Cultivating a Business With Behind It Heart: Voice Like A Lion with Cameron Gilmore

Ever stared failure in the face and laughed? Cameron Gilmore joins me, Steven Pemberton, for an unfiltered journey through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. We peel back the curtain on what it truly takes to start a business, from my own heart-pounding decision to leave the comfort of a steady job to Cameron's musing on the motivations fueling our ambitions. It's a rollercoaster ride of personal stories where resilience isn't just a buzzword—it's a battle cry.

Success isn't just about what you know; it's about what you do with that knowledge. In this episode, I draw on two decades of experience to explain why some of the best victories are dressed up as failures and how wisdom brought a balance to the entrepreneurial spirit. From generating millions to facing the stark dissatisfaction of the nine-to-five grind, we dissect the essence of true achievement and share strategies on how to pivot, persist, and ultimately, prosper.

We round out our conversation with an earnest look at self-improvement and the art of building a company with humanity at its core. Hear how my journey through humbling sales calls and the building of a positive company culture has taught me the power of nurturing growth in every team member. And as Cameron wades into the world of social media, we explore how connection and sharing knowledge can amplify success. So, if you're ready to turn setbacks into stepping stones and foster a thriving business with care, tune in for an episode that's as much about soul-searching as it is about success-searching.

Connect with Cam

Instagram: cam_gilmore

FaceBook: cameron.gilmore.39

YouTube: channel/UCddqzvN6_mZnR8k7vx4i-vw

LinedIn: cameron-gilmore-57b32768

Free 90 minute block gift (to get please email me at Steven@hollowco.com)

Transcript

Steven Pemberton: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to Voice Like a Lion podcast. I'm your host, Steven Pemberton, and today this is Take Two with my friend, Cameron Gilmore. He is a professional speaker, author of I'm Not your Sales Guru podcast, host of the Art Study of you, a top 25% globally listened to show in 13 countries. He is best known for building a company from zero to 34 million not 34,000, 34 million in nine months. Cameron, welcome to the show. Thank you, my brother. Welcome back.

Cameron Gilmore: 0:29

Yeah, I ain't no worries, man, I love it.

Steven Pemberton: 0:34

Thank you again for just bearing with me because, just the same way that business is, sometimes with these podcasts we run into some issues and we were talking about this offline and I think this is a really good place to start. Is you said it right before we started recording? Is you said to be an entrepreneur? You had to be a little bit crazy. You got to be a little bit insane. Why do you think that?

Cameron Gilmore: 0:57

Man. The biggest reason is because you can plan out and you can schedule out and you can go through all the checks and balances, all the do's and the do's and everything. You prep as best as you can but at the end of the day things happen right. Entrepreneurship what happens is there's this eco space in the universe that says you think you want to be an entrepreneur, so let's see how much you really want to be an entrepreneur and it's inevitable, like things will come up and stuff doesn't work, or missed assignments and missed deals or this doesn't, and it just all seems to fall apart within the first little bit of starting a business. Wanting to get into a business or the other side of it is you have a really good idea, you want to go become a business and then all of a sudden, a raise comes, a promotion comes, a new job offering comes and you're like well, maybe I should attend to this because this is what I've been looking for. And to become an entrepreneur you have to be a little psychotic in the brain, because not everybody will do or want to do what you want to do, which is totally fine.

Cameron Gilmore: 2:02

Entrepreneurship is definitely not for everybody, and so it takes the unrefined product and you will fail, you will lose, you'll stay up all hours of the night, it will bust you to your knees, it'll humble you very quickly because to put yourself in a position to where you have freedom, freedom of choice, freedom of options you are the author and director of your own life. That's not how the eco space was developed, was everybody follows in line and everybody does their path, and it takes the crazy ones to say I'm going to make my own path. So that's just been entrepreneur over the years that I've been somewhat trying to become the best version of myself, and it's just I do that through the businesses that I've created and the businesses that I've failed at, and just keep doing it.

Steven Pemberton: 3:05

See, I found myself very much in that same spot. I remember when I quit my job in 2020, I was up for a huge raise and I had applied for different positions that were going to get me this raise and I was a shoe in for them and I saw my name fall through the cracks and, for just inexplicable reasons, I did not get those positions. And then one day I just remember walking in I'd been running two different departments in this facility in East Texas and I walk in and they had put another guy over this department and the only reason he got the job was because he was so bad at his other job. He got demoted into that one and I just remember being so frustrated and upset and just thinking what is going on. And then I figured out why Because later on down the road I mean not much later, it was a couple of weeks later God caught me out of that job and very much exactly what you just said.

