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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Canada's Podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_05: Hello, I'm Mario Toneguzi with Edmonton's Podcast on Canada's Podcast Network. Joining me today is Nicole Matos, who is president of the rivet group of companies and founder of Uni. Thanks for joining us today, Nicole.
[00:21] SPEAKER_01: Hi, Mario. Thank you for having me.
[00:23] SPEAKER_05: All right, let's talk about both your busy lady.
[00:27] SPEAKER_05: Obviously, let's talk about both entities and we'll start with the rivet.
[00:32] SPEAKER_05: Tell me a little bit about rivet and what it does and when it started and how it started.
[00:37] SPEAKER_01: Yes, rivet is a commercial construction company. So we started, or I started rivet back in 2009.
[00:45] SPEAKER_01: So we're commercial construction company operating in western Canada.
[00:49] SPEAKER_01: We originally started in the Edmonton region and we offer commercial construction, so operating like doing a tenant improvement, so developing office interiors, restaurants, medical offices, and also like building full buildings as well.
[01:04] SPEAKER_01: And then as we progress further along, we also started offering interior design services, so doing construction drawings, interior design services for commercial construction.
[01:16] SPEAKER_01: And then last year we acquired another company, so we also have a division doing commercial preventive maintenance.
[01:24] SPEAKER_01: And then as the years progressed on, we started offering services across western Canada. So Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC.
[01:33] SPEAKER_05: All right, super. And Ooni, tell me what Ooni is.
[01:37] SPEAKER_05: Yes, see that I see it in your little banner behind you.
[01:41] SPEAKER_01: Yes, my new little, my new little favorite little brain child here.
[01:47] SPEAKER_01: So Ooni, I started during COVID when I was having some less projects going on with rivet.
[01:54] SPEAKER_01: So it is a local food marketplace. So it's like an online farmers market.
[02:00] SPEAKER_01: So if you have been on Etsy, it's similar to Etsy where it's a marketplace where people can have their own little shops on there, but it's all Canadian or locally produced food products.
[02:11] SPEAKER_01: So a place where you can replace your typical grocery shopping, you would do it a grocery store.
[02:16] SPEAKER_01: But with like a farmers market type quality and authenticity that you would get at a farmers market.
[02:21] SPEAKER_05: All right, super. I want to go back and ask you a couple of questions about rivet.
[02:27] SPEAKER_05: I'm just curious. Obviously, it's kind of an industry that, you know, to be honest, it's not heavily focused on females leading it, right?
[02:39] SPEAKER_05: There are you here and there. How does a, you know, woman get involved in the construction industry and why?
[02:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's definitely, you know, you're starting here a little bit more about like women in trades.
[02:52] SPEAKER_01: So you're starting to see a little bit more women in construction. But you definitely don't hear about women in leadership. That's for certain.
[02:58] SPEAKER_01: They're very sparsely found.
[03:02] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was originally actually a project manager, actually started action retail.
[03:08] SPEAKER_01: And then I got into project management with the federal government in non construction. I was doing census.
[03:16] SPEAKER_01: But I, I referred to it as my Aaron Brock Vitch day. So better clothing, better, better language.
[03:25] SPEAKER_01: But kind of that whole like spirit of like I wanted to change what I was doing.
[03:30] SPEAKER_01: I had an interest, you know, living in Alberta. I saw the construction industry booming.
[03:34] SPEAKER_01: And I had been doing like flipping some houses.
[03:39] SPEAKER_01: I was like 19 years old. I just really had an interest in that in that industry though.
[03:46] SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, my brother was running a bakery. And I was interested in construction. So we just kind of had some role reversal.
[03:54] SPEAKER_01: Excuse me. So, yeah. So I really wanted to get in construction. So I kind of mapped out places around my house and went to, first, please, they went to and I just went there.
[04:06] SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, I want to work in construction. These are how my skills will transfer over. And the first place they went to I was hired.
[04:13] SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how it started. So I, you know, was lucky to get on as a project manager and construction at that time.
[04:20] SPEAKER_01: And some experience there and took some schooling while I was working.
[04:25] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and that's how it started. And then when we had a recession.
[04:29] SPEAKER_01: And you know, everybody in the company was laid off. And during that time I kind of looked at it as an opportunity to start my own thing.
[04:37] SPEAKER_01: And that's when rivets started was when I was laid off actually. And that's when I started doing projects on my own as rivets.
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: And kind of started growing from there. And that's where it began.
