Program 15.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Ralph:

Welcome to World Next American Business English! I am your host Ralph

Taps. This is program fifteen. These lessons are based on a video course
developed by paste international headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

These are the textbooks we're using in the course: Volumes One through Four.
We are now halfway through volume Two. At the end of today's program we
will give you information on how to get your room books.

In our last program we started Case Study 5. We made Brain Raul are back
and Bruce Murray, two American businessmen. Today they are telling us
about a learning curve and about how to find capital financing. We’ll also get
their advice on mentorship before we get into the case study were practice
conversational skills with the short role play. The role play is the continuation
of the conversation Bruce Murray was having with quality control men
Joanne.

You’ll get a chance to warm up first. Are you ready? Good luck!

Interact

Bruce Murray:

All we can do to end because I know only we've had some problems with our
source on these headers. So we did no order if we can't straight in this thing,
you know.

Joanne:

Ok, right now we have two thousands of these on order. They are supposed to
come in on 3-10. I can give them a call and see if by chance they can make our
due date. The problem in the past has been that they’ve cut it just a few days
over what our due date is.

Bruce Murray:

I can have some you might try on this. One times these factories respond little
better if you give them bigger orders and we have… This hasn’t been a very
big order for them and it might to come up a little bit if we can get a bigger
order after in one of them. And I just heard from consult that the other day
that there are forecasts are going up. I wouldn't be surprised if they increase
the quantities with us pretty shortly so… And that might give us the
opportunity to order more. So what you might try to do is go back to the
vendor and look and talk into about a bigger order and see if that wake them
up to.

The learning curve

Ralph:

Another you're all warmed up. I’m going to let you talk directly to Bruce
Murray.

Remember you have to speak first. Are you ready? Here we go!

Interview

Ralph:

What do you feel was most valuable from your MBA studies?

Bruce Murray:
I think the most valuable things i learned the theory of the learning curve and
this was in the production management class top by a professor that actually
been out working in industry for many years.

And apparently the origin of the learning curve to be trace back to airplane
manufacturer at the rolling company here locally at least they develop some of
the very early experience with the learning curve analysis. And what the
learning curve thirty states is that you can expect your product costs or your
time to build a product to drop as you build more and more of the product.

Raising capital

Ralph:

Did you enjoy talking to Bruce? I hope so.

Now we'll have an interview with Brian Rawback. He’s the president of
“Infometricks”, remember? He’ll talk about raising venture capital. We will be
taking turns with the interview. I’ll talk to Brian first and then it'll be your
turn. Here we go!

Interview:

Ralph:

Brian, would you give me some advice on finding venture capital money?

Brian:

What you have to do when you go into a venture capitalist is to be aware of

what they're particular needs and what they're types of investments had been
in the past. And you have to get or your presentation to those needs further
you have to do a little soul-searching to determine whether you're company
can really be fit into those needs and if it's not your wasting your time.
Ralph:

Do you include resumes of key people with the brochure?

Brian:

Yes, it is. It you would provide to a venture capitalist, series, pieces of

information on the people; the people are extremely important on the idea,
very strongly, on how you would focus that idea on the target market, how do
you fit. How do you curve out the match that is going to be yours for ever and
ever or at least until to think those public I’m a venture capitalist jumps off.

Ralph:

Assuming you have the brochure, what would the next step be?

Brian:

How would you find in the venture capitalist themselves?

Ralph:

Yes.

Brian:

Interesting. Probably, the most effective way of doing that is to go to other

people that are generally in the field and talk to them. The sounds a little like
you're concluding your competition in on what you want to do but what
happens is the people that have started successful companies don't have the
time to pursue your idea. They are pursuing theirs and there are reasonably
good sources of information and they will make the introductions and they do
it for free they are in it to take a percentage of the top.

Ralph:

Now it's your turn to do the interview remember you have to ask the first
question. Are you ready?
 Mentorship

Ralph:

I hope you didn't have any problems and you drop with Brian.

Well, I see we're almost that have time for today but before we go I want to
ask Bruce Murray if he has any personal advice to pass on to us.

Ralph:

Bruce, is there anything you which you might have had to make running your
business easier?

Bruce Murray:

One thing that I haven't had, that I wish I had, I think, the thing I have missed
the most is not having people over me that could show me want to do or set a
good example for me. We call that mentorship quite often.

Ralph:

But there's learning by doing.

Bruce Murray:

What?

Ralph:

There’s learning by doing, finding out from your an experience.

Bruce Murray:

Well, sure, being thrown in the deep is a great way to learn things but
experience can also be a very painful teacher and I think there's obviously a
proper blend between learning for oneself and learning with good guy or good
instruction.

Ralph:
So learning by doing is too efficient?

Bruce Murray:

I’m a little bit lazy. I’d for other learn watching, the other guys mistakes even
have to make them all myself. I make the enough myself as it is. I think it's
just... It is just very-very important to recognize where one can get help and
they know who the people are that can really provide wisdom for doing a job
well.

Ralph:

That was pretty good advice. Well times up for today. In our next program
sixteen, we will move on to case studies 6 “Planning for the future”.

Join us! Stay to for information on how to get your own copy of the American
Business English textbooks. Goodbye until your next time and have a nice day!