Defying Limits and Redefining Opportunity in Canada with Daniel Monzon

Defying Limits and Redefining Opportunity in Canada with Daniel Monzon

Kelly Kennedy: I never cease to be impressed by the incredible guests who grace our stage, but Daniel Monzon may be among the most exceptional. His story is one of grit, courage, and an unwavering refusal to accept limitations. Daniel has climbed mountains with one arm and one leg, built companies from the ground up and devoted his life to empowering immigrant and underrepresented founders across Canada through Catapult Startups.

He is opening doors. Creating opportunity and reshaping the entrepreneurial landscape, one leader at a time. This is a conversation that will challenge you, inspire you, and remind you of what is possible when resilience meets purpose. Stick with us. You won't wanna miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development CapitalBD.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 294 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring to you Daniel Monzon.

He is a trailing entrepreneur and an advocate for underrepresented communities whose work is reshaping the entrepreneurial landscape in Alberta and beyond. As the CEO and Co-founder of Catapult Startups, a not-for-profit accelerator, Daniel is dedicated to empowering immigrant refugee and minority entrepreneurs to overcome systemic barriers and launch thriving businesses.

Under his leadership, Catapult Startups has committed to helping 200 small and medium sized enterprises take root by 2032, creating 5,000 jobs and contributing 3 billion in direct GDP to the Alberta economy. With its focus on mentorship, funding, support, and tailored business resources, catapult startups is not just fostering individual success, it's driving economic growth and innovation at scale.

Daniel's passion for creating pathways to success is deeply personal. Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Calgary, Alberta. He is drawn from his own challenges to champion resilience and opportunity for others. In addition to his work with Catapult, Daniel founded Creative Social, an IT services firm dedicated to helping small and medium sized businesses navigate the digital transformation.

His dedication extends to volunteer work with organizations like Shriners Hospital and the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, where he supports newcomers in building professional skills through catapult startups. Daniel is not just helping to launch businesses, he is creating a legacy of empowerment and redefining economic opportunity for future generations.

Daniel, wow. It is an honor to have you on the show today.

Daniel Monzon: Thanks, Kelly. Appreciate that. I just wanna make one thing clear. With the Shriners I used to volunteer with them when I was going to the Shrin Hospital, and one of the things that I would do, I actually do translations, so. Any kid coming in from where a country that couldn't speak English, I would literally do that, be the one translating to them with the doctors and nurses and things like that.

Um, so I should've Wow. Edited that. Apologies for that, but I just wanted to clarify that one there.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, no, not at all. Not at all. I appreciate the clarification and like I said, either way you're doing some pretty big things. It's an, it's an honor to have you on the show.

Daniel Monzon: Thank you. I I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And you're excited to get going.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. You know, um, catapult Startups is something that's been on my list for a while. I've been trying to do an Alberta ecosystem series, so basically from the beginning of the business development podcast, I've had the pleasure of meeting with quite a few different organizations across Alberta.

And this was just one that I needed to get off the list. And when I met you, I was like, wow, we really need to talk.

Daniel Monzon: No, I'm glad, I'm glad we're talking. And also, you know, I'm glad that it's, well, not glad, but, um, thank you for your patience. You know, it's taken quite a while for us to get communicating, get going.

I know you reached out to me like last year. And I finally had the time to now start talking to you. So apologies for that. Um, like I was, you know, like communicate earlier forms are my pet, my Achilles heel.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Um, but now we have a bigger team and I'm working with that to speed up that process.

So I appreciate your patience and thank you for welcoming to your show.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, not a problem. Actually, you hold a record, at least at this point in time. You hold a record for like the longest time between an initial conversation and an actual recording at a full year later. And the funny thing is, Daniel, we're actually recording almost a full year ahead, so by the time people are hearing this, show me and you have been in conversation for two years to make it happen.

Daniel Monzon: Yeah. So it'll be really interesting. You know, it's, it's how things how some, some things go sometimes, you know. Yeah. Uh, again, really excited to be here and hey, let's get the show going.

Kelly Kennedy: I think the lesson here really just is that nothing happens as fast as you hope it would in business.

Daniel Monzon: No, no, it's true. And, and the other one too, it's just because you, you lost touch or you lost connection with somebody else, doesn't mean you can't reengage with them. Because I remember putting you in a red flag and always looking at that email. I'm like, alright, I gotta get this done today. Yeah. And I think the funny thing is, I think we booked it, or I booked it in August or July of last year, but you were already so booked.

Yeah, but the only time was January and I'm like, okay, january, right.

We're at, yeah. But I'm glad I did it then. Instead of waiting for January of this year, and then god knows, who knows when I'll, we'll be talking by then.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, we are, um, you know, I mean, I don't wanna say it's a blessing and a curse.

We're blessed on this show to have so many people who wanna come on it. And, and unfortunately the downside to that is I wanna have them on, but I have to wait, uh, you know, until sometimes a year to get their show out. But the conversations, the cool thing about the business development podcast is that the conversations are pretty much evergreen, relevant, always like the lessons we learn from, you know, experts like yourself.

They're just as relevant five, 10 years from today as they are today. So it's cool that like, even though we are a ways into the future, the lessons are still hot and fresh typically by the time they come out.

Daniel Monzon: For sure. Exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: Dude, take us back to the beginning. You're a serial entrepreneur, but that clearly couldn't have always been the case, you know, who is Daniel Monzon?

How did you end up on this entrepreneurial journey? Take us back to the very beginning.

Daniel Monzon: That's a, that's a good question. I would say honestly what it came outta creating an opportunity, quitting a niche. Funny enough you know, I went through university, going through university. I really, really applied my, applied myself somewhere, I'll be honest.

But the biggest thing I tried to do was get into those internship programs. That's how I would recommend anybody in university right now, if you're post-secondary or college or whatever. Try get into an internship program. An internship program essentially will pro will give you work experience while you go into school and give you a better chance when you're out of university to land a job you're looking for within your field.

Right. So one of the things I was, I was doing is essentially trying to get into these, um, internship programs, but then also executive programs. Now, these executive programs are programs that you get, uh, that they put you in s in a path as to be an executive. Most of them tend to be from large, um, energy companies.

And I was talking to two currently and I ended up ma making a final final like, I guess step or interview process with one of them. And, and I won't say the name because I, they were really great with me. They were honest and upfront. That's the biggest thing I think in business is if you're honest and upfront, it's okay, but you have to be honest and upfront.

And they had the decency to bring me in. A conversation. It's a tough conversation, but they were like, Daniel, for you to go into an executive program, because you gotta go into, in the field and, you know, switch every quarter, every three months, it will, you would cost us, our insurance costs would be too high.

Mm-hmm. It's

unfortunate. We looked at it every way possible. We could do it, but we, we just can't get around it. But at least had the decency to bring me in and have this as a proper conversation. It wasn't an email, it wasn't a phone call, it wasn't a text. It was a one-on-one face-to-face. And, and, and for that, I'll always give them thanks.

Yeah. Not the answer I wanted to hear. Mm-hmm. But at least they were able to communicate that. So from that and that point, I was like, okay, if that path is closed, what other paths could I go through? So I started applying and going to, and working for small businesses. And in small businesses you wear multiple hats.

You're very quickly, even if you're applying for an account manager position or a business development position on an operations position, yeah. A coordinator or anything like that reason it's entry level, you're gonna quickly go into wearing multiple hats. It's just how it's, and I really enjoy that.

Yeah. Um, and I, I did that for about, I would say five years when I started thinking, I'm like, you know what? I can do this for myself. And it wasn't, that was like the initial part was there, but I feel like okay, I could, but, you know, I need so much capital. I need so much this and this and that. I would make excuses why I couldn't do it.

