I, Entrepreneur

It’s hard to believe I’ve been in GDL for six months already. To celebrate my half-year anniversary of moving here, I get to go the Customs office at the airport to extend the permit for Samantha (my car). I’m kind of bracing for that one…’nuff said!

The week after I arrived here, I landed a job teaching English. This has been a great start for me to get to know the types of students here and also to familiarize myself with the business environment. The environment is practically the same as corporate anywhere but with a bit of a Mexican twist. Yes, it’s been challenging at times to get used to the casual, seemingly consensual treatment of time and tardiness. I’ve always been uptight about that so, I have plenty of ground to work off my impatience.

But as many of you know, I came with the purpose of opening my own business here, so it’s important that I learn up front many of the pluses and minuses of starting a new venture. I thought I’d give you an update so, here it goes:

The guiding principle behind my business idea is to create a center for the improvement of English skills for individuals who have graduated from a traditional institute but who lack the confidence to communicate in English – with speaking and listening being major challenges for Mexican learners. My target client is the quintessential corporate go-getter who sees excellent English communication skills as a competitive advantage.

In my current job, I go to different companies, most of them American or German to teach on the premises. It’s alright though I have to follow a curriculum that mostly lacks context and the students are often isolated from using English in the real world.

So, I’ve used this time for doing my hands-on market research and then refining my business idea to offer a set of services that would stand out from the traditional approach used in teaching English here.

The first thing I’ve done is start a blog to coach my students through managing their learning strategy. By focusing on a learning strategy, I challenge my students to take responsibility for their learning outside of the classroom and to learn to articulate their specific needs for more effective language acquisition. A lot of my ideas date back to when I was learning English when I was a teenager in the DR. Anyway, check out my blog at:


{ English Communication Arts }




The other thing I did was start marketing myself a bit, so I now I have a corporate image after having created my logo and some business cards. The logo is a silhouette of an archer shooting up to the sky…get it? I call him “little man” though I gave him a very spiritual name of Saraha that I picked up from one of my Tantra books -- I don't intend to use that name in any of my marketing...it's just a private pet name of sorts. Anyway, I’m also excited because in a couple of weeks I will conduct the first Conversation Club meeting at a cool café in a neighborhood full of high-tech companies.

I have also hired a lawyer to legalize my business entity and also to legalize my visa so that I can work independently and pay taxes. Looking forward to that! Yay!

It looks like by the end of this year, all my papers will be in order and I can then really market my services. It is unclear at this point on whether I will be opening an actual office or just go visit my clients at work. Most likely, I will start out renting space by the hour to conduct some special activities until I build a solid clientele. Obviously, I have a lot of choices and challenges and I’m simply thrilled to be involved in all of it.

That’s the update on my entrepreneurial pursuits. Stay tuned for more. Peace.