Steven Pemberton: 3:58

Mike Tyson, I think, says it best when he talks about just life in general, but I think it goes really well with business. As he said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and I just see it all the time all over social media. Hey, you can make money doing this and you can make money doing that. Yeah, you probably can. But are you to sit there and bet everything on it? Are you willing to bet your whole life on it? Because, like you said, when you get punched in the teeth to the point where you have no teeth, are you willing to just keep getting up, keep trying again, keep moving forward? Because it is so easy when your whole life is sitting there writing on you, making a paycheck, making something happen, and when it doesn't happen, do you quit or do you keep going?

Cameron Gilmore: 4:41

Man, you brought up a point right life doesn't start when it's good. Life starts when you have adversity in your life. That's the point of life. It's to learn and to grow.

Cameron Gilmore: 4:55

I had this conversation with my son, my son last night. One of my boys, he's studying, he's an electrician and he's going to school, a trade school, to become a master electrician and eventually he's going to become a journeyman and he's going to own his own business one day. His goal is by the age of 22,. By the age of 30, he wants to own his own company and run it. And he came to me and he's like dad, I'm having this massive anxiety attack. I'm OK, I'm just super anxious and everything feels like it's coming down on me and he goes. Does it ever stop? And I go. I asked him a question. I said why do you go to the gym? And he goes to get stronger and to feel better. And I go no, you don't. That's a lie. That's the falsetto. So that is going to the gym to get stronger and to feel better. That's the falsetto. Those are everybody that you see. Those are, as my good friend Eric Thomas, dr Eric Thomas, the ET, the hip hop preacher, says, those are those that gazelles front like their lions in the jungle. So you see all these people on the internet. You see all these people saying do this. There's this new process, there's dropshipping, create this course. The AI does everything. You can make money in your sleep. That's the falsetto. So I go back to him and he goes. What do you mean, dad? And I go. You don't go to the gym to get stronger in the way you think, and you don't go to gym to feel better. You go to the gym to fail. That's the whole purpose of it.

Cameron Gilmore: 6:31

The design of a 50-pound dumbbell is not to make you win, it's to make you fail. It's to understand at what point does failure happen? At what point are you going to write down this? At this point, at this many reps, at this many sets, I failed. So you now have a benchmark. You now know where your 100% giving 100% is. When you fail, when you can't pick up that weight, that's 100%. So now you know where that new standard is. This is the new standard of 100% In the process of failing, in the process of going through hurt, through pain, through anguish, through agony, through sore muscles, through sore brains, through soreness of mind, soreness of insecurities and the soreness of not feeling good enough or not being like the person that's on the Instagram or on social media.

Cameron Gilmore: 7:22

In that process you become stronger, because you understand that that 50-pound dumbbell no longer feels the same when you can do it 30 times. Let's say you're doing curls. You can curl this thing 30 times. That does not have the same feeling as when you picked it up for the first time. But a 65-pound dumbbell now feels like the 50-pound dumbbell when you first initially picked it up. So I told my son you go to the gym to learn what it's like to fail, truly fail to truly build yourself to understand where that pushing point, where that breaking point is. Because once you understand that breaking point, that's the start. That's when you start. So have this mindset right. I love the voice of a lion. That's what a lion does. A lion understands that. A lion sleeps four hours a day.

Cameron Gilmore: 8:19

It's only really not sleeps, it only is awake really like four to six hours a day. It sleeps the majority of the time, but when it gets up clarity, it knows what it's doing. It knows that when it wakes up, every animal around it understands there is now a threat and if they're the weakest one or if there's the slowest one, they are going to get devoured by the line. So I tell my son you understand the process of failing. When you understand that process, you now understand what it is like to be successful. You and I are the byproducts of failing and losing, more than the person who is just starting. And that's what people need to understand is you have to fail, you have to lose, you have to go. You have to just lose so much. And here's what you lose in the process you lose friends that tell you you can't do it. You lose the negative thoughts that run through your head this is too hard. You lose watching Netflix, amazon Prime, youtube TV. You lose all of that. You lose shows that don't benefit you in this moment. What you gain is clarity. You start reading more. You start surrounding yourself with a circle of influence of people that want to be, that want to be and help you become the best version of you. So you lose a circle of friends that don't help you elevate. And what I mean by that is you have those friends that you can call up at any time and you know it's gonna tell you that they're gonna talk about the same thing, tell the same jokes or a goof about about the same thing, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But in the process of becoming the best version of you and becoming a true entrepreneur, those friends take a backseat to those that you are trying to aspire to become like. And I'm not talking about fame, fortune or wealth. I'm talking about mindset, clarity and living in an abundance.

