How We Landed 5,200 Media Stories with Cameron Herold [Podcast 231]

Share this post:

GTF 231 | Free PR

 

Would you like to know how to get more free publicity to grow your company, impact, and reach? 

That’s what my guest, Cameron Herold, has done, and he’s here to discuss how to do exactly that. 

If you don’t know Cameron, he’s the best selling author of multiple books, a regular media contributor, founder of COO Alliance, and he helps lead leaders.  He’s built two $100-million businesses, and now travels the world to help other companies simplify their processes so they can scale with less stress.  

He’s got a rare gift of combining strategy, simplicity, and implementation to help you get results. 

If that’s what you want too, grab a pen and paper to take notes… Cameron shares a ton of valuable information you won’t want to miss! 

Listen to the podcast here:

How We Landed 5,200 Media Stories with Cameron Herold [Podcast 231]

Let me ask you, what do you think you’d learn from somebody who had been able to go out and get 5,200 stories in the press in six short years using the concept we’re going to talk about? In other words, 5,200 stories to help champion his company, edify his company, grow his company. How would that impact you? Do you think it would give you the ability to get more A) Publicity, B) Generate more leads and C) Create a bigger reach in your community nationwide possibly even internationally? That’s exactly what he’s done. He’s here to show you how to do exactly that. His name is Cameron Herold. If you don’t know Cameron, he’s a bestselling author. The short version is he helps simplify business problems and guide business leaders maybe like you to unimaginable success. He has built a couple $100 million businesses. He travels the world to help entrepreneurs, business owners, founders, cofounders, tech startups, companies simplify their process so they can grow in scale with less stress. If that’s what you want, stick around. If that’s not what you want, you might want to go check in to something else. We’re going to talk about this concept here called Free PR with Cameron. Cameron, welcome to the show. How are you?

Dan, thanks for having me. It’s great talking to you again.

I want to dive right into this because you’ve got a few amazing books, all of which I’ve read, consumed, shared with our team, many of our client. This one Free PR came back. I have to tell you, for me, this is like a guidebook, not for PR but for building a great marketing platform, combining reputation management, PR with direct response marketing. Why did you write this book and what’s the purpose behind it?

It’s funny that you mentioned that it’s a guidebook because that’s how it started. This was several years ago, I was asked by the founder and CEO of a company called Grasshopper.com, David Hauser. I’m sure your audience has heard of Grasshopper. David Hauser, who is the CEO of Grasshopper, asked me if I would write his PR manual for his in-house PR team that he is building from scratch. David had learned about how to land Free PR from me at a program we ran at MIT with the entrepreneur’s organization. I said, “No, I wasn’t going to write a PR manual. It’s not what I did.” He said, look, “I’ll pay you two to pull something together.” I’m like, “I will pull together a PR manual for you.” That became the first one of the chapters of my first book, Double Double. I covered it for fifteen pages. Over the years, I realized there was a lot more to it than fifteen pages on PR. That was the genesis of it though, was teaching people how to go out, land grade stories and how to help the media at the same time.

GTF 231 | Free PR

Free PR: How to Get Chased By The Press Without Hiring a PR Firm

What’s amazing is many years ago, I had hired a PR firm. You talk about it in a book, right in the beginning of Chapter One, a traditional method, pay the PR firm $5,000 a month. They don’t even guarantee you anything. I use this service for a couple of years with moderate success depending on how you measure success. You talk about the idea of bringing it in house and you did that. Your first hire in your book, you talk about, it’s Tyler if I’m not mistaken. Tyler, who you brought in-house who had no background in PR, no background in being able to go out and talk to journalists, to generate this PR. You laid off the guide of how to do it in this book. Before we get into strategy, what do you see are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re thinking about PR number one, going out and trying it?

Tyler, you nailed it, didn’t have any PR background whatsoever. He was a junk guy. He worked with us in the trucks at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. He also worked painting houses and as a franchisee at College Pro Painters, two brands that I helped build. Tyler was a sales guy. He could pitch. He loved the cold call. He was totally okay with rejection. In the model that I talked about in the book Free PR, he was the prototype. He was perfect. He did great stuff. He landed around 600 stories for us in a couple of years, including getting us on Oprah, Fortune magazine and CNBC Squawk Box. Tyler was extraordinary at PR with no background. He was just following the system.

