The 5 Stories That Generate Free Press for Your Business with Cameron Herold

Cameron: [00:00:00] So the more that you focus on revenue coming in the door right, more gross margin coming in the door, the more that you're gonna be able to buy your way out of every problem later
Cameron: but it's not by building the better mouse trap. So resist the urge to have a better program or a better model, or better systems none of that stuff. Is as important as more revenue coming in the door.
Intro: You are listening to the seven-Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Rieman.
Dustin: How do you scale a profitable business that's based on your expertise without feeling trapped in the business? So I have one of the world's leading experts on answering that question and how to, effectively build a team around you to, help you scale a business without losing the soul of what makes it so special [00:01:00] and without losing the profitability.
Dustin: So, Cameron Harold is here. extremely excited to have Cameron as a guest. First taste I think of, Cameron's work was I was reading The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs by Elrod, who's a fellow front row dad. And there was one chapter in there about this thing called a Vivid vision. And if you've ever heard of a vivid vision, this man is responsible for, that term and for all the power that's behind it.
Dustin: And he wrote an entire book about it, which I. Subsequently went and devoured. And you know, Cameron's went on to write six different books from Vivid Vision to second in Command. He host a podcast called Second in Command, and I think a lot of us may know, Cameron's story through 1-800- GOT-JUNK where he, was involved in the early days there and it helped scale that service base business from 2 million to over a hundred million in revenue.
Dustin: So, Cameron, I'm really excited to dig in here today and. Particularly focus on your expertise about helping solo or or small. Expert based businesses scale in a way that really keeps the soul and keeps the [00:02:00] profitability of the company. So thanks so much for being here.
Cameron: Hey, Dustin. You're welcome. Glad to do it.
Dustin: Yeah. So I, I think I've set the context here, and so I think , the best place to start here if, someone's listening, and they are in that seat, and I know you've, built a whole. Company in this same model, called the COO Alliance, which I'm sure we'll get into as sort of a live case study.
Dustin: Where do we start? So if I'm sitting here, say, I'm generating multiple six figures, it's just me. I've got a coaching or a consulting practice that I'm, I'm really proud of, but I realize that I'm wearing all the hats and I really don't know what that first step is to be able to start to, get some scale here.
Dustin: So where would you suggest that we start?
Cameron: I'm gonna go into a couple of different directions really quickly that I think will Spider Web out for us. The first is, it's really important to look at your pricing and looking at your revenue. You know, even if I rolled back the camera to the 1-800-GOT-JUNK days, the first thing I did in the company when I got there was raise our prices by 40%.
Cameron: And the reason I did that was no one was making enough money. No one was, there wasn't enough margin to pay the bills. [00:03:00] For most people that are in that kind of consulting coaching space, when they're a company of one or just getting ready to scale, they're often not charging enough. And let me explain how this works.
Cameron: If you are in that space, only 30% of the time is someone paying you for the work.
Dustin: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: Because a 30 year time you're working on doing sales and marketing to find clients, and about a 30 year time you're working on the business stuff, right. Whether it's accounting or you know, getting bills paid or, logistics of working with your clients or whatever, and you're not getting paid with that.
Cameron: So if you're only getting paid for a third of the time. You should charge three times more than you think you should charge to end up at that normal rate. So let's say you wanna make $200,000 a year. That's normally a hundred dollars an hour times 40 hours a week, times 50 weeks a year translates into 200.
Cameron: But if you're only being paid a third of the time, you need to charge $300 an hour instead of a hundred dollars an hour. So I would look at your
effective hourly rate that [00:04:00] you're charging. I would bump that up as a good starting point. The second place I would start is don't look to hire a second in command yet.
Cameron: If you don't have an executive assistant, you are one. Dustin: I
Cameron: love that. So you need to get a lot of the admin off your plate first, and the first thing you should hire is a fractional or an offshore executive assistant that you can delegate lots of stuff to so that they can free up your time to work on the business to generate more revenue.
Cameron: Or even just to enjoy your life a little bit on this journey. That would be the next starting point. The third is to drive revenue. Right. And it's not just by charging more, but revenue solves problems.
Dustin: Yes.
Cameron: So the more that you focus on revenue coming in the door, right, more gross margin coming in the door, the more that you're gonna be able to buy your way out of every problem later.
Cameron: But it's not by building the better mouse trap. So resist the urge to have a better program or a better model, or better systems. None of that stuff. [00:05:00] Is as important as more revenue coming in the door. So revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue. That's gonna be able to solve all the problems. And then I think the last part is, is look to actually get multiple revenue streams from your client base.
