Introduction

Every CEO has a vision of growing their company or running it better. But for most, the vision is as far as it gets. As the company starts to grow, so do the CEO’s problems. They can’t seem to hire the right people or grow their team. They don’t have time to execute on their growing list of urgent, high-impact projects. They can’t even think of positioning the company to sell.

Many CEOs get stuck in the day-to-day instead of building the overall business. They have no time for strategic thinking. They spend too much energy working on too many areas where they kind of suck, which leaves them feeling drained. And that just makes the problems worse. Other CEOs may be great at the details but would rather have someone else actually dealing with the details on their behalf, so they can focus on more strategic areas, or on areas that energize them.

Most CEOs I’ve met know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s enough to make even the most visionary CEO feel overwhelmed. The good news is that, though you might feel like you have to do everything yourself, you don’t. You just need to hire the right second-in-command. That’s often a COO, although (as we’ll see) there are a number of titles that all describe a similar role, any of which can achieve the same results. Mostly, though, I’ll use the term COO as a shorthand.

If you can find a COO who complements your skillset, the partnership will set your business on fire. You won’t be by yourself anymore. That alone is a huge change that will give you space to be strategic again. In many ways, you will be one of two in the box on the org chart. And the power of two doesn’t just double your effectiveness. It multiplies it exponentially—and it brings the Vivid Vision that inspires you within reach.

The bad news is that hiring the right COO isn’t easy. And hiring the wrong COO is worse than useless. It can kill your momentum…or your company.

This book will help you avoid mistakes. It will show you how to find the right COO for you and for your business, whatever stage you’re in. It will help you figure out the kind of COO you need, and tell you where to look for them, how to hire them—and how to work with them to bring your vision to life.

I’ve stepped in to help three CEOs realize their visions by growing their companies to over $100 million. The highest-profile occasion was when my best friend Brian hired me to help him grow his small junk-removal company, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. He believed it could scale rapidly, but he couldn’t do it on his own. With him as CEO and me as COO, we grew the company from $2 million to $106 million in six and a half years.

Brian couldn’t have fulfilled his long-term vision without me—and I couldn’t ever have been an effective COO without him. Brian was the visionary, and I was in the trenches. It was hard as hell, but I was in heaven.

We were yin and yang. And, in many ways, we were even stronger than the EOS Visionary and Integrator that so many talk about. We had a bit of an unfair advantage, as he’d been best man at my wedding three months before I joined him as COO. We also did a lot right, which I’ll uncover throughout this book so you have the same upside.

In 2008, I spoke at a conference run by the founder of the Entrepreneurs Organization, Verne Harnish. As I left the stage, one of Verne’s coaches, Kevin Lawrence, walked up to me and said, “Wow! I thought you were a saying, but you’re a real person!” For two days he’d heard entrepreneurs at the Gazelles (now Scaling Up) conference saying, “I need a Cameron.” He figured it was a business term, like “I need a Flywheel” or “I need a BHAG.”

My name had become shorthand for someone who can execute a vision and help a CEO grow their company. What the entrepreneurs were really saying was that their business was missing a piece; they needed a COO. And many of them likely did—but they didn’t need a Cameron.

For at least 90 percent of the CEOs at the conference, I would have been a terrible COO. I wouldn’t have matched them or their needs. It would have been a disaster. In fact, when I think about all the members of the COO Alliance, an organization I set up and still run to support elite COOs from around world, I likely couldn’t run 95 percent of their companies—and probably only two or three of the hundreds of members we have could have helped build 1-800-GOT-JUNK? like I did with Brian.

Brian and I were two in a box. We fit together perfectly. The CEOs calling out for a “Cameron” at that conference were desperately hoping there was a quick way to achieve something like that for themselves—but that kind of match is rare.

When I meet CEOs with their COOs, you’d be surprised how often I can see right away that they don’t quite fit. And, in other cases, why they fit so perfectly.

Keep reading, and you’ll get all my secrets.

The Chief Operating Officer

A “Cameron” can’t be shorthand for a second-in-command. There’s no one definition of a COO. Ask yourself this: what does a COO do? Or, more specifically: what do you want your COO to do? I’m going to show you exactly how to know what you’re looking for in your COO.

I guarantee that your answer won’t be the same as mine. It won’t be the same as anyone else’s. There are as many ideas about what a COO does or how they do it as there are CEOs. COO is the hardest senior job description to write in any organization. That’s why there are magazines and mastermind groups for CEOs, HR executives, heads of marketing and accounting—but there are none for COOs.

There should be—which is why I’ve created the COO Alliance, which is a network of members from more than seventeen countries where COOs support one another and gain tools and connections to grow themselves and their business.

Just because COO is difficult to define doesn’t mean it can’t be defined. Just because they have hugely varied roles and personalities doesn’t mean COOs don’t have things in common. For one, they all have to work with a CEO. They’re all executing someone else’s vision. And they’re all in high demand in a business environment dominated by founders and entrepreneurs who are often long on vision and short on execution.

I’ve interviewed more than 250 COOs for my Second in Command podcast. From that experience and running the COO Alliance, I’ve learned that although COOs come in all shapes and sizes, they fit into broad types. They have different backgrounds and skill sets, though they lean practical rather than visionary. They fill different roles in a company, though they tend toward execution.

