our own business

juanito my friend, you were a one man show lately.
it seem like the real spirit never dies.

now things settled a little in my personal life. i'm also ready to attack the business plan we don't actually have, little by little. but only at ten percent capacity this month. rada and my term in AIESEC will need the entire month of march.

these days i've herad about some friends of mine who got hired. nothing weird till now, except for the fact that i was expecting them to be young entrepreneurs.

now i look around and i only see juan, gabi, tzutzu and cecil. four guys out of an entire generation. and me, the fifth element. :)
my biggest wishes for us are busy days, peaceful nights, lasting friends and living dreams.

this was another non-professional post.
randomlly,
at 3 o'clock, very early in the spring,
the evil vp.

Hey guys, I felt motivated today when I read this article:

"If you are taking an entrepreneurship class, you want to be a venture capitalist," said Andrew J. "Flip" Filipowski, chairman and CEO of Silk Road Technologies. For the true entrepreneur, he continued, reality is the superior teacher; and school is an excuse to delay failure..."

Read more in Lessons of Succesful Entreprenurs

I remember so clear the words of my teachers now: "Los mejores negocios ocurren en una mesa de tragos" - "Best businesses happens in a table with beers"...

And it is true.

Whenever I want to get something done what I need to do is invite the person to go out for a beer. No matter how many mails or phone calls I make, the beer gets the answer faster...

What do I see now?

Two things:

1. Methodology - I will be drinking more beer in the next months than ever before :)
2. Opportunity - In Costa Rica, we don´t have a Beer & Business Pub. A place where you can go and have a beer, listen to good music, but also have access to pc, magazines and other business tools... Hmmm

Develop it. And keep a place to promote tradeWORKS there. I will be happy to take some of the clients for a B&B.

If you are going entreprenur Competitiveness is a concept you should be familiar with.

Basically Competitiveness is the internal ability of an organization to hold and improve their psition in a define market.

The Competitiveness is determine but some important factors:

• Power of Negotiation of suppliers and clients
• Substitute Products
• Potential Competence
• Rivality within current Competence
• Barriers of access

Analyzing all this perspectives can help you evaluating which business is more factible to be succesful.

There are available analysis on specific business fields and world regions. Big companies, most likely, have their own Competitiveness Intelligence going on (continual evaluation of the competitiveness environment), pharmaceuticals lead on this field.

Some interesting links:

• Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness (Lead by M. Porter himself)
• Global Competitiveness Report (The 2005 Report, GBP 65)
• Responsible Competitiveness (An Accountability research, Euro 30 - price for NGOs)

Is this bad news???

"No one says the life of the entrepreneur is glamorous, at least in the start-up phase. Financing pressures. Bad diet. Family—what family? And now new research from Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman reveals another "founder frustration": below-market pay."

Read more about this nightmare Here!

My personal opinion:

Money should not be the only engine that lead your actions. If you become an entreprenur, most likely, you will deeply commit yourself to your business therefore money should not be the only variable you should care about.

Somethings that matter to me:

• Core Work and Legacy - What are you doing? How is it collaborating to create a better world?
• Values - What do you stand for? What do you belive in?
• Balance - Are you able to have a paralel life?
• Money - Do you have to choose between buying bread or a milk box?
• Friendship - Are you coming closer to your people?

3works sometimes...

As true fan of spending quality time with friends and family, watching those important fútbol matches and visting a new place every year, I have to say that I am very satisfy with the results shown in the following article:

Check this out:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5190&t=srobbins

Work smart sleep late :)

when i made my decision about not running for the national committee, it was mainly because i felt my mind starts moving faster than my soul.

6 months later, now, i'm working on several directions.
first of all, two more months to go, before i will tare AIESEC out of myself. two more months full of 100 people.

then, JCI's brench in cluj. i'm sure we'll make it work and grow fast this year.

then two small companies. career with gabi and tzutzu. import with gabi and juan.

hmm, last year in university...

well, what it crossed my mind today is the fact that, as a president in AIESEC, i had quite some coloured opportunities ahead. the easiest of all, and not without content, getting hired. losing my unnatural modesty, i'm sure i could get a very nice job in a very nice company.

still, today i realized i took a different way. i'm investing all my energy in two own businesses and an NGO. and that this brings me 6 months of wondering "how will i live?". because i might need some money for that. add the time i will invest in an internship abroad as well.

god i hope i can maintain the courage and the confidence i have now.
and god, thanks a bunch for my friends, thanks for AIESEC and for what it built in me. because no way else could i be that ready for the next 6 months.

and after 6 months, the businesses will bring me good money.
what should i do with all these money?

anyways, i think i'm a little scared. a little.

i remember the day when the three of us met to decide upon the name of our company. after some hours, several, we decided upon trade works.

too bad there are some other tens of people in the world who thought about it. and several companies around the world, with the same name. and no free domain for trade works on the internet.

until we get back to the name, i want to share an experience we had on creating a name for another business me and gabi are in.

december 2005 - we called it career works.
january 2006 - career works was not good enough anymore. we called it divelop.
february 2006 - today. divelop is so taken. we called it DeCariere.

also today i shown the logo idea to o good friend of mine. "a product for dentists?" he asked.
romanian will know why. :o)

still, we decided to go on with DeCariere, despite the funny meaning it might take. we decided to transform this in a big advantage: we're also funny. :o)

anyways, creating a name for your business is so much harder that you could expect.
to make it at least a little easier, we suggest http://igorinternational.com. and do download the pdf file. it helps!

well... another tough night ahead for the young entrepreneurs!
"is DeCariere good enough?"
"and what about Trade Works?"

nighty night...

October afternoons in Costa Rica are dark and rainy. It makes people feel melancolic and think about the past.

When I was in High School, I used to lie down and look by the window how the rain fell.

It was very hard to follow one drop of water all the way to the ground.

Today, I feel the same. Everytime I talk with people, they come with many different business ideas, with many opportunities.

It is very hard to focus.

I will try to catch at least one!