[04:50] SPEAKER_05: I imagine you probably initially when starting up faced a lot of barriers because you're a woman in the male dominated industry. Is that?
[05:01] SPEAKER_01: Oh, definitely. Like women and indigenous. So I mean, like check a few boxes for sure there, right.
[05:09] SPEAKER_01: Definitely, I mean, when I first started off, I was lucky at first because I had a few like really good contacts and things.
[05:18] SPEAKER_01: And so I had a few customers come to me and they found out I was doing stuff on my own.
[05:23] SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, our first year we had a few really good contracts and it was great.
[05:29] SPEAKER_01: But I went out of my own in 2009 and 2010 I had my second child. And so, you know, doing, you know, I remember answering client calls from my garage trying to act like I was like, you know, one of the big wigs, you know, in an office tower.
[05:44] SPEAKER_01: But really I was in my garage with a crying baby inside trying to act like I was, you know, bigger than I was.
[05:51] SPEAKER_01: But then, you know, running a business in that way, you know, I could only kind of maintain the customers I had.
[06:00] SPEAKER_01: I try to build more customers was hard. So I kind of had a decline in business and trying to re break in again was really hard because most of the business was done like on golf courses and over beers and things like that.
[06:14] SPEAKER_01: So I had to, you know, I could have, I mean, you can sit there and mind about it and complain about it or you can decide to, you know, I just decided to do something in a different way.
[06:25] SPEAKER_01: And that's when we decided to add design. And so my thought was, you know, instead of complaining about it, I decided to just do it.
[06:33] SPEAKER_01: Instead of going after customers from the leasing agents and things like that, I decided, well, I'll get customers at the design stage.
[06:41] SPEAKER_01: And then I get them for two parts of their project. And I only have as many clients.
[06:45] SPEAKER_01: Because now I get them for design and construction. And so that kind of started, you know, we ended up doing things differently than everybody else in the industry.
[06:54] SPEAKER_01: Which really made us stand out sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad.
[06:58] SPEAKER_01: But it's turned out really well for us in the long run.
[07:02] SPEAKER_05: All right, let's talk about Ooni a little bit here.
[07:05] SPEAKER_05: What's the potential here for this type of thing? And where do you see it going into the future?
[07:15] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm totally optimistic, of course.
[07:20] SPEAKER_01: You know, Alberta in Alberta, get into a few little fun stats here.
[07:26] SPEAKER_01: So in Alberta, we only had last year 152 farmers markets in all of Alberta.
[07:33] SPEAKER_01: So that's very few. And most of them only operated 26 days of the year.
[07:38] SPEAKER_01: Like as an average. And on average, they had less than 30 merchants per market.
[07:43] SPEAKER_01: So you think about how popular farmers markets are and how much Albertans love supporting local and they love supporting our Alberta farmers.
[07:53] SPEAKER_01: So much so that with that few farmers markets and few merchants being that them, they still had nine over 900,000,000,000 in revenue per year.
[08:05] SPEAKER_01: So I'm not doing we had more people able to sell their products.
[08:10] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like easily. And imagine it was easier for us as consumers to be able to get local products because I don't know about you, but I want to buy more local products, but I'm busy.
[08:20] SPEAKER_01: Right. And I can't always get to a market on a Wednesday between five and seven. Right.
[08:25] SPEAKER_01: My cancer in activities and things like that.
[08:28] SPEAKER_01: So I think that people want this, you know, I think that, you know, people they want to support our neighbors and they want to eat healthier and they want better products.
[08:38] SPEAKER_01: But I think it's timely.
[08:40] SPEAKER_05: Okay, super.
[08:42] SPEAKER_05: So I'm curious running two businesses.
[08:45] SPEAKER_05: Where did this entrepreneurial bug come from?
[08:49] SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
[08:52] SPEAKER_01: I really don't know.
[08:55] SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
[08:56] SPEAKER_01: My parents were like very hard workers.
[09:00] SPEAKER_01: But they had a business at one point in time and it wasn't successful for them, unfortunately.
[09:06] SPEAKER_01: So I honestly never thought I would own a business.
[09:08] SPEAKER_01: It wasn't something that was kind of pushed on us in any way.
[09:13] SPEAKER_01: It was never in in my mind.
[09:16] SPEAKER_01: But what was in my mind, I guess, from our parents was, you know, you do what you've got to do, you know.
[09:23] SPEAKER_01: My mom sometimes was working three or four jobs, you know, to make ends meet.
[09:28] SPEAKER_01: You know, so I guess that part of it was just, you know, do what you have to do.