Cameron: Right? So if I think about my. Businesses that I have and the different ways that I generate revenue today. When I started my organization 19 years ago, my original company was called the Back Pocket coo. Mm-hmm. Because I was going to be a fractional COO. This was way before the term fractional COOs even existed 19 years ago.
Cameron: My idea was, you can't afford me. You can't afford not to have me part-time.
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: You can't afford to have me full-time in your company 'cause I'm gonna charge you millions of dollars a year. But if you could have me fractionally once in a while, coaching, consulting, speaking, whatever, the upside is gonna be too valuable for you.
Cameron: So the revenue that I have and all of my revenue streams solve one core purpose to help [00:06:00] entrepreneurs make their vivid vision come true. Everything I do makes that happen, whether it's my seven books, my seventh just came out last week, with and I co-authored The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs with Hal El Rudd.
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: It could be my Invest In Your Leaders course, which is an online training platform that people grow their leadership skills. I make revenue from that, and the more managers in a company that get those skills, that helps the entrepreneur. I get revenue from my speaking events, whether it's online or in person.
Cameron: I've been paid to speak now in two weeks I'll be paid to speak in my 30th country. I'm flying over to Austria to speak to a group of entrepreneurs, so that'll be the 30th country. That's awesome. I've been paid to speak in. My coaching helps entrepreneurs. My COO Alliance helps entrepreneurs. my referral income where I refer like, so everything I do is aligned with my core purpose, but I've found ways to make money from multiple revenue streams instead of saying, I just coach.
Cameron: And I only coach. Well, what if you could also make money from a course and some books and some speaking, right?
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: [00:07:00] you know, back in the early days people would say, do you run strategic planning sessions? My answer back in the first five or seven years of building my company was, the answer is yes.
Cameron: What do you want to pay me for? I was
Dustin: gonna say depends. Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: Right. I can make that happen. Like you, you wanna pay me to coach? Yes, I coach. You wanna pay me to consult? Yes, I consult. You wanna
pay me to speak? I speak. You wanna pay me to write a book? I'll write a book. In fact, my very first book double double.
Cameron: The reason I wrote it was the founder of a company called grasshopper.com asked me to write his PR manual. To train his in-house PR team on how to generate public relations, pr. And I was like, yeah, I don't do that. And he goes, I'll pay you $5,000 to write the PR manual. And I said, I will have it to you in two weeks.
Cameron: Right? Yeah. And then that PR manual became the chapter for my book Double. Double, which I later expanded to become my book Free pr.
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: So if I had said no, then I would've missed that opportunity. I probably wouldn't have written my first book. [00:08:00] I wouldn't have been able to like, but saying yes because. It aligned with my core purpose.
Cameron: If I wrote his PR manual, that would help him build his company. But if I was so focused on, no, I'm only coaching, I would've missed all those opportunities. So say yes to revenue that drives towards your core purpose. Okay? And say no to revenue that is not aligned with your core purpose. So if a government agency comes and says, will you speak to us?
Cameron: I say, no. Because it takes me away from my core of helping entrepreneurs, right? And I would speak to all these government people and they'd be Yeah. Cameron's too entrepreneurial. Yeah, I fucking am. I say no to corporate audiences all the time. Because it's just not I, I don't fit in a corporate environment.
Cameron: Yeah. I don't dress that way. I don't talk that way. So it would ruin my brand and it would take me away from time with my entrepreneurial. So that those would be my core focus points. And then the last one is start to delegate everything except genius. If you're gonna be building a [00:09:00] company, stop the urge to do the work.
Dustin: Yes. And,
Cameron: and if you say, well, I don't have anyone to delegate it to find someone. Fractional or full-time or whatever, but, but delegate it anyway. Just pick someone and then coach them and develop them so that you can get stuff off your plate. And that's where scale's gonna come from.
Dustin: Yeah. Amazing answer.
Dustin: Of course. a lot of, Directions we could go with that. I, I think the one glaring question that comes up for me, if someone's been in the work, so they left a corporate job, they're doing coaching, they're doing consulting, they're really happy with the level of income, but they don't see a path forward to remove themselves out of any of the seats.
Dustin: you mentioned the first hire executive assistant, because if you don't have one, you are one. I think that's really key. But the thing that really stood out to me is. Articulate and clear you are on your purpose. Right? And you said this purpose is tied to your vivid vision and your purpose, of course, is tied to the other, vivid visions of the entrepreneurs that you serve.