Cameron Gilmore: 10:31

So all of that, what you just said, just struck this nerve. When I was telling my son about that. I talked to my kids all the time about stuff like this. I said you don't want to be like me, you definitely don't. I'm the benchmark, I'm the starting point. Where I am today. We're met. Myself and my wife are. We are the benchmark. The personal development, the mindset, the reading, the training, the coaching, all of that. That's the benchmark. So now you know where the starting point is. Now you need to elevate past that.

Steven Pemberton: 11:00

Yeah, I love that because that there's so many things Like for me that's one thing I talk about all the time is the gym. I've always related the gym back to business because of the same reason. Now I didn't put it as elegant as you did, but I've always said it is. People think, well, it's like you know, I'm just going to be successful as soon as I start this business. But if you were to walk into the gym and there's 315 loaded on the bar for you to do a bench press and you've never been in the gym in your entire life and if you have been, you've been on the treadmill do you think it is actually feasibly possible for you to get on this bench and just do 315 for reps? It's not going to happen because unless you're just like literally godly gifted strong because that's not how it works you have to get the reps in and the thing is the reps are hard, and especially the ones when it's like I can't do another one, there's no more I can do and you got to push yourself beyond what you think you can do For me. I mean, we met in the middle of one of my toughest seasons where it was just man. I've just felt as if I could not win to save my life. It literally felt that way. But the thing was is in those reps of I can't do this another day, I can't do this another moment, I can't do this another week, I still kept going, I still kept showing up, I still kept persevering, and now we're having the biggest month that we've had in an entire year. So are you willing to take the punches? Are you willing to do the reps? Are you willing to fail over and over, and, over and over again until you actually achieve a breakthrough? Because when you see the people who are the world's strongest man, or you see the people who are winning Mr Olympia for being the most jacked, they didn't just wake up just like that. They had to get their life in order and they had to keep going. They had to keep.

Steven Pemberton: 12:43

Like you said, when, the more that you start dialing in on you, the more that you start developing you, what ends up happening is there's so many people that start disappearing. And that's when you find the people who are true to you. And even with me, there's been people who've come into my sphere of influence and then they've disappeared. And I'm telling them it's like just wait. So I know you don't see it yet, but just wait. I know it doesn't look good right now, but just wait.

Steven Pemberton: 13:06

And everyone just in there saying, no, no, you missed it somewhere and maybe God told you something different, that maybe you should just pick a different business. And I'm just telling them, wait. So just wait, because there was things that had to come out of me through doing all these reps and there's things that I had to learn, and you learn those in the hard times. You learn those in the reps. You don't just learn it from a book or it's great. Podcasts are amazing, but if you're not listening to what Cam is saying, what I'm saying, and implementing it, then it's just something else. That's playing background music.

Cameron Gilmore: 13:34

Aha, I love that man. That's beautiful, beautifully said. I want to touch on something you said the implementation of this right. So people always when they hear $34 million in nine months, everybody wants to know what the secret sauce is. What is the secret sauce? And I'm like you want to know, you really want to know what the secret sauce is. And they're like, yeah, and I tell them Suck more than you win.

Cameron Gilmore: 14:03

I have 20 years in business. I have failed more times than I can care. I have burned money, I've burned bridges. I have failed more times than I can count on the victories. Look, it's not that I love winning, I hate losing. There's a big difference. I practice not to be perfect. I practice so I don't mess up.

Cameron Gilmore: 14:31

So, in the process of understanding, how do you zone in? How do you know what is good? Now, look, you may be a nine to fiveer and that's totally fine. I know some of the happiest people that work a nine to five job and they love their job. They love they're calling 100%. That you're calling, love your calling.

Cameron Gilmore: 14:52

I know a lot of people who are nine to fives that dislike what they do. But my question is why do you dislike what you do. Why is it that you dislike the job that you go to? And here's the mind quandary. If you will, you hear all these people all the time. If you hate what you do, then move. Or if you hate what you do, change.

