============================================================
TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
============================================================
[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's Podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Mario Toneguzy, managing the editor of Canada's Podcast.
[00:10] SPEAKER_00: Today's guest on Calgary's Podcast is Lertus One,
[00:14] SPEAKER_00: who is a Calgary-based entrepreneur.
[00:17] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
[00:19] SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:21] SPEAKER_00: Well, I didn't describe what you do because you do a lot.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: We're going to go through each of the enterprises that you're involved in.
[00:33] SPEAKER_00: And maybe if you could describe them for us, let's start with that.
[00:37] SPEAKER_00: Need technologies. What is that?
[00:40] SPEAKER_01: Sure. So that's the latest venture.
[00:42] SPEAKER_01: So it's a technology company that has a software for food, rescue, and food recovery.
[00:50] SPEAKER_01: And that sort of was born from the Leftovers Foundation,
[00:53] SPEAKER_01: which I know is on your list to chat about as well.
[00:56] SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk about Leftovers Foundation.
[00:59] SPEAKER_00: What is that? And tell me a little bit about it.
[01:03] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that started back in 2012.
[01:06] SPEAKER_01: So it's a food rescue organization.
[01:09] SPEAKER_01: Actually, Mario, I was thinking back on the history of Leftovers.
[01:13] SPEAKER_01: And you were the first journalist to write not one, but two stories on it.
[01:17] SPEAKER_01: And it certainly helped with the success of the organization.
[01:22] SPEAKER_01: And what they do, I'm not there anymore.
[01:24] SPEAKER_01: I just finished my board term.
[01:27] SPEAKER_01: I was executive director for almost 10 years.
[01:30] SPEAKER_01: And there are food rescue organization.
[01:32] SPEAKER_01: So they pick up food from vendors, grocery stores, retailers,
[01:37] SPEAKER_01: and take that food to service agencies that are in need of food.
[01:42] SPEAKER_01: And that is across three provinces now, which is kind of crazy to think.
[01:47] SPEAKER_01: Because it just started with me and my car.
[01:50] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and tell me a little bit of the history of that,
[01:55] SPEAKER_00: the Leftovers Foundation.
[01:57] SPEAKER_00: What, I guess, motivated you to start something like this?
[02:03] SPEAKER_01: Certainly, yeah, I sort of had an aha moment.
[02:05] SPEAKER_01: I went with my cousin to go pick up excess bread at a local bakery here in Calgary.
[02:11] SPEAKER_01: And there was a lot of it.
[02:15] SPEAKER_01: And I think when you see the sheer amount, you know, 200 pounds, 150, 200 pounds of bread.
[02:21] SPEAKER_01: And it's perfectly good.
[02:23] SPEAKER_01: It was baked that morning.
[02:24] SPEAKER_01: You really think about, you know, other stores sort of wasting or creating this excess.
[02:29] SPEAKER_01: And where can we bring it so that people can put food on their tables?
[02:33] SPEAKER_01: And so it started with one location and with your help and the help of the
[02:38] SPEAKER_01: Calgary community and volunteers, it grew to about to rescuing 10,000 pounds of food per week across three provinces.
[02:47] SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's amazing, right?
[02:49] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it kind of doesn't blow you away when you think about that when you're...
[02:54] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[02:54] SPEAKER_00: ...you're going to be getting out of your car, right?
[02:57] SPEAKER_00: And what that foundation has done?
[03:00] SPEAKER_01: It really does.
[03:01] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I remember, you know, organizing all of these logistics on Pentepaper and Excel documents.
[03:06] SPEAKER_01: And now, you know, the charity created this app, which is now need technology.
[03:11] SPEAKER_01: So I'm still in the food rescue space, but more on the tech side.
[03:15] SPEAKER_00: All right. You're also involved with something called fresh root.
[03:18] SPEAKER_00: So they may be described that for me.
[03:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm the CEO of Fresh Roots right now.