The biggest mistakes are not following the system because step number three is pick up the phone. I’m coaching a CEO. The first PR person that he’s hired is his PR girl has gotten tired of pitching after two weeks and she wants to start connecting with people on social media and connecting with people over email. I’m like, “She’s the wrong person.” As soon as you start to go towards email, you’re going to be caught up with 200 other people that are pitching per day. I talked about the three easy steps to Free PR. Step number three is pick up the phone. That’s where people go sideways the fastest.

Speaking of the strategy, we’re going to get into that because I want to take as deep a dive as we can in the short time we have because there’s so much genius here in your book. You talk about three types of media. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it explained or described the way you illustrate it in the book. Speak to the three types and how when you get it right, there’s a sweet spot where the three connect that can differentiate you as a company position you, package you as a company that makes you bulletproof in many ways. Let’s speak to that.

We talked about the digital trifecta of earned media, owned media and paid media. This was up a concept that my co-author, Adrian, brought to the table. Adrian is the CEO of CanvasPop. My book, when it was ready to go to print, I sent him a copy of it to look at it. He decided to ask me if he could coauthor it with me and bring a little bit of additional on the digital side to the table. He’s helped take it to the next level. The basic concept is you’ve got three types of media coverage or focus around your brand. One is your owned media, which is your social media platform, your website or your marketing material. That’s your owned media. Second is your earned media, which is the PR that you’re getting. Press coverage, whether it’s on a podcast, blogger, ezine or TV, radio, newspaper, etc. The last is your bought media that you’re going out and acquiring that media.

You’re paying for it, paid media and that’s where you are buying advertising or buying traffic, etc. The trifecta is when all three of them come together. Most people think that “If I land a story, if I’m on Oprah, wow.” Even when we were on Oprah back in 2003, that didn’t move the needle for more than about a day. Afterward, it was the fact that we could mention we are on Oprah. We could put on our website we were on Oprah. Nowadays we didn’t even have Facebook back then, but if we could have shared the episode on Facebook, talked about it on Facebook, market its link, paid traffic towards it, that’s where the major leverage comes from. The leverage comes from tying your PR back to your website and getting the SEO linkbacks, adding it to your website page, sharing it on social media, email it to your clients, running traffic towards it. You use the third-party credibility of earned media, but you tie it in with your own media and the paid media. That’s where the digital trifecta is strong.

Advertise your advertising. The real power comes off that one story. - Cameron Herold Click To Tweet

I know in Chapter Nine you talk about keeping the buzz around this idea. We should do a shout out for Joe Polish of Genius Network, which is how we got a chance to meet originally several years ago. He calls it advertise your advertising. It doesn’t have to be advertised. It’s essentially what Cameron was mentioning, which is leverage any piece of news in a good way. It advertises your advertising or advertises your PR. Chapter Nine, you break this down in a lot of depth and a lot of different angles that are powerful.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about is advertise your advertising. It’s the fact that if you’ve gotten some press coverage, it doesn’t matter. If you can share it three times on Facebook, three times on LinkedIn, three times on Twitter, link it to your press page, share it with your email list or give it to your employees. That’s where the real power comes from off that one story.

As you’re reading this, what would it be worth to you to be able to take one simple story and leverage it twelve, fifteen, eighteen different unique ways? If you’re looking for that packaging and how to be able to do that, the book that Cameron has put together, will show you and walk you through exactly how to be able to do that. Now one of the things you talk about is creating angles. I was fascinated by. You talk about this in Chapter Three. There are four types of angles to look at. I’m going to speak with two personalities. I don’t know if you might think of a company like 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, which Cameron helped build from $2 million to close to $100 million, grew it from a handful of people to thousands of employees. They have PR but someone might be sitting there going, “I’m a little guy. I’m not that guy who’s going to go be a mouthpiece everywhere and brag about my stuff or name drop or any of these sorts of things.” Speaking to that elephant in the room, what would you say to that person who might have that little bit of a belief going on right now is that you’re hearing about strategies related to PR and getting their name out there?

Two things. The first off is that we were at once a small company. When I joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, there were 14 people in the head office. When I left, six and a half years later, we had 2,200. My point was that we didn’t have a big company. We didn’t have any advertising. We didn’t have a budget to spend. We picked up the phone and called journalists, called the media and told them our story. We weren’t a sexy business. We picked up garbage. There was nothing unique, nothing fun, and nothing cool about what we did. We had defined some stories. Some examples that we came up with were the school dropout, the person who drops out of school, quits their job or finishes their education and isn’t sure what to do so they started their own business.