Cameron Gilmore: 15:14

But why is it that you actually hate where you go to work? Why is it that you despise where you go? And the root cause of it is you just don't like the way you are personally. Personally, there's an imbalance. Right, there's a word in Navajo I'm half Navajo and half Scottish there's a word in Navajo. It's called hojjo, means balance mind, body, soul and beauty. Right they? We believe that if you're in balance of all four of these things are in balance. You live in what's called hojjo balance. There's always an imbalance in somebody. If somebody doesn't like where they're at, there's an imbalance. So you have to hone in on what is that imbalance? You have to isolate and understand who you are and where you are in your life. If you don't like that, then change. Change who you are, because once you change who you are, then you'll start to learn to love where you are. And once you love where you are, then things around you can blossom and grow.

Cameron Gilmore: 16:14

So first thing you need to do is understand where your imbalance is, whether it's your mind. Are you not reading enough? Or is your mind being just filtered with social media, the quick, instant gratification? So first check your mind, then look at your body. What are you eating? Are you drinking enough water? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you going out and exercising 30 minutes a day? Go, take a walk for 30 minutes a day. Watch what it will do and how it will change your life. Get outside in the sun. Let the sun get you right, the rays from the sun, like in the wintertime, okay, but still you can go outside, put a coat and hat on and walk outside for 30 minutes. Don't give me an excuse that you can't do it, because you can.

Cameron Gilmore: 16:56

Then the spiritual side whether you believe in God or the universe or the great spirit, whatever it may be, align yourself with whatever that spiritual being is. You and I both are God-fearing individuals, so I always have a check in with God and have a conversation with him. Make sure that he and I are. I'm aligned with him because his alignment with me, he's always aligned with me. I just get out of alignment with him and then the beauty right? Do I spend time? Do I spend time giving thanks for the beauty that's around me? Do I have a day of attitude of gratitude? Do I start my day off with three things that I'm grateful for? So typically, when you hear in, the misconception that people have is if you don't like where you're at, then move. Why don't you like where you're at? It's cause you're in balance, so find that balance. So people ask well, how did you start? How did you do 34 million? It's simple One. It's 20 years of just screwing up as much as I could to get to where I was, to be in a place to say, hey, mr Investor, you invested in this and we are going to exponentially grow it.

Cameron Gilmore: 17:59

The second thing is is we're gonna take unrefined products which were part-time college kids who were going to school? They are the greatest sponges of soaking up the knowledge. They're not professionals. They want to be taught how to be better people. So the first thing we did was build them as individuals. We build them as people. I told them when they come to work for me, my job is to build you as a person first and let the business side take over. And that's what we did. We built them individually. We helped them get into balance.

Cameron Gilmore: 18:31

We helped them get in the line and help them push through the negative thinking cause you do something you're not normal to, your brain says hold time out, you're the fight, the flight or the freeze right, and your brain is designed to keep us safe. So if you go into a space you're not used to, the brain says we're out, bye-bye, we're running, Understand how to push through it. So the first thing is you study your craft. And what is that craft that we're trying to study is you. I have to study myself first.

Cameron Gilmore: 19:01

What makes me tick, what makes me grow, what makes me think deeply, what makes me cry every single day, what makes me laugh every single day? Jimmy V, right, every year he does Jimmy V for the cancer. He says the three greatest things how to have a great day is if you laugh every day, you cry every day and you're deep thought, that is a great day, that's a filled day. So what we did and what I did is built this whole process around building yourself first. Business will take care of it, because if I'm more confident in myself, it comes through in my place. If I believe in who I am, then I believe in what I'm doing. But if I know that my goal today is to be more confident, to overcome an objection, to have an actual conversation, then I'm selling what that actually is selling, and that is the true process of becoming a balance with somebody.

Steven Pemberton: 19:56

And the thing that really strikes me about that is I was talking to my wife about this a couple of days ago is, I feel like, especially in the Christian community, there's one question that most people are not willing to ask themselves, which is why do I believe what I believe? Because I had this conversation with a non-believer atheist and he asked me this on his podcast why do you believe in God? And the thing was that I knew why I believed in him, because I've seen there's been inexplicable evidence in my life that he exists. But I've seen so many people crumble under that same question. No matter if that is, why do you believe that your business is gonna succeed? Why are you upset? Why are you being able to be successful at that job? Similar to what you were saying is if you ask that question, why do I believe that I hate this job? You may find out it's like well, it's actually just because I've been super lazy, and so every time a promotion comes up, I get skipped and I feel like I deserve to get the promotion. But then now I'm realizing I show up two hours late and I still have a job after two years. Maybe I should just be grateful that they haven't fired me yet.

