with a hundred people on average per event, that’s 2000 people, but we’re going to get 35% of them to sign up for our list and we’re going to get half of those to sign up for five bucks a month.

Cameron Herold: Now all of a sudden, we’re at 700 people. We’re at 350 people at five bucks a month. We’re at 15,000 a month. That’s 200 grand a year in recurring revenue and now add that up year after year. That’s way better than being a speaker.

Gene Hammett: Yeah.

Cameron Herold: The whole thing with Jay Conrad Levinson that blew my brains was 180,000 people paying him $2 a month to receive a fax every week and he didn’t have to do any of it. He had somebody pulling together stuff from his speaking, from his videos, from this media, editing it, pushing it out the door, probably cost them 100 bucks a week to push something out. Bob’s your uncle five grand to make $4 million a year. That guy and his book targeted. It hits everything pushed towards this little thing that nobody saw him. No one saw it coming.

Gene Hammett: Now you mentioned, because I have a book called the trap of success and I love the book. It’s gotten great reviews and it really is represents me, but it doesn’t lead people the way through the model of my coaching. Well as it could.

Cameron Herold: Yeah, so go back and just drop in some stuff into all the chapters like you’ve got every book goes through a couple of versions. Call this version three of the same book and tie some stuff into it. You don’t change the name or anything, just weave it in.

Gene Hammett: And would it be better to take this concept of growth leadership or growth culture that I’ve been working with that’s most of my speaking is right now is on this gross. I studied the Inc5000 to over 300 interviews with these companies. And you were probably won’t be surprised by this, but a lot of people don’t think it’s true, but fast growing companies put employees first. And, and most people don’t get that when I say that,

Cameron Herold: but when I have my clients set their goals, it’s employee net promoter score, first customer, net promoter score, second profit, third revenue for it. Everyone does it backwards. Where they focused on revenue and customer. That’s Bass ackwards. If you focused on employees, super happy employees, they’ll take care of the customers, they’ll take care of that business. It wouldn’t got it backwards.

Gene Hammett: That’s, that’s the model of which I work with through my speaking into that. And I think the book will, would really highlight that. I could probably come up with the book fairly fast, but I also want to make it short, sorta. Then my current list,

Gene Hammett: This is where it’s worth working with scribe because you just get to walk around it and talk and they’ll pull all the content out of your head. You can send them some transcripts, some of your, your solo episodes from your shows. They can pull that content in. They craft it and turned it into a book. Like even when I wrote my book meeting stock, it was originally supposed to be for leaders on how to run meetings and they’re like, no, but what about all the people that need to show up and learn and participate in the meeting? Let’s make a third of the book just on how to participate and be in a meeting. I’m like, fuck, that’s huge. They took, they opened the door up. Now people buy a hundred at a time instead of one at a time.

Gene Hammett: Yeah, and that’s what I want to do with, I think that next book would be that type of book.

Cameron Herold: Well. So I would do both. I would get trap of success redone really quickly so that you know, your next book’s coming out next week can weave into your list, can weave into your marketing, can talk about your coaching, you dropped some stuff in and then you know, even talking about your podcast, right? And it can be like pss on certain pages, whatever. It can be an appendix, it can be mentioned in a couple of chapters and then do your second book to really be that kind of a solid marketing book and delivering value.

Gene Hammett: Now the where I was kind of, I got lost in this cause I was trying to give you context so I’ll just get right to the point, the $5 per month email. So when you think about the people that you’re serving, is it a short email with high impact or does it lengthen them to articles or is it like kind of a video or, I mean, how do you see that?

Cameron Herold: I see it as either a video from you or content from your podcasts or content from your stuff that is just being shared so that they’re getting kind of your insights, these trap of success insights on a weekly basis so they don’t get trapped and it’s gotta be sound bites gotta be digestible and you don’t send them a fucking newspaper like it’s, you don’t want to send them a book like this is a half page to a full page of content Max.

Cameron Herold: Would that mean you would do away with my Solo episode?

Cameron Herold: No, I’d send that to, maybe that’s a link. Every email there’s a solo episode gets attached to it.

Gene Hammett: Okay.

Cameron Herold: But the only people that get this email is the, is your, you know your list.

Gene Hammett: Right? The ones that are paying them the $5 fee.

Cameron Herold: And again you’ll get like 50 people sign up for it and be like, Oh God, I’ve only got 50 people. I’m making 250 bucks a week. But then the next week you’ll get 10 more and then you get 10 more and then all of a sudden look at what happens when you get 10 people a week. Right?

Gene Hammett: Yeah. I like it. The challenge is how do I create something that is insightful that people.

