Cameron Herold has taken 20 years of experience operating some of the biggest business success stories in North America and turned it into a flourishing career as both a motivational speaker and management consultant. Cameron is a business coach and mentor to several companies, and a CEO coach to large corporations globally. He is also the best-selling author of Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less.
If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?
I’d pick the one my oldest son has and it’s his smile. Every time he smiles, the whole world stops.
Was there an impact moment that led you on this journey to being an entrepreneur?
I was groomed by my father to be an entrepreneur, but the real moment that showed me that being an entrepreneur was where I wanted to be was one day my dad took me to a golf course in the middle of the day. He pointed out to me all the people who were playing golf at twelve o’clock, and what company they owned. His lesson was, the people who could play golf in the middle of the day are the ones who control their free time, and the way they control their free time is by controlling the way they make their money which is by running their own company.
How has mentorship impacted you and influenced your outlook?
The mentoring for me comes in various forms. The first is focusing where I’m going, the second is having a mentor board of advisors that I could always learn from, and the third is surrounding myself with others in masterminds who are learning in the same focused area.
Entrepreneurs are wired differently than the rest of society:
Most have the following traits:
Those aren’t necessarily traits that describe entrepreneurs. They are actually clinically diagnosed traits for bi-polar disorder. Most entrepreneurs have the traits of manic depression. We also have a lot of the signs of attention deficit disorder.
According to the medical community, we’re disasters. We should be medicated. The reality is we are sane. We’re wired exactly the way we’re supposed to be wired. They should not be medicating us. We should learn how to actually leverage those strengths and not call them weaknesses anymore because they’re absolutely strengths that we have.
What we need is for the entrepreneurs to rise up and say, “Stop medicating our kids. Stop saying there’s something wrong with them. Maybe they’re wired exactly as they’re supposed to be. Maybe this is how they’re supposed to think.”, and starting to show the education system they can actually function in high functional ways if they would try to accommodate for those styles.
How can entrepreneurs get supercharged focus?
We need to give ourselves a little bit of a break and allow ourselves to hyperfocus for maybe 8 hours a week, do some buffer work for 16-20 hours a week, and then have lots of free time & breaks scheduled in between just to recharge our brains.
How can entrepreneurs and leaders approach leading teams that consists of four different generations?
We need to understand how each generation works & leverage their strengths, and also teach each other. Traditionalists and baby boomers can learn a ton from Gen X, Gen Y & Gen Z on leveraging technology. Gen X, Y & Z can learn a ton on business processes, planning, and leveraging networking the old fashion way & truly building deep relationships.
How did you enroll “the dream manager” into 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
On day one, get your employees to write down their bucket list. Your role is to help coach people and connect them to people, and get them to start crossing things off their bucket list.
Imagine you could start getting people on your team to achieve the things they want to do before they die, and how much more engaged they’d be in the company.
In your book, you talk about the 5 stages of the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship. How can entrepreneurs approach that Crisis of Meaning (questioning the meaning of life) stage, and what are the steps they should follow to get to the Hopeful Realization stage?
You need to relax your brain and take disconnect times from work or you’ll never be recharged enough to hit the ground running.
Why is important to take time and reflect on the past?
Instead of being busy and learning from everybody else, it’s important to dig deep and ask, “What have I learned from me?”. Instead of reading a book of someone else’s experience, why don’t we tap into our own experiences.
I am probably the best mentor I can have for myself if I will allow myself to be introspective and look at my contributions to my successes and failures.
How will you measure your life?
Right now it’s on my ability to raise good kids. Our role is to raise nice young adults, and to raise happy, healthy children so they can leave the nest.
Last words of wisdom
At the end of the day, let’s not take ourselves so seriously. Can we just wake up in the morning and start having fun with what we do? Let’s leave others that we touch every day with a sense of our smile, our fun and our healthy enjoyment of life cause at the end of the day none of us are getting out of this alive. We might as well have fun along the way.
Show Links
Cameron’s Website - CameronHerold.com
Meetings Suck, Cameron’s newest book on Amazon
“Let’s Raise Kids to Be Entrepreneurs” Tedx Talk
Commit To 3 App - CommitTo3.com
FocusTime (Pomodoro app) - FocusTimeapp.com