Steven Pemberton: 21:00

But those deeper questions and that's why I love how you built your company and I would love for you to go a little bit deeper into that is you built it from the mind down instead of trying to build it from the fingertips up or trying to build it from the heart.

Steven Pemberton: 21:14

It's like you had to build it in the mind, that gray area between the ears I've just seen defeat so many people. I had a conversation with an author the other day and he's a big time business guy and he said those exact same things. He was talking about the five principles that he's seen of every successful person, and the very last one he stated was receiving. And for me, when I heard receiving, you have to learn that If you grew up in a state or in a place where receiving was really hard, where people would give you a compliment, you just say well and you try to deflect it. If you're not able to receive, it's gonna be difficult for you in business and that's usually just because of the inches between your ears. So I would love for you to just go a little bit deeper on how you built that company.

Cameron Gilmore: 22:00

Man. I love that. It's a great book for everybody to read. I have plenty of books that people should read. Gay Hendricks, the Big Leap right Talks about upper limit that was good.

Cameron Gilmore: 22:10

Yeah, and there's a spot in there where in the book where it talks about a guy who's going out golfing. So they're golfing, right, the typical answer of a you get it. He says the guy hits a good shot and the people are playing with this man, that was a great shot. He goes eh, I didn't get a hold of it. The other part is oh man, you hit that really good, I could have done better. Right, the deflection, right. So this receiving, so it's this whole deflection forces that we're really good at and I have been good at that, super good at that over the years is deflecting. When someone says, eh, you know blind, you know blind squirrel finds another every now and then. Right, yeah, you know, even an idiot can win a race. But it's this constant negativity in the brain that we're conditioned to do as a joke or we're joking about it. A joke, oftentimes, told enough, becomes a reality.

Steven Pemberton: 23:03

Yeah.

Cameron Gilmore: 23:04

How can you just differentiate between a joke and a reality if you keep saying it over and over Because I think it, I must be it right? Think of that quote over and over, because I think that I must be it. How much has that ripped and destroyed individuals? So when we built this company, when I built this company, I built it on the foundation of how fast could I replace myself and everything right A sales manager, a customer service manager, tech team, tech market? A whole nine year, I had to replace me because I couldn't do them all, yeah, and so, when I was building this company, the first thing we had to do is replace who I was, and what I was is somebody that had to do all the training into the customer service, quality assurance and listening, had to replace everybody. To do that, though, was to find individuals that embodied what I was looking for. So the first thing you do when you're starting a company is you need to sit down and write out what does the CEO look like? What are the characteristics? What are they do? What do they do on a day-to-day basis? The second thing you need to write out is what does a chief marketing officer do? What do they look like? What are their characteristics? How do they interact with the team? How do they interact with the individuals, the chief success manager, the chief so you build them out, the top level people. What your top people? What do they all look like? How do you interact with them on a daily basis? So you're writing it as if you've already created these individuals. They already are working with you.

Cameron Gilmore: 24:34

Once I did, this took me two weeks. I broke it all down what do they all look like? And what I did every day? I had a standing meeting with these individuals Newsflash. I had just started a company. Nobody had nobody in these positions, but I still held a daily meeting with them for 30 minutes. Tell me what you're gonna do, tell me what's on the agenda. Tell me what we're working with. Tell me this. So it was me having a conversation with myself. Funny enough, people don't know this is. I put a little mirror and I would look in the mirror and I would look away. Okay, chief marketing officer. Okay, chief success marketer. Okay, deep chief analytical. I'd have this conversation with me and my mirror because I had to put my brain in the position that I already had all of these people.

Cameron Gilmore: 25:19

So as I started, we started hiring on people. The first thing we did was replace me in the sales department over the call center manager so a good guy who had years of experience. He was going to school to become a teacher, so I said, hey, I brought him in and I sat him down. I said listen, there's a job coming up. It's the sales, it's call floor manager. These are the characteristics that I'm looking for in a call sale manager. You have 40% of the 100% that I'm looking for. So here's what we're gonna do.

