Today I’ve read a handful of fabulous posts about entrepreneur-istas, and I’d like to share them with you.
1) I loved Alicia Morga’s series of posts from her trip to Azerbaijan. She writes:
So why Azerbaijan, the Land of Fire? Well, I was invited by the U.S. State Department to share my experiences as a female entrepreneur with women around the country.
When I landed in Azerbaijan, cultural attaché Chris Jones picked me up at the airport and immediately handed me a cell phone and a large packet. I felt like I had parachuted into a scene in Mission Impossible. …
Azerbaijani folk dance, via Flickr Creative Commons
Talking to women, young and old, I learned how much they defeat themselves. They see no use in trying. There is a culture of can’t – even in the face of real life examples of can.
There are successful women entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan. I was fortunate to meet many, including a woman who started the few and largest bookstores, a woman who opened a tea house for women, and even a woman who started her own bakery with another woman friend at the age of 52. Where at least one person has accomplished something, in my mind it means that more can follow – the path is forged and it’s possible.
But I was frustrated to run up against mindsets that were either completely fixed and negative or unrealistically attached to Oprah-isms – dream it and it will come true – without moving to put in the work. Adding to the problem was the general fear of admitting to not knowing something and a very palpable fear of failure.
Though it’s not difficult to see how that might flow from the top. Dictatorships are not exactly known for their creativity. It’s hard to be creative when you’re not allowed to fail. It’s easy to feel defeated when you’re surrounded by corruption.
Still I did my best to convey hope and inspire the women I met to pursue education and consider entrepreneurship.
Many of the women I met we’re eager to learn and welcoming. Young girls came up to me asking for pictures and easily draped their arms around me. One young girl went to hug me and stopped abruptly, catching herself and sucking in her breath like she had seen a ghost. “Is it okay to touch you?” she asked, “I know that Americans don’t like to be touched.” I laughed and gave her a big hug. [more]
She also gives a list of practical tips for women traveling to Azerbaijan, such as:
some odd but true cultural guidelines:
a. It’s not appropriate to go outside with wet hair; if you walk around with wet hair it implies that you just had sex
b. It’s also not appropriate to put on Chapstick in public – again, it has sexual connotations [more]
2) I was delighted to see fellow StartUp Chile entrepreneur Yifan Zhang on the list of 20 Brazen Young Professionals to Watch in 2012. She’s in great company! Guess who nominated her? Here’s Brazen’s blurb about this brilliant young entrepreneur:
Yifan Zhang: A recent Harvard graduate, Yifan founded Gym-Pact, a mobile app that motivates you to work out; it launches nationally on Jan. 1. Yifan also founded Styleta, a nonprofit fashion organization.
3) I really liked this post by Pam Slim: The Deeper Root. She asks:
Why are you doing this (business) (parenting) (difficult project) (job)?
What will happen if you succeed?
Will it be worth it even if you fail?
Why does it matter?
What will you regret not doing?
What will you rejoice leaving as a legacy? [more]
4) Last but not least, I did this interview for The Workpreneur, which Ryan titled La Entrepreneur-ista.
Have a great day!
Today the Economía y Negocios section of El Mercurio has a special report on China-Latin America business. It’s by the Grupo de Diarios de América, and the whole text is here, via Mexican site El Universal.
Source: El Universal http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/graficos/pdf11/china.pdf
Here is my translation of the beginning of the report (emphasis mine):
Latin America exports cheap raw materials, energy and food to China, and China exports technology products, finished goods, textiles and cooperation projects to Latin America. In the past decade, exports from the subcontinent (LatAm) to the economic giant (China) have increased 12 times, while imports have grown 8 times, according to the American Economic System (SELA).The trade exchange exceeds that with the US and neighboring countries.
Economic observers see this relationship progressing in a way that can be compared with relations with Japan between 1960 and 1990. Then, Japan’s technological development fueled economic growth and per capita income increased from 15% to 70% of the US per capita income.
“China has become a strategic partner for Latin America and the Caribbean, there are many opportunities to reach agreement on export and investment in mining, engineering, agriculture, infrastructure, science and technology,” said Alicia Barcena, Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
The country has already displaced the U.S. as the main trading partner for Brazil and Chile. In Venezuela, China outpaced Colombia and Brazil to become the top trading partner. Mexico’s case is special because although its products compete with Chinese exports to the United States and Canada, bilateral trade grew 2000% between 1990 and 2010. In other countries, progress is evident: Uruguay’s trade increased 40% between 2010 and so far this year, and Ecuador will sell 54% of its oil to the Asian giant.
The importance of China to the region is concentrated in high demand for primary products. To maintain its 8% annual growth rate, China’s demand for food, energy and materials will continue to rise. And Latin America provides these.
