Growing Your Company | Canopy Management COO, Haley Burt (Podcast 265)

I think the problems and challenges you face, they really don't go away. They get bigger and more complex as the company grows. So, again, that Rhino Lining is just critical to help the team align and move through those problems without feeling shaken, like you're going to break things. When you're growing quickly, as quickly as we are, things break. Sometimes you solve one problem, another one will pop up. So I think that some of the lows is just keeping that in mind and not letting the issues phase you and demotivate you, but, you know, using it as an opportunity to align the team and come together and get through it.

All right, you're going to love this episode. We have a great guest with us today, Haley Burt, who has been the COO for Canopy Management since they only had six employees. There are over 100 employees. Today, she's going to talk about why she chose to be a COO alliance member to help her with her growth. How the company, Canopy Management focuses on growing people, how they document all their processes. They've got 1400 pages of documented playbooks, which has really helped them with their growth. This is a brand that actually helps bigger brands sell on Amazon and Walmart. And she's going to talk to us about some of the insights of dealing with an organization like Amazon and being able to help brands scale and sell. She can talk about a concept called Rhino Lining, which I loved, and we're going to get into how that's helped toughen her up and and allow the company to scale. Also how they work on setting goals with their employees, setting monthly goals and taking the goals of the company down to the individual and team layer on a monthly basis, and even some of their thoughts around people and some of the frustrations of having to deal with people that aren't performing and kind of where they struggle with that as an organization, and some of her thoughts around that side of the business as well. Hope you'll love the episode. We'll see you on the inside. So, Haley, welcome to the Second In Command podcast.

Thanks, Cameron. Great to be here.

Yeah. Looking forward to learning from you as well. I mean, this is also a great episode because you're also a COO alliance member. So why don't we even start with that before we dive into what Canopy does and how you got there and kind of how you've moved into the role of COO and even your five years at the company. Tell me a little bit about what it was about the COO alliance that had you join. What were you looking for in your growth and, and how did we make that fit?

Yeah, so when we started Canopy, you know, we're five people and we're looking for mentors and we find some groups, but they're all CEO focused and you know, it's, it's always the entrepreneurs and they're much louder than the operators generally. So there's not really a great space in those groups for us to collaborate and talk through the, the challenges of the detailed part of building a company, the processes and managing the people, and all of those top topics, apart from the vision. So I just went out searching for groups that were more operationally focused and really excited to find the COO Alliance. It's been great to learn from other COOs out there that might be a little more reluctant to speak in those entrepreneur groups.

Yep, I, I totally get it. I resonate with that. I, I used to go to a lot of the entrepreneur events as well and at times I wanted to sit and talk about, you know, recruiting and interviewing and I wanted to spend three hours on it. But in a three hour conversation, entrepreneurs have talked about eight different things. You know, they, they kind of. All right, makes a lot of sense. So what, why don't you tell us a little bit about Canopy? What does the organization do? What was it that, that kind of kept you engaged and, and you know, how's you excited being their coo?

Yeah. Yeah. So Canopy is an E commerce brand management firm that helps brands on Amazon and Walmart. Amazon's a tricky platform. They change things all the time. We just found that larger brands didn't have the expertise and they didn't want to devote a team to learning it and keeping up with it. So the demand is really high there. And on the other hand, operationally, to build your business around something that's constantly changing, definitely had to be creative. There's always the new challenge. There's so many different ad types and ways to succeed on Amazon. From the listing to trying to establish and drive traffic off from off Amazon on Amazon to, to get your ranking going. That's where we step in and, and really help them succeed. It's been fun.

Now there's been a huge trend over the last 10 years for entrepreneurs to start selling stuff on Amazon. I mean, these are the companies that are, you know, they're buying off Alibaba and they're flipping it over and selling it into the US for a profit. But you guys are working with real brands, with other companies or are you also selling some of your own products as well?