That was an angle or the overcoming adversity story, when the partner quits or the bookkeeper steals from you. Your only employee quits and they have the only cell phone because your whole company was runoff that person’s cell phone in the early days. Those are the overcoming adversity stories or the inability to hire great people or a tight job market. You start talking about a culture story and how you built a great culture to compete with the big companies, who pay more in wages or you have your technology story. How you’re leveraging technology to grow a business, to become lean, to automate and optimize versus spending money. Those are all story angles that virtually anyone listening could come up with.

GTF 231 | Free PR

PR is nothing about your product so much as it is about how you’re building the business.

 

I did those exact same stories when I was running my house painting business and when we were building autobody shops. It’s nothing about your product so much as it is about how you’re building the business. The other story angle that every single one of us has is how our product or our service helped the customer overcome some problem they were having or achieved some success that they were looking for. When you talk about your customer and your product was that success or was that reason for that success, that’s the reason that the media will write about you for sure.

Cameron, in the book you talked about building your media following. You talked about some strategies from lookalike audiences to competition, the sites, influencers and some hidden sources like Trade Journals. How do you go about identifying who to be able to reach out to? Not all markets are created equal and not everybody should be looking at Forbes, Inc. or Success, speak to that a little bit.

It’s understanding your customer and your customer avatars. Let’s say that you have three different types of customers that you serve with your product or with your service. It’s understanding your customer and understanding what media content they devour. Where do they like to learn? What do they like to read? If you’re in an industry like carpet cleaning, plumbing or auto body, your customer might read the trade journals. If you were in a consumer product like a baby product, your customer might read the mommy bloggers or the mommy ezines or the weekly bulletins that get sent out to homes or whatever.

If you’re a business-to-business and you serve the small business audience of let’s say the 5 to 100 employee market, those people are not reading Forbes magazine, they’re not reading the Wall Street Journal, but they are probably reading Entrepreneur magazine, Inc. magazine, maybe Success magazine. They’re devouring more podcasts and blogs than the person who’s in the oil and gas space might. It’s first sitting down and thinking about who are my customers, where do they hang out? What do they look at? What do they read? It can be as easy as asking them. One of my core businesses right now is the COO Alliance. I’ve started the only network of its kind in the world for the second in command.

Right now, you need to have at least $8 million in revenue to have your second in command to qualify for the COO Alliance. I know where my customer avatar fits. If they’re too small of a customer, although I’d love to help them, they probably don’t have a true COO. If they’re $1 billion company, it’s probably too big for my COO Alliance as well. We’re in that probably $10 million to $500 million range. Those people devour a certain content. I can market to those people. They’re probably not on Pinterest. They’re definitely on LinkedIn. They’re probably on Facebook. They’re reading the marketing content that is being put out there.

Building your media following is about understanding your customer and your customer avatars. - Cameron Herold Click To Tweet

In the book in Chapter Four, you also mentioned some incredible tools. As I went through this guide, this book that you have created that not only does it apply to get PR using tools like BuzzSumo and many others, dozens of other resources you list in the book. You can use it for marketing. You can learn it for business growth. There’s a wealth of wisdom here. You talk about a hidden secret. It’s not as competitive as a lot of other places like trade journals. Speak to trade journals and how valuable this can be for a lot of small businesses that are not leveraging it to its fullest right now.

First off, it’s understanding how the media makes money. How do TV stations, radio stations, bloggers, podcasters, magazines, newspapers, how do they make money? They all make money by selling advertising. The only way they can sell advertising is having good content that attracts more of their viewers or listeners, etc. All the media needs good content. You’re doing them a favor by giving them your story. You’re not asking them to cover you. You’re saying, “I’ve got a good story for you. Do you have a couple of minutes so I can tell you about it?” You’re helping them out. The trade journals more than ever need good content because they can’t afford to have that investigative journalism.

They can’t afford to be out there looking for a story. Trade journals are usually small, three to five-person companies. They don’t have true journalists’ team out there. If you have a story that’s related to something that their customer cares about, which is usually geek out specific stuff to that trade or that industry, they’ll cover you. If it’s something that’s interesting to all the people in that industry, where it might be how this industry can leverage technology or how this industry can compete for good people using better cultures, etc. then they might listen as well. Every trade journal is looking for content and they typically publish once a month.