- The caption translates to: Clothing Industry. Generates 310,000 jobs in 8900 companies, although since the opening of the market to China, 400,000 jobs have been lost, and as a result of the triangulation have lost a lot of market share. Beginning on December 12, the big importers will be able to buy from China. For example, they will be able to buy sports outfits for $0.20 for 2 million units. Click here to see the rest of the graphic.
Source: El Universal http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/graficos/pdf11/china.pdf
If you’re at all interested in this topic, I highly recommend that you read the whole report!
Working abroad can make you taller!? Figuratively, yes. I took this photo in Bahia Inglesa, in the north of Chile. I have definitely held higher positions and done more interesting work while abroad! And you can do it too!
Today Brazen Careerist published my article, “How to Launch Your Career Overseas.”
Have you ever dreamed of working in China? India? Brazil?
The new landscape of work transcends national boundaries, which creates unprecedented opportunities to work worldwide.
Here’s how you can get started.
Study abroad
“Overseas stints have launched many a career because of the inherent curiosity, flexibility and interest in the world they indicate to an employer,” says Stacie Nevadomski Berdan, author of the new eBook GO GLOBAL! Launching an International Career Here or Abroad.
Even if you’re no longer in school, study abroad is still an option. Consider a graduate degree or language program. The Rotary Foundation offers Ambassadorial Scholarships. ESADE and IE have international MBAs in Spain. According to Ben Apple, the Chinese government is giving out scholarships for masters’ and PhD programs “like candy.” [more]
This is the second time I’ve been featured on Brazen Careerist. The first was this interview I did with Jaclyn Schiff.
If you’re interested in starting your career overseas, you might especially like Hilary Corna’s book One White Face, about her experiences training Toyota dealerships to implement Kaizen all over Asia. Hilary is offering a special discount code for readers of Beyond Chile’s Single Story. Go to https://www.createspace.com/
Here are some other posts I’ve written about international careers.
- How to Launch Your International Career, a review of Stacie Berdan’s eBook GoGlobal!
- “Sometimes, I find myself set in a puzzlement about meanings of life and jobs.”
- Foreign Young Professionals in China Mini Series #3: “Why China? Because I could.”
- Adventure + Failure + Grit = Success?
If you’re interested in chatting more about working abroad, feel free to contact me by leaving a comment or emailing me. Cheers!
This Wall Street Journal article, As China Goes, So Go Commodities, is the clearest explanation I’ve read about how trends in China’s economy might affect commodity prices.
You want to know where the global commodities markets are heading in the coming years? Then it’s probably best that you remember a single word: China.
Liam Pleven outlines three possible scenarios for China’s economic future and describes how these would affect the worldwide market for commodities like oil, copper, and soybeans. These three scenarios have huge implications for China-Latin America trade because Latin America is a major supplier to China, and this trade is a major component of Latin American economies. For example, Chile currently supplies 29% of China’s copper and this constitutes a very large percentage of Chile’s exports. When copper prices fluctuate, so does the dollar-peso exchange rate.
Source: The Wall Street Journal.
Here are the three forecast scenarios :
Full Speed Ahead
If China’s consumption of commodities continues to grow at the rate it has over the past 10 years, this is what the world would have to do to meet that demand in 2020, assuming that the rest of the world’s collective appetite doesn’t change at all:
[this would mean, among other things]
• Extract nearly three times as much new copper as the current annual production from Chile, which mines about four times as much as any other nation.
The Hard Landing
A growth rate of 4% to 6% would be a big leap forward for the U.S. economy and plenty of others. But not for China….
Demand for steel, copper and other industrial metals could drop significantly if China does stall, because those materials are heavily used in construction—which would be at risk from weakness in the Chinese real-estate market—and because China often accounts for some 40% of global demand for those materials. Coal demand could also tumble, she says, because the fuel is heavily used in China to generate power.
Slower but Steady
For many China watchers, including Barclays, the most probable scenario is an economy that keeps expanding strongly but at a less blistering pace, with annual GDP growth rates in the high single digits. That would mean continued upward pressure on most commodities prices, with some possibly rising substantially, but in most cases not the soaring prices that a red-hot economy would produce.
I took this photo at a wedding I attended in Beijing in 2009. I think it's an appropriate way to illustrate this rather technical post about Chinese economic trends because this is the real face of oil/gas/copper/soybean consumption. This wedding had mass amounts of meat (lamb but no pork since the bride's family is Huimin, part of a Muslim minority.) As China grows more prosperous, more people will be eating more meat and hosting ever-more-elaborate weddings.
Note: I’m curious to hear your feedback on this post because I am thinking about starting a whole new blog about China-Latin America relations, in both English and Spanish, perhaps in partnership with the small number of other people who blog about this emerging topic. Gracias!!
I wrote this from Pichilemu, a tiny, idyllic surf town on the coast of Chile, about three hours south of Santiago. It looks like California, but without the highways, chain stores, hotels, malls… if you took a bare stretch of the California coast and added a few little guesthouses, family-run pharmacies, ice cream parlors, sidewalk restaurants, and shops filled with inexpensive beachwear, it would look like Pichilemu.