Dustin: So [00:10:00] that becomes a very important filter,
Cameron: I got a bit of a helping hand with my core purpose, years ago. Do you know the name Simon Sinek?
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely.
Cameron: So Simon, Simon was on our board of advisors five years before he wrote the book. Start With Why. Wow, that's awesome. So five years before he did the TEDx Talk.
Cameron: So he was at my home for dinner one night in 2004. And, and we were talking just about stuff and, and he said, you know, he was asking me about core purpose, what my why. and again, this was way before people knew who he was. He only, he ran a five person marketing agency for years when I knew him. And he identified that.
Cameron: The reason I did what I did was I kept seeing entrepreneurs like flies, banging their head on the window and ending up dead on the windowsill, right? Their company going bankrupt, struggling for hard. Their marriage was at risk. And I'm like, there's always a shortcut. There's a, there's this easier path.
Cameron: And he goes, why do you like helping them so much? I'm like, 'cause I, I just see that easier path and I wanna help them. And he said that all you really want to do is help entrepreneurs make their [00:11:00] dreams come true. Make their vivid vision come true.
Dustin: Absolutely.
Cameron: And, and I was like, yeah, that's why I do what I do.
Cameron: And he goes, that's your core purpose. that's your aligning a reason for waking up in the morning. So for me, and it drives my wife crazy at times, now she understands it. But when we were first dating, she was like, why are you going for lunch with that person? Why are you helping?
Cameron: Why don't you charge 'em? I'm like, I don't need to charge them. If I help that person, it just leads to more yeses later. It leads to more doors later, it leads to more revenue later. But again, if it was somebody who was running a nonprofit, I wouldn't go for lunch with them.
Dustin: Yeah. No, I love that. So if we don't know Simon Sinek, five years before he writes his, his Pinnacle book
Cameron: Yeah.
Dustin: Like. how do we start to make progress towards that? Because it feels like it's a very foundational part of decision making to have this filter do. Would you suggest we start with a vivid vision and then from the vivid vision we can sort of distill it down into a core purpose to make these critical
Cameron: No.
Cameron: A core purpose and core values and your big, hairy, audacious goal [00:12:00] are different components of things you need to understand as is the vivid vision.
Dustin: Got
Cameron: it. So. Remember when you were young and your, your mom gave you a jigsaw puzzle to kill time on a rainy afternoon.
Dustin: Yeah.
Cameron: What was the first thing you did with the jigsaw puzzle before you started?
Dustin: find the corner pieces?
Cameron: Well, before the corner pieces you looked at the picture on the front. Yeah.
Dustin: Look at the picture To get a vision for what I was trying to ultimately create. Right?
Cameron: Yeah. So the vivid vision is the picture on the front of the box. Dustin: Got
Cameron: it. Every entrepreneur needs to decide what their company looks like, acts like, and feels like in the future.
Cameron: Right, so describing your entire company is the starting point. The four corners of the jigsaw puzzle are your core purpose, your core values, your BHAG, which is your big hair audacious goal, and then your one year plan to start making that vivid vision come true. Those are the four corners of the jigsaw puzzle.
Cameron: After you find the four corners, what do you do? You look for all the side pieces.
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: Well, the [00:13:00] first side of your jigsaw puzzle are all the people systems. That's the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training, onboarding of people. The second side of your jigsaw puzzle is your strategic thinking systems.
Cameron: That's mentoring, coaching, your annual planning meetings strategy, SWOT analysis. It's spending time in strategy, which is different from planning.
Dustin: Yes,
Cameron: strategy and planning are do different things. Planning is part of your third side of the systems, which are all of your meeting rhythms. Your meeting rhythms are like your annuals, your financial meetings, your one-on one meetings, your daily huddles, your L tens, your coaching meetings.
Cameron: All of your meeting rhythms are your third side, and then the fourth side of your, of your puzzle are all the financial systems. Cashflow budgeting,
right? Your p and l balance sheet analysis, fractional, CFO oversight, those are the financial systems. And then remember when you get your corners and your sides, we start looking for the big shiny objects.
Cameron: Where's the red chair and the yellow umbrella. Right? Because they're easy to pull those. Yeah. Those are your [00:14:00] culture systems that start to emerge.
Dustin: Okay.
Cameron: Okay.
Dustin: Well that's, yeah. Super helpful analogy. And then I can even look in my own business and. There's, you know, there's, there's some sides that maybe aren't missing, but they weren't intentionally set.