So we, we have an Arm Canopy brands that does own own brands and manage those. And actually that is kind of like our testing ground. And so it's amazing for the team to try out new strategies, really cutting edge stuff, test new ad types and new beta programs that Amazon's putting out without putting someone else's product online. So we, we do test and have our own brands that are doing well too. So do a little bit of both.

I love that it's in, in the franchising world, I've always encouraged franchisors to own some corporate locations as well as to franchise. And I think it's just irresponsible for them to go out and franchise their business and not own a number of locations in a number of different markets. You know, own one in a very, you know, urban market. Own one in a very, you know, wealthy market. Own one in a very expensive market. Own one in a tertiary, a small city, like a, you know, a 30,000 person city. And I think if you can, if a company can do that, it makes it work. So is that an expensive part of the business in terms of you guys making those decisions and learning or are you always on the bleeding edge and you're winning there as well because you're testing stuff out and you're able to do it before the competition comes in?

Yeah, yeah, I would say we're winning there. Luckily we are generating revenue. It's not just a test where we're running, throwing money into a black box and we do find a lot of traction and success. Our team has been in Amazon for, oh gosh, since its inception, since it was just getting out of its bookstore phase. So they really find success pretty quickly with the new programs. Yeah.

Now you also mentioned Walmart. How big is Walmart for some of these companies? Like if they're doing, let's say a brand is doing $50 million a year on Amazon, what percentage are they doing typically on Walmart?

Yeah, that's a great question. Walmart is really an up and comer just in the last few years, like if you even ask me that one, two years ago, I would say it's not a giant player yet. The platform wasn't super sophisticated and they're getting up to speed quickly. They definitely have a leg up as far as distribution with all their locations compared to Amazon's fulfillment centers. So I think it's an amazing up and coming channel that's really going to rival Amazon. So I think that brands will be missing out if they don't hop on the train before it really takes off there.

I heard that from, from a company a couple years ago that Walmart was starting to kick in, but they didn't explain the whole distribution point, which makes a lot of sense. So are they running distribution from their stores? Are they doing online orders and then one of somebody comes and picks up from a store and delivers?

Yeah, they, I mean, because they have stores in every location across the country, every state, almost every city, they do use those as hubs too. So they have a major advantage compared to Amazon. For sure.

That makes a lot of sense. It's huge. Okay, Now I also heard something a couple years ago, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Target was coming into the online space as well. Is Target just kind of a, a far behind third place or are they even anything to worry about or consider at this point or are brands starting to look at them as well?

Yeah, I don't even know if they're really a true marketplace. It's so gated, it's still kind of invite only. It's really hard to get your products listed there. They're very, very selective. So it's not really an open avenue for brands to explore at this point, especially the smaller brands who are gaining traction on Amazon and Walmart.

Okay, so you've got canopy brands and Canopy management. I'm not going to ask you direct revenue numbers. I know they're big. But what would the canopy brands purs. Percentage of your revenue be and what would the canopy management percentage of your revenue be?

Yeah, yeah, management's 90. 90. I think the brands is, is just 10%.

Okay, that's, that's cool. So you are kind of dipping your toe in it and playing with it, but making money off of it as well. What kind of brand, what kind of brands do you manage and, and where do you find them?

Yeah, so we manage everything from skin care, health and wellness, furniture, art, wall art, really any category except fashion. And we find brands. Well, we actually owned an educational course. So when Amazon, I think there were only three ad types back in the day, but nobody was teaching brands how to manage those ad types. On Amazon, we had an educational course called Sponsored Products Academy that taught brands how to manage it. But we had a handful of brands coming to us saying, we don't want to train our people to do this. You know how to do this. Can you please just manage it for us? And that's how Canopy was born in 2018. And so once we started the firm, opened the doors, we had a lot of brands coming to us. And then now I think referrals make up our biggest influx of new brands. So we have 84% year over year profit growth for our brands because it's just so hard to effectively scale and manage spend there. And we find we could spend a lot less and get them a lot more revenue. So word of mouth is, is huge for us.

