As COO of 1-800-GOT_JUNK?, Cameron Herold is one of the architects of the company’s explosive growth.

 It’s the kind of success story that all entrepreneurs dream about: take something ordinary (hauling junk or selling coffee); differentiate either the product or the delivery, or both. Ride the exponential growth curve to the mult-million-dollar stratosphere. Go on the lecture circuit.
            It’s the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? story, in a nutshell. Vancouverite Brian Scudamore started hauling junk in 1989 as a high-school summer job. The differentiating elements he employed were not new, just new to the junk-removal business: the “Got Milk?” advertising campaign, the 1-800-FLOWER model for branding your name and phone number for all of North America, FedEx’s service philosophy (clean trucks, uniformed drivers, fast response), Wal-Mart’s way of instilling a sense of mission in every employee (daily motivational meetings), the leveraging of celebrity exposure (starting with an appearance on Oprah).
Cameron Herold joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK? As chief operating officer in 2000 to manage its franchise expansion. Today, the company has 237 franchises in most North American cities and is pushing into Australia, the U.K. and Europe. On Friday, May 11, he’ll share some of his strategies with the insurance industry in his presentation at the IBABC conference.
Herold, like Scudamore,  showed his entrepreneurial bent  at a young age. At seven, he made rocking chair pin cushions and clothes pins and sold them door-to-door in Sudbury, Ontario. His next foray into business was comic book arbitrage – buy low, sell high. “Kids at one end of the beach gave me comic books for nothing and I sold them to the rich kids at the other end; if you wanted comic books, you came to me,” says Herold, laughing. A few years later it was the scrap metal business. “I got metal from local businesses and at weekends my Dad drove me to the scrap yard. I also collected clothes hangers and sold them for a penny-a-piece to the dry cleaners. I was wired that way.”

When it came time for higher education, Herold’s father, in the true spirit of entrepreneurs, told his son that he had to figure things out for himself, which meant getting a job while working on an undergraduate in law with a minor in business at Carleton University. For three consecutive summers, he ran a College Pro Painters franchise in Sudbury. “This was my big, early step,” says Herold.

He further honed his skills in franchise growth at the VP level with  Boyd Autobody & Glass, where he spent the better part of four years on the road. He next served as President of Barter Business Exchange in Vancouver. At 34, Herold was vice-president of corporate development for Ubarter.com in Seattle, a technology and infrastructure services company, where he was hired to grow the company as fast as possible. But after working 14 hours days and being away from Vancouver and his family for the better part of 18 months, he moved back to Vancouver. “Without a job, I bought a house, did a reno, lost a pile of money in the stock market and found out that my Mum had cancer,” he says. “Needless to say, that time of my life was stressful.”

“My plan was to coach hypergrowth (companies that grow at 100 percent per year) to entrepreneurs. Brian [Scudamore] gave me my first three-month contract. That was five and a half years ago and 1-800-GOT-JUNK became my one and only consulting contract. I became employee number 14,” he says; today there are 182 corporate employees and more than 1,800 system-wide. The sales revenues of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Have achieved hypergrowth levels for several years.

Herold first met Scudamore eleven years ago at the Young Entrepreneurs Organization.At the time, Scudamore’s company was called Rubbish Boys. “I told him there was no way he could franchise – today we laugh about that,” says Cameron. “Now I just say he didn’t have the systems or skill set in place yet, not that it couldn’t be done.”
As COO of 1-800 Got Junk, Herold runs all the operations.  “I reverse-engineered Brian’s dream: he shows me the future with no idea how to get there and I do a gap analysis between the future and today. In other words, I backward schedule everything that needs to be done.”
However, he is also forward thinking. Herold recognized and utilized Web technology to make the company more efficient. He helped create an intranet, called Junket, which serves as an administrative tool for franchisees. It acts as dispatcher, a job scheduler, and more.  Herold’s next goal is to increase corporate business from 25% in sales to 50% by the end of this year. He is currently working with Google on search engine optimization. According to Herold, booking online will reduce operational costs by 95 percent, and could save the company about $1.5 million.
Ken Sim, co-owner of Nurse Next Door homecare services, visited Herold at his 1-800-GOT-JUNK office near Granville Island and was immediately impressed with Herold’s work ethic. He also has the good fortune of having Herold as his mentor. Sim believes that Herold’s success is partly his gift of looking for best practices in people and companies. “For example, he will take the aerospace industry which is totally unrelated to an industry such as mine (www.nursenextdoor.ca), find a best practice and apply it,” says Sim.

“I first met Cameron when he was speaking at a function and I saw the future of my company through him; he’s an honest, down-to-earth guy and always downplays how smart he is,” says Sim. “If I were to put my finger on any one thing, some people can see the future but Cameron has the ability of showing you how to get there…his strength lies in helping others go forward.”

 “Another strength is that he likes giving back-- to other people and other businesses. He likes seeing others succeed,” says Sim. Asked to describe himself, Herold comes up with two words: casual and consistent. “I love this business and it’s like playing; certainly I have an impact on the company but so does everyone else. I’d like to be here forever,” says Herold.

A strong work ethic seems to spill over into everything he does: Herold applies this business model to his personal life, especially when it comes to planning dinner parties -- from the grocery list to seating his guests. “I love to cook and entertain; I took a nine-day course at Dubrulle Culinary School and I worked at Gourmet Greens in Toronto back in 1989, just for fun,” he says. 

He also has a passion for cookbooks. “Another package will arrive in the mail and I’ll say to him ‘This had better not be another cookbook.’ He almost has to hide them from me,” says his wife Jane.
Now that his kids are aged two and four, Herold’s focus is on his family. “ I haven’t taken the time yet to spend with them and I want to teach my oldest how to ski. I’ve done my traveling and now just go away for personal development and speaking engagements. I’m starting to free up my time and plan to go back to the family cottage at Thunder Beach,” Herold says.  Maybe his son will find some comic books there.