Dustin: Right. So they're, well, they're not, they're little
fuzzy.
Cameron: They're not as important. You don't need to work on some of those early sides of your puzzle too early. Yeah. Right. When you're a small one or two person company, you don't need meeting rhythms.
Dustin: Right.
Cameron: Right. You don't need to worry about like, but you definitely need the corners.
Dustin: Yes.
Cameron: Right. So I understand my core purpose, which I just explained. My core values are very, very deeply ingrained inside my organization. My employees know my core values. I recruit based on my core values, deliver what we promise, be open and vulnerable, show respect for everybody, grow big acts, small, have some effing fund.
Cameron: Those are my core values. Mm-hmm. Right. Very deeply ingrained in the organization. Then my BAG, my big hair audacious goal, which is the Jim Collins term.
Intro: Yep.
Cameron: And most people screw this up. A [00:15:00] BAG is not a measurable goal. There's no number sign in there, there's no percentage sign in there. the examples of really great BHAGs are to crush Adidas.
Cameron: Which was Nike's BA from 1972 to democratize air travel, which was Boeing's, you know, BAG, to democratize the world's information that was Google's BAG, to create insanely great products that challenge the status quo and change the human race. That's Apple's, BHG. my BAG is for vivid visions to replace vision statements worldwide.
Dustin: Hmm.
Cameron: Right. And then so those three corners are very deeply ingrained in my organization. And then the last is the one year plan. You don't need a three year plan 'cause everything's changed by six or nine months out.
Dustin: Yes.
Cameron: But you need to have some framework that allows you to say no to some things, and Yes to some things, and to budget for some things.
Cameron: Right. It allows you to focus on the critical few things versus the important many. That's your fourth corner. That's where most entrepreneurial companies [00:16:00] need to focus on. You don't need the sides of your puzzle yet.
Dustin: Okay. No, that's super helpful. And you've got your four corners, would you say,
Dustin: Obviously you would say start, start with the vivid vision so you at least know like, what do you really want? Be able to give some, some life to that and some, objectivity to that, and be able to operationalize that vision. And then you've got the four corners and then that, it sounds like those four corners, especially the core purpose and core values would be important to have in place, at least in a draft level before you hire even the first executive assistant because you wanna.
Dustin: Find someone who's aligned with your values, I would think would be one of the primary, metrics or, or filters for that, hiring process of anyone that you consider a team member. Is that accurate?
Cameron: Yeah. Ear, early, early stage. you're not even really looking for team members as much as you're just looking for people to help you get some stuff done.
Cameron: Yeah. that's really the key is I just need some people to help me get some stuff done. Don't even put a title on [00:17:00] them in the early, early days. Right. The titles are so much less important, than just, I need these things. Who can I get to help me do these things
Cameron: Then you can move towards having a team later.
Dustin: Yes. Okay. So big emphasis early on. Revenue, revenue, revenue, make sure that you are. Establishing an effective hourly rate and basically tripling that from maybe the mindset you would've taken from working, in a different company because you only have a third of your time that's gonna be billable or, or productive, in a sense, from a revenue generation standpoint.
Dustin: So, yeah. Let's, let's shift a little bit here 'cause I know you have some really, useful insights. I dunno if Gorilla Marketing would be the right term, but, you know, generating pr, like you have the, an entire book that you wrote about that, and. Mike Abramowitz is another connection between us, another front row dad, and I really loved your interview with him.
Dustin: The focus there was a little more on service-based businesses, but you had a part of that interview that I, I wrote a lot of notes about, and it was these five core stories basically that you [00:18:00] can leverage repeatedly to generate, PR or, you know, in today's, Nomenclature, maybe, uh, social media, attention, leads, appearances on podcasts, things like that.
Dustin: So would you
Cameron: Yeah.
Dustin: Like to share some of that through the lens of, Hey, you're an expert, you've got this niche Sure. Expertise that people would love to know more about? How do you package that up and deploy it?
Cameron: I got to learn very early in life how. People generate press coverage. Dustin: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: Most people think that press coverage, whether it's in a newspaper or a magazine, or a TV show, radio station, blogger, podcast, or easy and et cetera, most people think that someone did something that was newsworthy, that had that media outlet find out about you and want to cover the story.
Cameron: Kind of like the Peter Parker out there trying to get the good, you know, the, that doesn't happen anymore.
Dustin: Yeah.