Okay, 84% year over year growth is crazy. Why is that happening? What are you doing that's working?

Yeah, I think. Well, first of all, I mean the traffic on Amazon, you know, it's there. But if you're not competitive with your listing, you need to have the videos there, you need storefront built out. You need to really showcase your product in the best light. That's like step one, step zero. Besides that, there are a lot of strategies to get your products to the first page. If you're not on the first page or two, you are not ever going to have the traffic that you need to generate a lot of revenue. And so taking advantage of the ad types, all of them, and having a really great offensive and defensive strategy against your competitors and just finding those sources of traffic within Amazon, I think it's pretty nuanced. And we, we spent a lot of time really perfecting our process and so we can, you know, as diverse as the brands are, we have a really great minimum viable process that we build upon and make unique to each brand and get those kind of results. 84% year over year profit growth, we're, we're extremely proud of that.

Yeah, that's a solid number. So when the brands are selling on Amazon, I know that one of the things that they really are frustrated with are the third party sellers of their products. So sometimes it's selling to those people as wholesale and then the wholesalers are selling it at a discounted price. And sometimes it's just, you know, third party people buying it and selling it. I don't know how they're doing it cheaper. But how do you prevent that? Or is that part of your strategy on helping brands out is by preventing others from selling?

Yeah, we absolutely help out on that front and we can successfully get, I would say over 90% of those sellers removed. There are always going to be a few that maybe pop up. But I think five years ago there were a lot of brands that said, you know what, we're not going to sell on Amazon. It's just not in our model. We, we, it's not a channel we want to explore. Amazon takes too big of a cut. But just like you said, if they're not selling. Someone else is selling their product and they're likely not doing a great job maintaining the listing, maintaining the customer experience the way that the brand want. So it's not really an option to just ignore the Amazon channel anymore because people are going to find the product there. So we do have a strategy. We get with our legal team and we, you know, send out letters and unless the third party sellers have an agreement with the original brand, they are not authorized to sell on Amazon. So you can go back and forth between Amazon and those brands to get them removed.

And what, what size does a company typically need to be to start working with you? Is there a certain revenue number or, you know, certain.

Yeah, so we typically work with brands that do a minimum over a million dollars a year on Amazon. We, we just need the budget for renovating listings, doing all that advertising, really putting the work into the back end and getting those other sellers removed like you mentioned. So that's where we find we really can move the needle.

And are you taking a percentage of the revenue that you generate for them as well or are you only getting a fee for service? How's your revenue model work?

Yeah, so I, I do love our revenue model because it's based on year over year profit growth. So if we take on a brand and we've not grown them, we're only taking a cut of where we've moved the needle for them and grown them. So we do have a small flat fee to cover our hard costs. But we are really a performance based model and we like to win when our brands win. That's actually part of our mission statement. Partner success is canopy success. So we want to win when they win.

I love it. There's a guy who does that in the radio advertising space. His name is Roy Williams. He's run, he's called the wizard of ads. And he builds such a huge trust between his brands that he manages the radio ads for that they never want to leave. And if they leave, they're never allowed to use his model or his systems. They don't even know what his buys are, he doesn't disclose the buys. So they're so kind of wrapped up. How do you prevent, when you've done all this work for a brand and you've really grown their revenue, you've grown their profitability, they're kind of on autopilot. How do you prevent them from leaving?

So we've gotten things running, you know, they're optimized, they're efficient. Right on the ad front. We really like to Work with brands and give them homework too. We love to see brands expand their product line and really succeed. We are great at analyzing the data about Amazon and finding those gaps in the market and saying, hey, you should really launch. This would be great with your product line. You know, the traffic's already there. You should launch a version of this with your product line. Giving them that kind of homework and then also just expanding into other channels like, like Walmart. Right. We're, we're really happy to set up different channels and I think once we've perfected one, we can move on to the next one. I think there's always something to be said about staying ahead of the, the content game. You know, I, I think that content's really king right now. You have to have amazing content and keep it fresh and relevant and that those are the brands that are really, really succe now. So we love helping out on that front and we've won a bunch of awards for our creative work. So I think there's, there's always ways to move the needle there.

