Board judgment and customer pressure, grounded by a COO's practical answers.
Cameron Harreld revisits one of the show's most downloaded older episodes to ask what great looks like for a company at its stage, its board, and its management team.

500 episodes listed below
Sitting COOs on how the job actually works.
Each episode brings on a chief operating officer to walk through what the job actually involves: priorities, org clarity, accountability metrics, and the daily grind of translating strategy into execution. Produced by the COO Alliance and founded by Cameron Herold, it treats the second-in-command seat as a craft worth studying.
PRESS PLAY
Most business interview shows talk to founders. This one talks to the person standing next to the founder. Every episode features a chief operating officer, and the conversations are built to extract what the role actually demands day to day. Cameron Herold founded the COO Alliance, which produces the series, and co-hosts including Savannah Brewer and Lindsay Smith run the interviews. The framing is consistent: guests are described as the chief behind the chief, and the questions treat that position as a discipline with its own skills. Recent guests span very different industries. Ben Plomion came to Pearl AI, an AI platform in dentistry, from growth and marketing roles, and talks about transitioning into the COO seat from another executive function and why principles outperform core values at scale. Lindsay Gibson, COO of TextNow, describes resetting clarity across a global organization during a period of heavy cost-cutting — town halls, travel, and a goal of one-to-one time with every person on the team at least once a year. Marcus Hantla of Contractor Foreman takes on imposter syndrome directly, arguing that everyone is an imposter until they have done the thing, and that dwelling on it produces analysis paralysis. Amit Shah of Virta Health talks about leading a large team inside a mission-driven company and balancing genuine care with hard feedback. Dan Murphy of D1 Training draws on West Point and Army experience to explain why structure helps but rigidity kills speed, and walks through outsourcing decisions and the metrics that give every team member a clear line to accountability. Arnold le Rutte of the Virtual Hub describes the soul-destroying administrative work hiding inside otherwise healthy companies, and the moment a CEO or COO looks over and asks whether they are really still doing it that way. The pacing is measured and the texture is conversational. Sentences run long when a guest is explaining something with numbers and caveats attached, and short when a co-host pushes for clarification. Detours into personal or career history are welcome, though they tend to return to a point about operating practice. The show does not manufacture suspense or compress its material into tidy takeaways. What it offers instead is volume and specificity — many hours of practitioners describing prioritization, culture repair, and burnout avoidance in their own imperfect words. Listeners looking for polished narrative production will find something plainer. Listeners who want to hear how the job is really done will find a deep catalogue.
Made for: Chief operating officers, general managers, and senior operators who want peer-level detail rather than motivational framing. Also useful for founders trying to understand what a strong second-in-command does and for executives considering a move into the COO seat from another function.
What sets it apart: Where most leadership podcasts default to CEOs and founder origin stories, this one commits entirely to the operator's role, and its interviews stay at the level of priorities, metrics, and accountability. The rotating co-hosts include a former COO and COO Alliance alumni member, which keeps the questions grounded in the same job the guests hold.
Welcome to the “Second in Command” Podcast hosted by Cameron Herold, brought to you by the COO Alliance, where top-level COOs share their insights, tactics, and strategies that made them the Chief Behind the Chief. Cameron Herold founded the COO Alliance with one simple goal in mind: to provide COOs with the same professional development and growth opportunities CEOs have enjoyed for many years. COO Alliance is the world's leading network for the Second in Command.Cameron Herold is a top business consultant, best-selling author, and speaker. He’s the mastermind behind hundreds of companies’ exponential growth and he’s touched thousands of businesses indirectly through his work.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It makes the COO's hidden work legible through concrete conversations about execution, delegation, culture, growth, and the CEO relationship.
Second in Command turns the COO role into a series of operating decisions: what to prioritize, what to delegate, when to change course, and how to translate a CEO's direction into work a company can execute.
A CEO throws balls; the COOs here help you decide what to catch and what to leave rolling.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Board judgment and customer pressure, grounded by a COO's practical answers.
Cameron Harreld revisits one of the show's most downloaded older episodes to ask what great looks like for a company at its stage, its board, and its management team.
A practical look at how mission, partnerships, and authentic alignment can turn into fast, measurable impact.
Stephanie Kaufman keeps the focus on how a partnership proves its worth. She moves past slogans, tests whether the value is real, and shows how a mission-driven idea can turn into measurable fundraising fast.
A practical conversation about knowing when to adjust the route and when to redraw the map.
The episode frames change as a constant part of the COO role, then makes a useful distinction between adjusting the route and drawing a new map.
Sunil Rajasekhar connects burnout, gratitude, cloud adoption, and MindBody's growth to the daily work of staying effective.
The episode is strongest when it links personal limits to operating decisions. Sunil Rajasekhar, MindBody's president and CTO, looks back on burnout with the plain regret of someone who wishes he had heard earlier that he was not invincible.
A COO's view of trust inside Xtend and friction around bank-partner work.
Guillaume's account of operating at Xtend frames culture as a practical question of permission: guide junior staff and new hires, set guardrails, then let people move without seeking approval at every turn.
A practical COO-led review of attention, pacing change, and giving teams one useful next step.
A COO frames attention as a leadership discipline, not a productivity trick. The conversation is most useful when it stays close to self-awareness: senior leaders need a clear read on what they do well, where they are weaker, and which requests do not deserve space on the…
Ben Plomion shows how a COO turns a CEO's thrown balls into useful operating and revenue work.
Ben Plomion's account of working as Pearl AI's COO gives the chief-behind-the-chief role a practical shape. A CEO throws balls like financial reporting and company culture, and the operator has to turn each one into something useful for the CEO and the company.

Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.

Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.


SaaS operators on scaling, pricing and AI, metrics included.


Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Nick Dinsmoor, COO of Real Access, discusses fearless delegation and the evolving COO role.
Vincent Malizia, co-owner and Chief Culture Officer of A1 Roofing, discusses how he built a strong company culture to reduce turnover, emphasizing mentorship, delegation, and work-life balance.
Ben Plomion, COO of Pearl AI, discusses his transition from CMO to COO at the dental AI SaaS company.
Tom O'Connell, Chief Supply Chain Officer at New Belgium, oversees roughly 800 supply chain employees across breweries in Fort Collins, Asheville, Comstock and Daleville.
This episode features an interview with Arnold le Rutte, COO of The Virtual Hub, discussing how implementing strong systems and virtual assistant teams can eliminate soul-destroying administrative work and unlock organizational capacity.
This episode features an interview with Ben Plomion, COO of Pearl AI, discussing his transition into the COO role, essential skills for success, and his philosophy on using principles over core values to scale teams effectively.
This episode features an interview with Lindsay Gibson, COO of TextNow, discussing how to rebuild organizational culture and leadership strategies during crises, including practical insights on communication, accountability, and personal management systems.
This episode features an interview with Marcus Hantla, COO of Contractor Foreman, discussing how top COOs overcome vulnerable moments like imposter syndrome and drive operational success.
This episode features an interview with Amit Shah, COO of Virta Health, discussing his approach to leading and scaling a mission-driven team focused on reversing type 2 diabetes through personalized care.
Dan Murphy, COO of D1 Training, discusses strategies for scaling a fitness franchise, avoiding leadership burnout, and implementing systems for team accountability and community building.
"What does great look like?" is the question this episode keeps coming back to.
Stephanie Kaufman talks about how the Melanoma Research Alliance turns mission into action.
Nikki Beatty describes why change is unavoidable when a COO owns execution.
Cameron Herold interviews Mindbody president and CTO Sunil Rajasekar about a platform used in close to 100 countries and supported by multilingual booking.
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold features Guillaume Bouvard, Xtend's co-founder, COO, and CMO, talking through how the company sells bank-distributed spend and expense tools to businesses.
Vincent Malizia, co-owner and Chief Culture Officer of A1 Roofing, discusses how to build a strong company culture that reduces turnover and fosters employee loyalty through mentorship, delegation, and work-life balance.
This episode features Ryan Montgomery, former COO of ClickFunnels, discussing strategies for building and managing effective distributed teams.
This episode features COO Nick Dinsmoor discussing practical strategies for effective delegation and prioritization in leadership roles.