AP 1166: How Do I Build My Team, Expand My Brand, and Connect with More People?

AP 1166: How Do I Build My Team, Expand My Brand, and Connect with More People?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1166 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur like you. However, this entrepreneur is very unique in that they are not living where most people live and they have a very different journey than most people have had. However, still an entrepreneur at heart and still needing a little bit of help today.

And we're speaking with Arcelia from Mission Chocolate. She owns a chocolate factory. It's awesome. This conversation left me, number one, super hungry, but number two, just really excited for the future of her business because there's a lot of challenges that she's experiencing. And I want you to listen in because these are unique challenges and how we approach these, how we sort of come up with potential solutions are really, really interesting in this episode because it is a little bit of a unique situation.

I will say that Arcelia did send me some chocolate and, oh my gosh. Amazing. Seriously, MissionChocolate.com.br if you want to check it out, but let's listen in. Here she is.

Arcelia, welcome to AskPat. How are you today?

Arcelia Gallardo:
I'm good, thanks.

Pat:
Really excited to chat with you. I'd love for you to, first, help us out and let us know a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do.

Arcelia:
Of course. So I am American, I was born in California, but I am now living in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and I have a chocolate factory that's the number one chocolate factory in Brazil. It's the most awarded chocolate brand in this tiny country.

Pat:
You have a chocolate factory? Oh my gosh. Okay. I want to go into a different place in this conversation and I also want to go to your chocolate factory, but we'll talk about that later. But that's so cool. In Brazil? You moved over there, and there's obviously cacao beans and all this stuff that's very native and that's probably why it's amazing. Keep going. Sorry. I just got really excited.

Arcelia:
Yeah, yeah. No, we can talk about everything that you want. So I've been in Sao Paulo, Brazil for five years now and I'm making chocolate here, but, well, I was going to go into my question for you, but I'm not. I'm going to backtrack. So I've been in the chocolate industry for about 18 years now. I first started off as a chocolatier. So working making pastries, desserts, and I opened a store in Berkeley, California, and I started working with chocolate, but then I realized that I really want it to be a little bit closer to the source. The US doesn't have cocoa, cacao, and Brazil is the largest country that produces good quality cocoa. So I decided to move here. I didn't speak Portuguese. I didn't know anyone here. I'd never been to Brazil. And so I sold my store in Berkeley and I moved to Brazil. So now I'm here making chocolate, I teach chocolate-making classes, I teach a lot of tastings, and my entire life is all about chocolate.

Pat:
You're living the dream, it seems. That is awesome. It seems quite a bit risky to have just kind of left the store in Berkeley. By the way I went to school up in Berkeley. I don't know - how many years ago was that when you moved out of there?

Arcelia:
I moved out of there in 2014.

Pat:
2014. Okay. So what was the name of your store there?

Arcelia:
It's Casa de Chocolates. So house of chocolates on Ashby and College, I think it was there though after you left.

Pat:
Yeah, I think - I was going to say, I don't remember it, but I know exactly where Ashby and College is. That's incredible.

So you go to Brazil, you open up this chocolate factory and sort of just kind of blow it out of the water now, and you're doing all this great stuff. First of all, wonderful example of just you internally in your gut, knowing that this is what you wanted and chasing your dream, even though it was probably very scary. I'd love to know how long did it take for you to get accustomed to the culture and the language and whatnot? Was that a tough thing or did it kind of happen?

Arcelia:
Yeah, no. I mean, it's definitely tough. I mean, I don't think anything we're doing is easy, right? So definitely tough when I moved here. I speak Spanish, but when I moved here, Portuguese just makes your head hurt for a whole year because it sounds like drunk Spanish. So you're just trying to figure it out in your head. And it takes me about a year for your head not to hurt when you listen to people speak Portuguese, and they speak quickly. And so it took me about a year to kind of get settled into the country. I watched a lot of TV, a lot of shows on restaurants and food, and so the first language that I picked up was really culinary language in Portuguese. So I was able to navigate really quickly to the gourmet scene, the food scene, and then it was easier to get into normal day things after that. So I would say about one to two years, you get acclimated.

Pat:
Incredible. And what's the name of your store there now?

Arcelia:
My factory now here is called Mission Chocolate.

Pat:
Mission Chocolate. Are you available online in case anybody's curious and wants to find something?

Arcelia:
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I have my website, MissionChocolate.com. I have a recipe website, that's MissionChocolateRecipes.com. And you guys can find me anywhere on social media, under Mission Chocolate.

