[Applause] [Applause] welcome everybody to another episode of amplify your business today i'm talking to craig milne he is the ceo of copperstone technologies now this company is really cool it's all about robots and hazardous areas that people can't enter and who knows we might even talk a little bit about space but uh before we do so i want to welcome you craig to the show thanks so much for having me on yeah it's going to be really exciting because normally we're talking to entrepreneurs and founders of companies now you are a ceo of a company that you didn't found and so two partners started copper stone technologies hired you early days uh before commercialization and you are the one who who have really grown it to what it is now then correct me if i'm wrong is that the right story there yep yeah that's spot on okay awesome and so this is going to be interesting to talk to somebody who has come into a venture and is working with a couple partners and you know just all the entrepreneurial energy and everything else that goes along with that so to start with i would love to hear your response to a twist on on a question that i typically ask entrepreneurs and that would be what are three things that entrepreneurs should consider when they're thinking about hiring a ceo to basically run their company that they founded um it's a great question actually i've got i've got a similar parallel story i've got a a couple of friends right now who are technology uh experts and they're looking into their company to hire a ceo so i sometimes relate to them so my own experiences here with me at copperstone and what they should be doing right now and and uh you know i think it's really important to understand what they're looking to get out of the ceo because i think that sometimes when i talk to technology focused founders or early founders there's a lot of a lot to a business that they might not understand and so i think sometimes the attitude or the hope is that somebody else will have the answers and so you're filling the unknown gap with an unknown person and so really understanding what you want out of the ceo and ultimately the ceo has to have the ability the authority the um to control the direction of the company um and so it is a it is a big move to hire into that role um secondly it's really important to understand why the particular candidate that you're that you're interviewing would would take on a job like this and it it can be a it can be a tough ask right to as a startup ceo because you know and especially in the early days there's no money there's a lot of risk there's a lot of unknowns there's a lot to build and so um whoever you bring on board really does need to have the right motivation to to carry the dream forward right um so really trying to understand where where that person that candidate's uh motivations for the job lie um and then it's probably also good honestly to to consider like what happens if things don't work out um and you know i think i think as arnold schwarzenegger that said never have a plan b uh but you you do at least need to consider what a what a like a prenatal agreement or what an offer amp could look like because sometimes your vision just doesn't align sometimes things just don't work out and so really making sure that that you've got an ability to try each other out and and it doesn't have to be so serious as as you know mentioning a prenuptial agreement but i know some other people have have basically tested out a ceo by engaging in a project it's like hey why don't you help us write our business plan it's a short project let's see how you do or help us create a pitch deck right and if if a candidate ceo can do a good job if you can work together you know if you can spend a night in a hotel room together and get along like you know it's probably a good sign for the future yeah i think that's really interesting that you brought that up because it is such a um embedded person such a critical role uh in any business regardless of what stage the business is in but when it comes to the startup your identity as the hired ceo becomes part of the dna i think of the organization as well and so if there's a mismatch there a misstep in that hiring process that could really have significant consequences on the success of that startup and and getting to that place of commercialization and launch that's right so now i'm i'm curious though in terms of like one thing that i that i noted down when you were talking was the right motivation and so i know in a lot of startups because the cash flow isn't there uh the motivation oftentimes is share options or a ownership position may be really off the top would you recommend that being a strategy for other founders to consider when they're looking to you know put together that compensation package because cash flow usually is always very dear um or is there other areas or other things that you would suggest that they explore first before giving up some of that equity i think it actually it needs to be part of a package especially with such a critical role like like the ceo there has to be ownership in the business and you know and a lawyer can provide the proper advice on how to structure that in a way that you know you're you're motivating and compensating someone to to really have bought into the success of the business but if things go sideways you haven't permanently given away too much um but i think i do think there has to be lots of other motivating criteria for you know especially for a ceo to join a company