How a three-month reset led Cameron Herold to build the COO Alliance

Executive overview

After leaving 1-800-GOT-JUNK, Cameron Herold took three and a half months completely offline — no email, no business talk. The break forced genuine decompression and led to a structured self-audit that clarified what he loved, what he was good at, and what to cut.

The result: a deliberate career redesign focused on coaching, networking, and speaking — and eventually an organisation built exclusively for second-in-command leaders.

Knowing what you hate is as useful as knowing what you love when designing your next chapter.

The three-month reset

• Mentored by the COO of Starbucks for 18 months before leaving Got Junk
• Read The Artist's Way and journaled 15 minutes every morning
• No email, no phone messages, no business conversations for 3.5 months
• Social contact only with people who agreed not to talk about business

Self-audit outputs

• Documented every company, venture, project, and business area he had led
• Listed all failures, successes, and lessons — roughly 57 internal lessons captured
• Built explicit lists: things loved, things hated, things he was great at, things he sucked at
• Outcome: loved coaching, networking, speaking, and helping entrepreneurs execute their vision

Career redesign and the COO Alliance

• Decided never to run an operational company again
• Created "Back Pocket COO" — a fractional COO role before the term existed
• First three clients: Fairway Divorce, Nurse Next Door, I Love Rewards
• Built a community called the COO Alliance exclusively for second-in-command leaders, no entrepreneurs admitted