Educacion de Negocios

Today's the day where everything comes together.  The day where after months of learning at school and working hard to get ahead in class... we finally realize everything that we've learned.  And the best thing is, is that it adds real value to local businesses here.
I sat in the advanced seminar with a group of 15 dedicated business owners who have been to our seminars since we started 3 years ago.  They started when we began with an initial seminar and began learning how to figure out brainstorming, fixed and variable costs for their business, and how to network with new clients.  It's amazing how much more productive a business can be when it figures out what it's fixed and variable costs are- it can learn when to take on a new client, how many products it needs to sell to meet costs, and how to come up with innovative product ideas.  Rob Nash and Rick Harris's classes finally came in handy!
In this group, we had some very outstanding businesses.  A few made bread, others made clothes, some were involved in advertising, and others dabbled in a few general areas.  Regardless of what area they chose, they were confident to speak their mind and were very proud of the businesses they had each built from scratch themselves.
 Our first session today was a review of 5 mini cases.  Chris Yuko and Cameron Carter taught a mix of breakeven analysis, operations (flow charting for their business), and beginning marketing.  The business owners not only sat captivated by our seminars, but also seemed to remember a lot of what we had taught them before.
 The next was negotiations, taught by Lynsey Hathcock.  Thanks to a class by Bill Davis, Lynsey taught the class how to negotiate against each other and pitted one team against the other in a battle to see who could win the best negotiation.  It's funny how all this works in a different cultural setting- they look at business more as maintaining relationships rather than making cut-throat deals.  Perhaps this is something the US could use more of.
 After, Bentsen taught some more financial concepts, helping business owners figure out the time-value of money.  It as as if Rob Nash was teaching himself.  The business owners took real life examples if they were to get a loan today, how much they would have to earn in the future to pay it back given the fact that money is worth less over time.  What seems like a good deal up front, might not actually be profitable once you spread it out over time.
 Finally, we ended the seminar with a consulting session where we each broke out into small teams and worked on an individual business.  It was great to really walk through a business from start to finish, helping them identify which products were the most profitable, what their target market was, why people bought their product, and how they could actually expand what they did in a scaleable way. 
After everyone packed up, we headed up to Wake Forest's new property to toast the trip off to a great start while overlooking volcanos and the lake in Managua.  Watching the sun set, sipping some flor de cana, and talking about vision's for the future...couldn't get much better than that!

Business Visits

Hola. We’ve made it to Managua safely and have had a great trip so far. We started the trip with a weekend at the beach where we participated in numerous team building exercises. Today we broke off into three small groups: consulting, microfinance and small business visits.

 

I was a part of the small business trips where we went and spoke with numerous business owners in the area. They had all either previously been to the seminar or will be joining us tomorrow. One woman has owned a water distribution plant for 17 years and has been to both the seminar last spring and December. She showed us all of the ways that she had incorporated what she had learned at the seminars into her business. She also proudly displayed her Wake Forest certificate in the entrance of her plant. It was very satisfying to see that the seminar has had such a lasting effect.

 

Another woman we visited with is sending her son to the seminar tomorrow. She owns a candy company and distributes her products all over Central America. She told us how just a year ago she had such serious health problems that her doctors told her medicine would no longer work for her. She spoke about her passion for her business and her desire to serve her community through both her company and her church. While we have only spent a day here in Managua I already have a strong feeling that we will learn just as much from this community as they will learn from us.