[03:24] SPEAKER_01: I'm the founder of that organization.
[03:27] SPEAKER_01: And it sort of came out of the Leftovers Foundation.
[03:30] SPEAKER_01: We were incubating a bunch of different projects within the food system.
[03:35] SPEAKER_01: And really trying to understand how we could get affordable food to households with dignity.
[03:42] SPEAKER_01: And so we provide a mobile grocery store model that we pop up in different locations around Calgary and soon to be Edmonton.
[03:53] SPEAKER_01: And we make sure that people get affordable, culturally appropriate food with no proof of income.
[04:00] SPEAKER_01: So it's a pop-up grocery store.
[04:01] SPEAKER_00: Oh, excellent. Okay, then.
[04:04] SPEAKER_00: While we're in kind of the wellness area.
[04:08] SPEAKER_00: And let's talk about Soma.
[04:11] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, help me if I pronounce it wrong, but Soma, Haman.
[04:17] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's perfect.
[04:18] SPEAKER_00: And spa. And when did you start that and tell me a little bit about what Soma is?
[04:24] SPEAKER_01: Certainly. That's been so that is a traditional spa.
[04:28] SPEAKER_01: So we started back in 2010.
[04:31] SPEAKER_01: Lots of different roller coaster rides that companies have been on throughout the years and then through COVID service-based industry.
[04:38] SPEAKER_01: But we sort of landed a spot within the Marriott Hotel and have sort of upcoming partnerships in other Marriott hotels.
[04:46] SPEAKER_01: And it's a traditional spa that's made for hotel clientele.
[04:53] SPEAKER_00: And how did you get into doing this?
[04:56] SPEAKER_01: You know, I put some, I think back on all the hats I have worn and continue to wear.
[05:02] SPEAKER_01: But I'm actually a certified medical aesthetician.
[05:05] SPEAKER_01: So I can do things like laser and peels.
[05:08] SPEAKER_01: And it was sort of a job that put me through my undergraduate and my master's degree.
[05:13] SPEAKER_01: And so I started a spa that I thought would be based on some of these medical aesthetic things.
[05:19] SPEAKER_01: But it turns out we sort of did a 180 with the company and our self-care sort of philosophy is more time-based and more based on, you know, doing treatments that are more natural.
[05:32] SPEAKER_01: So we don't do any of the medical aesthetic stuff anymore.
[05:35] SPEAKER_01: But we certainly advocate for people taking the time for themselves.
[05:40] SPEAKER_00: Okay. And let's move on to from from spores to real estate.
[05:47] SPEAKER_00: And then you're involved in high developments.
[05:51] SPEAKER_00: Tell me what that, you know, what that development company does.
[05:56] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So that I like to describe as my first child.
[06:00] SPEAKER_01: So that was my first company.
[06:02] SPEAKER_01: I have a master's degree in environmental design.
[06:04] SPEAKER_01: So my professional background is in urban planning.
[06:07] SPEAKER_01: And so that company takes on community consultation work, urban planning and urban design.
[06:15] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[06:16] SPEAKER_00: What got you, you mentioned, you master's at UFC.
[06:21] SPEAKER_00: What got you involved in in that area?
[06:24] SPEAKER_00: Like what was the appeal for urban planning?
[06:28] SPEAKER_01: You know, I thought I was going to be an architect.
[06:30] SPEAKER_01: My dad is a was an engineer.
[06:32] SPEAKER_01: I thought, you know, I really love architecture and design.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: And once I started to really understand, sort of urban planning and really that that sort of architecture,
[06:45] SPEAKER_01: but on a wider, sort of more broader basis when we're designing cities instead of designing buildings.
[06:53] SPEAKER_01: That sort of peaked my interest of, you know, how a city can take on a certain personality.
[06:59] SPEAKER_01: Calgary has a personality, you know, that's different from New York and and Los Angeles and and Manila.