[09:33] SPEAKER_01: But I don't know, I get excited doing these things.
[09:37] SPEAKER_01: I genuinely like doing what I do.
[09:39] SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's all I have to talk to about sometimes, but it's because I do like what I'm doing.
[09:45] SPEAKER_05: So, you and I chatted on another platform about your entrepreneurship.
[09:53] SPEAKER_05: And you told me a little bit about your background.
[09:56] SPEAKER_05: I wonder if you could share that again here with this audience.
[10:00] SPEAKER_05: Talk a little bit about your background and your roots and how you grew up.
[10:05] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So I grew up.
[10:07] SPEAKER_01: Well, like I was, I think I was staying.
[10:09] SPEAKER_01: I'm an Indigenous person.
[10:11] SPEAKER_01: So I grew up, I grew up on a farm outside like rural Alberta.
[10:16] SPEAKER_01: So I actually grew up, you know, we didn't grow up with much like I we grew up quite poor.
[10:22] SPEAKER_01: Literally had like mushrooms grew up in the carpet of our house.
[10:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I didn't grow up with much at all.
[10:30] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, like I said, we grew up with, you know, really hardworking parents.
[10:35] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
[10:36] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's part of the party you were referring to.
[10:38] Speaker UNKNOWN: Yeah, yeah.
[10:40] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, our parents did definitely teach us like a very good work ethic.
[10:45] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we also grew up with, you know, the mindset of helping other people.
[10:51] SPEAKER_01: And kind of giving before asking.
[10:54] SPEAKER_01: You know, our parents were always the type that we're willing to offer to help other people.
[11:00] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, my, both of my parents really, they were always willing to offer to help other people.
[11:06] SPEAKER_01: And I think that that was very much instilled in myself and my brother.
[11:10] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we're both the type to do that as well.
[11:13] SPEAKER_01: I mean, my brother also oddly is just starting a business himself as well.
[11:17] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, his business is all based on gratitude and giving.
[11:22] SPEAKER_01: And it's just very much the way that we we've been growing like raised, I think.
[11:28] SPEAKER_05: I wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of things that I saw in your in your bio.
[11:33] SPEAKER_05: And, uh, and a couple of kind of notes there.
[11:38] SPEAKER_05: And one was about how you love tackling unexpected challenges with fearless determination.
[11:45] SPEAKER_05: Can you talk a little bit about that?
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[11:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I definitely am a person that doesn't like, I mean, I don't think that I've ever had like the easy road past past to me.
[11:59] SPEAKER_01: Like, I would have loved, loved to go into architecture for school.
[12:03] SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would have been my dream.
[12:06] SPEAKER_01: But I mean, it just wasn't really in the cars.
[12:08] SPEAKER_01: I didn't ever think that it was an opportunity that I would have had.
[12:12] SPEAKER_01: You know, we didn't have the finances.
[12:14] SPEAKER_01: I don't think I really had anyone to really guide me to even know that, you know,
[12:18] SPEAKER_01: loans would have been an opportunity.
[12:20] SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I just didn't have that.
[12:22] Speaker UNKNOWN: I mean, I just didn't have that.
[12:23] SPEAKER_01: The that group of people surrounding me to be able to like guide me in that way.
[12:28] SPEAKER_01: But yet, you know, I managed to like kind of forge a path where I found a way, right?
[12:34] SPEAKER_01: I mean, realistically, I'm, you know, I'm able to run a business where it's a multi million dollar business running design.
[12:42] SPEAKER_01: And yet I don't have, I'm not an architect, right?
[12:45] SPEAKER_01: But I've managed to forge partnerships with people and, and do these things where, you know, I'm constantly learning and doing things.
[12:53] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I don't think that things are always about knowing how to do everything, but about who to talk to and, and who you know, and what you can learn and kind of having that open mind.
[13:04] SPEAKER_01: So instead of learning that, you know, somebody tells you know, it's not no.
[13:09] SPEAKER_01: It's like not right now or not in this way.
[13:13] SPEAKER_01: It's about not exactly like this at this point.
[13:18] SPEAKER_01: So, and it's like, okay, but what can I do and what, you know, where can we go and who can I talk to and how can I make this work?
[13:27] SPEAKER_01: Has kind of always been my mindset.
[13:29] SPEAKER_05: So, okay, super. The other thing that I noticed on your bio, I talked, I talked about some successes coming from trying everything the wrong way.
[13:40] SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
[13:43] SPEAKER_05: Tell me a little bit about that and.