Our friend, Joe Polish, he became an icon in all the different resources tools that he made available in the market for carpet cleaning initially. He was in the trade journals all the time. He’s been teaching this idea for years and years. Yet you bring someone from your world into this and you bring the two together. It’s amazing what can happen for somebody leveraging the trade journal concept. As you’re reading right now, I challenge you to explore. In the book, by the way, Cameron makes available a lot of free resources and tools, places you can research to find the trade journals for your industry that are available to you.

A quick little side note on the whole idea of trade journals. Years ago, we were going to a trade expo. It was called the Waste Expo. It was at a trade show or a conference for people in the garbage industry, as boring trade show to go to. Two weeks before the conference started, we phoned all four of the major trade journals and said, “Do you have a couple of minutes?” Our second in command, our COO will be at Waste Expo in two weeks. He’d love to have coffee with you and talk to you about the partnerships that we’re launching or talking about at the show.” We had no partnership signed. I was going to be talking to all the garbage companies like Republic Waste Management and Allied BFI at the conference. They all agreed to meet with me for coffee. I met with all four of them for coffee during the show. Two weeks after the trade show when everyone was back at their companies doing work, all four trade journals came out and we were on the cover of two of them. We were on the inside of the other two. Everyone reading them was like, “There’s that guy that talked to us two weeks ago. They must be the real deal.” Not understanding that all we did was pick up the phone and call them.

GTF 231 | Free PR

Every trade journal is looking for content. If you have a story that’s related to something that their customers care about, they’ll cover you.

 

Speaking of preparation, to me, you’re like a scientist. In a short time, we’ve gotten to know each other, a deep thinker and strategist. You’re very strategic, low key, humble which I respect and admire about you, Cameron. In the book, you talk about this strategy. We’ll call it what you and your team learned from Jeff Bezos. This idea that I learned in a different way is from a guy named Ted Nicholas. I know Joe has talked about it a lot too, which is before you bring an idea, write a sales letter for it first. You have taken that approach from Jeff Bezos. If you talk about it in Chapter Five or Six in the book, speak to that about the idea of writing a press release first and why?

It’s tied into my concept and the vision as well. The whole idea of vision or writing a press release versus having a clear vision of what the outcome looks and feels like. If you write the press release first for what your story looks and feels like when you’re contacting the media, you’re phoning the media and you’re talking to them about your story idea, you’re usually conveying it with a lot more energy and excitement than if it was rough bullet points. You’ve thought through it in a lot more detail. You can see it and feel it. You can convey that to them so they can create a story out of that. By the way, you mentioned some tools, if anybody who’s reading wants some, if they go to FreePRBook.com/tools, we give out a whole bunch of additional tools and resources that might be helpful for them in starting up their own in-house PR as well.

I want to encourage you to get the tools. You can go to FreePRBook.com/tools. There is a wealth of resources there to help you make this journey not only for PR but again building a great business with great thinking behind it. There are several you list in Chapter Five, seven parts to a great press release. What are a couple of the key things to have in a press release, Cameron, for people to look at building in their model?

The press releases are the sidestep to the core model. The core model is to know your angle, know your target and pick up the phone. The press release is something that now due to digital media is easy to do but don’t do it on its own. You want to issue a press release that is around something strategically that you’re working on with the hopes that you’ll get picked up by some of the smaller online journals that you can again push out on all of your social media feeds. If you do a press release and hope it’s going to knock the world to your door, it won’t. If you do the press release land a few, link those back to your websites, push them out on social media and share them with your list.

It helps drive additional credibility. The key things that put in there are whatever strategically you’re focusing on in your sales and marketing. That’s first and foremost. It’s usually mentioning each of those core points two to three times. Because if it’s not going to get picked up once, they’ll notice it on the second or third comb through on that article. Third, try to limit it to a maximum of four to five core bullet points for that whole story. It’s trying to not overwhelm them with too much content, otherwise there’s no story there. You’re puking on their shoes.

All the media need is good content. You're doing them a favor by giving them your story. - Cameron Herold Click To Tweet

I know you’ve got a great resource available that people can model your press release blueprint inside the link you gave out. If you want to get access to that, number one, get the book. Number two, go to FreePRBook.com/tools. In Chapter Six, you talk about the one, two, three punches as far as follow up. You are amazing at follow-ups. Talk about why one to three is incredibly important. You already alluded to someone making a mistake because they rely on like sending out an email or something like that. Speak to the one, two, three punch and how to apply it.

