Back to the Isla de Ometepe for the Business Incubator 2013!!!

I recently headed back to the Island of Ometepe as part of Team Emprende, the small group of Small Business Volunteers that are responsible for the National Business Plan Competition, Congress, Fundraiser, and now the Business Incubator...

We spent three nights at Charco Verde, a resort on the Island that has hiking trails, a lake, kayaks, and obviously enough space to hold a conference for 32 people, 22 of which were small business owners from around Nicaragua. In a way, this year's incubator was a follow up to the National competition as we had both the second and third place teams in attendance, and were able to see what had been done in their business since finishing high school and starting out in the big scary world. It was nice to see that one of the groups, a young man from a rural community in Boaco, had continued his business, improved packaging, and was looking for distributors. The other group from Esteli had not done much as they had moved on to the university and were not sure of the direction they wanted to take their business.

As a whole, the workshop focused more in building brand image, low-cost marketing, managing employees especially as family businesses, accounting, and production. We had great participation by all and will continue to work with the small business owners back in their home towns via the volunteers that nominated them. (I bet a lot of small business owners in the US would be jealous of the experience these lucky and hard working folks had!)

Enjoy the pictures, and of course, make good choices!!!!

Traffic on the Island is BRUTAL

My happy little cabin

Not a bad place to work right

Yes that's a volcano back there

Even on the Island Natali didn't stop working

Production Workshop

Mapping their production process

Team Building at night

My little friend

We didn't know that they charged for the use of the kayaks until afterwards... oops!