Lost in Translation: My Name is Organ Donor

Getting mail in Mexico, particularly in a small town like Valle de Bravo, isn't always easy. There's a Pak Mail franchise here in town, however, and for a small per item fee they will receive packages on your behalf and call you to come pick them up.

Aran and I have been waiting for a particular book for quite some time now, and it finally arrived. I went to the store to pick it up, and of course, the polite young man manning the store required an ID before he released the book to me. I handed him my Maine Driver's License and 25 pesos, and he carefully scrawled my name into the store's official log:

"Shetterly, Organ Donor."

Con mucho gusto!

Economics Rap (for econ/finance geeks only)

While perusing Harvard economist Greg Mankiw's blog (yes, I am an econ/finance geek) I came across a video called "Fear the Boom and Bust (Hayek vs. Keynes rap)".

Free-market advocate Friedrich Hayek and fiscal and monetary interventionist John Maynard Keynes are headed to an economics conference but get sidetracked by a night on the town ("Party at the Fed...20 minutes") with all the accoutrements --stretch limo, Cristal, fine female entourage--and engage in an epic battle of rhymes on the merits of their respective economic philosophies.

Like many, I must admit that the freshwater economic zeal of my callow Wall Street youth has been somewhat tempered with age (and the global financial meltdown). However, I think Hayek kills it in his rap.

Runners up

We were notified today that we were not among the finalists for the Expansion Los 10 Emprendedores del Año 2009. Better luck next year! Thanks to all for the good wishes, and to Expansion and Endeavor for the nomination.

Entrepreneurs of the year?

Last week, Aran and I found out that we had been selected by Mexico’s business magazine Expansion as one of 20 finalists for their special report Los 10 Emprendedores del Año 2009 (Top 10 Entrepreneurs of 2009). Yesterday morning at 11:30 AM sharp, we met with a group of nine journalists, business experts and private equity investors for a five-minute presentation of our company, Editorial Manda SAPI de CV (Inside México), followed by a five minute rapid-fire Q&A session. The panel will select the finalists today, and the winners will be notified tomorrow. Profiles of the finalists will be published in Expansion sometime in the next month.

Starting a business in your own country is hard enough, but doing so in a new country—and in a second language!—is something altogether different. Four years ago, full of adventure and optimism, we left our homes in the United States to come to Mexico and start this business. With an idea, a business plan and a little seed funding, we literally drove down from the US, set up camp in Oaxaca (only later did we move to Mexico City) and proceeded to start what would become Inside México.

In retrospect, our Honda Element was actually a turnip truck, as we had no idea just how complex and difficult an undertaking this would turn out to be. As refugees from the dot-com industry, we had our hands full learning the ins and outs of magazine publishing. Even more daunting, however, was navigating the sea of forms, fees, regulations, lawyers, notaries, accountants, government agencies, door keepers and other intermediaries involved in starting and maintaining even the simplest of businesses in Mexico.


The time since has been replete with achievements as well as disappointments. We’ve had the good fortune to work with people with world-class talent, people who have rolled up their sleeves and plied their talents into the wee hours to make Inside México what it is. We’ve become fluent in Spanish, and functional in our understanding of Mexico’s business climate. Inside México is now the most widely distributed English language publication in the country, and our website Insidemex.com, which we relaunched this spring, is really taking off in terms of traffic and functionality. We count among our advertisers some of the most recognized businesses in Mexico (Bancomer, Santo Tomas wines, HSBC, ATT Alestra, Coldwell Banker, even Jif Peanut Butter) as well as scores of smaller businesses from around the country. These days, when we go to a client meeting, we’re as likely to get a warm “Oh yes, I read your magazine, I know your website!” as the impassive stone face that was par for the course when we were first starting out. We even managed to generate a little press. The images above are from a feature article Expansion magazine published on us in October 2006, right after we launched Inside México's first issue.


But there are many days when the demands of the business are crushing, when physical work, mental stress, uncertainty and an endless string of 18-hour work days would send us to our sickbeds, but for adrenaline, coffee and the stubborn, blind desire to move the business forward. Rejections —from potential clients, potential investors, potential partners, banks, adverting agencies, you name it—litter our inboxes and file cabinets. We’ve been courted by any number of investors and partners, only to be left standing, gobsmacked, in a lurch, at the altar. Clients pay late; banks don’t give credit. The times we’ve looked at our bank account and asked ourselves “How are we going to make it through this week?” are now too numerous to mention. Sometimes the French entrepreneur’s false cognate undertaker feels more apt when I think of what this has exacted from us.

And yet: day after day, we walk forward. We make the calls, we send the emails, we hatch the ideas, we change the plan, we adapt to the circumstances, we lick our wounds, we fight back, we take the chance, we make the mistake, we try to fix it, we pull the all-nighter, we hash it out, we close a deal, we do it all again. And most of all, we close our eyes and summon our belief in ourselves, in our colleagues, in our vision and also in Mexico, which as an entrepreneur is not always easy.

Recently, President Calderon announced a plan to streamline the long, expensive and confusing series of forms required to start a business in Mexico. Mexico is a country of hard working people with great ideas, and I believe that making it easy for those people to act on their ambitions is the key to this country’s long term economic future. But this plan, which amounts to an online consolidation of federal databases, should be just the beginning. In order for startup businesses to revitalize the Mexican economy, the entire act of setting up a business—from contracting phone and internet service, to opening a bank account, to hiring and firing employees and paying taxes—needs to be more efficient, less time consuming and less costly. This is particularly true if Mexico is to take advantage of the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of migrating foreigners, whose plans for their new routines in Mexico include more than the daily margarita on the beach.

Regardless of whether we’re one of Expansion’s top ten, being selected as a finalist is quite an honor and a real picker-upper after these last few hard months. We gave it our best, and enjoyed the back and forth with the panelists. If nothing else, it’s a wonderful acknowledgement of what it’s take for Inside México to get to this point, and a much-needed shoutout for the value of entrepreneurship in general.

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Mexico is back in business

Although today was quiet, there's no question that Mexico City and the rest of the country are getting back to business as usual. We'll open the Inside Mexico offices on Wednesday and the volume of work-related emails (that is to say, work emails related to something other than swine flu) was significantly greater today.

The Mexican government has a real challenge ahead of it: how do you crawl out from under the PR disaster of the swine flu (and this on the heels of the "War Next Door" nightmare)? Air Canada and regional WestJet airlines canceled flights to Mexico's tourist destinations; Argentina and other airlines have also canceled flights. Mexico is up in arms over China's aggressive handling of Mexican tourists (though Canadians and others have been detained as well...the facts don't support the claim that China is singling out Mexicans). But what is Mexico going to do to turn this around?

White folks staying away from Mexico City's Zocalo

This morning, I clicked to the El Universal website to find the following story:

Pocos güeros visitan el Zócalo (Few white people are going to the Zocalo)

"En la plaza principal del centro histórico los extranjeros sólo esperan el momento de irse, no por miedo, si no porque todo está cerrado." In Mexico City's main plaza, foreigners are hanging out while waiting to leave the country-- not for fear, but because everything's closed.

As readers of this blog know, güero is the word used to describe a person with white skin. It is not a synonym for foreigner.

Maybe there were no moreno foreigners in the Zocalo when the correpondent did his investigation? Maybe all the Mexican güeros (yes, there are lots of white Mexicans) were hanging out at home?

I speak Spanish as a second language, so I might be missing something here. Am I wrong to call them out on this? For me, the headline displayed an ignorance both of the diversity and international nature of Mexico's tourists and residents as well as of its own population.