Cameron Herold: That’s not the challenge. And you just told me you have 400 podcast episodes, you could get it transcribed. So you’ve got 400 you’ve got enough content there and you’ve got a bunch of the solo episodes that you’ve done and you’ve got probably speaking events, the youth film to end. You’ve got a book that can be stripped down into chapters.

Gene Hammett: Yup. So that’s all free now except for the book.

Cameron Herold: But it doesn’t come to them in a format that they’re getting dripped with.

Gene Hammett: Okay. Like don’t just like taking the account today. And I realize too, part of my business, I’m more reactive than proactive.

Cameron Herold: Let’s put it this way. Jay Conrad Levinson was definitely sending out stuff from guerrilla marketing in his weekly emails to people.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. So don’t, don’t get caught up with the fact that it’s already out there.

Cameron Herold: Will have to be new. No, not at all. But people need to get it in a different way.

Gene Hammett: Okay.

Cameron Herold: And I would try to do it in a way that doesn’t take up. It doesn’t create work for yourself.

Gene Hammett: I have a team that repurposes everything now so we could just add to the process of this is going to be repurposed in this way

Cameron Herold: And you can get them to come up with, you know, 26 emails before you get started. So you okay. I can see how this is all going to work.

Gene Hammett: Yeah, I could definitely do.

Cameron Herold: Like when I launched the second in command podcast on Itunes, before we went alive, I had 10 episodes already recorded, all the design stuff. So then it was like one a week, but I had 10 produced and I was like, shit, I gotta get some more produced. Right. So now I’d just like interview three or four people and I’ve always got a backlog as long as I always have for shows that are in the cam that I’ve done the recording. I know we have enough buffer. Same thing. You just always have like just always have 10 emails prewritten so that you don’t get worried.

Gene Hammett: Right. I’m eight weeks have had on the podcast now.

Cameron Herold: Right. So you could, you’ve got so much content that can be repurposed into an email list. Could be huge.

Gene Hammett: Now I guess that the…

Cameron Herold: And again, your books have to drive towards your coaching more and then you have to extend your coaching model so that it’s 12 months, not six, just like 600 per sale. You know, it’s like, it’s like going to a steak restaurant and asking for a burger. Like I want on a burger that we don’t serve burgers. Well, I want one. We can’t have one here in a stage restaurant. Like I want six months coaching. That’s cool. But that’s not what I do. I do 12 months coaching.

Gene Hammett: Yeah, I’m pretty cool. I mean, when I moved to six months, it wasn’t a big deal for me. When changed prices, it hasn’t been a big deal. I know the value which I offer for my clients. I mean, I’ve got seven clients now that are an Inc5000 list.

Cameron Herold: I’m at the stage now where it’s going to end. It’s coming soon that all of my coaching clients have to give me a piece of the company, either equity or upside or Senator Kerry money that they raise. But one of my clients raised $255 million from Warburg Pincus. And if I asked him now for 1% of that money, he’d say no way. But if five years ago I’d said I want 1% of any of the money you raised in addition to my feet as he would have said. Yeah, cause he was going to think, oh maybe I’ll raise 10 million. Great, I’ll give the guy a hundred grand. Right. You didn’t realize you were gonna raise $255 million. That would be a two point $5 million check for me. And I met at the confidence stage now and the supply demand curve is high enough that I can start asking for more without being greedy. But I have no upside. They’re like coached one of my clients from 3.6 million to 52 million in four years and he turned to me and he goes, it’s amazing. I’m happy to pay you 80 grand a year for coaching, but you grew my company from a $3 million value to a $50 million value and you have no upside. Right. So I think that’s the other thing to consider is how do we, how do we build some upside into our programs as well?

Gene Hammett: I am thought about that and I’ve talked about it a few times, but I’ve never, no one’s ever took me up on it. Willing to play in those areas

Cameron Herold: For sure. Create a one page or like I’m now working on a one pager with terms where I have some rough deal terms I’m thinking through and then I’ve talked to some people that have done it and I’ve asked. So it’s part of my vivid vision now is how do I kind of craft all this? That’s why I said it’s coming soon as I’m starting to think now. That’s how I can counter might demand because my brand is big enough and then you just take some of your money and you spend it more on your brand. Right

Cameron Herold: Now, I know a big part of what you’ve done is through the speaking through Eo and Ypo and I’ve done a couple of EO events. I think I would short list for a YPO event here in Atlanta and it didn’t work out. Is that a good path for you? Think? For me?