Cameron: the days of a news outlet, being able to afford to pay somebody to go out and find a story are over, and they've been over for years. More often than [00:19:00] not, the news outlet has someone calling them to tell them about a story and they go, oh, that's interesting.
Cameron: Yeah, we'll cover that. And the reason I learned that at such a young age was we grew up in a small city in Canada called Sudbury, and my dad was always in the newspaper. Now, when I first saw that I thought my dad was really important and my dad said, no, no. I just called the newspaper and told them what they were doing, and then they came out and took the photo.
Cameron: I'm like, that's amazing. So I was running my first business, I was 20 years old, I had 12 employees. I was doing painting houses in Sudbury, and I decided to try to see if I could get some press coverage so that everybody in the city would know about me from the newspaper. I called the newspaper. I actually called the photographer, whose name was beside a photo in a newspaper article, and I said, Hey Tom, his name was Tom Cohen.
Cameron: I said, would you like to come and. you know, I'm a student running my own business and I'm employing other students in the city. It's a tough summer to get jobs. I think you could come and do a good story and, [00:20:00] and here's the photo. We could have a bunch of students painting a house and he goes, I love that story.
Cameron: I go, and we're six blocks away from your, from your office. Why don't you come up to the job site and just take a quick photo? So he did. He was there an hour later, took a photo. We were in the newspaper. I learned two things from that. One, it was very easy to get the story.
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: By just calling the person who did the photos and explaining to them why it would help them.
Cameron: Number two, nobody beat a path to my door 'cause I was in the newspaper.
Dustin: Yes. Yeah,
Cameron: right. The next day nobody knew 'cause there was more news, however. I took the clipping from the newspaper and I put it in the front of my client binder. And every potential client that I talked to going forward saw that I had been in the newspaper.
Cameron: The Sudbury Star, that third party credibility was like, oh, you must be important. 'cause they don't know that I just called him to get the story
Dustin: right.
Cameron: They all they knew was the newspaper's not covering any other house painters. In fact, I told them the newspaper [00:21:00] wasn't covering any other house painters.
Cameron: So that third party credibility is what really moved the business forward. So the lesson there is that regardless of what press coverage you get, even when we got one, 800 got junk on Oprah in 2003, being on Oprah was really powerful for two or three days.
Dustin: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: But what's been be really powerful was telling people we were on Oprah for the next 23 years.
Dustin: Oh man. Yeah. That's
Cameron: super. So it's what you do with the story that's important, not the story you get. Right. Even. Yeah. Mike, I was on Mike's podcast, Mike, and I'll be skiing together in Austria in 10 days. the fact that I was on his podcast was good, but now I can take that clip and I can put it on my media page of my website.
Cameron: I can share his podcast three times this year on Facebook. 'cause nobody will see it the first or second time anyway. Some will, but I can share it three times on Facebook, three times on LinkedIn, three times on Instagram. I can email it out to my list. the clips that do well on Facebook and LinkedIn, I can actually boost those later and drive some traffic to them.
Cameron: Then I can take the clip that I [00:22:00] was on with him and I can slice it into 10 shorts and I can push those out on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. So the value is what I do with the press, not the press that I get.
Dustin: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And as I shared before we recorded, you know, one of the primary things we're doing is helping this same coach, consultant, earn media in a sense of podcast guessing specifically.
Dustin: Right? It's pretty much a universally available platform. Hosts are looking for great stories. They're looking for inspirational and, practical advice for their audience. And one of the things we say over and over and over again is. Getting on the right show, telling the right story, having a great call to action is about 20%, right?
Dustin: Like Yeah. When it gets published, you've done about 20% of the work as far as leveraging that opportunity. 80% happens after it's published because Yeah. Of just the things you just said. Now you have an asset to leverage
Cameron: the analogy that I use and here, here's an example behind you. You've got a guitar sitting behind you right now.
Cameron: It's doing nothing. It's just sitting there,
Dustin: right?
Cameron: A [00:23:00] story is like a guitar. But if you pick up the guitar and start playing it, then there's some value there, right?
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: So I always say that a story is like a log, just a big chunk of wood. If I get on five podcasts, now I've got five logs or five big chunks of wood.
Cameron: I have to light those logs on fire to get some value. But when you were 12, 13 years old and you and your buddies lit a fire, what did you like to do with it then?
Dustin: What do we like to do with it? Usually throw things into it and Cameron: get it even higher. Right? Absolutely. Bigger
Dustin: and
bigger.