Empresas Especiales

It all starts off with some fascinating women, people believing in their dreams, and a little bit of working capital.
One of the best parts of Project Nicaragua is that we work with a dozen businesses throughout the year and then follow up with them during our visits to Nicaragua.  We've seen their business plans, we've tallked with them via video conference and now we finally get to see them and their businesses in person!
 Our group split into two teams and got to visit three pretty outstanding businesses each.  My group went to visit Eliesser a stovemaker, Sonia a seamstress, and Yasmin a watermaker. 
 Eliesser makes customized stoves and only advertises in the yellow pages.  He makes these beautiful stainless steel stoves that people order to produce industrial goods for cooking.  Eliesser is known for high quality stoves; however, he doesn't know what his competitors charge for stoves, but simply charges twice what it costs him to make a stove.  Not a bad way to live life.  He wants to purchase a machine that buffs the stainless steel; however, is it worth saving him time, when perhaps his time isn't that costly to begin with? 
 Sonia is a seamstress who makes custom order clothes.  She takes orders from companies and also takes orders from vendors that sell in the market.  All her clothes are from her design and they are very high quality clothes.  However, she needs two new sewing machines to make higher quality clothes.  The clothes she sells in the market, she sells for around 18 cordoba (less than a dollar) and it costs her 16 cordoba to make.  Essentially her profit is 2 cordoba...pretty much nothing.  Markets in Managua are selling clothes illegally brought in from El Salvador, so how can she make a profit when competing in this unregulated market?  She wants to make uniforms for school, but can't afford the capital investment of buying clothes up front before anyone has ordered them.  How can we help her meet 2 months of capital needs so her business can grow?  Is she willing to take this risk that might seem relatively small to us, but might seem like her life savings to her?
 Yasmin is the last visit of the day.  She makes bags and bottled filtered water and is branching into the coke/flavored water products.  She makes and distributes over 45,000 bags of water a day.  After 20 years of operating, she's looking to expand in a big way.  She recently branded her bagged water and is trying to develop a logo that identifies different products within her brand- Poche- named after her daughter when she couldn't pronounce her name at age 4.  Yasmin is in the process of getting her business certified- this means passing health standards, revamping wall heights, and changing the chemical processes involved in creating each business. 
 Yasmin recently implemented a coke product with a logo that looks exactly like Coke.  It's funny trying to figure out if there is a copyright law that they might be breaking.  Or if rules like that simply aren't followed.  She decided to forego chemicals to clean her water and is boiling it to decrease the environmental impact.  Could she market this to eco-friendly tourists/hotels here?  Does the sustainability factor mean a marketing advantage?
After all the business visits today, these things are clear:
1) In a machismo society, these business women have more self-confidence than I've seen in a long time.  They have this purpose, this sense of giving back to the community, and it's clear why microfinance works wonders abroad.  Giving women access to capital is a key pillar to success.
 2) Today we learned not to let emotions cloud business decisions.  Yasmin made some mistakes in the past when she was passionately involved with what she was doing and realized in retrospect that she was too close to the decision.  So, how can you grow a business and follow up carefully on all decisions when you might be emotionally invested too?
3) How do we apply business concepts in a socialist world where business owners are not simply stand alone pieces of a community, but integral pieces that depend on each other for everything?  How can these business owners sell to their friends, make a profit, and gain a competitive advantage when their competitor is their neighbor?
Being here I couldn't be more thankful for everything I have.

Nicaragua Begins

There's nothing like the sight of our classmate dancing in a sombrero while singing a Nicaraguan national song with a Nicaraguan business student.  He's smiling ear to ear and dancing around, while everyone is captivated by the national pride that follows.  4 hours of sleep, 6 hours of travel, and one faculty member missing a plane, and we're finally at the start of our journey.
 Yesterday, a group of 15 business students arrived in Managua to begin our small business seminar and consulting week.  After settling in, we began our journey by rooting for Wake Forest verse Clemson at a local restaurant.  While trying some of the local cuisine, we were energized by the close Wake Forest win and set off in high spirits to begin the night.
 For dinner, Ajay arranged a meeting with 5 local business students here in Managua.  These students come from all over Latin America to receive a great business education and we were so lucky to have them interested in partnering with us.  Whie we definitely bring a lot of enthusiasm and dedication ourselves, partnering with a local group will make this project more sustainable and effective.  It's one thing to come down twice a year and try and make a difference.  It's another to make this project bigger than ourselves and try and involve some local students.  
 After a long day on the road, we were excited to settle in and prepare for a few days of an exciting cultural exchange and business experience!

El primero dia del seminario (a.k.a. the seminar has started)

We all have been looking forward to this day as the preparations have been proceeding. Today, the business seminar has actually started and we had at least as much fun as expected.
As planned today's seminar cases were taught in two different classes at simultaneously and we were able to experience a fantastic level of quality as for the lecturing and the participant's contribution. We had participants from all over Managua and its suburbs, Masaya, and La Chureca forming a group of about 35 people.
http://www.mba.wfu.edu/apps/blog/nicaragua/images/DSC02100.JPG
We started the day of with and introduction in which the project and the seminar was introduced and we had the chance to present ourselves as students from Babcock that would be teaching the next two days. This was followed by an ice breaker that gave all of us, the participants and the Proyecto Nicaragua community, to get to know each other. After that the lecturing could be launched to cover the brainstorming tool (OB), flowchart and bottlenecks (OPS), break-even analysis, and pricing. We also had a lunch all together and a few more ice breaker actions. These included working the human nod and Sarah's intro to square dance!
Overall, we had a great time with the participants and are honestly looking forward to get all back together tomorrow to take it from here!
Hasta manana, amigos!