It wasn't until I would say I started volunteering for TEDx Calgary. Yeah. Um, that I met a couple individuals. Um, the biggest one, I would say Keith McDonald. Um, he was one of my mentors and he was like, Hey, Daniel, what you're trying to do here, because I essentially communicated TEDx Gallery at the time, it was like, I think 13 or 14 years ago, maybe now, 15 years ago now, how to quantify social media because they were doing an event.

Um, they're like, Hey, here's how you quantify social media and here's how you get drive, you know, traffic into your website and how you can track, um, sales cost as well. Yeah. Right. And you can see, and you can have a return on investment on which channel, whether that's media, text, graphic. Or, you know, it is giving you the the more bang for your buck, right?

And they were like, that's, you do that? I'm like, yeah, just simply quantifying. And I show them all this. And he was like, uh, keto, saying, Hey, there's something here. Um, he at the time worked for Shell in the operations shipment department area.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Out in, but he was I think stationed out in Netherlands for a couple LNG projects.

Right. Okay. But he said what I was doing, and he was like, there is something here. You should probably develop a business. And I was like, really? You think so? And I was like, I think I would need to give, you know, give 10 free clients or something like that, or for, to get traction because I need to build, you know, some credibility, validation.

They're like, Daniel, no, you're ready. Go for it. Right. Start, put in an ad, put in some, marketing collateral, things like that and get going. So with that I was like, okay, I'll, I still was hesitant until literally I got a phone call. From those meetings, got phone calls saying You've been highly recommended.

We know that, you know, um, social media to quantify it. We're looking at someone to jump into this startup. Yeah. To kind of focus on communications and be that driver. Would you be interested? And I'm like, yep, absolutely. So I jumped in and essentially I've never looked back. That was, yeah.

Now 13, maybe four, no longer. Wow. 16, 15, around 14 years ago that I haven't had to write a resume. Um, and I think that's the best part I enjoy about this whole thing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Daniel Monzon: Because it's just so tedious. Yeah. But I love writing project proposals. That's a whole different thing because you're writing a project, working on a project or a business, right.

So it's a whole different area. Um, and yeah, it's literally changing that mindset instead of spending time on writing resumes, spending time writing proposals. And yeah, I kind never looked back. I mean, they gave me a call. They're thinking You're interested in this project. I took on the project. That's when I learned about.

Really doing your due diligence on the entrepreneur hand. They were building a really cool little product. The product was like a lantern that gets powered by salt water. Oh, cool. The inventor, the CEO

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Signed an agreement with the investor so when the money came in that it could only be marketed to doomsday people or peppers.

Mm.

So it's like, I, so you're literally, sorry for the pun, but you're literally tying one arm behind my back.

Yeah.

You know, because you just focused me, helping me tell me we should focus on one tiny section of the population.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: That characteristically isn't gonna be online.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Doesn't wanna be found.

Why are you gonna market to that? And, and, and the funny thing is, we would get consultants from California that were $40,000 and New York that were $50,000, and they would all say, why this is a type product. Why are you targeting it to. To, to teenagers, to to parents. As a camping product, tech camping product.

You can charge your batteries, it can provide you light, you can charge your phones, you can watch and watch movies. You should promote it as that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: But because of the contract and the stipulation do.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Daniel Monzon: So yeah. What do due diligence before you join a team Yeah. What you're spending up to. And I guess the investor thought that maybe he can make, make, make it work around it.

Maybe he could eventually convince him, but once you sign something

He, the inventor had him over. It's like, there's nothing you can do. You signed it, you gave me the funding.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: You're managing the team, which is your job to do. But it says here, you can only market it weird.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. I, I'm not sure that I understand the reasoning behind that. Like what investor wouldn't wanna sell it to the broadest spectrum of people possible.

Daniel Monzon: The thing I wanna say is this and, and, um, I'll say with a grain of salt. Entrepreneurs when you're starting out, they tend to use this phra, this phrase, and to me it's a red flag. Oh, this is my baby. No, it's not your baby.

Your child is your baby. That's just a business, and business come and go all the time. But they're so protective of the idea that they think it's the best idea in the world. They're not willing to listen to feedback.

They're not willing to listen to just criticism, constructive criticism. And, and they're not open-minded to see revenue generation.

They feel that, no, you're not communicating my message properly enough because a product asset is, it's so wonderful and great, and it's like nobody cares about your product. I'm sorry to say this, unless people are willing to pay for it. Yeah. You could care for your product and that's great and dandy. I applaud you.

But if you can't find customers that are willing to pay a dollar value, exchange actual cash for your product or service. I'm sorry. You have nothing. And, and, and with Catapult what we're doing, because we do talk to entrepreneurs and we talk to them, you know, early stage sometimes, whether they're launching a startup or a small business, some of them are really good head on their shoulders.

They understand business, they understand processes, and they also want to admit what they don't know. They just, why, why they're talking to us. Yeah. But others are so adamant that, no, my idea is the best and it's all about the technology. I'm like, great, but what is the business model? How are you making money?

And they get stuck on that. Like they don't know how to make money. And that's a very frustration part for me.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And, and you see that a lot in startups and I think because a lot of startups are university students, right? Like they're, they have incredible ideas, but they haven't necessarily spent a lot of time in the business world.

And so, you know, I mean, I've interviewed quite a few different, uh, mentors for startup founders over the show, on this show over time. I noticed that that's a problem that comes up pretty consistently is that they build a product without thinking of who's going to buy it. They just assume, well, I have this great product, somebody's gonna wanna buy it.

But they're not building a product to solve a problem. They're building a product then trying to find a problem to solve with it. Right.

Daniel Monzon: Exactly. And it makes no sense. Like, and, and this is where you have to have the honest conversation with yourself. That's what I mean by this entrepreneurship or starting a small business, running a company.

It's like you're flying a plane as you're building it while it's on fire and you're putting out the fire if you're comfortable with that. Perfect. And the other thing too is you have to feel comfortable operating at 80%. What does that mean? Nothing's ever gonna be perfect. And I deal with so many entrepreneurs, they're like, well, we need to our product be perfect.

It needs to be perfect. I'm like, why? Well, we want it to be perfect so then we can talk to clients. And I'm like. You haven't talked to clients yet? No. And I'm like, how much have you spent on this perfect product? Yeah. Oh, $200,000. So you spent $200,000, which I'm assuming it's either your own money or grant money, and let's say it's grant money.

You spend time and resources to write those grants. There's money behind that, and you spend time building this thing, but you haven't had the time to talk to, up to a hundred potential clients to figure out what features or things, or even if this, they're interested in this product. I'll give you a quick example.

Okay. Have you heard of, um, pet Rock or the Pet Rock in the eighties?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I, I know what you're talking about.

Daniel Monzon: Okay. Pet rock, horrible idea. Anybody that set up Pet rock, that's a dumb idea. Me And you can say it's a dumb idea all day. Everybody can say it's a dumb idea all day, but you know what doesn't make it a dumb idea?

The fact that guy made a million dollars in revenue in sales because people were willing to give him cash. So someone out there. Was willing to give out cash and, and anybody listening to this podcast, please Google Pet Rock. You're gonna laugh, trust me on this. It's literally any rock you can find out there in the park, it would just come in a little box and they would put Google Ice and little things you can stick to it so you can decorate your rock.

And if you came in your pet rock. Yeah. And, and, and they charge these people, this what you can find them at Toys R Us, Walmart, superstores anyway. Wow. But they validated the idea that people were willing to pay for that. Yeah. And that's, I think, a problem that received a lot of young entrepreneurs, students, her little scared or intimidated to talk to customers, but that's a customer.