Where I always go with this is even sometimes even past the one, two, three, it’s remembering that the writer or journalist is not used to getting pitched. They’re used to getting dozens or hundreds of press releases or newswires on a single day. You have to cut through some of that clutter a little bit. What I like to do over the phone is if I don’t get through to them on the first call is say, “It’s Cameron calling from the COO Alliance. I have a great story for you. Give me a shout back at this number,” if they don’t call back the second time it’s going, “It’s Cameron calling from the COO Alliance. I’ve got a great story regarding the only network of its kind in the world for second in commands. Give me a shout back at this number.” You’re going to lead them into the story a little bit. Third, I might say, “I’m going to drop you a quick little email with a couple of core bullet points.” You’re going to lead them into it, but you’re not going to give them the whole story. That tends to be the way I approach it all.

It’s like building curiosity, mystery, building a headline in many ways. How do you get someone to respond or open the message is to give them a little taste, give them a little glimpse, give them a little glance? You have several examples in here now.

I always remember that the writer is a writer. If I write the whole story for them, it’s insulting. They want to write their own story. Let them write it. Give them the basic framework, a little taste of the story and that allows them to crop something around that point.

If you’re reading this, Cameron several times throughout said, “Reach out and phone,” you might go, “How exactly do I get these journalists’ phone numbers?” Do you realize that inside the book in Chapter Six, Cameron has a five-step blueprint share how to be able to do that? What are a couple of tips that someone can put in place right now, take action with Cameron to be able to get the phone numbers of journalists?

GTF 231 | Free PR

The more credibility you have, the more credibility you continue to get, the more times you’re covered, the more the big ones will want to cover you.

 

If you’re committed to going in-house and building this in-house team, hiring your first halftime or full-time person to pitch PR for a year or so, a couple of great databases. One is Cision, which is now owned by PR Newswire. Second is called Muck Rack. There are a couple of other databases out there that you can purchase. They usually cost $1,500 to $2,000 per year, but that gives you access to all of the journalists, all their contact information, their emails, their phone numbers, their websites, the kinds of stories they cover, links to past stories. It’s a great resource to run with. Another one is if you’re going even in a smaller way is lookup Google. Type in like Dan Kuschel’s phone number, cell number, mobile number, PH, stuff will start to pop up, contact info and all of a sudden you start getting this person’s contact information. It takes a little bit longer, but you get it. I always say that the PR person, because they’re a salesperson, they’re spending about 25% of their day pitching, finding the information on who to contact and how to get ahold of them. Maybe 25% of the day doing follow up and maybe 25% of the day sending out information or information that’s been requested. They’re only pitching for a couple of hours a day. The rest of the time is the rest of managing the sales funnel.

Cameron, there’s so much more to be able to share about the book, the concepts here. If you were starting over, brand new and you were going to give yourself advice, starting a new business from scratch with no contacts and little money or no money, what would be the first handful of steps you would take to be able to go out and generate free PR?

The first one would be thinking about my business strategically over the next 12 to 24 months. What are the core business ideas I want to be able to convey to my customers, my suppliers, my employees? How can I get the media to tell that story for me as that third party credibility? It’s thinking strategically of how I can leverage it. Second would be to pitch some of the smaller outlets first, news outlets and use those to ladder up to the media a little bit. The more credibility that you have, the more credibility you continue to get, the more times you’re covered, the more the big ones will want to cover you.

People always think, “If I’m covered ten times, they’ll never want to cover me.” It’s not true. There’s a story about Apple magazine or Apple company in virtually every news outlet that exists. They’re constantly getting coverage so you’re not going to run out of places to cover you. Use that would be the second one. Third would be to make sure that you realize that it’s not about landing one story at a time. It’s truly about the amplification of those stories using that attract factor, the owned media, paid media and earned media. That’s where the leverage comes in.

What’s something I should have asked you that I didn’t?

It takes a long time to get to the night before you become an overnight success. - Cameron Herold Click To Tweet

How did we land Oprah? It’s interesting that virtually every outlet we’ve ever landed was by picking up the phone. Each story helps you ladder up to the media. What happened with Oprah was we had been phoning her every week or two weeks for a period of about a year, sending them packages, sending them letters, sending them gifts, picking up the phone, leaving phone messages, trying from seven different people going in and we could never get through to the gatekeeper, could never get through to them. Finally one day, Oprah read about us in the USA Today. We were in the money section of USA Today. She came in and she turned to her team and said, “Has anybody heard of this company?”