I came to Pichilemu to get away from the stress of Santiago (including loud repairs in my apartment) so for my first two days here I just read novels, wrote in my journal, gave myself a pedicure, bought a striped sundress, and sampled several flavors of ice cream.
But by Monday, I knew I needed to get some work done. Inspired by Alexis Grant’s recent blog post, Learning How to Travel While Working, I decided to turn my day into an experiment in Location Independence.
Workplace #1
My first stop was a hotel that had a wifi sticker on its door. It specializes in government-endorsed package tours for Chilean senior citizens. I asked if I could use the internet, and a woman pointed me to the living room, a cozy space with several yellow leather couches. I sat down on the couch and asked for the wifi password. She said that the password had just been changed, and she gave me a password that didn’t work. So I sat down on the couch and started writing. I don’t need the internet to write; it’s actually a distraction. I periodically switched on my phone’s data plan to check email and Twitter, look up quotes for the articles I was writing, and ask colleagues to call me if they needed anything.
After about two hours, dozens of guests came back to the hotel, and the maid started vacuuming the living room. She apologized for disturbing me, and suggested that I move to another seat. But I saw an obese man setting up his cello for a performance for the senior citizens’ group, and knew it was time to move on.
I paced the streets of Pichilemu in search of wifi. I knew I had spotted at least one guesthouse with a sign advertising wifi. I entered one residencial and asked if I could use the wifi. I told him I was willing to buy lunch, drinks, or even just pay for the service, but he refused. He said that now is the time to clean, not attend to guests.
So I kept walking. And eventually I found a guesthouse with a British theme and wifi. I rang the doorbell and no one came. So I just opened the gate and sat down at a white plastic table in the garden, under a handmade sunshade. The place had wifi but no one to tell me the password. So I typed this on a disconnected computer. So much more productive that way!
Workplace #2
After two hours (and writing two full articles) I moved on to a seafront restaurant with a lovely deck where I’d eaten before. It advertised wifi, but the waiter told me that the entire town’s wifi was broken and they needed to wait for a technician from another city to come and fix it. He apologized, and recommended the lenguado (best fish in Pichilemu.) So I ordered lenguado a la plancha con ensalada surtida and continued to write, as I watched the waves roll in.
Workspace #3
After sunset I visited an internet café to respond to a few emails and read the day’s news.
In a day and a half of working Location Independently, I wrote 7 full blog posts, and got a solid start on 3 more. Not bad!!
6 Tips for Location Independence
1) Invest in the right tools.
In Pichilemu, the right tool would be a wireless internet device that plugs into the side of the computer. These are widely available in Chile and there are both monthly and prepaid payment options. However, as you can probably tell from the previous story, I don’t have one. (And even if I did it might not work due to the problem with the town’s wifi.) I do have a Samsung Galaxy Mini smartphone with a Chilean SIM card and a prepaid Android data plan that costs me too much money. (I’m definitely due for an upgrade to a monthly unlimited plan.) For other destinations, investing in the right tools might mean renting an AirCard.
2) Bring earplugs.
In the day’s first workplace, the radio was playing way too loud, on a station that had “My Heart Will Go On” and other classics on repeat. Thankfully I had earplugs. A godsend for my attention span and sanity!
3) Ask people to call you.
This is the best way to communicate with people in other places. If you’ll be far from home, you might want to set up Skype (and a healthy dose of SkypeOut credit) on the computers of your loved ones and colleagues and write down the time difference, your number while traveling, and the best times of day to call.
4) Be realistic with your expectations.
If you are a writer and you’re trying to spill out a “shitty first draft” of your novel, a place like Pichilemu is ideal. It gives you the mental and physical space to process thoughts and put them on the page. If you are a consultant or web designer, whose business depends on conference calls and other Internet-centric tasks, I recommend taking #1 to heart and staying in a place with more connectivity. For example, here in Chile, there are plenty of beach towns (Viña del Mar, Reñaca, La Serena, etc.) that have a greater concentration of nice hotels and cafés to help you stay connected.
5) Spend at least a week in each place.
Once you’ve found a comfortable and convenient workplace, complete with reliable wifi hotspot, good coffee, handmade muffins, beautiful scenery, massage chairs (hey, a girl can dream!) stick around for a while. You will work much more efficiently if you don’t have to search for a new space.
6) Be sure to enjoy your chosen destination.
Why go to a tiny beach town if you’re going to code all day? Be sure to indulge in your surroundings: go for a long walk on the beach, eat some fresh ceviche, work on your tan… I think you get the picture!
The beach in Pichilemu on a weekday in December. Not a soul in sight!
Have you ever tried working Location Independent(ly)? What has been your experience? What would you add to this list?
I'm Leslie and I connect entrepreneurs in Chile, China, California, and beyond — especially through translation, training, and trade. More about me.