Writing about the perro

I know, I write two blogs in six months and then write two in a day.  However, I feel that this news deserves this super-human blogging effort.
I would officially like to announce the newest member to the Wake Forest Nicaragua community, and future general of the Wake Forest Security Detail......Buckwheat.
He has 9 weeks, is a pure bred Rotweiler, and his father has a head the size of a horse.  He likes eating our older dog's food, eating dirt, and eating Crocs.  You'll notice in one picture my Ocean Point, Croc-look-alikes.  Buckwheat refuses to stop stealing my Crocs and so I went to the market and bought a substitute pair.  They look like Crocs, feel like Crocs, and Buckwheat eats them like Crocs.  But they cost 2 dollars. 
My next trick...teach him to stop walking into the house to use the bathroom.

Reflections on the Past Year

Not often enough to we take the time to sit back, take a deep breath, and really take in the big picture.  And as I did that yesterday, I was inspired by what has been accomplished.  I am very excited to greet the students on this trip because it is really a trip of milestones.  This trip will mark the one year anniversary of our first business seminar.  It will mark the first successful turnover of roles, with all original members passing on their responsibilites to first year leaders.  And it will also mark the most growth and innovation that we have seen. 
We are growing the project to two seminars, allowing us to work with 40 Nicaraguan business leaders.  We are launching two consulting pilot projects, allowing our students more intimate contact with Nicaraguan businesses.  These students will spend several days immersed in the business, truly learning its model.  Then, after the seminar, they will be able to work directly with the business leader in their business, applying key seminar principles and tools to their daily operation.  We are very proud of the impact we have had on these business leaders, however we desire to take it to the next level and really quantify  our efforts.  Along these lines we are looking to establish a video conference center in our partner organization's office here in Managua.  This will allow us more continual and direct contact with the network of businesses.  Student teams at Wake will be able to speak directly with their businesses and continue the 2-way learning and transfer of knowledge that takes place during the trips to Nicaragua.  Next, we are launching an exploratory project into the feasability of offering lending services to some of our seminar attendees.  We are sharing our education, we are sharing consulting wisdom, and now we are exploring the possibility of empowering our students to (through the consulting piece) identify a capital need in a business and directly meet that need and help grow the business.  Thus, we are broadening our ability to provide solutions.  And finally, we are launching our first children's activity day in La Chureca, which  will allow us to grow our relationships in this community. 

So this trip embodies one of the key principles of this project, constant innovation.  Each group that comes through the project leaves behind their own legacy.  And our hope is that each new group of students leaves behind an even greater legacy.  The first year student-leaders, Jayson, Chad, Cameron, and Sarah, have embraced this idea and really pushed the project to new levels.

I sat down with Roberto, our Nicaraguan partner is these seminars, earlier this week.  And, as we talked through the new form of the project, he was extremely excited at the advances being made in the model.  Wake Forest is quickly becoming a known brand in Nicaragua.  Our business seminars are in high demand and our growth potential is outstanding.  We have already been approached about growing our seminar to cities outside of Managua.  Furthermore, through local (Nicaraguan) and international publicity, we have been contacted by various local organizations asking to hear more about the project and wanting to find ways to have their communities involved.  As I shared the new pilot projects Roberto's face lit up even more.  When asked to pick two business to participate in the pilot project, he really struggled. "All of them would benefit from this type of work".  And perhaps one day they all will.

Various universities have participated in efforts like this in Nicaragua.  I have spoken to the organizations they have worked with.  But one thing that I have heard over and over again is this:  No other university has come to Nicaragua with the  institutional support present at Wake Forest.  And that makes a huge difference.  The support of the faculty and administration, their willingness to challenge themselves and the  current state of education, has moved  this project forward.  That, coupled with the talent of our students, has created a project of tremendous value that is and will continue to change lives.