Pat:
So what are the challenges? What can I help you with today?

Arcelia:
Okay. So this is my question for you, is I've traveled through all Latin America, teaching chocolate and learning about chocolate. So I have a lot of friends, followers, business contacts that are Spanish speakers. My native language is English, and I do sell a lot in the US, and I write all my blog posts in English, so I have some readers in the UK, Australia, but my store that sells chocolate only sells in Brazil. So that's Portuguese and so I'm having a lot of trouble navigating, and I'm small business, I'm having a lot of trouble navigating all of my platforms, right? So my Instagram, should it be English, Portuguese, or Spanish, or all three? Should I have three Instagrams, or should I do one post in three languages? And so this goes for all my platforms, right? My website, my blog, the newsletter, what do I do? Because I'm not big enough to have one person dedicated to each platform in a different language because I do it all myself. So how does that happen for other people?

Pat:
Yeah, well, I'm actually on your website right now, MissionChocolate.com.br. And it did prompt me to translate the website into English. And as I translated, there are many things that are now translated properly. And there's also a few things like a lot of images and such that are, that are not translated. But for me, if I was to, or excuse me, when I purchase something, I think that I'd probably be able to navigate this in a way. But as far as social media is concerned, I know a few people who are bilingual who do indeed put both Spanish and English in the same post. I think it makes complete sense to have that if it's something that you feel - nd you can even test this, right? You can try it out, test it out for a while to see how people respond to it.

I think people will understand and do appreciate it. It's not like anybody ever complains about an Instagram post being way too long. So you would then have room on there to just have the one spot, because as soon as you start adding multiple platforms and multiple accounts, I mean, you could probably have an idea of what's going to happen. It's just a lot more to manage, especially as a small business owner, having three accounts seems kind of overwhelming. I mean, maybe two, but ideally you would just want to have one spot. The only way that I think it would work, if you had other accounts and wanted to go kind of like, duplicate what you're doing but in a different language entirely, would actually be to have another person on board on your team specifically to manage that. That is their job, is to take everything you are doing on the main website and doing it in English and starting with just the one other language first and then maybe branching out to others later.

And that way it is in fact like... Because there are websites where you go to the dot-com version, but then there's the dot India version, and it is basically a duplicate, but it's not just an easy click, Google translate situation. It's actually somebody there who is taking everything that you're doing, knows the plan, and is executing it similarly on the other side. As far as the ecommerce is concerned, that's something that I'm not a hundred percent sure about, but I would guarantee that things like Stripe - and I don't know what other payment platforms you're using online, Shopify, for example, I'm sure that they would be able to make it easy for a customer, no matter where in the world they're at to see their dollar value in their home country when they land on that page, because it's all based on location and IP addresses and such.

So I'm sure those tools have solutions for that, whether it's built in or a plug-in at least so that if you do have two pages, they would be going to the same checkout process and have language and or processes to process those payments no matter where they're coming from. But if I were to ask you, where would you want to start? So you have everything in Portuguese right now. What would be the next language that you'd want to sort of tackle and start first? Because I think starting with one and just kind of seeing how that goes is going to be something that's going to give you the way to figure out how to do this across many languages later.

Arcelia:
Right. So what sustains this factory in South Paulo is Brazilian purchases made in Brazil. And so I've recently just started doing it in Portuguese. So really it was all English, but once we started selling more in Brazil, we switched to putting Portuguese in the front and then English. So really it's a matter of toggling between English and Portuguese, but I don't want to leave the Spanish speakers behind as well. Portuguese would be definitely the most important other language.

Pat:
Okay. Yeah. I mean, once you start to get three in there, it definitely starts to get a little confusing, right? I mean, two makes sense to have on the same platform. Three, however, that again is a whole 'nother, almost business, it seems. And it would require another person, I would imagine, to manage and tackle that because if you're doing a third website - I mean, you also have to teach these chocolate classes, you also have to manage the factory and your team there. To me, in my opinion, and maybe people who are listening can correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it would not be possible if it weren't for somebody else to come on to sort of take on that role and responsibility. And it could be somebody who works there now who maybe is bilingual and is able to sort of take on this work and sort of do that on the side and build that out as you are still able to do what it is you're doing, but it's going to be very difficult for you to do that all on your own.

Arcelia:
Right. So let me ask you a question. If you're following whoever on Instagram, would it be better for you to see one post, and then you open it and there's options for languages, or would it bother you if you saw a Japanese post, and then a Spanish post, and then an English post, 'cause now you're seeing posts that are not in a language you can read.