Cameron Gilmore: 25:50

This was a Friday conversation. I said you're gonna go and talk to your wife, spend this weekend and you're gonna tell her hey, I'm getting moved to call floor manager. I didn't ask them. I told them this is another leadership chip. You don't ask people. You tell them this is what you're going to do. This is why I'm putting you in this position. This is what I believe in you and this is what I'm looking to accomplish, with you and me working side by side. So I told them that. I said and so, monday, this is what it starts, what it doesn't do. It gives you a title but doesn't give you a raise. We're in a startup, so I can't give you a raise, but I can give you this title and I can give you these things to work through as we build and hit these benchmarks, then we can work on. I will make sure that when the opportunity is to give you more money, I will pay you more money. That's very key because people think, well, if I get this new position, I should get more money. No, I'm putting you in this position to help grow. That's what we gotta do. So then, that was the first thing that we did.

Cameron Gilmore: 26:47

The next step was to set a process, was set a functionality that people knew what to do every single day when they came in, and it wasn't just open my computers, open my computers, read the email, get the dialer ready, get the leads ready. No, it was. You sit down and we had this Excel spreadsheet because we wanted to get the mind right. So, the three things what are three things that you're grateful for today? Your attitude of gratitude. So they wrote down the three things that we're grateful for every single day.

Cameron Gilmore: 27:17

Then, what are the three things you want to work on today? Non-sales or non-customer service or whatever. What not related to any of that? No money, no monetary thing attached to it. None of that. What do you want to work on today? So, if I was in sales, one of them was my tonality, right, when do increase the volume? When do decrease the volume? When do when they speak softly, when to be loud and engage? So we did these three things focusing on today and I said, if you focus on these already positivity things that we're already focusing on, you will understand, you'll get to a point in the day, like man, I did more today than I did yesterday. Right, little wins is what we're going after.

Cameron Gilmore: 28:03

So we set up two 90 minute blocks. We broke up Ed Milet talks about this having three work days into one work day. Right, these kids are. These were young college kids who really didn't set goals and had no clue what to do our goal setting. So we said, listen, everything we're gonna do, we're gonna set you, we're gonna break your day up into two major pole components. There are gonna be two 90 minute blocks and these 90 minute blocks you're gonna turn everything off your cell phones, your email, anything that's a distraction you're getting rid of. What you will keep on is you will keep on Spotify. Some had YouTube, didn't have a Spotify account, but we left YouTube on like all right. So what we need to do is, for 90 minutes, you are gonna completely focus on the task at hand. Whatever this task is, that is what you're focusing on.

Cameron Gilmore: 28:48

So, particularly with cells, was your whole job is to get to this part in the script. Right? When they got to a certain part of the script, then they knew that they had, they were close to closing the deal. So the first thing we did, we just did what the hype music is, right, we put the brain in the state of winning. Already we had them correlate a song of music, something that was a win, a success, something they were a part of, something, a great memory. That happens. So we called the hype music.

Cameron Gilmore: 29:21

Soon, as the song kicks in, the brain recognizes oh, I remember winning, whether it was a sporting event, whether it was a competition, whether it was their friends out having a good time. Was it a good, you know, a party? That they went to, a dance, a club, whatever it is. My brain goes. Man, this makes me happy. And what happens is the inside of your brain start to go, the neurons start to fire, the dopamine kicks in. So these dopamine starts to kick in and go. Yeah, it's the happy, feel good drug.

Cameron Gilmore: 29:50

Once that's over, boom, we flip you into what's called the state of focus. So the second song was a focus song. I've listened to the same Hans Zimmerman playlist for the last six years. The last six years, same playlist. It's because my brain now knows when this song comes on, these songs come on. I should be focusing, I should be focused on the task at hand. So guess what? Boom flipped it on. Call. They get into zone and for 90 minutes 90 minutes. We are putting them in a state where they completely focus on the task at hand. That's it and that's how we build it. So we did that twice.

Cameron Gilmore: 30:25

Once they were done and we told them, we shut down, say hey, we had a bunch of snacks, go grab your phone, get a snack, go walk outside. You needed to leave, you needed to purge. You had purged all that energy out. It's tough, man, it's really hard when you're focusing that long. It takes a lot out of you. You gotta fuel up. So we got them to eat more, got snacks, drinks, whatever, decompress their brain and came and sat back down.

