Day 16 through 18

Day 16

Antigua
On Saturday we got to take a trip to Antigua. It was really cool. The Spanish made Antigua the third capital of Guatemala in 1543. It is at the base of the Volcán de Agua (Volcano of Water). There are two other volcanoes surrounding the city, the Volcán de Fuego, and Acetenango. Antigua was the capital until 1776 when it was moved to Gutatemala City due to various earthquakes, which had destroyed the town. All of the buildings are very old and in Spanish style. It was really cool, here are some pictures:


Egg Man
On our way back from Antigua, we stopped and visited with a guy who started his business through a loan from the Cause for Hope. He purchased 75 chickens for Q55 each and will sell the Q.80 each. Each chicken should produce an egg each day. They will lay eggs all year. At the end of a year, he can sell them for meat and get Q50 per chicken. We haven’t run the numbers yet but looks like a great business. Produce revenue and profit all year and then recoup most of your initial investment. He figures his margins are about 50% after feed costs, etc.

Day 17
Church today, no earthquakes…

Today at church I understood 99% of everything, which was a really big improvement over the first Sunday here.

Day 18
Big day today, we got a lot done.

La Abuelita
First thing this morning, we went to visit La Abuelita. Tim did some sales training involving customer segmentation and sales goals. For example, if it takes 50 contacts to get 10 people to try the café and for every 10 people, one purchases, so you have to make 50 contacts for every sales. Tim taught her to track the data so she will know the real numbers and be able to set goals for contacts made. And it is all, of course, based on how much she wants to earn. We also talked quite a bit about getting her wholesale division off the ground. Good stuff.


Surveys
After that we stopped by and got the surveys from La Blanca and La Fidelina. They were great! We got 26 from La Fidelina and about 20 from La Blanca. We came back to the office and entered all the data into speadsheets. We found out some really interesting stuff. For example, we tried to tell La Fidelina that she needed a sign. She didn’t want one. However, the main suggestion from her customers is that she puts up a sign. Shocker!

Store on the floor
This afternoon we went to “Store on the floor” to give some suggestions Tim came up with regarding tracking which items are selling and which are not. Hopefully he will try to implement the idea.

A&B Fotocopias
Last, we went and talked with A&B Fotocopias. We spent about 30 minutes discussing all of their fixed and variable costs. The owner really didn’t understand the difference and has been pricing his copies based on a variable cost that includes the fixed costs. We ran a little monthly income statement on the spot and got all the information we need to run breakeven analysis and perform some sensitivity analysis on his revenue and income using different volume assumptions at different price levels.


Other

• I love my Grandma Wilson; I was glad I was able to talk to her the other night and wish I could be with her right now.
• Peter Drucker - "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."
• Guatemalans drink a lot of stuff out of little bags, a lot of soda pop from the side of the road and even milk from the store.
• The power has gone out each of the last 2 nights, last night for 3 hours, tonight for 15 minutes.
• It rains here every day in the afternoon…it is almost winter here. The rain is worse than anything I have ever seen by far and the lighting and thunder is CRAZY!
• I am starting to say things in English that only make sense in Spanish…like “the food is not falling good with me”
• On Friday, we saw and heard a marching band in Reu playing “beautiful girl” by Sean Kingston...my dad will be happy to know that the people in Guatemala are also fans!