Cameron: I like the pour gas on the fire.
Cameron: Yeah, right.
Dustin: I don't wanna say that, but Yes, absolutely.
Cameron: Yeah. So if you get a whole bunch of stories in the press, that's cool. If you put 'em on Facebook, that's cool. But then if you drive traffic to it. That's pouring gas on the fire to make sure that everybody sees it. That's the real value that you get from pr.
Cameron: And let me just really quickly explain the, the core stories that everybody who's listening or watching can get for their business. The first one is called the Genesis story. It's how you started. [00:24:00] It's why you started your coaching or consulting business, why you started helping entrepreneurs or whoever you help.
Cameron: It's why you quit your crappy job and went out on your own right. The second is called the hero's journey. It's where you stumbled, where you fell, where you almost went bankrupt, where you almost quit, and the lessons you learned from that and how you overcame adversity. It's that hero's journey arc that almost every movie is, kind of absolutely written about, right?
Cameron: That hero's journey. The third is around your culture. Right. The culture that you build with your organization, it's how you live core values. It's how you draw, you know, it's, it's that cultural story of building a business. Probably not as easy to get when you're a one person company.
Dustin: Sure.
Cameron: But once you've built something up, there's a story there.
Cameron: the fourth is how you're leveraging technology, how you're leveraging ai, how you're leveraging the tech stack and how you're using automations to help you scale up your business, because that educates. And inspires lots of other business owners. And then the fourth is about your customer. It's how your product or your service [00:25:00] has helped a customer get a result and grow their business or remove obstacles or build a better life.
Cameron: Right.
Dustin: Beautiful. Yeah. And so those are the hooks. Basically, those are the stories that you can pre-create. And then that's what you take to the various, you know, PR media podcast outlets because they're really interesting. They're gonna be unique to you. There's value there, for that audience that receives them.
Dustin: and of course they paint you in a great light and create a lot of credibility, when you have a. Platform that you're invited onto to share those stories. So, Genesis Story, hero's Journey, which we've talked a lot about on this podcast through the lens of StoryBrand and, you know, story based marketing.
Dustin: the culture story, which like you said, may not be as applicable early on, but. If you have your core values defined and you've got this purpose, like that would, that makes a great story. and then technology, which of course right now is, and probably always is in some form or fashion, a really hot topic.
Dustin: And then it's
Cameron: been hot, been hot for 30 years.
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. That is true
Cameron: here. Here's what's beautiful about this, is [00:26:00] none of these stories. Are time sensitive.
Dustin: Yes. They're all evergreen. Yeah.
Cameron: They last forever. And the cool thing is a media outlet, if they're covering you and all of a sudden there's a big story that's happening, they can put your story aside and they can tell it on Thursday instead.
Cameron: Yeah. It's not quite a fluff story. Right. It's not about fluffy the cat who, you know, had three kittens, but it's kind of a fluff story, which is beautiful. Yeah. The key is to make sure that you understand the media outlet and how you position your story for them. If I'm gonna be on your podcast or Joe Rogan's podcast, there's very different audiences there and I have to tailor my content slightly differently.
Dustin: Yeah, and I think the one that really stands out from that perspective is the fifth one, the customer story or case study. depending on the audience, it could be geographic, it could be by industry, it could be by size, right? Like we all have lots of great customer stories to tell. And so that, that really represents a whole library of different stories that you can sort of pick and choose from [00:27:00] based on the audience that's gonna really resonate with them in particular, right?
Dustin: So you should really always be cataloging these customer success stories, and. Literally creating a library to be able to draw from for different, situations, different stages you're on or different, different,
Cameron: well, here what's nice about the customer success story? Let's say that you have a, or like, I have a, a company that I've coached that has been successful, so I have a.
Cameron: elite, SEM, which is now called Tenuity, and I helped them get press coverage in the city of New York City that they were based in and how they grew their company from 40 employees to 300 employees, and they became the number two company in the United States to work for on Glassdoor. I can take that same story and change out a few of the facts and figures to talk about acceleration partners.
Cameron: That's based in Boston, and they became the number 12 company to work for in the United States on Glassdoor. And they went from 20 employees to a hundred employees and exited the company. Or I can talk about Blue Grace Logistics in Tampa, Florida. That became the number one company to work for in the state of Florida.
Cameron: Like it's [00:28:00] the same stuff. Different day. Yes. So you don't really need new content. You just tell the similar story in another market.
Cameron: And you've got lots of markets in North America or globally to tell the story.
