Experiencing Brazil

The first day in Rio was already incredible!!

However, as expected, my luggage wasn’t as lucky.. It made it to Rio, but then it was lost inside (!!) the hotel. They took it to another room but didn’t remember where.. argh.. it took them several hours to find it again 🙁 And of course, I didn’t wear any business casual for the flight, so I was risking showing up in the wrong dress code to the first business meeting. Luckily, my room mate gave me a dress, so that I didn’t have to wear my comfortable, but ridiculous travel outfit. I was really glad, when they found my suitcase again!

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First meeting!

Who: a journalists from the TV news channel Globo (http://g1.globo.com/globo-news).

Key takeaways:

• No culture of saving: They had very high inflation during the 80ies (2000-3000%!!). So they are not used to save their money. In addition, one president apparently confiscated their savings, so people generally don’t trust the institutions.

• The current president: Dilma Rousseff is an economist by training. Therefore, she has a very clear opinion how the economy should work. However, they have the feeling that a lot of her new policies are just short-term gains without actually improving the long-term outlook (e.g. on education).

• Education: The government actually spends a lot on education, but somehow the money doesn’t flow to the right places. The public schools are really bad – or in PISA terms on the same level as Columbia and Jordan. In contrast, the public universities are really good. But in order to get accepted, you have to write a national test. And usually only children from private schools pass the limit. So Dilma’s short-term solution is to impose a quota for public school kids. Unfortunately, this means that people without sufficient academic knowledge are now allowed to study.

• Public opinion: At the moment, Dilma is very popular and has an acceptance rate of >70%! Merkel could only dream of such a number, but then again, she’s in a way more difficult situation.. Interesting fact is also that voting is mandatory in Brazil.

• Planning: The government isn’t good in planning. During the past, many of the government policies were about inflation and “trouble shooting”. It’s a fairly new situation that the government has all this money and stability.

• Corruption: Got better in the past couple of years. They even convicted a number of ministers of receiving/paying corruption payments.

• Stock market: Only very few people invest in stock. Most people don’t understand the concept.

• Installments: On the other hand, people love installments! It’s so common, that the interest rate is usually already priced in. And if they don’t get installments, the usually prefer to buy somewhere else.

• World cup & Olympics: When people in Rio or Sao Paolo make fun about the horrible traffic, they usually say “imagine during the world cup!!” 😉 If the traffic is already a nightmare now, imagine how horrible it will be when millions of soccer fans come to Brazil. But as usual, Dilma’s government has a short-term solution: Holidays! So all the people of the respective city will get holidays on the day of the match, so that the streets can be free for the tourists.

  As a result, she doesn’t believe that the infrastructure will be ready for the world cup, or at least only with higher cost. If infrastructure projects are too late, they usually get “special treatment” which means for example that you can give it to your best friend instead of making a public bidding process.

Summary: In general, the journalist painted a rather neutral or negative picture of Brazil’s outlook. As we will see over the course of this week, only a few people shared her view (or were open enough to share it with foreigners). However, it can also be that it was just her journalist attitude that was speaking – bad news sell better 😉

Let’s see what the other business leaders think of Brazils outlook :)!

Hello from Rio 🙂 I finally arrived in this beautiful city. But getting here was more difficult than expected 😉

After arriving at the SFO airport, we realize that our flight is delayed. And soon it became clear that the plane will probably not fly at all this day. Luckily, thanks to my travel mates, we managed to get rebooked from an American Airlines flight via Miami to a United flight via Dallas. So we ran back from the gate to the counter to get checked in again. We literally made it just in time before they closed the door of the plane. However, we were not sure if our luggage would make it as well..

Apart from this initial stress, the flight was really beautiful 🙂

It also gave me time to think about the past couple of months. Moving to Stanford was a big decision and I still cannot believe how much my life has changed since then. Meeting all those incredible people, I realized how big the world is and how many opportunities and ideas are out there. Although my life was already very international for Swiss standards, life at the GSB is a totally different level. I am really thankful for this experience.

In addition to that I found amazing new friends. They are my new family and a big part of why I feel so at home at Stanford. From Swiss fondues to late night chats – without them Stanford wouldn’t be the same.

However, flying further and further away from the U.S. and looking forward to traveling three weeks in a country I barely knew, I felt anxious and alone. Maybe the last couple of months were just a dream? What if the others don’t like me that much? Who am I? I know who I was before the GSB, but who am I now? And what part of me didn’t change, because it’s part of who I truly am?

And in addition to the thoughts about the GSB, I was thinking about my friends at home. Living abroad for two years is a great experience, but it also means that I leave my old life behind. I’m still in close contact with my friends and I definitely don’t want to lose them. But at the same time, their life moves on and if I’m not careful we’ll lose each other.

However, I was also looking forward to being on the road again. Being away from your daily life opens your mind and challenges you to rethink who you are. Knowing how you think and feel when you are alone in a new environment far away from your normal life, makes you better understand who you truly are. And in fact, you don’t really need much, because the most important thing – you – is always with you.

In this regard, I was looking forward what Brazil has in it for me..

As every visitor I have certain expectations about Brazil. So when I think about Brazil, a couple of pictures come to my mind:

So what is the real Brazil like? What are their dreams and aspirations? How does their life look like? What does is mean to do business in Brazil?

Let’s find out 🙂