I've been to Brazil! 〜Business Trip to Brazil Vol.5〜

Translated from 日本語 • View original

It has been four years since I started working on the Brazilian market. During that time, I was on a business trip to Brazil, so I thought I would be the fifth person, but about two weeks ago, I heard from Daniel in Brazil that Floris is from the UK.

**Brazil Business Trip Vol.1~4 is here. **

Floris has been working in the UK since the year before last, after working at Colorkrew in Japan. It seems that this time I went to Brazil privately, but as the team expands around the world, we will meet in various combinations and in various places, so it's interesting.

Daniel's blog is here

I looked for Floris' blog, but there were only early ones, so I'll ask you to write about it again next time.

Floris's blog (when I joined Colorkrew)

From European student to full-time software developer in Japan. By the way, the time difference between the UK and Brazil is 3 hours (4 hours in daylight saving time). It's much easier to work together than in Japan.

It seems that we will work together more in Brazil and the UK.

By the way, I met Daniel in person in November when he was able to go on a business trip to Japan, so it was my first reunion with him in two months. Also, the other friends (Marcelo, Rafa, Anderson) also have a weekly online regularity and often communicate via chat, so it didn't feel like it had been a long time since I last met.

Times have changed.

Bullet 6 and a half days! 38 hours one way to travel!

This time, it was a six-and-a-half-day bullet business trip, departing on Sunday and returning on Saturday of that week.

The flight is via New York to São Paulo.

Tokyo → New York is 14 hours, and New York → Sao Paulo is about 10 hours. This alone is 24 hours, but it took a total of 38 hours to arrive in Brazil after transit between and from my home to Haneda Airport.

If you go back and forth, it will be a full 3 days. It's hard just to move.

In addition, the time difference is 12 hours.

In the past, I was stationed in Europe and traveled back and forth to Japan a lot, but I realized that this trip was different. It is exactly the other side of the world, but by the way, it seems that the back of the earth seen from the head office of Carakul (Taito Ward) is not the mainland of Brazil, but the territorial waters.

The other side of the world was summer

It is natural to say that Brazil in the southern hemisphere is "summer". In Japan, it is July.

When you think of Brazil, you have an image of summer, so if you think about how hot it is, it's not that much.

During my stay, the maximum temperature was about 23 degrees Celsius, and it rained all the time.

I heard from the Brazilian team that there is a jinx that it rains all the time when someone from Japan comes. Unfortunately, I couldn't overturn that jinx this time either.

Team Training Camp @ Sao Paulo

I'll tell you a little bit about what I was doing in Brazil.

For about two whole days, we went to the beach on the outskirts of São Paulo and had a training camp meeting with the whole team.

First of all, business updates.

From Japan, there is a business update online every month for the entire Karakul, so the Brazilian team understands the overview, but there are not many opportunities to talk about the details, so I explained the situation to each business category and asked the team questions about what they didn't understand.

And business updates from Brazil.

In Brazil, we are mainly engaged in sales of Colorkrew Biz and "OKR training" in which we consult with Goalous on OKRs to the company's management level.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a business term that refers to goals and key results. This is a goal management method that sets Objectives and Key Results to measure the degree of achievement of goals. OKRs are known as a method of clarifying the direction and tasks that companies, teams, and individuals should head. By setting up each hierarchy of companies, departments, teams, and individuals, the entire enterprise can tackle the same challenges. OKRs were born at Intel in the United States and have been adopted by well-known companies in Silicon Valley, such as Google and Facebook, and have been attracting attention in recent years.

Recently, we have been receiving more and more inquiries from Colorkrew Biz, and in order to respond to the increasing number of implementation support, CS, and management work as well as front-line sales, we are expanding our system not only internally but also outsource.

There are also requests that are different from the Japanese market, so I talked directly with them and communicated with Japan in real time to discuss what kind of support they need in the short and medium term.

Also, the Brazilian team is roughly divided into key account sales, inside sales, marketing promotion, and CS, so we discussed what KPIs each person should have in their own roles in 2024.

Another big debate is about products.

Caracle will be releasing quite a lot of products to the market in the next three months or so, and it was time to show prototypes, including those that have not yet been fully completed, and to ask questions and answer questions to get the Brazilian team to understand and get feedback from them.

Finally, there was a discussion about a new product for Brazil.

As mentioned above, in Brazil, we provide OKR training in conjunction with Goalous, and there was a request to create a product that could be sold as a package, so we discussed the details.

Before I came, I thought to some extent, "Is this what it looks like?" and took the platform with me, but when I talked to them who were actually doing business on the front lines, I realized a lot that I hadn't imagined. When I return to Japan, I would like to work on product development as soon as possible.

About Brazil

I had been acting with these five people all the time, so I didn't have time to wander around the city alone, but what I felt when I came into contact with Brazilian people around the house where I camped, in restaurants, at the airport, etc., was that Brazil is friendly anyway, and no one has a grumpy face! That's what it was.

There are many mixed races, so there is almost no discrimination against race, which seems to be a rare country in the world.

Within the team, Daniel is the boss, and I feel like that boss (me) has arrived, but the communication is completely flat, and I was able to confirm that we are able to build an even flatter relationship than Colorkrew in Japan.

On the other hand, security is never good.

I got into the passenger seat of the car, opened the window in the city, and it was immediately closed from the driver's seat. It seems that you should not open the window and run around the city.

While drinking at night, Daniel said, "The safety of Japan is insane, after all, it's okay for a drunk girl to sleep on the street!" I explained to the team.

Certainly, there may not be many countries other than Japan that are so safe. When I came to Brazil, I also felt the goodness of Japan.

Evening and return flights in Brazil

After a thorough discussion, we cook by ourselves and have dinner. What impressed me was that everyone was good at cooking!

While eating, I play Jenga every day, and if I lose, I drink a shot of Brazilian sake (cachaça). If you get too drunk, jump into the pool. I did it until after 12 o'clock every day, so I was frustrated. Laughter

The day of my return was a holiday in São Paulo. It was a night flight, so I was invited to Daniel's house. It wasn't a holiday in Brazil, so even though there were meetings in the middle, the team was all together and sent me to the airport at the end.

Return flight. I checked in early at the airport and was in a daze until boarding, but I didn't notice that the gate had changed and missed my flight to New York.

(This is about the fourth time in my life that I have missed the ride)

However, the Delta Air Lines staff arranged a flight via Atlanta, and I was able to arrive in Japan three hours earlier than the New York flight.

All human affairs are horses. No, it's not.

Please be careful when flying overseas!

That's it.