Now what about your growth in the organization? You've been with the company for just under five years now. How have you had and how many employees does the company have now and how many were there when you started?

Yeah, so I was employee number six and we have over 100 now. And so that's a, that's a lot of growth in, for, we're coming into our fifth year right now. It's been amazing. It's been amazing. I think at first we really needed, you know, when you're, when you're a six person team, everyone has to be good at a lot of things, wearing a lot of hats, being extremely agile and then now over 100. We're finding we need experts at very specific things. So just watching that transition, it's been really cool. And then also, you know, joining CEO alliance, trying to specialize more myself as I've gotten out of the operational processes and more into managing efficiency and managing the, the people in the team and the outcomes for the brands. That's been my personal growth journey in Canopy as well.

What was the, what was the growth of the company like? And not in terms of revenue growth, but how did you need to evolve and grow as a company during COVID.

So when Covid hit, it was not super big impact for us. I think the supply chain is really what hurt Amazon the most. But Amazon actually really thrived during those years and the revenue on Amazon was accelerated, kind of corrected afterwards back to its original trajectory. Of growth, which is still extremely strong. But I hate to say it, Covid was not a bad time for us. It was. It was okay. It was okay.

All right, so talk to me a little bit about the complexities of dealing with an organization like Amazon that's massive. And my understanding is that we often don't even have direct access into a person, or maybe there's one person that you're entirely reliant on and they're now dealing with these supply chain issues. So how do you navigate around that when you have such a limited pipeline into the organization? And am I correct that it's like a very. Like you might have one or two key contacts there and otherwise you're just praying that they don't change much?

Yeah. So I think for a lot of brands that's the case. Like if you're just one brand on Amazon, you have a few reps that you're in contact with and I. That's one of the biggest things we hear and that we manage and help control for our partners is that communication with Amazon. Luckily, between all our brands, we have so many reps and we also really have. We create templates for how to solve certain issues like suppressions and things, so that our team knows a lot of times you just have to send the same message to them over and over and over, and then it finally gets through. So we do all the very tedious, heavy lifting to get the response, to get the listings unsuppressed, to move the needle. But it is hard. It is hard. I don't know that the departments within Amazon talk to each other very well. I think they have a lot of silos and they're obviously a massive, massive company. So we just try to hit it from all angles and maintain relationships with as many reps as we can.

I'd like you to speak to something on just the growth of the company again, of your business. So I often talk that companies change when they go through the ones and the threes. So from one employee to three, from three to 10, from 10 to 30, from 30 to 100. So I'm curious, when he evolved, can you kind of roll the camera back when you were 10 employees and you went to 30, what really started to change there and then what's, what's very different now that you're at 100 from certainly when you're at 10, but even at 30.

Yeah, yeah. So I think when you're at 10 employees, like you're saying, you, you kind of think, oh, if we can only solve this problem, you know, we're, we're gonna get to the next level, we'll never have problems again. There's almost this feeling like if I just hit this revenue number or solve this one problem, it's all going to be better. And you've just solving one problem creates another. So I think at 10 people, we were really still trying to nail down the best MVP for bringing brands under the canopy and getting them to succeed. Because brands are so diverse, different seasonality, different categories, we were still ironing out our operational processes to get the best result. I think by 30, the challenge has changed. We got the process in place, we got really great at training our team and so we were able to scale our operational team to handle the management of many more brands. And then our challenge became, okay, how do we get in contact with more brands? We're ready to go from 50 brands to 100 brands under management. And so it became a sales and revenue operational challenge at that point and then, you know, finding people who specialize in helping us solve those kinds of problems.