Her team laughed and said, “We’ve all heard of that company pitching us for eighteen months.” Oprah was like, “Let’s do a show about cleaning up somebody’s life.” That was it. They called us on Tuesday morning. They asked if we could be in LA on Thursday. Our PR guy, Tyler said, “Yes, we can be there.” He got off the phone super excited saying, “We need to be in LA on Thursday.” We’re like, “The closest trucks we have to Los Angeles is in San Francisco.” We only had 23 franchises at the time that we run Oprah. When I left, four and a half years later, we were in 330 cities. It’s by picking up the phone, being persistent, not taking no for an answer and realizing it ladders up to the media. It takes a long time to get to the night before you become an overnight success.

Coming back to your strategy of starting small, local or national to begin with?

I would go local first. Contact some of the local media first and go national. A lot of companies don’t need the national press. Why do you, if you’re only a local business and you’re local, you might be better off getting a local press. There’s a lot of local press to be gotten. If you think about Vancouver, Canada for a second, we’ve got a few different daily newspapers, probably a couple of dozen weekly newspapers. A bunch of trade journals, a bunch of magazines, bloggers, radio stations, TV stations. There are probably 500 media outlets in the Vancouver market alone or more if I think about bloggers and podcasters. There are a lot of places to start. If I got ten from Vancouver, ten to cover me over the course of a year or six months, I could share them three times on LinkedIn, three times on Facebook, three times on Twitter, email them to my list. That’s a lot of local credibility to work from.

Buzz creates buzz. No momentum like any momentum. Momentum creates momentum.

GTF 231 | Free PR

Be yourself and be authentic. Don’t try to be anyone that you’re not. We are all gifted with our real unique DNA code that is our strengths.

 

You can’t argue with the laws of physics.

A question that someone might have related to getting started. I’m going to pick up the phone. I’m going to go with this. I see contact info for a reporter. I see contact info for a journalist. I see contact info for an editor of a publication. Who do I contact first?

You always phone the person who’s writing the story or the person who’s covering you. You never phone the editor, never phone the news desk or the city desk because those people are paid to say no all day. If the editor gets 300 press releases, he’s saying no to 280 of them. The actual writer probably gets pitched 100 times and he’s saying no 98 of those times. Their phone might ring four times once it’s probably their mom. Now if you pick up the phone and call them, you’ve probably got a one in three chance of getting through to them. That’s high odds that you’re going to speak to that person. If you ever want to get a photo coverage of your brand, pick up the phone and call the photographer because nobody ever phones those people. They’re sitting at their desk waiting to be sent out on assignments. Call them up and say, “Do you have two minutes? I have a good photo op for you.” They’re all going to say, “Yes. What is it?”

As you’re reading this, I hope that you are looking to take action with what Cameron is sharing with you because there is much wisdom here. Cameron, where can people go if they want to go deeper with you. I know we’ve given out the link for the book, but where can people go to go deeper with what you have available?

All five of my books are available on Amazon so they can pick up a copy of Free PR on Amazon. It’s also on Audible and iTunes. The Second In Command podcast, if they want to get some insights as to the kinds of companies that I’m helping grow or that we’re learning from. We only interview the COOs. Everybody interviews the CEO. I wanted the rest of the story. The Second In Command podcast would be a great place for people to start as well.

I want to encourage you, get Cameron’s book, Free PR. Get access to the resources for the book at FreePRBook.com/tools. Check out his podcast, Second In Command podcast. You can also find him at CameronHerold.com. Cameron, we like to shift gears to something a little more personal on the back end of this. What is something that most people don’t know about you?

I’m insecure and shy. When I show up at events, masterminds or conferences, I’m usually quiet and nervous. I usually try to find somebody who knows me or that I know quickly, but I find them uncomfortable. I would rather stand on stage and present to 1,000 CEOs, which I’ve done in 28 countries versus walking into a cocktail party of a dozen people. I’m terrified of those.

Who is Cameron Herold?

I’m a guy from Sudbury, Canada. I’m a small-town guy trapped in an adult body.

Speaking of an adult body, you have two kids, Aiden and Connor if I’m not mistaken.

Aiden is getting all of his university acceptances back. He’s been working super hard at school this year. He’ll be eighteen. His younger brother is Connor, who’s big into sports. He’s going to be sixteen.

You spent some time with them here as well. You are sharing in our prep for the show. What are a couple of values that you hope to instill in Aiden and Connor, whether it’s business life, relationship, entrepreneurship? I’d be curious on your take on that.