Cameron Herold: It can be. Vistage is a really great network to break into as well. If you, if you want to go and speak at their smaller groups, they can transfer pretty nicely. Again, it depends on where you’re going. Right. What do you like stick? The Cheshire Cat said if we don’t know where we’re going, any road will take us there. So where are you growing your business? Ypo is tough to break into, but they don’t have any built in coaching model. They have the money that about the right client size. For me it’s a bullseye, like they all have CEO’s. Vistage for me is less of a model because they have a coach built into their model already. Their chairs coach their members.

Gene Hammett: And that’s what I’m probably, I’ve run into as well.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. But if you had a list, if you had a, uh, an email campaign and it’s something that it can scale out. Bureaus for me have been effective, but I’d probably get like four or five events a year from bureaus and it’s just because I’m charging enough now that they can make a reasonable fee, but it’s not core to my strategy. But they take the money and thanks as well.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. The Vistage model pays quite differently than, than Eo or Ypo.

Cameron Herold: Uh, so I don’t speak at Vistage groups. I only spoke with the all city events and executive summits for Vistage and they were paying me 58,000 plus travel.

Gene Hammett: Okay.

Cameron Herold: And the group’s only pay a maximum of 1500 if you’ve got a big brand, normally a thousand. And the other thing that has been really, really helpful for me with my brand and then we’ve got to wrap up because I’m at the top of the hour is joining groups yourself to be a member of the group, so I’m a member of the genius network. I’ve gone at mastermind talks five times. I go to the main Ted conference every year. I had found it three baby bathwater events. I’m going to a war room event next month. I’ve gone to three maverick events, so I’ve been in, Oh, I’ve been seven years in strategic coach, so because I’m in these mastermind groups, I’m surrounding myself with thought leaders and with business owners that are thinking about growth and I either find clients from from being there or really rapidly accelerates my growth of my business. That might be something for you as well as to look to get involved in a couple of groups.

Gene Hammett: I’m done some of this stuff before, but I haven’t, you know, I didn’t do the genius network or being on the road now it’s gotten, it’s very difficult. I don’t really go unless I’m getting paid.

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I go to, but I brought in almost a million dollars in revenue from the genius network just by attending and all of a sudden these people hire me because I become the expert in the room.

Gene Hammett: Yeah.

Cameron Herold: So I went to abundance three 60 this year and I picked up a coaching client and I was there with five when my current clients that were their strategic coach, I landed a couple of clients for the COO alliance. The only event that I haven’t landed coaching clients from yet is Ted and undergoing this April to the end of the main Ted and that’s probably more for cache than it is for generating clients, although I’ll probably get some guests for the COO alliance this year. Is that helpful?

Gene Hammett: It is. I mean it definitely gives me something to think about what I should be doing with the brand and the money. May I like the $5 idea, I guess just by dollar a month. It’s just, I never thought of it.

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I like ripping off and duplicating. Right. Figure it out. I just take some best ideas from other people that are, as long as they’re easy to execute on and they, and they’re consistent with my brand and what I’m building and they still drive my core purpose, which is helping entrepreneurs make their dreams happen, then it all works.

Gene Hammett: What would you call it? Like it doesn’t have to be the trap of success. If my next book is going to be growth leadership, would you more align it toward that or would you…

Cameron Herold: Yeah, I would align it to what you’re building. What we felt like everything for me now is related to the second in command. The second in command podcast. I’m even considering rebranding with COO alliance as the second command. The, because some of the members are president, VP ops, you know, GM, some are CEO’s even kind of playing with that. So yeah, I would think about what you’re building and then work towards that.

Gene Hammett: Alright. Grows leadership is really the future of the business. Yeah. Fantastic. Any other questions or thoughts?

Cameron Herold: No, I’m good at. And now that you reminded me that our episode didn’t go live, we should, um, we should do one with me being interviewed on your podcast coming up.

Gene Hammett: I did put you on for the meetings that don’t suck. And I know you’ve got one on PR now, so we could, we could do that one if you want to.

Cameron Herold: I’d love to. That’s been a really big success too. That was, um, I coauthored that with one of my former coaching clients. Done really well.

Gene Hammett: Congratulations on getting that out.

Cameron Herold: What’s the number one more books sold in the first week than any other book that book in a box is put out so far?

Gene Hammett: Can you share the number or is it it’s big. It’s big.

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: It puts you on a Wall Street journalist or

Cameron Herold: uh, no, and we’re not, we weren’t even trying for that. I just wanted to write a really good book so I’m not playing the game of buying, you know, that’s a really bad position where you really have to snake around marketing and PR or marketing. Yeah. But no, it’s, but it’s been solid.

Gene Hammett: I didn’t know if you just had enough kind of grew that.

Cameron Herold: Oh, we got lucky with it. No, it’s not quite there.