Mm-hmm. And you don't need a lot of money or resources to validate an idea. It can be a simple Facebook, post, LinkedIn, post, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, saying, Hey, we're building this, or we're creating this. Would you pay for yes or no? Just do a quick test run. See how many people say yes or no.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: And if you come to yourself like, oh, well, you know, people said no because I don't think they under understood our body proposition.

Well, there are two things. Either A, you're communicating piss poorly, or B no, they understood it and they don't wanna buy it. Yeah. They're not willing to give you money for that idea. I'm sorry. There's, you know, like we worked with one entrepreneur who had a really good idea, we thought had a good idea.

It was about understanding notifications and seeing when a system would go down so you would miss out on notifications that would conventionally cost you money because of emails and things like that. Once we talked to him, he was telling us and was very upfront and honest, like, Hey Daniel, I'm starting this out, but I wanna talk to accelerators and incubators to figure out which one's the right one for me while I'm doing my validation process.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Perfect. Awesome. A month later, he comes back to us. Hey Daniel. I wanna let you know what I found of the validation. Cool idea, but there's no way I can make money it because I cannot scale it. I'm like, nothing wrong with that.

Mm-hmm. You

had the idea, you validated it quickly, you tested it out. You're like, yeah, there's no way I make money.

This, the market's not ready for perfect. You put it to rest. You didn't try to force something that wasn't there. You did your due diligence and you were, you were able to put your

ego aside, Hey, is this not gonna work? It's okay, let's put it aside.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, I, um, it's, at least they did, most people would just still keep trucking forward.

I know. It's, uh, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard to have an idea and think that it could work and then find out that maybe it's not the right time. And I do think that in a lot of cases, that's all it is. It's not the right time. I think many ideas are excellent, but you have to wait for the time for it to work.

And I think that's kind of the kicker to it. Exactly.

Daniel Monzon: I mean, an example of that is Tivo. Tivo went out in the nineties and early two thousands. They could literally record your TVs. Yeah. It was early ai. If you think about it, it would re understand your patterns of watching TVs and it would start recording the shows that you think you might wanna watch.

But you even knew having to click record. Yeah. But people were like, hold on, that's too scary. We're not ready for it. No one bought it. Yeah. It's still one of the best manufactured products out there. Yeah, far none. But the people weren't ready for it Now it's a joke. It's a bird Tivo. I mean, I dunno, I guess I'm 40, 20, 41 this year, so people might, might know who Tivo is, but.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, it's, you're absolutely right.

'cause I remember at the time being like, oh, that's kind of a cool idea. Like the whole idea of A DVR, but now they're just like, they're gone. Like that whole thing just missed. I think Blu-ray is also, if we wanna talk about something that was like really cool, but just short-lived, just Blu-ray, right? Like sure, we still have, you can go buy a Blu-ray video, but who in the world is buying Blu-ray videos anymore?

Right? It's kind of too bad because it was like the pinnacle of, of discs, right? But its lifespan was what, five years tops.

Daniel Monzon: And, and that's the thing though. Now you look at some companies that, okay, they invested or betted on Blu-ray PlayStations, Sonys, um, video your game systems that instead of putting DVD, they put at the Blu-ray, so then you can play the games and watch Blu-rays.

Yeah. But now Blu-rays no longer exist. Now some of them, you can still do a streaming system on them with your PlayStation and Xbox or whatever, but again, it's the means that changed. Right? Yeah. I mean, if you think about it ne, streaming services nowadays are, it's on demand watching. Yeah, it's video on demand.

You watch when you want to, I mean, the days of Saturday morning cartoons are gone.

Mm-hmm.

I, I remember when it was like Saturday morning cartoons. Five in the morning, six in the morning. Yeah. I set time to watch those cartoons. Now you can watch whatever you want.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, me too. I honestly, dude, I'm so disappointed with it because like my kids, I want them to love Saturday morning cartoons, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I can watch cartoons anytime. There's no such like a Saturday morning cartoons. Like, ah, it's too bad. Really? It's too bad.

Daniel Monzon: They dunno what they're missing. And, and, and memory might sound a little silly, but I think it builds a little bit of discipline, is what I mean by that. Okay. So you go to school Monday to Friday and you and your parents are waking, at least for me, they're like, wake up, go to school.

And I'm like, no, I don't wanna, I'm sleepy. I don't wanna go. Like, please leave me alone yet on a Saturday morning because it's what I wanted, a cartoon that I wanted to watch. I was willing to internally just wake up at 5:00 AM grab that, go downstairs in the kitchen. Pour myself a bowl of cereal, milk, watch some Saturday morning cartoons.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: But now you correlate that to like, okay, business world, I want something. You're gonna have to get up early to go get it. Yeah. Early bird gets so warm and I think a lot of us who live in that area, I feel that, yeah, waking up early might be tough, but if it's something that we want, we're able to almost, how can I put it?

Um, attach ourselves to that feeling or emotion of like, Hey, started morning cartoon, something we wanted to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: And we were able to do it, so let's go back here. Hey, this early meeting or this project or this, whatever, me getting early is gonna help me achieve that goal or get what I want. Right?

Yeah.

But I don't know, and again, maybe it's an assumption, I don't know. People that didn't grow up with Saturday morning cartoons, is that damaging in that aspect? Are they not Maybe getting that, training quote unquote when they were young? Yeah. To wake up early because you get an award.

Kelly Kennedy: As humans, we love instant gratification, don't we?

We do. We do. And that's the world they're growing up in, man. For better, for worse, who knows? I have no idea. What I can say is, is we gave them tablets, initially, learned our lessons, ended up fighting to take the tablets back, and now we have a tablet, free household. So it is possible, but I don't know, man.

It's hard. It's really hard. 'cause now the fight is, you know, trying to get them off YouTube and, and I think the argument for me with YouTube is it's not YouTube, it's the crap on YouTube that's for kids. Yeah. Right. It's the people that are marketing all these games and all this other garbage to kids that's like, oh, like I don't hate YouTube.

I love YouTube, but I love YouTube to learn things. And I want my kids to love YouTube to learn things, not to just watch a bunch of idiots, do dumb things.

Daniel Monzon: And I don't agree with you on that. I think we all had that time when we looked at stupid stuff on, on the internet to laugh, but at the same time, totally.

You do wanna make a balance. Yeah. You know, within what you're learning and what you're being entertained with.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my God, I love that you touched on that because dude, I, you're absolutely right. I look back to like, when I was a kid and we'd watch like, I don't know, miniclip.com or something like that, just watch like stupid videos all day long.

It was, it's no different. But the adult Kelly is just like, that's such a waste of time. You guys gotta do something better with your time. Watch something more educational. But it's like you completely get disconnected with the fact that you did the exact same thing at the dawn of the internet and.

Daniel Monzon: Exactly.

And, and, and maybe just to touch that to a little bit, like, there's nothing wrong. So like, everybody takes a different journey in business, right? I would consider myself an extremely late bloomer. I got, I mean, I'm 40 now, turning 41 this year. I got a top 40 or 40 when I was 30 nine's. Crazy. Like the last year possible.

Yeah. Um, I got married at 40. I'm having my kid at 40. You know, I, I I, I would say that I wouldn't. I feel not comfortable under my own shoes and my under and my own skin in any kinda situation. I would say starting around maybe 35, I think around that age, I was extremely sure of myself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: I would consider myself a, a bloomer.

Now I look back 'cause I've, I'm gonna, again, I'm sorry, I'm people that might not know out there, but I'm having a kid pretty soon with my wife end of January, beginning of February. So I'm been thinking about, my kid and what I'm gonna try to teach him and tell him. And one of those things that looking back at, at, on what I was doing in my twenties and my, you know, in, in, in late teens, and it's like, yeah, okay, I went to university, but I wasted a lot of time just doing stupid stuff that I'm just looking back, I'm like, I wish I didn't.