It's interesting you mentioned the sales and marketing problem that I think when companies get to focus on sales and marketing, that's where the trajectory can really grow because you can start to buy your way out of every problem at that point. Right when you're truly focused on growing revenue, growing gross margin, then you can start buying people, you can start buying systems, you can really put the infrastructure in place. Was, was that the balance for you in that growth is kind of doing both until you could just focus on revenue or.

Yeah, you know, we had to stop selling for a while. It, I think in 2019, we just told, you know, our sales team, okay guys, go sit on the bench. Luckily it was like small two person team. We're like, okay, let's, let's just maintain the pipeline. But we're not closing any new deals. Like we are maxed out on the brands under management. So we did pause, but that was, that was the last time. And now we have over 1400 documented pages of procedures in Tetra is like our, our wiki that we use. And so now we're, we're just like, bring it on. We're ready to go. We're ready to go. But I think we've had, you know, the idea of buying your way out of, out of problems. I don't know that that's, we found success with that yet. We're still pretty hands on with the sales and marketing process, but making progress.

You'Re probably past there. So when you, when you deal with brands and I would imagine some of your clients are, are some of the larger brands out there as well. Often these enterprise level companies want things their way or they want things done differently. How do you balance the need of the customer with the reality that we can't do everything their way? It's kind of you sell them what they want, but you give them what they need. How do you balance that and say no to some of these bigger brands to show them that you know what you're doing and you have to do it your way as well? Or do you?

Yeah, I think, yeah, we definitely do. With our, our largest friends, you know, we really try to, to solve their problems. We want coming back to their success is our success. Like we are going to do everything we can wherever the roadblocks are to make sure that their revenue is growing on Amazon and Walmart, but at the same time setting expectations and also letting them know what they need to do on their end. You know, sometimes they need to go back and they need to fix something about a product. Like if there's a flaw with the product and it's getting negative reviews, they need to go back and, and you know, go back to research and design, solve the problem and come back out with it because no matter how many ad dollars we expertly deploy, they're never going to hold their ranking because there's, there's a fundamental flaw with the problem. And besides that, I think giving them homework on their end and saying, look, go research this other product we want you to launch, you know, go do your work to get approved for this other channel on your end so that we can help you manage it. We try to really form a partnership with them and it's, it comes hand in hand. You know, we're not there to solve all their problems. We're there to work with them to get the best possible results. So I think kind of framing it that way has helped as well. That's great.

It sounds like it's a bit of an education part and there's a bit of a seldom don't tell them. So yeah, you, you said 1400 pages of documented systems playbooks. How do you, how do you know when you've got too many. How do you balance out not having enough? And how do you, how did you get to the stage where you are good as a company of documenting systems and, and are, how do you get people to follow them? It's a lot there, I know.

Yeah, yeah, there is a lot there. So I think, I think we always get feedback when we're training new people and then we refine the process from there. So we're very careful to ask every new tribe member who's gone through the training, like, what did you like about it? What was unnecessary? Where can we improve? So getting that continuous feedback to refine the processes and then it's just really a part of our core values that we reiterate every week on our company wide huddle is like, if it's not documented, it doesn't exist. If you've done something more than once, you need to update that process. And so I think just getting everyone to have that extreme ownership feeling around our processes and knowing that, you know, we're tech enabled but we're not a software company. So our process is our magic sauce. Right. Our special sauce that gets the results and that ensures that we're doing everything in a similar fashion for all our brands and really covering all our bases. So I think it's just something we've tried to inspire still deeply into our. Our core values in our company.

And you said you're documenting all the processes in a wiki?

Yeah, yeah, it's called Tetra. It's. It's like a wiki app.

Slowly. What's it called?

Tetra.

Oh, Tetra. Okay.

Tetra. Yeah, yeah.