and and for them to want to drive the success i know for myself uh for example like me joining copperstone was it was a it was an interesting story i had a friend who ran a mentorship program the the u of a venture mentoring service and i was out for beers one day with him and i said i'm gonna start a robotics company and he said don't don't do that i know these two guys and you should meet them uh and so that really was sort of my introduction to the original founders here at copperstone um but for me the you know part of my motivation in my role now is is you know both my past experience as a as an entrepreneur but also just that curiosity that that led me to want to start a robotics company and has led me down a number of uh rabbit holes in my own journey so that's part of what helps me be successful in my role here that's really interesting so you had a vision to get into robotics and um so that was a direction that you were wanting to go so yeah it sounds like a perfect match made uh there between you and the founders and so let's let's get into that actually so we've teased that there's some robots involved so what is it that copper stone technologies does so we actually build uh robots for hazardous site investigation um and really it started with uh my my colleague founders were in university at the time they were mechanical engineers studying robotics and they had a project with a company up in the oil sands to basically deploy a sensor uh in an oil sands tailings facility and tailings are the waste by-product of mining and of oil sands operations and really just a a large looks like a lake but it can be really really challenging to access kind of peanut butter like consistency um and so they were trying to deploy this this uh sensor uh and they realized that the challenge was actually getting to the tailings and so they they bought a robot off the shelf you know they're available on the internet uh and the robot didn't perform as expected right it got stuck in the tailings and so they realized that there's this whole challenge around accessing the tailings and so that led them to create a whole new class of robots and that's really what what began copperstone and what we're building on today is this it's a special purpose class of robots that can access all types of environments open water soft mud snow hard ground and that drives us today is is building those robots yeah and it's fascinating the the design of it so for those of you listening or are watching this episode right now if you head over to copperstonetech.com you're going to get to see what these are these machines look like and them in action actually there's some great video work on it but it's really a novel corkscrew um tread system i guess i i'm not sure how you describe it but uh yeah it's it seems very novel is that uh kind of the heart of of its mobility i guess then right yeah there it's built around some pontoons and so the basically the pontoon allows the robot to float in water and then there's a helical coil or a grouser basically that can turn and so that becomes like a screw and so in soft material or water it screws forward and backwards and so it can pull itself through mud or snow or water but it's also can be a wheel on on hard ground and so it can drive much like a car would drive and so we call that uh basically a screwdriver propulsion system and and there are past examples especially from the military where they're they're playing around in swamps and areas like that and so if you google screw tank you'll you'll see a number of hits for some very cool looking vehicles and so it is a kind of a design of the past that copperstone has brought forward into into the world of robotics uh and we've we've patented that propulsion system as a as a robotic concept uh and we're we're building our our current fleet of technologies based around that yeah well that's really exciting stuff and and super high tech and i teased at the intro as well that uh maybe we'll be talking about space as well and and uh the reason why i i brought that up is when we first chatted and i was looking at your website it looks like some sort of alien uh planet that these robots are going across the you know in terms of these uh really um strange-looking landscapes of the tailing ponds and so um i was just teasing that that would be an application that uh your technology would definitely apply to and i think he said that uh yeah you know there's there's no reason why it wouldn't 100 we we have a rallying cry around the office here it's you know robots on the moon um and that's that's really that it it's both uh our rally and cry but also there's a serious element to that we eventually do want to get into space robotics uh you know for for a team of of you know creative and and hardworking engineers that we've got here you know being able to build vehicles they could eventually get up into space and and help you know humanity on on the moon and mars and and other planets like that you know that there will be lots of activity like that in the future and and there will be companies competing to be the best robotics companies in space and we just think hey why not copperstone right why don't we why don't we be that company that everybody else is chasing and right now while we have the opportunity here on earth we can we can practice we're building awesome ruggedized remote robots in in very difficult and challenging environments here and we're gaining tons of experience and knowledge and intellectual property that we can