Day 14 and 15

Day 14

I feel like being brief for day 14 so here it goes:

Today we visited with La Libertad pharmacy. Got all her revenue figures for the past year and a half. Tim ran a stats program on it to see the trend in her revenue. We will share the results with her and talk about what she can do to improve revenue projections.

After that we stopped by La Fidelina and La Blanca. Neither had done anything yet on the surveys. We decided that we were going to have Leonel go do them.

After that we spent some time planning. We have now visited 13 companies and are actively working with 11 of the 13. The other two really just aren’t interested in us trying to help them. We have mapped out an entire list of things we want to accomplish with each of the 11 companies and we are working to get everything done.

Went to the second TAE (Taller de Autoempleo) or Presentation on Self-employment in Sameyak tonight. It went pretty well. I feel like there are not enough basic business principles being taught in the TAE and we will make some recommendations on that to the Cause for Hope.

Day 15

We stopped by La Blanca to help do the surveys. We decided to leave Leonel there to do them and then have him head over to La Fidelina around lunchtime. It was a good decision because we got almost 20 surveys per business. This should help us make decisions about what can be done to improve their business.

After this, we headed to San Antonio to see the “Store on the Floor” as we are calling it. However, there is a fair in town so his normal spot was taken and we couldn’t find him. This has been another issue we have had to deal with, hardly anyone has a phone so we just have to stop by and hope they are there.

Takalik Abaj
After he wasn’t there, President Donis asked us if we want to see some Mayan ruins. Well who wouldn’t right. So we drove about 15 minutes to Takalik Abaj. It was awesome. The pictures really don’t do it justice. It is way cooler when you can see how all the temples and buildings form a big plaza type area. Much of the upper area is under about 5 feet of dirt that came from a volcano eruption. They have discovered many more buildings and temples and are currently uncovering them. There is also a Mayan sports arena that is being uncovered which we were not allowed to take pictures of. Just about everything the guide showed us was dated between about 300BC and 200 AD. Different statues in the same area were from different eras and people or, in other words, different tribes or groups were occupying the area and would add statues from different cultures or beliefs to the existing area. Pretty crazy. It was extremely awesome to be there and to see it all. The only thing that would have been better is if the tour was in English! It was hard for me to make out some of it, especially when the guide was saying the Mayan words and talking about the hieroglyphics.



Above is a wash area that was used before going into the temple.

Sculpture of a crockodile head in front of the temple.

This is a water chute.


We got back to Mazatenango and ate lunch. After lunch, I called Disory to see about having him design a logo for Granizadas Delicias. He is going to have a work up for us on Monday.

EOQ
Fortunately, shortly thereafter the owner of the “store on the floor” showed up at the office here. He drives to Guatemala City to get the bags of items he sells and we wanted to help him minimize ordering and inventory holding costs. So I spent about 30 minutes getting the information we needed to run an Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) for him. After that, Tim and I ran the EOQ. Currently, he is buying about 30 bags of inventory on each trip. The EOQ told us he should be purchasing about 75 bags each time. When we explained to him that he should try to purchase 75 each time, he explained to us that his little truck could only carry about 40 to 45 bags. Well, we did the work anyway. If he ever gets a truck with more capacity, he will really be able to minimize his costs.

Other

• Howard Stevenson of the Harvard Business School once defined entrepreneurship as "the relentless pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled."
• Everyone stares at us everywhere we go and often times the girls are checking us out and sometimes start saying stuff…they must think we don’t speak Spanish…
• I have been sick again, took another bug bomb, don’t feel as bad this time as last
• I am always dehydrated, no matter how hard I try
• We are going to Antigua tomorrow! (look it up)