[13:45] SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes. I, I love like working with other entrepreneurs and talking to them about, you know, telling them all the like wacky, crazy things that I've tried the wrong way along the way.
[13:58] SPEAKER_01: You know, from, you know, you know, some of them are just silly, right?
[14:03] SPEAKER_01: Like trying, thinking at one point in time that I could do my own like bookkeeping and accounting.
[14:08] SPEAKER_01: Right? Like, trust me. Sometimes you can't.
[14:12] SPEAKER_01: Right? Like how many quick book courses I took, thinking that I could do this and you know what I can't.
[14:18] SPEAKER_01: And that's okay.
[14:19] SPEAKER_01: And it's, you know, let the people that are good at doing quick books, do quick books.
[14:23] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[14:24] SPEAKER_01: Totally okay.
[14:25] SPEAKER_01: You know, at least I have enough of the foundation to kind of get the concepts and things, but, you know, there's many things along the way that I feel like I did wrong.
[14:34] SPEAKER_01: Same thing. I didn't get involved in knowing people soon enough and getting involved in the community, the business community early enough.
[14:41] SPEAKER_01: I felt like I'd approved myself first and then go and get involved and get to know people because I didn't think people would want to talk to me if I didn't know what I was doing yet.
[14:51] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[14:52] SPEAKER_01: And like what a silly thing that was right because the thing, the key is to get involved early because people like helping other people.
[14:59] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I feel like there's just so many things along the way where.
[15:05] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I tried things wrong.
[15:08] SPEAKER_05: So Nicole, what do you think is a key personality trait for being a successful entrepreneur?
[15:17] SPEAKER_01: Probably tenacious.
[15:19] SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got to just be willing to just keep on, keep on trucking, keep on going, you know, take your licks for a second and, you know, you can only have a minute to feel sorry for yourself and then keep going right.
[15:31] SPEAKER_01: And you got to have a thick skin, right.
[15:35] SPEAKER_01: I also think, I mean, there's just not one, right? Like it's really, it's really a good recipe.
[15:41] SPEAKER_01: I also think that something I've learned along the way is being, being a little bit, and this probably won't sound very like a common thing that people would say, but I think being a little bit raw and a little bit open.
[15:59] SPEAKER_01: And that would be shocking because I think when you're a little bit raw and a little bit open and, you know, I've been lucky enough to meet a bunch of people that have, you know, they'll be business owners and when you can be raw, you can say things like, oh, like there's that time when I was stressing and I didn't think I was going to make payroll.
[16:16] SPEAKER_01: Or there was that time when I was stressing and I didn't think I could pay this or I just thought I was really awful at this. And I think when you can be really raw and really, um, or thread about those things, I think that you'll learn that other people be really raw and really forthright with you and then you'll get really big learnings.
[16:35] SPEAKER_01: And it'll give you the ability to be more tenacious because you'll learn from other people and learn that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you because everybody else is rock walk that same path right.
[16:47] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly. Now you talked about earlier the challenges of, excuse me, dealing with a stupid flu.
[16:57] SPEAKER_05: You talking about the challenges faced in the business world for being a female. Let's talk about those challenges of being a, a matey and an indigenous individual.
[17:09] SPEAKER_05: Well, there are a lot of challenges over your life's life's career in being a matey and.
[17:22] SPEAKER_01: Like as far as career wise, I don't know that it would be like specific to just being matey or indigenous. I mean, I mean, there's definitely challenges like just some like a personal level of, you know, things that, you know, you know, with things about like different family dynamics or knowing your family or things like that.
[17:44] SPEAKER_01: But as far as I think any, there's a lot of different people that face diversity challenges that just have higher barriers, right, where, you know, for instance, something that we've had a challenge on with rivet for many years is, you know, people think, oh, there's programs available where, you know, for instance, the federal government has set aside programs where they have a lot of things that are available.
[18:13] SPEAKER_01: They have a certain amount of work that set aside for indigenous business.
[18:18] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[18:19] SPEAKER_01: And so people are like, oh, you're so lucky that work is just given to you.
[18:23] SPEAKER_01: And it's like, but it's, there's another hole on the surface. It sounds that way.
[18:28] SPEAKER_01: But then they also don't realize that there's, we actually have higher barriers to getting financing and funding.
[18:34] SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of these set aside programs require us like last year, we, we turned, we were asked to bid on probably over $10 million for work that we had to say no to because they all required us to have a million dollar your vocal line of credit, which meant that we had to have a million dollars of free and clear assets just in order to bid the work.