[07:08] SPEAKER_01: And so how can we really, you know, how would we build these cities and all the nuances that go into urban planning?
[07:14] SPEAKER_01: And that's certainly still my one of my first, my first passions and my first love.
[07:21] SPEAKER_00: All right.
[07:22] SPEAKER_00: Now somebody listening to all this, Lord, this is going to wonder, how the heck does this woman do all this?
[07:34] SPEAKER_00: Answer that. How do you do that?
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: You know, I want to be really cheeky and say, I don't not find myself.
[07:40] SPEAKER_01: That's not for sure.
[07:43] SPEAKER_01: I'm also a new mom. I have a two year old son.
[07:46] SPEAKER_01: And so throw that into the mix.
[07:47] SPEAKER_01: And I definitely don't do it all.
[07:50] SPEAKER_01: You know, the I sort of have started one company and one kind of falls off my plate.
[07:55] SPEAKER_01: And so I want to build these mentors, particularly on the social venture side,
[08:00] SPEAKER_01: to ensure that, you know, there's a good succession plan and that, you know, it can be taken on by someone else and the vision sort of lives on.
[08:09] SPEAKER_01: But I have really great teams that surround each organization, you know, from the spa to development, consulting to food system work.
[08:20] SPEAKER_01: And so it certainly takes a village.
[08:22] SPEAKER_01: And that's what I will attribute it to.
[08:24] SPEAKER_00: And let's talk about that.
[08:26] SPEAKER_00: It takes a village. A lot of your work involves community.
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: Tell me why community is so important to you.
[08:35] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, growing up, I think we lived sort of our family sort of lived by this motto.
[08:41] SPEAKER_01: And it's a famous quote from a long time ago.
[08:47] SPEAKER_01: And it goes something like this.
[08:50] SPEAKER_01: You know, you'll only pass through this world. But once if there's any good that that I can do or any kindness that I can show, let me do it now, because I might not pass this way again.
[08:58] SPEAKER_01: And my grandfather was a lawyer in the Philippines and he wrote that inscribed that quote into one of his legal notebooks.
[09:07] SPEAKER_01: And we found it after he passed and so it's sort of been this sort of theme, I guess, passed on, but through generations.
[09:15] SPEAKER_01: And my parents immigrated here to Canada from the Philippines when they were fairly young and met in Edmonton, Alberta.
[09:22] SPEAKER_01: And so we always sort of had this sense of it takes a village to raise a family and have young children and sort of push for a career and put food on the table.
[09:33] SPEAKER_01: And so sort of this idea of community, you know, not in the sort of food security sense, but the sense of community has certainly always been around my family.
[09:43] SPEAKER_01: And I've sort of taken that and put it into food systems work and entrepreneurialism.
[09:48] SPEAKER_00: So in terms of being an entrepreneur, Lord, is that did you have any like mentors along the way?
[09:57] SPEAKER_00: Did you, whether they be actual, you know, people that you knew or even people that you saw, you know, out there that examples of what you should do?
[10:11] SPEAKER_01: You know, in every field, I can say I've had a mentor, whether it's sort of general entrepreneurialism or from the development world in urban planning and architecture.
[10:25] SPEAKER_01: I think it was always important for me to learn and for me, I learn by being really hands on.
[10:31] SPEAKER_01: And that means asking a lot of questions and being really devoted to my work.
[10:35] SPEAKER_01: And so I certainly have had mentors in every field that I've interacted with.
[10:41] SPEAKER_01: And you know, recently, I think there's been a lot of mentor that looked like me that maybe I haven't met yet, but certainly I'm able to watch as an example.
[10:52] SPEAKER_01: And so that's been really helpful because when I started this journey, you know, 12 years ago, there was not a lot of people in Calgary in particular that I could really relate to.
[11:04] SPEAKER_01: And so, and now there's there's so many groups, there's so many organizations that are there to support.
[11:12] SPEAKER_01: And I found that that's been a really great support system for me.