Mm-hmm. But then I'm like, okay, would that made me the person that I'm today? Because even though I felt that it didn't maybe give me the, how can I put it, the quote unquote corporate experience that I needed to polish that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: I think what it did give me, it gave me an understanding of how the actual world works.

It gave me an understanding how people are, which is really important because people, you don't deal with businesses, you deal with people.

Kelly Kennedy: Correct.

Daniel Monzon: And sometimes I think when we think of, I can't fathom someone doing that, and then that happens is because we don't understand people. Right.

I think sometimes we can be in a bubble. Right? So looking back at all that dumb things that I've done and putting myself in the dumb situations, whether that's partying or whatever, hanging out with your friends and you look at the different surroundings or experiences that you had that maybe prepared you for a situation where looking back it can be like, yeah, I dealt with a lot of fires that I had to put out with a lot of situations that I to like, right away, think faster than my feet quickly.

Yeah. And make executive decisions that maybe because of those experiences prepared me for me today. Right? Yeah. That I'm ready to take on this challenge instead of maybe like, Hey, if I were to go down, let May say more that traditional eight to five kind of job scale, maybe I would've been already molded into like, no, I only work eight to five.

Because I'm comfortable working. It's not a comfort good thing, but I gotta keep it to eight hours. But realistically, it's sometimes 10 to 12 hours because I'm working on multiple things. Yeah. But I do make sure to spend time with the family. Family time is family time. Right. But there's a lot of time, there's a lot of downtime that looking back and you're trying to assess like, why was I doing all those years?

All those time. And you're like, what the hell? Right. I know. And and then you. And then you figure out how you can manage so many things and so quickly because you get used to making decisions. Yeah. High level decisions really quickly. So again, for Achilles cl, but you ask me for a strategy or ask me a forecast or for a hard hitting question, I'm like, yeah, boom.

Done. That's next question. Let's go ahead. Yeah. Right. We made an executive decision, we can put it to bed. I'm comfortable saying it was my fault. I'm comfortable giving the other person praise. At the end of the day, if you make it about yourself, no one really likes you. If you always work with a team and give praise to other, other people, I always wanna work with you.

And if you always take the blame, it's because, hey, you're the CEO, your buck stops with you, right? You cannot blame anybody else.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I can, uh, I can definitely resonate with you kind of saying like, you know, I'm a bit of a late bloomer. I, I started my business at 30, so I'm right there with you. You, you there.

But you know what? Here's the thing. Here's my belief. My belief is. There's never a wrong time to start a business. You're never too old or too young to start a business. And it was my time and it was your time, and we needed whatever we needed to get to the point where we were prepared mentally, physically, whatever, to take that leap.

Because starting a business takes bravery. It takes courage, and it takes a little bit of, of, uh, of trust in the universe I think.

Daniel Monzon: It does. You need to feel comfortable with risk,

like Yeah, and, and, and just to, I think for me, one thing that I did that I can always look back at and whenever. Whenever I have days with a top decision, a tough challenge, something that I think quote unquote ISS impossible.

Yeah. I look back to this moment, I climbed Huayna Picchu, so that Huayna Picchu is a mountain next to Machu Picchu. Wow. Now, people on this podcast might not know this, or dunno if you heard listen to.

Kelly Kennedy: They don't know yet unless you know you.

Daniel Monzon: Exactly. Is that I was born with one arm in one leg, so I climbed the one Huayna Picchu with one numb and one leg.

Wow. This kind of pissed me up a little bit. I was, I think, the 20th person to do it that had a disability. Yeah. That's what pissed me off. I was hoping maybe it could be like the fifth,

Kelly Kennedy: Sorry your #20.

Daniel Monzon: Yeah. I was like, okay. Serious. There was a lady who climbed the Huayna Picchu. And she only had one limb.

And I was like, holy crap. Wow. So she was like the person on one limb. And I'm like, that's like record breaking. Yeah. And I was like, no, for two limbs, you're like the 20th person with two limbs. Who has climbed that, that mountain.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: And the thing with that mountain, it's you sign a waiver when you go out, because if you fall down, they not gonna search for you.

They're not gonna find you. And no amount of money that you may have is gonna help because the jungle eats you. Wow. There has been cases where people will get lost going up or take, get outta the trail or fall down. And they might come from very affluential families with a little capital, and they'll bring on the capital.

They'll bring in your rescue teams and everything, but they, you don't find the people. You don't find the person because the jungle eats you. Right. So literally, I signed this waiver. It takes you an hour to go up the mountain, an hour down. I did it in an hour and a half, up, hour and a half back. So an hour, half an hour extra both ways.

Yeah. And I trained for about a year. Everybody in my family was like, don't do it. You're gonna die. You're gonna fall. And I'm like, no, I'm gonna be prepared. Mm-hmm. It's a risk, but it's a very prepared risk. I even went to the point that I would watch YouTube videos of people climbing that mountain like two hours long.

Yeah. Just seeing where all the barriers are gonna be. There's a large Bulger where the, the metal rope is broken, which essentially all the whole way up. So you learn not to hold onto it, because that's how people slip or fall. I see. And really understanding where, okay, this face is where I'm gonna have to cut my arm.

There's no other ways about it. I'm gonna grab here, scrape my arm. It's what? It's,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Daniel Monzon: But I did it all the way up and remember doing it and coming back and the feeling that I got, I'm like, if I did that, I can do anything. I remember texting my dad and my dad was like, holy. I can't believe he did that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: And he's not very a kind of like rah rah kind of guy.

Mm-hmm. But he

texted me like, Daniel, you're a champion. You have a heart of a champion. I don't know how you, you did that, but now I take that feeling of me going up and down. Yes. Prepared readiness, the risk associated to, and you gotta push through.

And, and the funny thing too about that climb is that morning, because we did it at 6:00 AM I was sick day before I was way Tylenol. No black market, Tylenol, whatever I could find. Small town. It's whatever's, it's Ty was Yeah. Tylenol. Right. I like okay, taking that. Yeah. I'm sweating it out. And even at six in the morning while we're eating breakfast, I'm like, how much do you want it?

Am I gonna look back 10, 20 years from now thinking I should have up the mountain? I don't have to because I did.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: And I take that in transition into entrepreneurship. You might be scared about starting a business. You might be scared about maybe opening, uh, into new market or maybe, or scaling into new areas.

But until you do, you won't know. Yeah. And I would encourage everybody, just take the risk because you never know what's gonna happen and it's better to take the risk and not know and be like, okay, it happened or didn't.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Then wonder.

Kelly Kennedy: I think everybody has moments in their life where you accomplish something that you may not have ever thought you could and it changes you forever.

And you know, obviously this was one of those moments for you, for me, it sounds really stupid, this one's gonna sound really dumb, but quitting smoking at 25. I remember thinking like, I tried to quit like 17 times, dude. Like I, I just, like, I, I wanted to quit. I just couldn't stick to it.

Couldn't do it. And when I finally did the, like, the strength. In that for me, gave me the strength to move up in my life and do something better and basically be a better person than I was before. Right? And I would argue too, that like starting my business and succeeding at it was also something that gave me a strength that's like, and made me a better person.

Like I genuinely think that entrepreneurship makes people better. It just, if you were willing to take that risk and that's, and that strength and that challenge on, you can't, even if you aren't successful, you will still come out a better person than you were when you began.

Daniel Monzon: Oh, a hundred percent.

And thanks for sharing that, Kelly. And then it's not a small, silly thing. I mean, smoking, it's a big deal a lot. It's hard. People struggle with putting smoking, but hey, kudos to you. Congratulations for doing that. But that must have been like really tough and I'm glad that you shared and said you tried 17 times.

