Houston, LATISM – Here We Come!

With the increasing access to new technologies, resources, and ideas, business opportunities are flourishing for Latino entrepreneurs now more than ever.

As part of the Business Track at this year’s #LATISM Conference in Houston, I have the distinct honor of sharing tactics, case studies, marketplace best practices and culturally relevant approaches for supporting social enterprises — the do-good-to-do-well business owners.

Having spent many years developing entrepreneurial programs for a business lobbying organization, and now as CEO of CONEXION, which virtually manages Hispanic Chambers of Commerce throughout California,  New York, and D.C., I am eager to share and exchange knowledge that moves our community forward.

Super excited and ready to pow-wow in Houston with my LATISM family.

For details on the conference or to register, visit: http://conference.latism.org/.

Good Food L.A. + [INFOGRAPHIC]

This post is about getting you involved with the Good Food Day LA project, a citywide event and day of service dedicated to learning about, celebrating and volunteering to strengthen the food system for all Angelenos. The event simultaneously brings together nearly forty sites and thousands of volunteers and participants who will be engaged in activities throughout Los Angeles – and you can learn about them and sign-up to participate here.

Good Food Day LA culminates in the afternoon at the Metabolic Studio, near Chinatown and will feature a resource fair, food trucks, chef demonstrations, and a cabbage cooking contest called “From Kim Chee to Cole Slaw” which will be judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold and several renowned chefs. It will be followed by a panel discussion at 1pm focused on the fight for food workers’ rights and Fair Food across the globe.

For me, this is an opportunity to empower our community to take charge of our food supply. When we become the food producers, not just the consumers, we indirectly promote healthier lifestyles that prevent debilitating diseases, while saving money and the planet by getting our produce from our own backyards. Plus, I’m convinced there is nothing fresher, tastier, or more gratifying than growing our own food.

The infographic below is a baseline assessment of our current relationship with food:

There are more than 50 personal and professional development events on the Conexion calendar; just click here or follow us on Facebook.

Thanks for reading.
Cheers to good health!
Edgar

Latino Engagement: It’s Not About Language…It’s About Cultural Relevance

It’s great that many of our favorite corporate brands (the smart ones, anyway) and more recently the Democratic and Republican parties are reaching out to the burgeoning Latino market. However, I’m here to remind the minds behind these initiatives that if your strategy consists of translating your fancy brochures or your shiny new websites into Spanish, and that includes dubbing of videos — congratulations! you now have a good chance at reaching my mom, my tia, and their “networks.”

Be warned, that approach neglects more than half of our community. You know, the one that went to school in this country and whose kids now attend those same schools – the bicultural Latino. Here’s the snapshot:

3 Wow Factors to Producing Kick-butt Events

From Avatar Star to Modern Family Mom to Superstar Director, they were in one place...

Last year alone, our company produced or co-produced more than 50 events, and over 250 since the business was founded just five years go. Before making the entrepreneurial jump, I had the daunting task and delight of producing events that included two U.S. Presidents (at separate times) and Fortune-100 CEOs as keynotes.
The point is, I’ve learned that no matter the type, the fundamentals of producing a kick-butt event that audiences are willing to travel and pay good money for are the same. I call these fundamentals the “wow factors.” Here they are in order of importance:

Latinos Score Big at the Super Bowl

With more than 100 million around the globe watching Victor Cruz of the New York Giants and Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots going toe-to-toe at Sunday’s big game, many Latinos in the US had much more to celebrate than touchdowns.

To folks like me, the Super Bowl was an opportunity to show off the many dimensions of our community; our diversity in color, taste in sports, athletic skill, level of acculturation – and most definitely, our ability to salsa in the end zone.

Latino Americans: Social Engagement

We gladly share with you a witty infographic highlighted at last Thursday’s KPCC One Nation event; “Real and Virtual Worlds: A Forum On Today’s Latino Americans,” and take this opportunity to thank Giovanni Rodriguez (@giorodriguez), Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Deloitte Postdigital Enterprise; Fernando Guerra, Director, Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University; and our moderator and KPCC reporter, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez (@aguzmanlopez).

For a one minute video recap of the event, click here.
Stay tuned for upcoming events by following our calendar at CONEXION.

Why Businesses [really] Fail: What to Do

In working with chambers of commerce and business associations I’ve met many business owners who strongly believe that access to business capital is their number one barrier to growing their companies – and to some extent, and now as an entrepreneur, I can relate. The number two and three reasons usually stated are raising costs of health insurance and taxes. Most times these are also the same factors blamed for a failed business.

However, I believe those factors are more symptoms than the root cause, and the infographic alludes to that idea. The real problem? Intellectual capital (or the lack there of). This is the brainpower provided by a person or persons who know your industry better than you do; they know the who, the what and the when of things, and they sometimes have access to key figures to plug-in to. They see your business from a different perspective and could even provide you with an advantage over your competitors.

As you look at the infographic below, think of your business and the pains that afflict you, and then think of who specifically would best solve that problem, their skill set, is it a consultant, and MBA, a SCORE mentor perhaps? Think of that person and don’t limit yourself by money, or as Harish R. Rao says: “pay enough so that money isn’t an issue, then give high recognition, autonomy, and the opportunity to learn and grow,” and watch your team excel. The right person, after all, could be the catalyst for growth in your business and thus worth the investment.

Folks, we as entrepreneurs need to stop trying to do it all ourselves and instead need to hire, outsource, or create partnerships – in other words; delegate to the right people!