Pat:
I mean, I think that my thoughts are the same as yours, which is, if it's at all inconvenient and I have to like, do extra work to get what I want or to read something in the way that I want to read it, it is going to affect the journey. It's going to affect the experience, for sure. So on social media, it wouldn't bother me because I'm still in the same spot, right? I'm still on your one Instagram page. And I see the two languages, and it's not a big deal to see both and just not read the other. However, on a website or during a checkout experience, that's when it really matters. And there are, I would imagine, solutions where if I go to your website - this is a little bit more technical, probably a little bit more advanced, but I'm sure this happens because you're not the first person in the world to have a business that is worldwide, right?

So, potentially seeing other businesses and how they do it would be really interesting to see how they solve this problem because this is a problem that I've not dealt with personally. So I'm trying to think outside the box here, but I guarantee you're not the first one. And I would imagine that there's either plug-ins or something that you could do on a website where when a person goes to the website, the first thing that pops up is, choose your language. And that's the only thing that they have to worry about, and any time that point forward, everything is sort of cool after that. And that's a very simple way to sort of filter and get people to the right place or have the page translated correctly for that person. So research on solutions like that would actually be very interesting, I think.

Arcelia:
Yeah. And what are your thoughts on newsletters? I would love to write one newsletter.

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, that's, again, that would be solved if there was a person who could translate and then send to a specific segment on your email list. And again, that would take it out of your brain and into somebody else's. Obviously, for a newsletter, clicking a button to translate probably wouldn't ever translate a hundred percent perfect each time, and that would obviously affect the experience, and it would feel maybe a little disconnected. Because you want to connect with your customers, especially people who have given you their precious email. You want them to feel like you're talking to them and if you just have a translation, it's not going to... A copy-paste from Google translate is not going to translate in a way that you want it to, right? Especially with different cultural aspects and things too kind of being in there.

So here's a potential solution, is you have the main newsletter for your primary language and then you have the other newsletter, and you only send them something once a month versus once a week for the others. And that way you do have a little bit of room to craft something that's maybe more newslettery, but not as often as the other one. And maybe that's sort of at least an interim solution that would give you the opportunity to still connect with them, but just not as often and not take as much time.

Arcelia:
Okay. That's a good point.

Pat:
These are cool challenges though. These are good problems to have. The fact that you have people from all around the world who want your stuff and who want to connect with you. That's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.

Arcelia:
Right. And now one question on, I have a blog recipe website, where it's mostly in English because it's easier and faster for me to do it, and then I've translated the most popular posts, which is how to make chocolate into Portuguese, but I have them on the same website, right? So it's like one post in English and one post in Portuguese. Does this make sense or should I maybe have two different recipe sites in two different languages?

Pat:
I would have a second recipe site if, and only if, you would be able to dedicate the same amount of time to what you dedicate to the other. Right? And I would imagine that that's going to be very difficult, right? Because you don't want just to have it be like it's just there and people who end up there don't feel like you're present and they're not getting the same attention. So I think having them both on the same website is okay, and at the top of the blog post or somewhere near the top, you say, "Hey, by the way, this is also available in Portuguese, click here." And on the Portuguese one, "This is also available in English, click here." And I would do that for all your most popular recipes. I wouldn't necessarily go all blog posts in English should be all also in Portuguese. Just choose the ones that are the most popular, because those are the ones that you've been able to filter from the English versions to go, okay, these are worth the amount of time that it's going to take to translate and put into the Portuguese version. Let's not even worry about the other ones.

Arcelia:
Good idea.

Pat:
Yeah. So do you do factory tours and stuff?

Arcelia:
Yes. I do. Yeah. So, right. So the whole idea of having a factory is to really get people in here to show them how chocolate is made. I'm not sure what kind of chocolate you eat, but most of the world doesn't really know what chocolate is, how it's made, where it comes from. And so I belong to a movement that's called Bean-to-Bar, which actually, you would be happy to know, was born in Berkeley with Scharffen Berger Chocolate.

Pat:
That's so cool. Yeah. I took a Scharffen Berger factory tour with my ex-girlfriend way back in the day. And I still remember, vividly, the taste of that chocolate and the people I met there. It was so awesome.

Arcelia:
Yeah, and the smell, right? It smells like chocolate, it tastes like chocolate. And so they started this movement that we call Bean-to-Bar. And so it's just a movement of bringing it back to real chocolate, of starting with cocoa beans and transforming it to a chocolate bar. And so, one of the ideas within our movement, is exactly that. It's having people come in to our factory. We show them exactly what we do, what all of the ingredients are, all the raw materials, and how it gets transformed into a delicious chocolate bar. So we do chocolate tastings, we do chocolate classes, mostly online at the moment and yeah, and we show people exactly how we make chocolate.