You kept trying and you eventually did it. And that's another thing too. I wanna communicate to entrepreneurs or business people like you might fail the first time. You might fail the second time, but if you stick long enough with it, you might succeed now. What do I mean by that? And, and I really wanna touch back to that point, to that, um, example I talked earlier with that client that we're talking to of those electrification business that he eventually had, you know what, after validating it, just shut it up.

Yeah. That's because he validated it, but he pivoted to something else. Yeah. 'cause he still wanted, he thought, okay, maybe not with this specific stream or service or product, but there could be another way for me to, you know, be a small business owner or an entrepreneur. Yeah. Or then continue on that path.

So that's what I mean by that. Right. And, and, and like you, maybe you're 17 times as you were trying different ways to quit until you found one that worked for you, but great. Now here we are.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: You know, so many years later when you're like, yeah, I, that thing worked. And I would say that's a thing for entrepreneurs.

Sometimes you might think it's the first thing or the second or third. I mean, I remember the first business that I ever tried running was an events company when I was 23. Wow. You know, and, and, and we thinking about it, I'm like, I was doing it because it was a pain point I was experiencing because I'm like living at home and I out with friends, and me and my friend were like, yeah, we should, really take this idea to the next level.

And Yeah. And you look back and you're like, no, that took a lot to do. And, and of course, I mean, you saw one of my close friends, but you can tell that he, he's not in, he was like, no, it's a cool thing to talk about.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: But then when you gotta put operations tasks, strategy calendar mm-hmm. Start moving the needle forward, you realize, right.

But of course, they quickly end nowhere. But the biggest thing and lesson learned that I learned from that was, you don't need a blackberry. Because you're talking about a business because we were just spending money to look, quote unquote. Yes. Oh yeah. Hey guys, I have a black bearing. Yeah. You know, it just out.

And I'm like, this makes me a business. No, it doesn't. Why? Why does it do that? No, it doesn't. Like, I'm sorry. It doesn't.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Monzon: It doesn't, it's, it's very easy to spend money.

Mm-hmm. Very

hard to make money. Yeah. And, and one of the things I want people to, to really think about this, it's the quicker you're comfortable validating your idea, even if it's not a hundred percent flush out, even if it's just 60% flush out, but you're just asking questions, you're trying to validate it.

And there's many different ways I would suggest use any AI platform, whether that's wrong. Try gt whatever the Google one is. I forgot what it's called. Gemini, I think.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Um, you know, like put on those prompts and, and try to figure out a way. And, and again, the biggest thing for me I see is that it's just quick validate.

Be like, ask it. How can I validate this idea?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Without costing me a lot of money. It's a quick, inexpensive way to validate this. Yeah. Is it through social campaign? Is it, you know that most companies, sometimes almost, but a lot of companies validate products or a potential service, but just making a fake button and adding it to the website and able click on that, that cost you Like what?

Okay, so let's think about that. The cost of the developer to write that code or put that button in there. Maybe the graphic design to maybe the color scheme or whatever, but it's already a template or branding. It's not color associated with it. And maybe the marketing manager or coordinator for the actual main that we wanna call me schedule a conversation.

Yeah. Learn more. Because those things will drive, as well clicks, but they'll validate it and test it out. Yeah. Now have you spent money on building that product and the infrastructure behind it? You were just seeing it if the market was interested mm-hmm. And you set a parameter and you're like, okay, I'm gonna put this link, um, on a Wednesday.

And I know that our marketing campaign logs out on Monday, so we're gonna get traffic to our website. Not about that service, but about, just general marketing. Sure. And let's say for me to see that this product or service, it's a good metric, and I'm gonna make this up. Let's say the metric for me that I'm trying to go look for is a 25% conversion rate.

So outta a hundred people that come to my website. If I get 25 people clicking on that specific link or that product or service, I'm gonna go ahead and build it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Or start the process. Yeah. But if I get less than that, I'm not gonna build it quick and easy. And you have to feel comfortable making those executive decisions.

Yeah. Whatever you get at 24, you decided on 25 what's a policy there? That's when you really, really test yourself as a leader and your executive team. 'cause it's all about your ability to make those quick executive decisions. Yeah. And then you wants the next

Kelly Kennedy: I love that. I love that. And I also love the idea of like testing for marketing stuff.

Because I think a lot of us are just spending money on, on advertising, whether it be like meta ads or Google ads, or Facebook or whatever, you name it, LinkedIn. But we're not really sure what it's doing a lot of the time. Right. Like that's the kind of downside to these passive marketing strategies is sometimes it's really hard to tell.

It's like, sure, you might get X number of impressions, but the impressions don't matter. And I think people kind of forget about that. It's not about how many people see it, it's about how many people actually engage with it or find deleted. Right.

Daniel Monzon: No. For example, if your goal is just to generate awareness, so you need to practice because then it's different.

But if your goal is sales, you need engagement. Yeah. And in many different things, right? So I think as people really need to focus on what is their goal and their intent and kind of work backwards.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's also important to remember that business is done through interaction.

So like everything that we do with regards to business development is always to get to a meeting. 'cause if we can have a, if we can have a meeting, whether that be a virtual meeting or a face-to-face meeting with another human being, be able to address questions, address challenges, introduce a product or service, actually have a real conversation, a real relationship that is like way more likely to turn into real revenue for your business at some point than somebody who just saw an ad on LinkedIn and might have even looked at it.

Or, or maybe didn't, or maybe scrolled right on by. Right.

Daniel Monzon: Exactly. No, e Exactly. You're, you're, you're, you're, you know, you're, you're right. You're right about that.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, one of the questions that I want to have, obviously, you know, working with a lot of startups and, and having that conversation with them is how do you, what type of advice do you give to your startups when you're talking about marketing and actually getting to a customer?

Because I think, you know, anybody starting a business, the goal here is to get customers, right? Well, obviously we need brand awareness. That's one part of the strategy, but brand awareness is great, but it also doesn't necessarily turn into revenue. You know, talk to me, what kind of advice do you give your startups when you're working with them to actually generate sales?

Daniel Monzon: And that's a good question. I would, I would say it depends on their business model. It really depends on the business models. We look at a, we gotta look at business models. So as your business model, uh, B2B instead of B2C, is it subscription based? Is it B two G, government, right? And, and look at that.

Um, and then look at your value proposition. Look at your product or surveys and look your targeting. Majority of the people, they have a, they what's say, have a problem targeting their product to the right audience. I think they think it's for everybody and it's not as far as very specific amount of people.

Um, one, so that's one. The other thing too, we wanna try to communicate is let's put in mechanisms in place that can quickly disqualify people.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Because what you don't want is people that are not interested in your product or your service in your feed or in your pipeline, because that's taken away time from you and resources from people that are actually interested in your pipeline.

And that's something like, even for us as Catapult, we, we struggled a little bit at the beginning. Um, for example, um, we were like, do we put in pricing and very specific information and we're like, you know what? We have to be upfront with what we're looking for and what we're trying to do. Because at the end of the day is making sure we talk to the right individuals for the right program, making sure it's the right fit.

And same thing for any kind of business, right? So you really need to understand that. So it's looking at your business model, looking at how you're engaging and communicating, looking what your strategy is. But then putting some processes in place when it comes to that. So what do I mean? Let's like let's look at retail.

If you're gonna do sales in retail, we gotta look at your product very specifically and put in some parameters around it. Okay? If it's ice cream, well ice cream is gonna sell itself. It's ice cream. It's more funny. You like a specific location in a corner with put traffic, go sell your ice cream. Yeah, right?

But more what we're doing is what is a good high traffic area or potential families that might wanna buy your ice cream because your ice cream is, you know, let's say it's healthy. So maybe let's go to an area that has a lot of single families or multifamily or families and then we're like, okay, based on our assessment, that's the, this communities in the Southwest and this communities in whatever it would suggest when you go in two locations in these areas at these times because have hollow lot traffic, which will generate some sales for you.