Very cool. Thank you. All right, so you talked about scaling your team and I think you were talking about scaling the skill set of the team as well as scaling the actual numbers on your team. What does scaling the skill set of your team look like?

Yeah, we are really big into professional and personal development. I think sometimes it's. It kind of goes hand in hand. So we try to give as many opportunities as we can to set people up for success. And like our finance team, we say, what are, what are, you know, what's one conference you can attend this year? What's one course you can get this year? Certification that's going to help you grow to the next level. And encouraging our sales team, we give them books to read and do like a book club thing to make sure that they're staying up to date. And I think just encouraging them biannually on their reviews, It's a part of their review. What. How did you professionally grow this year? And, you know, what was the result? What do you want to do next year to grow professionally? So. So I think that's helped a lot.

I love that. I've always believed that a leader's job is to grow people, to actually grow their skill set and their confidence. I launched a course two years ago called invest in your leaders just for that purpose of giving managers and leaders the core leadership skills to scale. So what about your growth? I mean, you mentioned looking for a group like the CEO alliance and getting involved in that. But what specifically have you worked on over the five years to allow yourself to scale from being employee number six to being CEO of the 100 person company today?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think some of it in business is growing your Rhino lining. Like there are always problems, kind of like I alluded to. But you, you learn that you are going to find solution to whatever problems coming up in the company and to eliminate those bottlenecks so you gain confidence in your ability to tackle that so they don't become daunting. So at first, you know, it's six person company, you're just super hands on, running the process, working in the team. Now I feel like my role is more about stabilizing the company, absorbing any bottlenecks and really making progress on that for every one of my managers and everyone else on the team to ensure that they are getting the outcomes that we've all agreed upon that we're going to hit as a company.

I like that you said the rhino lining. Is that just kind of how developing a thick skin that you don't take everything too personally?

Y. Yeah, Rhino lining. So that's actually what our CEO calls it. And that's just the ability to keep her cool and not be phased and say, you know what, this is a big problem and we're all going to come together and solve it. As a company, we've seen a lot of great progress that way. So we have quarterly goals. We kind of do a waterfall system like annual, quarterly, monthly, and we pick quarterly goals and assign every department. For finance, hr, we have the same quarterly goals and we're like, we are going to solve this problem. We're all going to be thinking about it, we're all going to be talking about it and we're going to find a way through it. And we've really been able to move the needle and grow as a company with that kind of strategy.

I love that in the rhino lining. Years ago when I was building college pro painters, we were talking about just kind of the entrepreneurial bobbing and weaving culture and that, you know, it's like if you want to make God laugh, tell them you've got a plan. Because that plan is just going to change and shift and you, you kind of have to be good with it going. Oh, and just as long as you're pointing in that right direction, how do you. Do you assign the goals and the, you know, the rocks to each person in each business area, or do you let them select what their goals are and help nudge them in the right direction? How does that process work?

Yeah, so we, the. The C suite, we set the annual and the quarterly goals, and then we work with each department to set their monthly goal. That's specific to solving that quarterly goal and hitting our annual goal together. Yeah. So our annual goal, it's just the 1, 1 number. Keeping it simple. And then our quarterly goal, along with that annual number will be a little bit more tactical. Like, okay, we're really going to get our churn below 2%. Like, this is what we're going to do. This is the strategy and have everyone really pitch in to work on customer experience, you know, for that quarter and really change whatever flaws we've seen.

I love that. That's where you get the alignment in the organization. But you also get people excited about what they're working on because they see purpose in their. In their work. Right. And then it shifts on that monthly basis. Do you use any software to organize all of this? Do you. Are you running off something like 90io or what are you doing internally there?

Yeah, we use Monday. We use Monday and we love it. Has time tracking. It's great for project management. We all have our weekly work manager in there for, For a management level. So Monday is. Is really our. Where the, the process and accountability happens for the process.

Love it. All right, let's talk about some of the highs and lows of growth. I mean, I'm sure that it has been easy, right? Just growing from 6 people to 100. Easy every single day.