transfer into space one day yeah yeah it's really neat so i i'm curious because i think you said that uh you joined the company in 2019 and so there was no you know it wasn't commercialized at that point um what year did you well sign the the first deal i guess in 2019 oh okay so right after when you came on board then it's job number one talk about performance yeah yeah you honestly you know funny totally detour here i read a book a long time ago about uh the brooklyn brewery so uh here we are talking about beer but you know it was a really fascinating book and you know a couple of guys wanted to start a brewery and so what they did was instead of like most other people you go buy some brewing equipment and hire a master brewer yeah she started a distribution company they started selling beer selling other people's beer and what they did to that was was they they learned how beer gets sold they learned what was hot in the market space and they started making money through their distribution company and through the through that business they learned enough so that when they set up their brewery they knew what they were doing right and you have your own opinions on brooklyn beer or not but it's but as a business it was quite successful and that was one of those books that for me i just read it and the light bulb went off in my head and i thought you know you have to make money first right we're as a business like we we have to uh we got bills to pay right and it's we have to be able to earn a fair profit for the work that we do we're providing value to customers and so even as early days as we were and as complicated as a system as a robot is you know the drive to make money very very early even if it's 20 bucks right you got to make something just to get over get over the hump of not making money because that can last for too long in most companies yeah which again is that wisdom that a ceo can come in with that a founder maybe doesn't have the same level of confidence or or urgency or understanding of that right so yeah i any other things i guess that you would say differentiates a you know a hired ceo versus a founding ceo you know i think one of the uh one of the things that that makes copperstone work is that i can entirely rely on and trust the engineering team to build what we need to build and it allows it allows me to focus on the business and the external world and on our clients and on growing the team because because really our product is complicated um and i and i do look at a lot of the founder-led companies especially where there is a technical uh you know strong technical element to the product there's clearly there's clearly a need for the ceo to be able to talk about the product right and and i have had to learn a tremendous amount about uh about motors and gearboxes and you know geotechnical testing and all these things that we talk about on a daily basis with our customers but but the sort of the ability to separate the deep technical knowledge and building of the product from building of the company i think is one of the keys that we've done right here at copperstone yeah and it's really interesting to bring that up because uh i i have a little bit of a parallel with our company ample media so when i started that a little over 10 years ago it was uh we were exclusively an animation studio so we were doing just animated video production and i have zero uh understanding of how to animate anything i am not creative in terms of of uh drawing anything i could write the scripts and i understood the strategy and the language that needed uh to be used to persuade somebody to you know um act after watching one of the videos but that was all i i had and so i had to surround myself with people who had all those skills and because i wasn't the cook i didn't get stuck in the kitchen and so i was able to you know work on the business side of things and i think that there is a lot of value in that and having somebody that doesn't really come from an ear case all that technical background you're smart enough to figure it out you're obviously learning lots through osmosis and everything else because it's just you're surrounded by it immersed in it but uh it it limits that that uh tendency that founders have and getting uh drawn into working in the business part as opposed to being on the business right that's yeah those are great points and and even sometimes the the need for the engineer the engineering team to explain something to me like when um like it would be very easy if they had carte blanche to to go and build whatever cool toy they wanted to build they would do it but if they have to stop and explain why they're doing something or what they're doing or how much it costs because i ask those questions then it does it does sort of put the brakes on some ideas or just change the priority of what we're doing i love that that's actually a really insightful point because uh again yeah like the founders who come from that technical standpoint they just love the inventing and so they'll invent themselves bankrupt often times i've seen that happen for sure yeah really interesting so i i'm curious um you know if you had the um opportunity to you know write yourself a letter um and sent it back to you back in 2019 when you first joined the company um as this hired ceo that came in and obviously we talked about the motivations and and so it sounds like you have some skin in the game in terms of some some equity as well now um is there anything that you would do differently as that