But they would also recommend with you in that space, use the physical location as almost branding and marketing have a QR code to your website. That people can have access to your website there. It's almost like a popup deck because again, you don't wanna spend $2 to make 50 cents. No. What is your return on investment?

You wanna spend 50 cents and make two bucks, right? Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, that's

goal. I mean, that's true. I mean, almost wanna have a ratio, but again, it's your return on investment, right? So ideally what we're trying to do when we communicate, that's one example, right? But let's say it's more a B2B.

It's all about how are you engaging with your clients? You can kind of talk to your clients, but the biggest thing we, and we we notice is that entrepreneurs are scared out to their clients. Talk to your clients. Make up the phone. Make a phone call, send them an email, send them a text. Engage with your clients.

Don't be afraid to talk to your clients. That the biggest thing to kind of get the bolt rolling when it comes to that be where they're where do you think there will be an opportunity for you to interact with them? Instead of a hockey game, is it a networking event? It's as a business after hours thing.

Like, you know, Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: What is it? Is it maybe going to your, um, your kids' lacrosse game or, or hockey game or whatever? Like, where are they spending time at? And, and then going to those events and meeting those people. But again, it's about talking to your clients. If you're not talking to your clients and you're hoping they'll find you on social media you gotta go directly to them.

And the first step is your network. A lot of people don't value their network and they have a vast network, and it's all structuring in a way that, for lack of a better term, you don't wanna sound annoying. You don't wanna be bugging them saying, all right, it's, come on, please use my services. You wanna come across very professional, and you wanna also engage with people from your network that you know that, Hey, you know what?

This is a potential service that can work for them, because that's gonna create a pipeline. You're gonna start having those conversations and that's gonna do two things. One, it's gonna get you comfortable. Talking about your product or service. Yeah. Your potential clients, even if they're your friends or close your network, right.

Or people that you or your colleagues that you work with, or university students or high school friends or whatever the case may be. They're gonna get you comfortable with your elevator pitch or your selling proposition, your proposition. The second thing's gonna do, it's gonna improve that process. So then when you do meet that real individual or you know, it's gonna also help you close the sale because even though they're from your network, you never know who needs your product or your service.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, there's a lot of individuals, and it's kind of funny that we're noticing that usually entrepreneurs tend to know other entrepreneurs. Yes. And, and it's always like, yeah, my friend started this and we've been talking about it for two or three years and they think I'm ready for it now.

So they always know someone that did it first that helped them validate it or, you know, mentor them around it. They're not close the capacity to run their business, but they picked their brain and they're always encouraging that front, hey to that he or she person to go ahead and do it. Go ahead and do it.

It's not, you can ask me questions and things like that, but it's not as scary as it sounds. Yeah. And then two or three years in, they're like, okay, I'm, I'm ready for this.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I love that it, the entrepreneurial community is actually quite tight. I, you're, you kind of nailed it. Most people don't like realize that, but I feel like since I became a business owner, I know more people than I like ever have, especially from this show.

But like, even if I hadn't have started this show, it's just a community of incredible people. I'm, I'm proud to know so many entrepreneurs because you know what? They really are incredible, incredible individuals, every one of them.

Daniel Monzon: No, for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, uh, Daniel, I wanted to spend a little bit of time just chatting about how Catapult fits in the Alberta ecosystem, right?

Obviously, you work with government, you work with other startup companies. Um, I imagine you also work with, uh, do you work with Edmonton Unlimited or, uh, Platform Calgary at all as well? Yeah, we do. Talk to me. How does, how does Catapult startups fit into this ecosystem? Who is it for and when do people need it?

Daniel Monzon: No, that's a great question. Um, I would say Kelly Catapult, how it fits in the Alberta ecosystem. We see ourselves as an economic catalyst. We're here to, we see ourselves as job creators and someone that's here to help drive the economy forward. Now, how do we drive the economy forward? We wanna, we're here to empower, whether that's new Canadians or, you know, we call like, um, first generation or even just people that were born in Canada, Canadians here, and essentially all people that are wanting to either start a startup or a small business.

We're looking to scale their small business. So scaling or growing, and essentially the type of individuals that we work with is whether when you're a startup or a small business that just launching, yeah, it's someone that understands that, Hey, I need help. 'cause a lot of entrepreneurs aren't gonna admit to that.

So if an entrepreneur needs help, specifically when it comes to marketing sales, when it comes to legal, when it comes to accounting, financing your team, um, strategy and your operations we're there for those. So the specific six areas we focus on, right? So that's marketing and sales. You're accounting, your finance, your people, your strategy and operations, your legal and your accounting and finance.

Those six are very, very specific. Okay. Now, within those areas, the one thing we noticed in time and time again, whether you're, if you're starting out, the biggest thing is you're looking for, and we're noticing is you, they're needing help with marketing and sales.

And then they're needing help with team building.

A lot of, and what I mean with till building is that a lot of entrepreneurs come with already, team built three or five individuals. Great. We can just scale and grow, but it's our first hire. Yeah. It's not part of the, the C-suite team that may be trouble. What do I mean by that? They might bring in someone that, you know, they know from the network that's a good individual, but might not be a good fit.

And startups need to understand that. You start being a startup, the moment you start thinking yourself as an actual business and to become an actual business, you gotta put in policies and processes. And that means your first hire is your first hire. And it's a very important hire because it's, that's a tone and culture for the company.

And when you're hiring your friends, one qualify because you wanna give them an opportunity. Are you taking your business seriously?

Mm-hmm. There's nothing wrong

with hiring your friend if they're qualified for it.

Yeah.

But if they're not qualified, they have a cultural fit, it's gonna slow down your business.

Yeah. It needs to be a culture, product market fit with that individual. Because when you are starting out, your company and your business. You're wearing so many hats and you need to remember that when you bring in somebody, it takes them six months to completely get onboarded. So if you bring in somebody and you have to fire them and let them go, you're already six months behind.

Yeah. Now you gotta hire somebody new and they have to learn another six months until they're now to that point. So now you up to a year. So now you wasted a year because of that hire. Wow. And that's what a lot of businesses sometimes forget. So it's really critical that you, your first hire really drives the business forward.

The second thing we look at and where the marketing and sales is pivoting the segment, who is it? How are you going about doing it? For example, when it comes to retail and a lot of other manufacturing space, I know that sometimes it can be very attractive to go and work with a broker to try to get some deals with larger big box stores.

What are your margins gonna be? Three 5%. Mm-hmm. Now what are your margins online and direct to sale? B2c. I mean, your margins B2C tend to be some margins. 90%. It's like between 90 and 70%. That's insane. Yeah. And you're, and now you're gonna go down to 3%. Did you associate that cost or did you at that, think about that cost decrease, you know, into your sales and into your operating and everything else.

Now that you're going with a broker into bigger box stores. And yeah, you might say, well, it's volume Daniel. Okay, but did you do your financial productions? And you'd be surprised how many times they don't. Yeah. 'cause they see, oh, it's a contract, it's a Walmart, it's a Sobeys. Oh my God. We made it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Did you really look at the fine print, really understand the process?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. I think people get disconnected and they see revenue and they think, oh, we just sold, call it $10 million in product. Right. Like you said, if you're only making 1%, at the end of the day, you might do better to not sell 10 million to sell, you know, 500, but at a profit.

Daniel Monzon: Exactly. And, and, and that's the thing is, right, so now are you spending resource and time to get the raw materials to deliver that bulk production?

Or are you gonna maybe spend time and resource engaging with buyers to buy your product? Yeah. Yeah. It's allocation, it's understanding that, that, the third thing I would say about that, that we do very well now, and, and this is a partnership that we've done with the federal government and the professional government here in Alberta and Canada, is the Elevate IP Alberta program.