Pat:
That's amazing. That's so cool. Does that movement have a website where people who are interested in that can go?

Arcelia:
If you just want to Google Bean-to-Bar chocolate, you'll get hundreds of replies on what it is, where to find it locally near you. I think you're in San Diego, California? I don't think there's anyone making chocolate there. The closest place to you would probably be in Los Angeles. But it's all the same concept. And obviously you can get, anywhere online, this amazing chocolate.

Pat:
That's so cool.

Arcelia:
Can I ask you what chocolate you eat?

Pat:
Yeah. It's usually dark chocolate, that I have. And it's from a - there's a store here in San Diego called Jimbo's, which is all organic, all natural and stuff. So it's always, somebody handcrafted that and I can't stand, no offense to anybody, but Hershey's just tastes way too sweet for me. All those sort of processed stuff that you get at the grocery store, it's just too sweet. I have developed a little bit of a palette for fine chocolate over the years, which is good.

Arcelia:
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. You're in California, it's a really great place for chocolate. There's Ghirardelli, and there's Guittard, there's so many. There's Dandelion chocolate, TCHO chocolate... in Berkeley. So you have a lot of great options there.

Pat:
Cool. Well now I'm hungry. So I'm going to go to Jimbo's later to pick up some chocolate for the family for this weekend. So thank you, Arcelia. This has been really great. Did I help you answer most of the questions that you had about kind of what to do? And again, a lot of this stuff I've personally just never had experience with before, but I think researching and finding other companies in different spaces and I think... What are you using for ecommerce right now? Are you using Shopify or something else?

Arcelia:
Yeah, I am using Shopify, and I think what you've helped me the most with is really to explore those plug-ins. I think that we live in such a modern times that I really hadn't put too much effort into plug-ins. I honestly just kept thinking another human, another human, another human, which I don't think I have to do yet. So you mentioned the word plug-ins a few times. I think that's exactly where I'm going to head next, is trying to see where I can get plug-ins to easily do the work for me, meanwhile I figure out, or add other people to the team.

Pat:
Cool. And Shopify obviously is the most popular ecommerce platform. There's got to be other people like you who have done this already, who you can learn from, there's probably forums and a lot of people having conversations about it already. So that's where I would go.

Arcelia:
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. That's perfect.

Pat:
Very cool. One more time, where can people go to devour your delicious chocolate?

Arcelia:
So in the United States, you can go to BarandCoco.com. She sells my chocolates out of Denver. And then if you want to learn more about chocolate, definitely my recipe blog, which is MissionChocolateRecipes.com. And if you just want to see what kind of things I do, it's MissionChocolate.com.

Pat:
Cool. Thank you so much, Arcelia. We appreciate you.

Arcelia:
Thank you, Pat.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Arcelia. Some challenges related to multi-lingual, to reaching other parts of the world, et cetera. But I got to tell you again, I just have to say, this chocolate was absolutely incredible. And my wife and I, we love our chocolate. We love our legit chocolate. And this is legit. I mean, we devoured it in probably a couple of days. I don't even know if we shared it with the kids because it was just too good. No, we probably shared.

But anyway, Arcelia, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing and for being vulnerable and telling us a little bit about some of the challenges so that we can understand how we can potentially approach our own challenges too. And it's not always easy, but you continue to fight through it, that perseverance and grit is so, so key. And obviously you have that within you or else you wouldn't be where you're at today. And again, I'm so grateful for the gift that you sent. And if anybody wants to check out her chocolate MissionChocolate.com.br, you can check it out from there. So anyway, thank you so much, Arcelia.

And I'm looking forward to potentially chatting with you too, the listener. If you want to get coached on the show just like Arcelia did, you might be able to, if you go to AskOat.com, find the application button, and then you can go from there, and I might reach out to you in the future, and we can work together. And again, I'm just so grateful because there has been so many amazing episodes here and we wouldn't have episodes if it weren't for you. AskPat without anybody asking is just Pat, and this isn't about me.

So thank you so much. Thanks for all the reviews, by the way, too. They've been incredibly generous and I'm just so thankful because it helps other people who discovered the show realize that there's some great stuff here, and I hope you feel there's great stuff here too. So thank you so much. I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Make sure you hit that subscribe button, take care, and as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace out.