Oh, so easy. Oh, every day. No, no, yeah, the highs. We just going back to bringing our brands the best possible result we can, watching them grow as we grow and, you know, having that mission statement, partner success is canopy success. That's the high. So when we hear, we just had a bunch of supplement and health and beauty brands have the best February ever. So best revenue numbers they've ever had in the company's history. And we love hearing those stories. We love sharing that with our team and saying, look what we did together. Look how we move the needle for this brand. Those are the highs and winning awards. We just won two awards for our creative services and videos. And like, our team just really, really lives on those wins for our brands.

And what about some of the lows?

The lows, I think, I think the problems and challenges you face, they really don't go away. They get bigger and more complex as the company grows. So, again, that rhino lining is just critical to help the team align and move through those problems without feeling shaken, like you're going to break things. When you're growing quickly, as quickly as we are, things break. Sometimes you solve one problem, another one will pop up. So I think that some of the lows is just keeping that in mind and not letting the issues phase you and demotivate you, but, you know, using it as an opportunity to align the team and come together and, you know, get through it.

Now, you've had, you know, in this trajectory, you guys have built a really strong company culture. You clearly care about people and, you know, the culture of the organization. But every once in a while, we have those people that we have to let go, either because of results or culture fit. How do you balance that? And, you know, I. I don't get the feeling like you're one of those people that are just, you know, quick to fire the bottom performers, and you're very kind of Machiavellian about it. How do you balance that? The need to actually, at times, remove that either the cultural cancer or the low performer, and also still care about them as a person. Do you have systems for that?

We. We do. We do. So we always. If, you know, somebody's not hitting their numbers or there's an issue, we always try to fix the. The process first. You know, if it's a core value issue, we try to coach them through that. If it's just a results issue, we really try to look at the process and figure out if, you know, the expectations are in line or if something else is preventing the result. And, yeah, I think we've been making progress there. It is hard, though. When do you say, okay, I can't. This isn't a good fit? And when do you keep trying to develop that person? Because everyone, I think, is capable of making the progress professionally to. To get there. So I don't know that we've completely figured it out, but I think we've gotten better at it, and we are very careful about hiring right culture fits. So that helps. We're very selective.

Yeah, it is one of the tough ones. I mean, Michael Gerber, who wrote the E. Myth revisited, would be happy with your kind of focus on going back to the systems and going back to the process all the time. He always said that people don't fail. Systems fail. And when you kind of take that approach. But then, yeah, I mean, I was coaching the CEO of Sprint years ago and he asked me, he was frustrated about some people stuff and he said, when are people not going to be the issue? And I started laughing. I said, you know, you're the 82nd largest company in the United States. If people are an issue for you, they're always an issue. Right?

Yeah.

That's the hard part of the business. That's the art. All right, let's go back. Let's go back to the 21, 22 year old Haley. You're just getting started in your career.

What is.

What advice would you give the younger you? Advice that maybe you know to be true today.

Oh, man. What advice would I give to the younger me? I would say. I would say just try to not be too serious and really enjoy the ride. I think maybe in the beginning we kind of. We were so focused, maybe lost the fun aspect, but fun really makes everything go faster. And not taking yourself so seriously to get the results, I think sometimes that can hold you back. And especially in business where, like you're saying, it's always about the people, it's always about the experience. So I think just making sure that you're making progress while having a good time, that would be probably the advice.

I love it. Haley, Bert, the COO for Canopy Management, thank you so much for sharing with us on the Second In Command podcast.

Thanks, Cameron.

Appreciate it. I didn't want to become a leader. I didn't want the title of manager because I wanted to be able to give orders or because I wanted to have the title of boss. It's because I genuinely wanted to make a difference. I understood what it's like to be a frontline employee and kind of feel like you're on an eyeless. And I've wanted to change that. I wanted to bring my own sauce to the table and say, this is how a team should.