One of them is to be real, to be themselves and to be authentic and not to try to be anyone that they’re not. That we are all gifted with our real unique DNA, unique code that is our strengths. The more we try to be like someone else, the less we’re being like ourselves. Everyone is perfectly okay the way they are. My son, Aiden, I tell him his superpower is his smile. He smiles and he owns the entire room. He is an entrepreneurial thinker and considerate, analytical, detail-oriented like notices things. Those are big strengths to have. If we try to make him like someone else, that’s what people get frustrated and stress. I’m trying to teach my kids that to be their unique selves and to be authentically themselves is a big one.

Thanks for giving us a glimpse inside you, your business, the success stories you’ve had, your family, your kids, the way you live. What I love about you is your frontstage and backstage are one. I see many of the Facebook posts that you do, the example you shared earlier, which is about you more comfortable with 1,000 people on stage than going to a cocktail party. I love that about you, that you’re vulnerable. You’re real. You’re genuine. It’s a pleasure to have you with us. What are one to three action steps you hope our audience take as a result of our time together?

The first one would be to try it out like a shovel. A shovel doesn’t dig a hole. You have to pick up the shovel and use it for the shovel to work. These systems do work. Buy the book, Free PR. Read the book. I would buy the hard copy and I’d write notes in it. I would use Post-it note pages, flag it and use it as your manual. I would pick up the phone and try it out. Those will be some big ones. The third thing I hope people do is to hug your kids and have fun with them because we only get this one shot.

There you have it. He’s Cameron Herold. The book is Free PR. You can put it in place to how we got 5,200 stories in a handful of years. That gives you the blueprint, the roadmap, the guide to be able to put it in place for you as well. I encourage you, access Cameron’s resources. Go check out FreePRBook.com/tools. Go check out his podcast, Second In Command and goes check out CameronHerold.com. He’s got all kinds of fascinating things he’s into. Thanks for making us part of your day. We’ll see you next time on GrowthToFreedom.com.

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

 

Breakthrough Strategy Call

If you want to go deeper and create a personal plan to get unstuck, stop the leaks in your business, ultimately free yourself from your business, or to get your next BIG Breakthrough, let’s have a Clarity Call.

You’ll walk away from it with clarity, new insights, and actions you can take to exponentially grow your business… to grow with less stress- even if we never work together.

To reserve your Clarity Call, go to BreakthroughStrategyCall.com or send an email to [email protected]  with Breakthrough Strategy Call in the subject line.

PPS: As we’re heading into a period of change in advertising and economy shifts, if you know of someone else who is looking for effective strategies, here are 3 ways we can help:

#1 – Send them to our Podcast (over 200 hours of insights, wisdom, and strategies) at https://growthtofreedom.com

#2 – Forward this episode to them.

#3 – Make an introduction and connect us at [email protected]  and/or encourage them to schedule a Clarity Call at http://www.BreakthroughStrategyCall.com 

About Cameron Herold

GTF 231 | Free PRCameron Herold is the mastermind behind hundreds of companies’ exponential growth. Cameron has built a dynamic consultancy- his current clients include a ‘Big 4’ wireless carrier, and a monarchy.  What do his clients say they like most about him? He isn’t a theory guy- they like that he speaks only from experience. He earned his reputation as the business growth guru by guiding his clients to double their profit and double their revenue in just three years or less.

Cameron was an entrepreneur from day 1.  At age 21, he had 14 employees. By 35, he’d help build his first TWO $100 MILLION DOLLAR companies.  By the age of 42, Cameron engineered 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s spectacular growth from $2 Million to $106 Million in revenue, and 3100 employees- and he did that in just six years.  His companies landed over 5,200 media placements in that same six years, including coverage on Oprah.

Not only does Cameron know how to grow businesses, but his delivery from the stage is second to none- the current publisher of Forbes magazine, Rich Karlgaard, stated, “Cameron Herold is THE BEST SPEAKER I’ve ever heard… he hits grand slams.”

When Cameron steps off the stage, he doesn’t stop teaching.  He is the author of the global best selling business book, DOUBLE DOUBLE, in its 7th printing and in multiple translations around the world.

Cameron is a top-rated international speaker and has been paid to speak in 26 countries.  He is also the top-rated lecturer at EO/MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program and a powerful and effective speaker at Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer leadership events around the world.

Share this post: