3 Essential Growth Strategies for Startups with Cameron Herold

Cameron Herold is an accomplished entrepreneur and growth guru, having built 4 companies to over $100 million in revenue. He is also the author of Double Double, a guide to doubling revenue and profit in 3 years. Cameron sat down with us to share three of his best growth strategies for building a successful company. Read more below or watch the full video here.

Create a Vivid Vision

This “vivid vision” is a 3-4 page written description of exactly what you want your company to be three years from now. More specific than a mission statement, this paints a picture of your ideal company and makes it easy for employees to work towards that vision. Once you have the final plan, it is easy to reverse engineer and create manageable steps to get to that point. Creating this description is like envisioning your dream home, and designing the blueprints to create it.

Get the Right People on the Bus

When recruiting employees, culture fit is just as important, if not more important, than technical skills. A good way to determine this is by bringing in 6-8 candidates at the same time for a group interview. Ask questions meant to identify the strong leaders and those that have a cultural fit. Steve Jobs would always say, “I have to see the twinkle in their eyes,” before ever calling someone back for a technical interview.

As much as you want to recruit the right people, you need to make sure you are getting the wrong ones out as well. The cost of keeping a toxic employee is 15x their annual salary, and can negatively impact your company in many different ways.

Hold High-Impact Meetings

When holding meetings, be sure and always have a clear purpose. Why are we here? What are the three big things we are going to get done?

Always include an agenda so that employees are able to follow along and make the best use of their time. A great way to make sure meetings start and stay on schedule is to create a built in buffer. Always promise to end calls and meetings five minutes early so that employees have time to make it to their next one on time. This way, things won’t get pushed back and employees will be able to efficiently manage their time.

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For more, check out Cameron’s book, “Double Double” or text the word “Double” to 38470 for tips and examples. Let us know what you think @startupsco!