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: When you look at being an entrepreneur here in Calgary, what would you say the biggest bonuses or biggest positives are of being an entrepreneur in this city?
[11:28] SPEAKER_01: You know, Calgaryens I find so I was born in St. Albert, but don't tell anybody I moved to Calgary when I was two months old.
[11:35] SPEAKER_01: So I just pretend that I'm a Calgaryen.
[11:39] SPEAKER_01: But I think Calgaryens really like to try new things.
[11:45] SPEAKER_01: And I think that's important. If you are a budding entrepreneur that you have a community that supports you, whether it's giving advice or if it's being a consumer of your product.
[11:56] SPEAKER_01: And the Calgary community has always been there to support, whether that's food rescue or a new spa or, you know, developers wanting to engage communities and do something different.
[12:09] SPEAKER_01: I think there's sort of this openness and sort of entrepreneurialism within Calgaryens, whether they are or not, that has carried me through certainly.
[12:20] SPEAKER_00: So when you look at the entrepreneurial journey, what would you say your biggest challenges have been that and maybe still are?
[12:33] SPEAKER_01: You know, at first it was really, you know, around, you know, having to do with those mentors that really were relatable.
[12:40] SPEAKER_01: But that's changed now, but certainly that was a big hurdle, I think.
[12:46] SPEAKER_01: I think the other hurdle is sort of self-inflicted that I don't come from a business background at all.
[12:53] SPEAKER_01: And so learning the Lingo, whether it's sort of on the, you know, fine accounting, finance side or, you know, learning the new tech Lingo.
[13:02] SPEAKER_01: It's all new and it's all new experiences for me. So I think that hurdle is sort of self-inflicted.
[13:10] SPEAKER_01: I have thought about going back and getting my MBA, but I can't imagine going back to school and having a two year old to be honest.
[13:18] SPEAKER_00: No, I can't imagine at all without even a two year old.
[13:23] SPEAKER_00: So if you had a protege, if you were a mentor to somebody that was younger, what advice would you give them about being an entrepreneur?
[13:37] SPEAKER_01: You know, I would say it's important to include your customers in your plan.
[13:45] SPEAKER_01: And I'm a real advocate for that, not only on the social, on the entrepreneurial side, sort of like the traditional business side, is to always, you know, kind of to do customer acquisition, you need to talk to your customers.
[13:58] SPEAKER_01: But also from the, on the social impact side, we have to, you know, have the tools to engage communities properly, to bring them on the journey that, that what kind of put society in a better position.
[14:13] SPEAKER_01: And we cannot do this work without them. I think traditionally what we've done is, you know, told vulnerable communities or marginalized folks, you know, how they should live, what they should eat, what they should buy, what they should spend their money on.
[14:31] SPEAKER_01: And I think if we kind of reverse that and really think about how we can include communities in the discussion of what a future could look like for them, I think that that would be really beneficial for for everybody.
[14:48] SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you've done a lot of things.
[14:51] SPEAKER_00: When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
[14:54] SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
[14:56] SPEAKER_01: I wanted to, I still do, want to be a food critic on some type of food TV show.
[15:08] SPEAKER_01: I would watch food TV with my dad and we would watch like Iron Chef with my sisters and, you know, pretend that we were iron chefs ourselves.
[15:16] SPEAKER_01: Turns out I'm a terrible cook.
[15:19] SPEAKER_01: My sister took all of that talent for herself.
[15:24] SPEAKER_01: And so I am, I am still learning, but that would sort of be like my ultimate if I could just eat food all day and comment on it.
[15:33] SPEAKER_00: Any, any favorites?
[15:36] SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, I like to call myself a pasta holic.
[15:40] SPEAKER_01: So I love Italian food.
[15:42] SPEAKER_01: I love anything in noodle form, actually.
[15:46] SPEAKER_01: But I am Filipino.
[15:48] SPEAKER_01: And so I do love Filipino foods, even though it's a lot of meat.