ceo slash now somebody who who has equity a partner um that would have been different had you known now what you know back then you know it's it's funny it's like old tired advice but you know i didn't listen to it and i probably wouldn't listen to it if i wrote myself a letter but it's the right thing to do is is is to focus right um there are lots of opportunities that come your way um you know the the concept of good ideas are preventing the great ones from succeeding and you know we followed a lot of things that seemed like good ideas at the time right good opportunities come by and they end up being distractions and so i think if i were to either start again or write myself a letter as you put it it would be to really focus on a couple of critical goals like what do we actually really need to accomplish by the end of the year and to just to nail that and and to be a lot more okay with saying no to things that seem really important or seem really attractive in the moment um just the focus down yeah i i'm also really curious because you said that you know you had an interest in starting a robotics company before meeting these two uh gentlemen who who were founding this one now i'm what was the inspiration or the desire was it just because you know you're one of those guys that it's just like robots are cool man let's get into this let's find a way to have fun with robots or i'm guessing there was some other opportunity that you saw so what what was inspiring you to get into robotics it was you know it was a little bit of all of that to be honest i was um at the time i i was running a company that did hyperspectral imaging so it's a it's an imaging technique that allows you to do chemical identification from a picture and so we were talking about uh being able to inspect pipelines and sewer systems and and so my mind was starting to go into all of these places that are hard to inspect for the purpose of the imaging side of what my my at the time business was focused on um and of course it made more sense to inspect hazardous locations with a robot and then of course like also being a you know uh growing up watching the jetsons and you know kid from the 70s and 80s and such like i love tinkering i was just always a tinkerer and so um you know what robots are cool and like who wouldn't want to be in a robots company if if you had the opportunity right and so it was just those two things coming together in my mind imaging and inspection and then robotics and this you know if you go back to 2018 2019 you know drones were still pretty new right aerial drones um and and aerial drones of course like you know they're everywhere these days and they will continue to grow in terms of their importance and function um you know copper stone at the end of the day makes an amphibious or a ground vehicle drone uh something very similar but uh different from an aerial drone because we can carry heavy capacity heavy payloads um but yeah i was just i was really just that curiosity driven kid that wanted to play with robots and saw an opportunity with imaging so yeah yeah that's really neat and i like you said i mean who wouldn't want to you know join a company that is doing robotics right that is really cool um and it's it's scary like some of the stuff that you see out there i know you guys aren't into those really weird things but like boston uh what is it boston dynamics dynamics yeah with those humanoid looking ones which are doing backflips and and everything else and it's just like holy crap these are are definitely futuristic looking um when it comes to uh i like you had mentioned that you were a past entrepreneur yourself as well and so i i'm curious for our listeners who tend to be uh entrepreneurs um and we all have had those moments where it's like man i don't know maybe it would be easier to go work for somebody else or maybe it'd be better to have you know more people sharing some of the load and and and and so you get a little bit uh discouraged from time to time or it's happenstance it's the wrong product or wrong time or whatever the case might be and i don't know what the background that you have in terms of your entrepreneurial experience but what i'm curious about is just in terms of um a lot of us entrepreneurs we kind of still start to self-identify ourselves as that business owner is that entrepreneur it becomes kind of part of who we are and how we describe ourselves um was it difficult for you to step back from your ventures and into a situation where you're coming in as the ceo and not the founder in this case um it not it wasn't actually i didn't find that too challenging to be honest um there is a little bit of sort of the you know an imposter syndrome at the you know the very early days of like you know i actually don't know how the robot works i don't know what it does uh and so there's a tremendous amount to learn um and so that that does feel a little bit weird but in terms of uh like my own self-identity i suppose um most of my you know my friends my social circle my family they i've been involved in lots of uh strange and bizarre ventures um and so i think that for them this was like oh just another one yeah and so you know it sometimes joke that you know they gave up on me a long time ago but um you know like i i have fun doing what i'm doing and they know that and they know that uh you know sometimes my work does get it does get stressful the hours do get long i do travel and and all of those things that uh anybody uh managing a small venture like like copperstone