Cameron Gilmore: 30:48

We had them listen to the phone calls. What worked, what didn't good call, bad call, and a call from their neighbor that they could listen to Somebody, that they could resonate. Oh man, I like what they said here, I like what they said there and the reason we did that was okay. So now we listen to a call, listen to your first workday. What could we do better? A second three things you wanna work on, because the first part was day one, the second part was day two, but we're still there. So then, day two, they wrote the three new things that they wanted to work on 90 minutes, same thing hype music got going, focused music. They wanted different focus. That's fine, but for 90 minutes, so for three hours a day, three hours and a five and a half hour workspace. I had them completely focused on the attitude of gratitude and the three things that they were working on.

Cameron Gilmore: 31:43

And let me tell you, the first two months was a struggle. It was really hard dead red, no money, losing, purging, thinking, waking up every day after a month and a half into it going dang, am I gonna get fired? Am I gonna get canned? Are they gonna bring in somebody else to run it as a traditional outbound call team or do they believe in what I'm doing? Two months into it, scared man. I got my wife. I got my kids. They're grandkids, all these things, they're all relying. I got all these kids that I just hired. Man, we got 40 people that I just hired and brought on. Is this the day right? Is this where we're at?

Cameron Gilmore: 32:24

Two and a half months in we finally broke even one week, had a break-even point and then after a minute it exploded because every day we did the same thing, every single day. When they came into work Monday through Friday then we started working Saturdays and they did the same thing. The setup was the same, the pitch, the process was the same. So when you study your craft, when you understand the process, it is the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over. But Buddy and I who owns a solar company who just was evaluated $100 million solar company said being a CEO is the most boring thing in the world because they do the same thing every single day. But because I know my process, I know I can predict within about 90% of what the outcome is going to be. That's when you know you're an entrepreneur. You do boring things over and over again and know the results are going to get there, just like you said. You just have to give it time.

Steven Pemberton: 33:28

Yeah, see, that's man. I just remember because you coached me back in the summer and one of the big things that you were talking about was just learning how to do that how to have two different days in one day and I implemented that pretty shortly afterwards. I really implemented anything that you told me to do. I pretty much implemented it right on. But then I went, I actually sat down with it in the end of November and I said, okay, this is what I used to do, but now let me get really detailed. What am I actually doing in day one? What am I actually doing with this? And I detailed it all and what I found to be super powerful which is actually really funny now is there was an hour and a half I would watch YouTube shorts, so much that I had to set myself a timer on my phone so it would tell me how your screen time's up. But then, once I actually created these days, I created a detailed plan. I never just got lost. I would just go look, I would go look at this and say, oh, shoot this one, I'm supposed to be working on this. And then I would work on that. And if at the end of that block. I wasn't complete with it. Oh well, moving on to the next thing, and I have gotten done I've probably done 10 times the amount of work in the last two months just from being able to actually concisely understand that principle.

Steven Pemberton: 34:45

And that's why you built that company, which most people I mean 34 million is a large number, but 34 million just thinking about the way you built it. Because it wasn't just how can we push harder, how can we go faster? It's like who do I need to fire to make this go better? It's like I don't need to hire college kids, let me go hire these professional closers. You did it. You did it very contrarian. You did it pretty much the opposite of how most people build their business. But yet what you did was you weren't building a business, you were building people and the people built the business.

Cameron Gilmore: 35:19

Yeah, yeah, you know, the people built it and I love that, because when you believe in somebody, there's always there's this great saying right, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Right? I'll say that again people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. The biggest hack that we had was when these kids would sit down and they knew how much we love them and we knew how much we cared about their success as a human being. Because I would always tell them look, when you guys leave this company, you're in college, you guys have, you guys are in degrees, you guys are working. When you leave this company, you'll have a better version of yourself when you leave than you did today. The second thing is is you will be able to go and be more confident in your next role, in your next job or whatever it is that you can demand and command more money because you have that confidence. You have this spell out. You know what it's like. You carry this aura and everybody knows what it's like when they're around. Those people that like man, this guy, what is it about them? Like? How can I just siphon off some of that energy and people just wanna know that you care that you don't see a dollar sign floating above their head. Yeah, it's tough like you wanna be real with people. Be real with them. I would sit my reps down and say let me just show you how much it costs for you to occupy this seat. Let me break down how much it costs for me to have you in this seat. So guess what? We laid it all out Electrical. We kind of guesstimated on some things, right Computer cost, software cost, lead cost, food cost, electricity cost, cleanup cost. It was laid all the way out and said here is how much it costs to have me have you occupied this seat. What it did is it gave them a realistic understanding of I own. So we tell you own the space in which you work. They own that space. So then we said, all right, so let's help offset this cost. How much business are you going to have to do to help offset this cost? And we figured out how many cells they needed to make to offset that cost. And they go great. Now you offset that cost. Now we got to offset another cost. So there was two costs that we gave them the cost of having them occupied that seat and the cost of having them, if we had any kind of returns. We figured it all out, showed it to them and said here you go.