[19:00] SPEAKER_01: Even though we could have performed it, well, I mean, like most indigenous businesses, small businesses, not going to have a million dollar your vocal line of credit.
[19:11] SPEAKER_01: So there's sometimes even though the intention is good there to have these programs, I kind of equate it to having a policy and, you know, one department having a policy saying, we're going to make it there for, we want to make it inclusive for people to bring their kids to work and have.
[19:31] SPEAKER_01: You know, a thought environment for kids to come to work, but another department puts out a policy that says no noise a lot at work.
[19:39] SPEAKER_01: They don't speak to one another.
[19:42] SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, that's kind of getting into the nitty gritty of it, but there's many different groups where there's a lot of different barriers out there.
[19:52] SPEAKER_01: And I just feel very passionately about, you know, not just helping indigenous, not just helping women, but just, you know, helping anybody with those different barriers to, you know, succeed and have an equal opportunity to succeed, right?
[20:10] SPEAKER_05: Yeah. All right. Let's talk a little bit before we sign off, Nikola, but your personal life, right? Now, obviously being an entrepreneur, you know, if many people will tell you it's a 24-7.
[20:22] SPEAKER_05: And, you know, business, you won't run two of them. You have three children. Yeah, you get any time to be on your own.
[20:33] SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I do. Definitely. You know, some of the different things were being a woman running a construction company. We are very different. We actually, we've kind of pride ourselves on being very different.
[20:45] SPEAKER_01: So this summer, we actually trialed with all of our staff. We did four day work weeks with all of our staff. So we kind of feel like we're kind of on the forefront to a lot of different things like that.
[20:56] SPEAKER_01: Prioritizing family. I feel like we get the best staff because we do those things. So our staff might not be here as often, but we get the absolute best people here because of it.
[21:08] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I all summer, I got, you know, three day work week or three day weekends with my family. And then we just did like kind of rotating call.
[21:17] SPEAKER_01: So I like to really prioritize my family. So.
[21:20] SPEAKER_05: Okay. So do you have any hobbies, interest passions beyond, you know, your family life, obviously, and your work life?
[21:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I, I love to read a lot. And I'm super really obsessed with watching Korean TV, which is where the name Uni came from actually for, for that business. So.
[21:42] SPEAKER_05: What is Uni me?
[21:45] SPEAKER_01: So it's a Korean word that we don't have a direct translation for in English, but it means like kind of like that older sister who isn't like maybe a blood relation, but it's somebody you kind of look up to.
[21:57] SPEAKER_01: Like an older sister.
[21:59] SPEAKER_05: Okay, so I got to say, what do you watch on the Korean stuff?
[22:04] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, actually on Netflix and stuff and like crime and all that, you can find tons of it, but don't make fun of me, but I love like dramas and the romance and all those kind of things, but also some action clicks and things like that as well. So.
[22:20] SPEAKER_05: Okay, good.
[22:20] SPEAKER_05: Great. Let's bring it real relax. I guess.
[22:23] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, brain candy.
[22:24] SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
[22:26] SPEAKER_05: Super.
[22:28] SPEAKER_05: Do you think every think that, you know, as I said, you've got this entrepreneurial brain, you ever think that you might come up with some other idea in the future and and launch.
[22:40] SPEAKER_05: There always brewing.
[22:41] SPEAKER_01: They're always brewing.
[22:45] SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. I don't know if I could ever stop.
[22:47] SPEAKER_05: All right, super then anything else, Nicole, do you want to share before you was sign off?
[22:53] SPEAKER_01: I don't think I can think of I always have a great time chatting with you, Mario.
[22:57] SPEAKER_05: All right, super.
[22:58] SPEAKER_05: Well, I appreciate you taking the time to do this today.
[23:01] SPEAKER_05: That was Nicole Matos, who was president of the rivet group of companies and founder of looney before I signed completely signed off, though I have a quick question.
[23:13] SPEAKER_05: Where did the word the name rivet come from?
[23:16] SPEAKER_01: Rivet, I just was looking at like construction words and a rivet is something that holds everything together and I felt like that's kind of what a project manager does.
[23:25] Speaker UNKNOWN: So yeah, super.
[23:28] SPEAKER_05: Super. It's always interesting to find out where were names of companies pop up. Thanks Nicole again for joining us.
[23:34] SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Mario.
[23:35] SPEAKER_05: All right, I'm Mario Toniguzzi with Edmonton's podcast on Canada's podcast network. Thanks for joining us today.