Dustin: Absolutely, yeah. And different, sort of horizontal markets geographically, different vertical markets, different sizes within the vertical markets.
Dustin: And you didn't have that sweet spot story based on the specific audience that you really wanted to attract with it.
Cameron: Yeah. When we were scaling, 1-800-GOT-JUNK. We got press coverage in every section. Of the newspaper, the Vancouver Sun, we were covered in every single section of the newspaper. And somebody was like, well, how could you get press coverage in the lifestyle section?
Cameron: Well, we got coverage for a, a guy who worked for us that was going to be on the Canadian snowboarding team, and he stood in front of our one 800, got junk truck with his snowboard, and talked about being on the Canadian snowboarding team and how junk was fine. We really had to make a fresh for that.
Cameron: Right.
Dustin: Be a little creative on that, but yeah, that makes sense.
Cameron: We got covered in the [00:29:00] HR section of the newspaper because we were hiring 30 people. Most people would say take out an ad in the newspaper, but because we were a cult-like brand in the city, they covered us and was a picture of Brian wearing a blue wig standing in front of 30 empty chairs saying, we're hiring in a tough market.
Cameron: You have to figure out how to position your story in that section to matter to that audience. And you also have to understand the journalist who's covering you, right? The Wall Street Journal is different from Entrepreneur Magazine, is different from Fortune, is different from Forbes, is different from your podcast, and I've been covered in all of them because I understand how to position my content for very different readers or listeners or viewers, right?
Dustin: I love it. Well, in the last couple minutes here, I'd like to, we've done a. Value packed episode. Of course, not surprisingly, talking about the the driver, you need more revenue. Right? And we've got very practical about how to think about that first, [00:30:00] hire that that next hire, how to keep the soul of the company by, establishing the jigsaw puzzle with the vision in the four corners.
Dustin: And then we really got practical here on how to generate press and how to generate. Basically free advertising for your company. I kind of think of that as third party attention. One thing that I know you've done really well, and I'd love to just get a little bit of insight from you on is sort of the first.
Dustin: Party. Right. namely referrals and partners. So I know one of the things I noticed about COO Alliance was you have a very robust partner program and you've talked a lot about how to delight your customers, where they just really can't help but talk about, you refer your, refer you to friends, and I'm sure there's a operational system behind that and, and all the different businesses that you've touched.
Dustin: So I know it's a huge topic. We could do a whole interview just about that. But, for this target audience that we're speaking to today, any. best practices or must knows about referrals and partnerships.
Cameron: Yeah. So the way that you're going to generate referrals from your business is to be referable.
Dustin: Yes.
Cameron: Right. To be remarkable. It's [00:31:00] not asking for referrals. It's not pushing people for referrals. It's not having a system to create referrals. It's doing something that gets people to be excited and happy so they can't stop talking about you. So it's having a very high customer net promoter score.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. Right where you just generate buzz. So one of the good stories I heard about this was Airbnb and they were sitting down with their leadership team and they said, what would a seven out of 10 experience be for a customer staying in an Airbnb? Let's describe what a seven outta 10 experience would be, and then let's describe what an eight outta 10 would be.
Cameron: Right. How about a nine outta 10? Oh, a nine outta 10. You show up and it's got tips and it's got, you know, some, some cool snacks in and it's got bottle of wine and some fresh water and you know, the place is beautiful and, you know, a, a 10 outta 10, the host meets you there and gives you a, like, whatever.
Cameron: Right? Like, and, and they created systems for what? A seven, what an eight, what a nine and a 10 outta a 10 would be. And then they said, what would [00:32:00] an 11 be? What would really blow people away if they were
staying at our Airbnb, and so the team got super creative and came up with all the things that they would do to make an 11.
Cameron: Then they said, what about a 12? Right? Like, what would we do that would just blow some people's F in mind? Then they decided to try to put the twelves in place for the tens and the tens in place for the eights. I have a friend of mine, John De Julius, who runs a chain of, salons and he has written books on what he calls secret service, the Secret Customer Service Systems.
Cameron: I'll give an example of one that becomes kind of referable. When you go into one of his salons. You're one of the women in his high-end salons in, in Ohio. He has three different color. Smocks or whatever the hell they put over you so you don't get hair all over yourself, whatever those things are called.
Cameron: Right.
Dustin: Capes or whatever. Yeah.