or a startup company you know you know what those those days are like and they can be quite challenging and also it can be quite difficult too just from a like a social perspective you know a lot of it's hard to relate to friends that have stable normal type jobs they don't quite understand all of the same nuance that that that an entrepreneur goes through but luckily there are lots of wonderful social circles now for for entrepreneurs and places like this podcast here where you can come and you can you can relate and commiserate with other stories and hopefully hear some inspirational ones too yeah um yeah and i i think you're you're like an ideal uh ceo like hired ceo i i think for all the founders who are listening right now going geez i i need i need to bring somebody in because you have that background right you understand you understand the struggles and the challenges and the sacrifices that have to be made in order to you know keep that business going and in those early days when it's just you know in this case maybe the three of you uh pre-commercialization you're at a point when uh you know like you have to act you have to be the entrepreneur you have to have that entrepreneurial spirit in that and so that's what you would have brought to the table what it sounds like and so it's a perfect fit yeah um i i'm curious as um the ceo versus you know in your previous ventures where you were the entrepreneur founder yourself uh but now you're the entrepreneurial ceo uh is success defined any differently for you versus when you were wearing the founder entrepreneurial hat um i you know probably not to be honest i think that well um successes may be grown in terms of its scope so my first answer probably not like i think for me the i still really think that the biggest metric of success is just enjoying the journey right i don't i don't have uh an end goal in mind that might sound terrible on a for most entrepreneurs but like i you know i don't think about an exit i don't think about a cash payout i don't think about those things very much i really i want to enjoy my day to day i want to work with a team of super smart people i want to do things that make me proud of the work that i'm doing i want to be able to tell stories at the end of my life about yeah we put robots on the moon like that was pretty good yeah so those to me are much more important uh measures of success and i think the the difference maybe between how i thought about things in earlier phases of my career versus now is like i also recognize that like we have at copperstone we not only have we have 19 employees today and they're families and at the end of the day i'm responsible for making sure that everybody also has that same enjoyable journey you know and everybody's getting paid and everybody's having a good time and you know that it's a responsibility but it's also part of this reward when i can see somebody's actually happy and proud of their experience at copperstone too that's that's a good feeling yeah yeah completely and i i love how you tied it back to the the human element part of it and it's just the the experience that one has on the journey with all the people that are around you right um it's so important and something that we always have to remind ourselves of because yeah life is short and uh and really at the end of the day what we have is the relationships that we build amongst the people that we're working with and the other businesses and so on and partners that we're working with so it's neat yeah so um in terms of uh you know people who might be interested in learning a little bit more about copper stone technologies or would like to reach out what what would be the best way for them to do so um well you know we just launched a new website yesterday so lots of new new content to digest there we've got an email address on there that's uh infoad copperstonetech.com uh that's always great i you know it's typically not too hard to reach me even through the info line like i was here about uh about in contacts that come in and so uh happy to have a chat um you know we do have a team of people here we're we're almost all in edmonton and you know to we want to be able to support the community here locally as well as as we expand globally so um those are all great contacts for us really cool well and i can't wait to hear about like see that press release where it's copper stone technologies is now on the moon i i'm i'm that is going to be really thrilling to see maybe uh maybe a spacex uh conversation or something like that is is in the works i'm not too sure but uh i look forward to seeing and monitoring how far you guys end up going because it looks like you guys are one of those moonshot kind of companies that have the potential of doing some pretty great things having some huge impact thanks we are we're working hard and swinging for the fences on those things so yeah really cool well thank you i really appreciate your time craig today sharing some of your experiences and i'm sure our audience really enjoyed hearing the perspective of a ceo and uh yeah i'm uh excited to to see where things go and for those who are listening right now if you really enjoyed this episode you want to check out some of our other episodes head over to amplifybusiness.ca that's where you're going to find the archives and then of course um any of your favorite podcasting platforms just search amplify your business and you'll find our future episodes there as well so until next time everybody stay prosperous
2022-08-30