I’ve also been a COO or second-in-command three times. Before I helped build 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, my first second-in-command-type role was with College Pro Painters, the largest residential house painting company on the planet.

I then became second-in-command for the franchising company of Boyd Autobody & Glass in Canada, which later acquired Gerber Auto Collision in the US; combined, they are now a $2 billion company. When I started, we had seven locations; when I left, just as the company was about to go public and begin its acquisitions in the United States, we had about sixty. I was also president of a private currency company, Barter Business Exchange in Vancouver, which was later acquired by UBarter.com, where I became VP of Corporate Development. All that before becoming COO for 1-800-GOT-JUNK?.

So, I know what I’m talking about.

The same COO position in a company can actually have different responsibilities and job descriptions at different times. As we’ll see in the first chapter, a famous study in the Harvard Business Review identified seven broad types of COOs. I think Brian initially hired me as what the study called a mentor.

He wanted to grow the business via franchising but didn’t know what he needed to do to achieve that. I did, so I showed him as I was doing it. I later became more like what the study calls “the other half,” meaning a foil who complemented Brian’s style, knowledge base, and way of working. And 1-800-GOT-JUNK? went on to become a Harvard Business School case study.

Later in the book, we’ll see examples of the many different types of COOs and the roles they play, and we’ll discuss how you can tell which is the right type for you—and when you need to hire them and where you need to start looking. I’ll tell you how best to attract the right person and onboard them effectively. And I’ll tell you how to work with them for maximum results in your company, too.

Adapt or Die

The shockwave the COVID-19 pandemic sent through the business world continues to reverberate. Supply chains faltered, and employees quit their jobs in droves in the Great Resignation (aka Great Realignment, Great Reassessment, etc.). That put even more emphasis on particular skills in any business: strategic thinking, removing obstacles, aligning people, and executing with consistency.

Those responsibilities all typically fall within the role of a COO—making a second-in- command more essential than ever for most entrepreneurs.

A good COO, for example, can help you turn the Great Resignation into a positive force. It’s about time employees quit shitty jobs at shitty companies where they have to drive forty minutes each way for the privilege of being treated poorly or working in uninspiring roles. Who wouldn’t decide to have a better life if they had the choice?

Companies need to build better cultures to attract talent; otherwise, they’re dead. The stakes are higher now than they’ve ever been—and a COO is a CEO’s ideal collaborator to get that work done successfully.

There’s an old saying that if the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, you’re out of business. In a full-employment market, it’s the same if you’re not building a better company. If you’ve reached the point where you can no longer keep up with the rate of change on your own, the right COO won’t just help you stay in the game.

They’ll help you positively thrive.

Chapter 1

What is a COO?

When a CEO decides it’s time to get help in the business, they may well feel overwhelmed and a little desperate. They’re tempted to reach out to the first person who comes along. That’s completely the wrong approach. It’s unlikely to succeed—and it might well make things worse.
A COO could be outward-facing with a focus on marketing or PR and sales. They could be inward-facing and focus on operations, execution, and engineering. They could be IT-centric. There’s only one key requirement, and it’s this:

The COO has to be great at whatever the CEO sucks at. Again, it’s yin and yang.

Chapter 2

The Seven Types of COOs

Nate Bennett and Stephen A. Miles wrote a great book on COOs—Riding Shotgun—and also a widely read Harvard Business Review article titled “The Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the Chief Operating Officer.” They describe the COO’s role as “at once so critical and so situational.” They go on: “While other jobs are primarily defined in relation to the work to be done and the structure of the organization, the COO’s role is defined in relation to the CEO as an individual.”

After interviewing dozens of CEOs and COOs, Bennett and Miles arrived at seven main categories of COO, depending on the role the CEO needs the COO to fill: Executor, Change Agent, Mentor, Other Half, Partner, Heir Apparent, and MVP (of course, a COO can belong to more than one category at the same time, or evolve over time).

Chapter 3

The Seven Types of COOs

Nate Bennett and Stephen A. Miles wrote a great book on COOs—Riding Shotgun—and also a widely read Harvard Business Review article titled “The Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the Chief Operating Officer.” They describe the COO’s role as “at once so critical and so situational.” They go on: “While other jobs are primarily defined in relation to the work to be done and the structure of the organization, the COO’s role is defined in relation to the CEO as an individual.”

After interviewing dozens of CEOs and COOs, Bennett and Miles arrived at seven main categories of COO, depending on the role the CEO needs the COO to fill: Executor, Change Agent, Mentor, Other Half, Partner, Heir Apparent, and MVP (of course, a COO can belong to more than one category at the same time, or evolve over time).

Chapter 4

The Seven Types of COOs

Nate Bennett and Stephen A. Miles wrote a great book on COOs—Riding Shotgun—and also a widely read Harvard Business Review article titled “The Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the Chief Operating Officer.” They describe the COO’s role as “at once so critical and so situational.” They go on: “While other jobs are primarily defined in relation to the work to be done and the structure of the organization, the COO’s role is defined in relation to the CEO as an individual.”

After interviewing dozens of CEOs and COOs, Bennett and Miles arrived at seven main categories of COO, depending on the role the CEO needs the COO to fill: Executor, Change Agent, Mentor, Other Half, Partner, Heir Apparent, and MVP (of course, a COO can belong to more than one category at the same time, or evolve over time).