And on an Elevate AP program it's a program that's done is done federally through all provinces. So anybody across Canada has access to this. And what it's, it's to inform and educate people, whether you're a startup or a small business. Okay. I'm gonna make that very clear. Whether you're a startup or a small business, and you've been operating, let's say under 10 years.

The government, both provincial and federally, we're looking to help you understand ip. What does intele intellectual property look like? What does, what are patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets? What does this mean to you as your business and how can it help you grow and scale and monetize? What we're noticing is that there's a lot of wonderful businesses that aren't, their ips, intellectual property isn't protected, and at first the idea thought, is this something that was provided to the ecosystem?

Within startups within, or small businesses are just in their first or two years. And yeah, a lot of them need it because they're understanding or providing education. So they're becoming aware of this process and they're putting it into their business plan and their strategy. But what we're also noticing is now existing companies, they've already been around for, under the eight year mark with a strong financial sheet.

They're like, Hey, we have ip. We weren't aware that we had an inte intellectual property. How can we monetize that and how can we use this now to scale and grow? And that's what we're finding out in the last two or three months. Yeah, that's a really interesting things because what, what everything is going on in the political landscape, you know, with tariffs and everything happening.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: I feel that there's a real opportunity, especially in Alberta, for these businesses, you know, to really scale and grow and, and, and, and again, it's just because of the information being available through this program. Right. So I would strongly suggest anybody to look into the. IP Alberta program, or in general, wherever you're hearing this, across Canada Elevate IP program.

Please Google it. It's, it's a free program with the federal government. It does provide education and funding for you to, um, get IP for your business. So again, something we would recommend, and again that's for us, IP and you understand how to protect the business in terms of property, there's so many different revenues.

Sorry, so many van, uh, different revenue streams you have no idea you can open up with. We have subscription base licensing base. Helping you with your marketing strategy to go into new markets. It, there's so many different levels, right? And that's what we're really understanding and, and pushing here for.

Kelly Kennedy: Daniel, how does a company know if they have intellectual property that could be protected?

Like I think, I don't think it's that they necessarily don't want to do it, but they might not even know that this is available to them.

Daniel Monzon: Yeah. Right. And, and that's where we are. We're in the states that people aren't aware. So what we're currently doing is an, an awareness campaign to engage with as many people out there to let them know what intellectual property is.

So I guess a good first step would be one, come to our website. We have a video recording that anybody can access. We'll give them information about what the program is. The second thing too, engage with us and we can talk and we can connect you with one of our, our lawyers, our IP lawyers, and then they can talk to you about.

Do you have anything that's probably applicable? And it starts by having a conversation. I think there's nothing wrong with having a conversation and you'd be surprised by the amount of businesses they're like, that's applicable. I wasn't aware of this. Now I'm not. That person's not a lawyer, that's our lawyers team.

But that's the first thing I would say. So first, sorry, first step, go to the Elevate AP uh, website, Google it. Go on, go to our second site, go to our website download our video. Watch, watch, and explain to you what Elevate IP is the different intellectual properties available. And at the same time, if you wanna engage with one of our, our IP lawyers, please engage with us well than happy to connect you with that.

And they can provide you with a set, let you know is there an opportunity or is something that's IP about and you never know. And I would encourage everybody to just have a conversation.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And I will make sure that both your website links and the Elevate IP links are with this show. So it'll be easy to find.

You'll just be able to find it in the show notes. Perfect. Um, Daniel, though, you know, we've been talking a lot about catapult startups, which is awesome, and I'm happy we were able to do that. But I would also like to dig a little bit into creative social talk to me. You know, creative social is really, I know you said not to say your baby, but it's your baby, right?

You've been with it for a long time.

Daniel Monzon: I wanna say no, because like, even like, we're actually changing names, like we're changing names, so I'm not the company's growing. I worked a couple more individuals. It's, that was more like what say solo project that I, it was still kinda working on. And I started out about 15 years ago.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: And it was my first real 14 entrepreneurship. That's what really helped me grow. Um, and essentially I grew it on my own from you know, social media analyst to then all the way going to. Analyst to implementing systems, to understanding systems, to then going into sales and marketing. And if I'm gonna go into sales and marketing, I'm gonna go into inventory because I wanna know what I'm selling or behind that system, and then I'm gonna into inventory.

We started going into strategy behind that, and then eventually leading to government relations. So all levels, federal, provincial, and municipal. So over the last 13 years, or 16 or 15 years, however, as long it's been, it's given me a, a nice wealth rounded, I guess, experience of the different kind of industries and the, you know, that and the different departments that a business has to do to run properly and grow and scale.

But for me, the biggest lesson learned is that if you wanna go fast, you go alone and you go nowhere. I was going fast, but I was going alone and nowhere.

Mm-hmm.

But you wanna go far? Keyword is far you go as a team, and now that I have a team going very far, and so I'm Catapult, it's a team based, um, organization.

Right. And I think that was a big, big key thing for me. It's knowing that Daniel, you don't have all the answers and that's okay. Put the ego aside. Yeah. I'm comfortable now being not being the smartest person in the room. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Yes, that's right.

My team has to be smarter than me because they gotta advise me and I gotta pick the best decision out there.

Right.

But if I'm gonna be hiring people that are, that are not as smart as me, like I'm doing a bad, a bad job. So I love working with my team. My team is squarely smart, brilliant individuals, way smarter than me.

That gave me great advice. Whatever we're trying to do in whatever many different industries we're trying to work on, you know, we're industry agnostic, but yeah it's on your team. And that's the one thing too, I would say is that that's the biggest lesson that I learned from creative social. It's, yeah, the ego gets in the way.

Yeah. 'cause you're thinking you can do everything and you start thinking, well, you know, if I share my revenue, but then you don't wanna understand that you're gonna be able to get two contracts and three and four and getting, you know, smaller pie quote unquote of 10 pies. It's bigger than getting the whole pie.

One pie.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So talk to me then, who are the ideal customers? Actually break it down 'cause we are talking about both. Yeah. Talk about catapult startups and who the ideal customers would be for catapult startups and then lead me into creative social and who may be the ideal customers are for that.

So if there are people listening to this, they can reach out to you after.

Daniel Monzon: Yeah, for sure. So I would say for, um, pul startups for, um, for startups looking to, you know, launching out under three years, I would say anybody that's looking to get help in navigating the ecosystem that has already needing help with building an MVP or is looking for investment and has a nice, healthy budget of, I would say around.

Anywhere between $7500 & $10,000. Okay? That you have to have a budget outside because you need to have some kind of budget in a year to scale. That's one. If you're a small business, I would say it depends. A small business. If the biggest thing is if you're looking to grow and scale, if you're growing and scaling within an agricultural manufacturing, um, retail side of things, we wanna talk to you.

We love working with you, and we know how to scale and grow you. The biggest thing here that we're trying to the right customer for us, for small business, and I would say it's they're looking to grow and scale. They, they're that low mid market business that wants to go above the 5 million mark. So if you're looking to go above the 5 million market, or let's say now you're 50 million and you're looking to go above 50 million the next stage of your business, comment on to us that's the right fit for what we're doing here and the programs and services that we have for creative social that we're more focused on implementing now systems system implementation, and I would say more automat.

So very specifically one manufacturing supply chain and logistical companies.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, perfect. Perfect. Daniel, we're talking to a lot of young entrepreneurs, maybe people that haven't taken that jump, dude. And you know, you're a serial entrepreneur, you're an exceptional serial entrepreneur.

You've lived with a disability and accomplished so much. I don't have a lot of people come on this show who can speak to other people who maybe are struggling with disability. And I would just, I would love for you to speak to them. 'cause guaranteed we have listeners around the world who are struggling with different types of disabilities and maybe wondering if they can accomplish.