[15:53] SPEAKER_01: But there's, you know, I love trying new things.
[15:55] SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the beauty about food is that there's so many nuance and taste.
[16:00] SPEAKER_00: Now, now you mentioned, obviously earlier in the episode here that, you know, we have a history together that goes back quite a long time.
[16:10] SPEAKER_00: But I, yeah, and I'm getting older so my memory fades.
[16:14] SPEAKER_00: But did you not tell, you told me once that you were also involved in beauty pageants, right?
[16:20] SPEAKER_02: Oh, my goodness.
[16:21] SPEAKER_02: Did I tell you that?
[16:22] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[16:22] SPEAKER_02: Did you run into my mom?
[16:25] SPEAKER_02: Yes.
[16:27] SPEAKER_00: A little bit about that.
[16:30] SPEAKER_01: Years and years and decades and a lifetime ago.
[16:35] SPEAKER_01: I held some pageant crowns for both locally, nationally and internationally.
[16:44] SPEAKER_01: I competed in beauty pageants, which sounds so archaic, but I did it.
[16:50] SPEAKER_01: And I still, one of my guilty pleasures is watching this universe.
[16:55] SPEAKER_00: There you go.
[16:56] SPEAKER_00: What were these pageants?
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: So I competed in mis-sphilipines Calgary and I won that and then I competed for mis-sphilipines Canada and got first place.
[17:09] SPEAKER_01: And then I competed in what was it called, mis-global.
[17:15] SPEAKER_01: And I won that category.
[17:17] SPEAKER_02: Wow.
[17:18] SPEAKER_01: Long time ago, far you'll I never talk about.
[17:22] SPEAKER_01: It's a secret.
[17:23] SPEAKER_00: So let me ask, you know, you know, with your busy schedule, and as you said, a young child, what do you do to relax?
[17:36] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[17:37] SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, I advocate for taking time to yourself.
[17:39] SPEAKER_01: And so I certainly do that at the beginning and at the end of each day, just alone time, either journaling or reading or just taking some, some quiet time.
[17:50] SPEAKER_01: I love binging shows.
[17:52] SPEAKER_01: I'm very normal in that way.
[17:56] SPEAKER_01: And so I've been a bunch of silly reality shows.
[18:00] SPEAKER_01: And I love spending time with, with my family.
[18:03] SPEAKER_01: I am very, very close with my sister is we live blocks from each other in a community called Bridgeland here in Calgary.
[18:11] SPEAKER_01: And I love spending time with them.
[18:13] SPEAKER_01: So I think that, you know, you have to, you know, make sure that you are a cup of full before you start to say, give to others.
[18:21] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
[18:22] SPEAKER_00: It's tough though after, you know, because you're always being an entrepreneur, every entrepreneur that I know of, it's almost 24 seven that they're on the job, right?
[18:31] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[18:32] SPEAKER_00: Or thinking about it, right?
[18:34] SPEAKER_00: In some fashion.
[18:35] SPEAKER_00: So I guess that it's important to make sure you take that time to yourself, right?
[18:40] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think you have to be like for me anyways, I have to actively be cognizant of not, you know, around my family wanting to talk about business or wanting to talk about the things that I'm working on because no one cares, you know, like we, we have to connect with each other on a personal level.
[18:56] SPEAKER_01: And so, but with working, like you said, 24 hours, it's hard to kind of turn that off.
[19:01] SPEAKER_01: So it's something that I'll continue to work on for sure.
[19:05] SPEAKER_00: Besides binge watching TV, what do you have any passions, any hobbies or interests?
[19:12] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I, I recently inherited my, the piano that we grew up playing.
[19:19] SPEAKER_01: And I'm not very good, but I'm starting to, to tinker a little bit on the piano and it's one of those things, I think, for me, anyways, that I have to actively try to have a hobby.
[19:30] SPEAKER_01: It's something that my husband makes fun of me all the time, but I have no hobbies.