Cameron Gilmore: 37:54

So number one thing that entrepreneurs have a problem with is showing the real numbers to the people they employ and empower. I'm going to empower you, become better every day, so you need to understand what that cost is to you, what that cost is to me. So have real conversations with your employees, those that you bring on. You hired them for a reason, so be real with them. Now, in that big corporation, they would never tell somebody oh yeah, what cost them X and Y dollars? Right, because they make probably 67% margins after they hit a certain level of expectation. That was the one thing that I did. Every rep me as the CEO of the co-founder of that company. I would sit down and say here's what it costs for you to sit in the seat. Here's what it costs for you to sit in the seat. Here's what it costs for you to sit in the seat.

Cameron Gilmore: 38:44

Now, we built all of those numbers and metrics based off the things that you run a business, right? What was your closing percentage? What returns did you have? How many lost opportunities. Did you have All that was baked into those numbers? All they knew is there was a dollar amount that they had to cover every single day. So you cover this, we're happy to have you, happy to have you. So the mindset was I need to become better so I can cover, and then I can grow exponentially. And they did. And then that's that was one of the coolest things to watch is somebody come in shy, nervous, scared, and they want it. But they never backed down from a challenge and you could just strip it all down and they left and you were like dang. Some of my best reps were some of the people that traditionally people would never hire, ever Yep, and. But they killed it and that's what we loved about it.

Steven Pemberton: 39:42

So, cam, this has been incredible. How can people find out more about you and how can they connect with you?

Cameron Gilmore: 39:48

Yeah, I mean social media is. I love social media for that fact. Instagram, linkedin. I spend the most time of business life and I spend it through LinkedIn. Just find me at Cameron underscore Gilmore, all my LinkedIn or Instagram Facebook TikTok. I'm at cam underscore Gilmore. That's the best way to connect with me. Reach out, I'm an open book. You have questions? Just send me a question Now. I got no problem with Elmdis. Steve already has it, but I sent him the actual 90 minute block complete list. That I did. I built it all out. I sent it to him and said hand this out for free, let people have it for free. Right Acquired knowledge is a must, but unshared knowledge is wasted knowledge.

Steven Pemberton: 40:36

Yep, yeah and everything. So everyone listening. Everything's gonna be down in the description and if you're watching this, it's in the description on YouTube. If you're listening to it, it's in the description on wherever you're listening to it on. And to end it off, cam tell me a funny story about you growing your company from zero to 34 million.

Cameron Gilmore: 40:56

Dang. A funny story. That's a. That's a gosh. There are so many, man. There are so many stories. I'll tell you this one. This is a pretty funny story Growing the company.

Cameron Gilmore: 41:14

I got on the phone. I would get on the phones a lot, right, and just do workout different things. There were a couple of times that I listened. I had the reps listening to me. I got off the phone and they were kind of sitting around and I go that was a terrible call. And they're like, yeah, that call was horrible. I'm like you're telling me this is horrible. Like you guys just listen.

Cameron Gilmore: 41:40

I had a group of 10 people sitting around me on a speakerphone and got off and I was like that was horrible. And they're like, yeah, I'm like let me take another call so I can redeem myself. The next call it was even worse Five calls and I sucked at every single one of them and these reps were like looking at each other and I was like man, this is embarrassing, like I'm supposed to be this person that you guys are like whoa horrible, like dang, and I said, all right, I'm bite of all lunch. But it was funny because the moment you think that you're good and the moment you think that you're better than everybody, life will hit you right in the face. I'd say you're about to get some humble pie and I did, and that was to me. It's funny looking back in the moment. It was horrible, but looking back at it is funny, but in the moment it was terrible. It was terrible.

Steven Pemberton: 42:34

That's so good. That's hilarious. Again, Cam, thank you so much for joining me here on Voice Like a Lion podcast and to everyone listening, I'll see you on the next episode.