Gene Hammett: All right, well I’d love to have you on the podcast to talk about it. I’m still trying to figure out how I best leverage the work I do for Inc because it is, it is a lot of work. I do ride a light a lot about new books coming out. Actually just published one today that had sets new book in it. Horst Schulze thing from Ritz-Carlton. Right.

Cameron Herold: I think you’re in cost to drive back towards either a course or back to your email list so that those leaders, those people are getting possibly marketed to.

Gene Hammett: It’s difficult because links inside of ink articles are very hard to get.

Cameron Herold: Well, it can be a byline that can be like your author name is like the, you know, can be Gene Hammett of the trap of success. Email something. Right? It’s something that they’ll look you up. Otherwise it might be one of those dogs that you have to shoot. Right.

Gene Hammett: It may be at one point in time I was ready to give it up because I didn’t have the right writer on my team and now that I do, it’s a lot smoother. It opens up a tremendous amount of doors

Cameron Herold: Then do it then that is, that’s why you do it. But then I would look at repurposing that like do you push that out? You know you push every article out three times on Facebook, three times on Linkedin, three times on Facebook. Do you email it out to your entire list? Is it linked back to your press page on your website?

Gene Hammett: We don’t do all of that cause I did a bunch of that most. They do all the repurposing my content. So I just pick and choose like the podcast, every episode we have, we do Instagram videos and we do linkedin videos, Twitter, everything’s going out, we’re paying Facebook ads. I even got retargeted by some of your stuff. Is that working well for you?

Cameron Herold: Working really well? I’ve been using ad roll and it’s just dead simple to use.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. I had Ad-roll on there and I meant to install it. So you’re getting a payback on it.

Cameron Herold: It’s irresponsible not to do it because the only people that I pay, so I don’t pay unless you click on the ad. So the fact that you’re seeing all those ads, it doesn’t cost me a penny. I’m only paying if you click on. So all those impressions of what you’re seeing and everybody else is just seeing, just they keep reminding themselves. That made I spent $250 a month

Gene Hammett: And that would be a good thing to use to bring people back to the $5 a month.

Cameron Herold: Yeah, exactly.

Gene Hammett: Figured that out. All right.

Cameron Herold: All right man. Good luck.

Gene Hammett: All right, appreciate it Cameron.

Gene Hammett: Let’s help us send me a link when this goes live.

Gene Hammett: Okay, I will.

Cameron Herold: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: All right, so I got coached and I have recorded this just you know, a few days before it actually going launched. I’m lost for words there. I was looking back at listen to the episode. I have already been working on many of the things that are done now. There was a lot inside here that I have not been able to get to. I have not figured out how to get my book produce cheaper. So that’s one of the things I want to do. I have not actually launched the $7 a month program that I want to, but I have the keys in place there, but I have to, there’s a lot of things that are going on outside of that that have to line up before that’s going to be launched out. So that’s, that’s coming. I’m still planning on changing the name of the podcast from leaders in the trenches to something else to better align with those that are growing fast. The Inc 500 stay tuned for that. And I am really excited about reaching more people through coaching.

Gene Hammett: I’m shifting a little bit the speaking and uh, trying to refine the business in, in major ways. So I am not the only one is going through growth in this moment. We have more opportunities than we can actually handle here in the company with me and my wife. It is something that we’re juggling all the time and we’re trying to figure out how not to miss these opportunities, but how to say no to the right things, how to say yes or hell yes to the right things and to create the kind of momentum that we need to build the life and impact we want with our business. So all that being said and done, if you are have enjoyed this episode, I want to know what impact it made for you. If you’re listening right now and you’re committed and it wouldn’t to know how you’re committed, I will hold you accountable.

Gene Hammett: If I’m doing something special with listeners of this, send me an email, [email protected] it really will help you grow your business. There’s no cost for this, but it is something that you could actually be a part of with me if you are so inclined. If you’ve listened all the way to this point, it is just for you because I know you’re committed to growth. So just email me. [email protected] Mentioned this episode, mentioned this call to action specifically on accountability, and we’ll talk about what’s next for you as always lead with courage. We’ll see next time.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Business of Coaching
• Dangers of Speaking
• Core of a Business Model
• Getting Ready for Professional World
• Strategic Coaching

Resources 

• Best of Leaders in the Trenches Podcast Episodes
• Share the LOVE and TWEET about this episode.

A QUICK FAVOR

And lastly, please leave a rating and review for the Leaders in the Trenches on iTunes (or Stitcher) – it will help us in many ways, but it also inspires us to keep doing what we are doing here. Thank you in advance!

If you want more from us check out more interviews:

Transformational Leadership
Productivity Tips
Best Selling Author Interviews

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | https://www.youtube.com/user/leadersinthetrenches