How to scale a company by mastering the second-in-command role

Executive overview

Most business content targets the founder. The operator who executes the vision, filters the ideas, and keeps the company functioning is almost entirely ignored. Cameron Herold spent 18 years as a COO across three companies, including scaling 1-800-GOT-Junk from $2M to $106M in six years.

The core job of a second-in-command: make the CEO iconic, preserve trust, and protect the company from the entrepreneur's own instincts.

The COO's role is to take all the negative off the CEO's plate, give the CEO credit for the positive, and build systems that let the entrepreneur be themselves without derailing growth.

The 11 traits of entrepreneurs

1. Filled with energy
2. Mind flooded with ideas
3. Driven
4. Restless, unable to keep still
5. Often works on little sleep
6. Gets euphoric
7. Easily irritated by minor obstacles
8. Burns out periodically
9. Acts out sexually
10. Feels persecuted by those who don't accept the vision
11. Desires constant praise and acceptance

These are also the clinical criteria the medical community uses to diagnose bipolar disorder. Five traits = clinical diagnosis. Nine to eleven = possible medication. Herold's view: this is a superpower, not a disease. The medical community calls bipolar disorder "the CEO disease."

How 1-800-GOT-Junk scaled from $2M to $106M in six years

• Raised prices 50% on day one — became the premium brand, like Starbucks for junk removal
• Built a cult not just a culture: mantras, hiring for cultural fit, firing toxic people fast
• Generated free PR instead of relying only on advertising — 5,200 independent press stories
• Doubled revenue and profit six consecutive years with no debt and no equity given up
• Would have ranked number one on Inc. 500 two years running at 17,000% growth over five years

How to generate free PR

• Call journalists directly — most receive fewer than five calls a day
• Photographers and syndication wire journalists (AP, Dow Jones, CP) are even more accessible
• Pitch with five bullet points; let the journalist frame the angle
• Syndication journalists are the priority — one story can run in 170+ newspapers simultaneously
• Persistence matters: 17 touches over six weeks landed a story in 170 newspapers in one day
• Once coverage runs, share it: three times on Facebook, five times on LinkedIn and Twitter, email list, press page on your website

The CEO's three core challenges

• Trust: requires deliberate one-on-one time, off-site sessions, and shared routines (e.g., runs, co-working sessions)
• Credit: the COO must hand all positive credit to the CEO while absorbing the negative
• Idea management: entrepreneurs generate too many ideas; the COO needs a system to capture, traffic-light, and stage them quarterly

Meetings and daily operations

• Meetings suck because no one is trained to run them, participate in them, or know which ones to hold
• Fix the meetings; don't walk out of them — the root problem stays otherwise
• Daily huddles work best mid-morning or early afternoon when body energy naturally dips
• Train all employees: 15 minutes daily (abstract concept + discussion + role play), one hour weekly
• Effective learning requires four elements: abstract conceptualization, active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation

Vivid vision and the CEO's role

• A CEO's job: control culture, grow people, control vision
• Vivid vision: a four-page written document that makes the founder's internal picture visible to every employee — like blueprints for a house
• Without it, employees can't execute; they're building without a plan
• Growing people means developing skills and confidence, repeatedly — that is the work

The COO Alliance

• Membership-only group for second-in-commands only; founders not admitted
• Five events per year in Scottsdale; members choose three; $20,000/year
• Format: peer-to-peer worksheets and problem-solving, not speakers
• Expanding to 30 cities over three years at $10,000/year for companies with 20+ employees and $2M+ revenue
• Annual CEO+COO joint session with a behavioral profiler and relationship specialist to strengthen the working partnership