And, you know, you're living proof that not only can you accomplish, you can sky high excel.

Daniel Monzon: No thanks. I I appreciate that Kelly. I really do. Um, what I would've to say to them, it's make your weakness, your strength. It's not a weakness, it's a strength. And what do I mean by that? Um, so I have one leg and one arm.

And when I was little, I would, you know, it would get singled out. You know, it's, it's, I always stick out like a, so, and I'm like, why am I sticking out like a SOR thumb? I don't wanna stick out. I wanna be like everybody else. What I realized though, is that the older I got, and the more I got into business, the more I became a superpower, because it takes seven points of contact for someone to remember your name.

And for me, it only takes them one. And in business, that's half the battle. If someone remembers who you are, you're 50% there. So whenever I meet somebody now, instead of being like, oh my God, no, I'm Daniel 101 leg, and I'm like, great, you're gonna remember me off the bat. I'm gonna have, we're gonna be able to have a second conversation more focused about a, a possible project or sales thing or sales that we can work together on, but that comes from turning that weakness into a strength.

I know it's gonna sound a little bit corny, but it's like, why, why try to blend in when you were meant to stand out? You're meant to shine. So I use that mm-hmm. As, mm-hmm. As, as a strength now, right. And then, yeah. You know, I'm not gonna lie, like sometimes I, I feel like I'm getting maybe too much attention and it makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

But at the same time, I know that that's the superpower that's gonna help me close deals a lot quicker because I don't have to spend out seven points of contact with a client or a potential client before they even trust me. It's that first meeting, initial conversation Trust is built because they remember you.

So then the next conversation you're having, it's not more fruitful conversation. So anybody dealing with any disability or barriers, whether a physical disability or mental disability, the biggest advice I can give you is don't give up. Really, really focus on your, internally on, on what is your internal strength and focus on the things that bring you joy.

Because that little things that bring you joy is also gonna, it's a kind of a domino effect into the things that you wanna do that maybe you're thinking, can I do this? I don't know. What do I mean by that? Okay, so I'm gonna take a very like normal kind of what I think, normal kind of example, video games.

A lot of people play video games. Yeah. I play video games. Even with my one hand, I figured out how to play video games with wanting no one controller, not a special controller, like a normal standard controller. Okay. But playing video games a little bit joy, it makes me happy and I get a little excited and you know, when I beat a level or do something like that, then I'll go, yeah, okay, good for me.

Now I take that emotion and I'm like, I was able to do something with my one arm that most people think couldn't do because Oh, how can a person with one arm play a video game?

Mm-hmm. And then

I take that little approach that I'm like, okay, well it took me a little bit to figure out how to put. The controller between my legs, so then I can hold it and then put my fingers on top of it to then manage it to figure out a different way to get the outcome that I was looking for, which is to play the video game.

Yeah. Now I take the same approach when I'm doing something different. So I know that if I'm going to an event, maybe I need to prepare differently than somebody else that's more, um, able to move around. But I take the same approach. It's okay, I know it's gonna take me a little longer, but I'm still gonna be able to do it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Right. And it's just pushing through and I know at first it's gonna feel a little uncomfortable pushing through and maybe doing things differently than somebody else that's able, or, or, has, doesn't have a disability is able to do. But what you'll get, so you'll feel a little awkward during the process, but once the process is done, you'll feel amazing.

Like each us on top of a mountain, even if it's as simple as tying your shoes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: Again, I'm not, I don't understand the level of mobility and you and what you can and cannot do. Just because doesn't mean you, you can't tie your shoes, doesn't mean you have a wonderful brain with an Oh, an incredible iq.

Yeah. That I would love to engage with and talk to that you can, yeah. You can provide a lot of value to a company.

Kelly Kennedy: I love when you talked about basically you're not gonna let the fact that you have one arm stop you from enjoying video games. Right, exactly. And I guess, you know, I love that because I, you know, I mean, obviously I'm a, I'm a gamer.

I grew up in that time. You know, I think on occasion, I still enjoy a game of Call of Duty, although I'm getting my butt kicked by the 12 year olds these days.

It happens, you know, they're, they're younger. It's there. I'm not,

I'm not teenage Kelly anymore. I don't quite got the same speed I once had.

But, um, I love that because I look at it from that standpoint of, if you're not gonna let that hold you back, there's certain things in business that maybe would really like kick someone on their butt, but it's like. If you have to have that level of resilience to be able to take that on. It's nothing but a gigantic advantage in a playground that's naturally hard like business.

Daniel Monzon: Right. Exactly. I mean, I mean, I mean, and just to put a

bit in context, the, when people ask me what's the hardest thing you've done, learn how to walk at six after that it's a piece of cake. Yeah. Like literally and, and, and literally think about this, okay, I had to learn how to walk at six by holding my own pants.

I was holding my pants and taking one step at a time. So I was literally holding myself. I was moving forward. I don't know, that's a bigger metaphor for life and that that I was literally holding myself to push myself forward. I wasn't holding into a railing. Yeah. I was literally holding down to my each pants and moving one leg at a time to learn to walk.

Wow. Wow. But I think that trend, I learned that once you learn that skill, so anybody dealing with a disability or, or a barrier, once you go overcome it, it's your superpower because. I don't wish what I went through to enemies, to my, any enemies or anybody, or Ill people, anyone that I don't like. I, I, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't wouldn't want that.

And a lot of the times people ask me like, how do you get outta bed? I'm like, I just get outta bed. But I know that they're asking, essentially, I don't think they could get out of bed if they were dealing with what I'm dealing with. Yeah. So I think a lot of people that are dealing with a disability right now, I want you to give yourself a pat on the back and be like, Hey, you are here.

And that's courage. That takes a lot. Some people just can't deal with having a disability and it's tough and they would shut down. And if you're listening to this and you're trying out there and you're engaging with people, keep going, man, keep going. I mean, hey, I'm, I'm married, um, and I have a kid on the way.

Those are things that I thought would never happen. And if I'm being honest, right? So, but again, I never gave up. I pivoted the way I was communicating, learning, engaging. And you find your way, right? Like you were saying, Kelly, it took you 17 times to quit smoking.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Daniel Monzon: But you figure out how to do it and now look at you.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

Daniel Monzon: You're just flying.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right. Everything that you overcome, every hurdle in your life that you overcome, my God, does it make you stronger? And I didn't re like, it took me a long time in my life to realize the little moments that made me stronger. And at the time I was pissed.

'cause they were sucky and they hurt and they were hard, but they made me who I'm today. And so I, I learned now to be grateful for the hard times because the hard times make me a better person.

Daniel Monzon: And another thing too about that hard times make good times. Good times make for hard times. Think about that.

Just think about that.

Kelly Kennedy: It's a crappy cycle.

Daniel Monzon: It's the, the, the harder of a life you have. You know it's gonna, you're gonna have a good life later. And it's, it's how, it's that you reap the fruit of your labors.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right. You know what Everything worth doing is hard. That's something that I kind of realized a long time ago.

Right. If it's handed to you, you don't appreciate it. But if you work for it, it tastes so much sweeter.

Daniel Monzon: Exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: Daniel, this has been an absolutely incredible show. You're an incredible individual. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Daniel Monzon: Hey, thank you, Kelly. I had a great time on the show. It's a pleasure.

And please hope you to have me back anytime, and hopefully we can have this quicker than a year in between, uh, conversations.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this next year, who knows what it holds for us Canadians, but uh, you know what? I have a good feeling about it. I think we're gonna be just fine,

Daniel Monzon: think we're gonna be okay too, as well.

I have a pretty good feeling as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Until next time, this has been episode 294 of the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on. The flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.