Cameron: Yeah. Capes. Drapes, whatever. Right. And he has white ones and he has black ones and he has purple ones. The white ones, then nobody knows. You just see people in there wearing [00:33:00] white, black, and purple, and all of his colors in his company are white, black, and purple. So you'd assume it's just because of his color scheme, right?
Dustin: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: Who do you think gets the white ones?
Dustin: I'm, I'm afraid to answer that. So you just tell me. The virgins.
Cameron: The virgins, the people that are at his salon for the first time are wearing the white shawl. So everybody in the salon knows it's their first time. It's
Dustin: their first time. Oh man, that's good.
Dustin: So
Cameron: all of a sudden you're like, oh, let's treat them differently. Let's wow them. Let's introduce 'em to others. Let's make them feel comfortable, make sure they have a friend. Right.
Dustin: The
Cameron: black who's the black,
Dustin: repeat customer.
Cameron: Repeat customers, right? Yeah. These are the people that come in all the time.
Cameron: They've been there a lot. Who are the purple?
Dustin: The VIP sort of the, the re
Cameron: VIPs? Maybe These are the people that spend a lot, they refer a lot. Let's make sure that the VI, if the VIP wants, a latte from down the street, I'll bring them a latte and I'll bring them a, a little treat, right? Yeah. Like, like, right.
Cameron: Whatever you want. I'll give you that and more.
Dustin: I love that.
Cameron: But nobody sees that system. [00:34:00] He is just decided to build that in as a very referable thing.
Dustin: I love that. Yeah. It reminds me of the unreasonable hospitality with real good, real guera. And there's, there's a lot of, a lot of really nuanced but powerful and I think importantly systematic things that you can do to,
Cameron: so lemme give a fun, lemme give a fun example of this. Dustin: Yeah.
Cameron: When I saw it delivered, where it blew my mind, I was at an event called Mastermind Talks. Mm-hmm. Jason Gainor, friends with John Roman, who runs front row Dads Jason Ha has built this MMT system. Jason, who was
really, really famous for at all of his events, asking you in the the signups sex stage, what's your favorite treat?
Cameron: And people write down their favorite treat. Right? Well, at the event, on the first event that he ever ran, he made everybody leave the room. And then when we all came into the room, our favorite treat was sitting at our seat. One of
the guys favorite treats was a Big Mac from McDonald's. So we all come back in.
Cameron: I had like, you know, salted dark chocolate sitting at my seat and somebody [00:35:00] else said caramel popcorn. And somebody else had dill pickle potato chips. This, you walk into the room and the whole room smelled like McDonald's. 'cause at this guy's seat, it was a brand new warm Big Mac that somebody ran out to get and brought it back and put it.
Cameron: Dude, game changing.
Dustin: Absolutely. Yeah. How you not gonna talk about that? You're talking about it here, right? And now people
Cameron: are gonna mess him. Yeah. And it cost, it cost Jason five to $7 per person. Yeah. It was a $10,000 event.
Dustin: Yeah.
Cameron: It cost, like even if it cost him a thousand dollars to give that for 150 people, it doesn't matter because he did 1.5 million in revenue.
Dustin: Yep.
Cameron: Right. But that became remarkable. People took photos, we talk about it. that's what does it.
Dustin: That's beautiful. Well, I'm sure that's got the listener's wheels turning. I know it has my wheels turning. I'm hosting an in-person retreat here in a couple months. We're in the planning of that and yeah, it's like how can I make that an absolutely remarkable experience?
Dustin: And it could be something as simple as what you just described and, Might steal that one from Jason. I think that's beautiful.
Cameron: I, I stole it in, in every one of our COO [00:36:00] Alliance events for the last 10 years in the gift bags is a snack from people and I just can't wait for someone to put like a burger of some sort in there.
Cameron: So I can make that happen.
Dustin: I love it. Well, Cameron, you're very generous with your wisdom, your time. this has been an absolute gift to me. and I'm sure it's been a gift to everyone who's heard it. So, if people wanna learn more about you, they want to pick up one of your books, they wanna listen to the Second In Command podcast, what's the best home base for people to, to get more Cameron in their life?
Cameron: Yeah. Easiest place to find all the information in my books, my podcast, my course, everything is@cameronharold.com. And it's H-E-R-O-L-D. So cameron harold.com.
Dustin: All right. Cameron herald.com. Well, thanks again, Cameron, for being here for enlightening us on the, this very practical sort of, gorilla marketing way to grow a solo business with soul.
Dustin: Absolutely loved it.
Cameron: You're so
Intro: welcome.
Cameron: Thanks, Dustin.