[19:35] SPEAKER_01: So, right, turn my hobbies into businesses, I guess, which I need to stop doing.
[19:40] SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that you haven't done that you would like to do?
[19:45] SPEAKER_00: Everybody talks about a bucket list, right?
[19:47] SPEAKER_01: Oh, my goodness, there's so many.
[19:50] SPEAKER_01: What would be, you know, I really, I want to travel a bit more.
[19:55] SPEAKER_01: And so I think with the tech company, I'm able to, to do that, but there's so much of the world that I want to see and I want my son to see.
[20:03] SPEAKER_01: So that's certainly at the top of my list.
[20:06] SPEAKER_01: I turned 40 next year, and so I'm hoping to make my 40th birthday, make sure I'm on a beach to Warren Greece.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: So there's certainly that, that aspect of it.
[20:17] SPEAKER_01: And of course, with the entrepreneurial brain, I have maybe about a hundred different ideas of different companies that I want to launch.
[20:25] SPEAKER_01: So that'll be further in my career.
[20:28] SPEAKER_00: So where do you think that came from?
[20:30] SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you say entrepreneurial brain, where do you think, you know, the foundation of that is?
[20:38] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly with my, with my dad, he recently passed away in September.
[20:42] SPEAKER_01: And so I've been reflecting a lot about, you know, how he raised us and, and like I said, he was an engineer, but a very specific field that he worked in.
[20:54] SPEAKER_01: So he worked on metallurgic failures, so failures for mechanical systems and different metals.
[21:01] SPEAKER_01: And so he had sort of like the ultimate problem-solving hat.
[21:07] SPEAKER_01: And he, because he knew he would research and sort of figure out mathematically, you know, why things failed.
[21:15] SPEAKER_01: And so because of that, you know, that my sister's and I kind of always understood how things worked.
[21:20] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[21:21] SPEAKER_01: And I think I will always have that problem-solving hat.
[21:24] SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like a, like a see piece that I want to make sure that I, you know, a skill that I really try to hone for him and for my career.
[21:35] SPEAKER_01: But certainly, I think it sort of started there and I've just taken it into a different areas of my life.
[21:40] SPEAKER_00: So, growing up as a kid, what do you think the key lessons were that you learned from your parents?
[21:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I think I learned to work ethic for my mom.
[21:53] SPEAKER_01: She worked three jobs to make sure to put food on our table.
[21:57] SPEAKER_01: My dad went back to school when we were little kids, which, you know, seems un-badging me now.
[22:03] SPEAKER_01: But, you know, they had three little kids and he was doing his engineering degree at the U of C.
[22:10] SPEAKER_01: And so my mom had to work long hours and, and, you know, her night shifts at the hospital.
[22:16] SPEAKER_01: And they shift at a grocery store.
[22:19] SPEAKER_01: And so I know that my work ethic or my propensity to not stop working certainly comes from her.
[22:28] SPEAKER_01: I do get my entrepreneurialism for my dad.
[22:31] SPEAKER_01: He, you know, started his own engineering company and sort of he did this time working at different firms and making sure he had mentors.
[22:40] SPEAKER_01: So it was sort of another big value and big piece of how I grew up.
[22:45] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I remember always like being at my cousin's house or being with my grandparents and really being surrounded by a family.
[22:54] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if you are not close with your family, you know, really being surrounded by a community.
[22:59] SPEAKER_01: And I think that's important to not only problem solve, but, you know, for mental health and to be around the people that really lift you up and really support you.
[23:10] SPEAKER_00: Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Lertus, for joining us today.
[23:15] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me. That was fun.
[23:17] SPEAKER_00: All right. That was Lertus one who is a Calgary based entrepreneur.
[23:22] SPEAKER_00: I'm Mario Tonogusi, managing editor of Canada's podcast.
[23:26] SPEAKER_00: This has been Calgary's podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
