HE Javier Gonzalez Expósito and NE Izabela Filipowska
New Entrepreneur (NE):
Name & surname: Izabela Filipowska
Country: Poland
Age: 34
Sector of activity: Linguistic outdoor education
Did you already start your business? Yes
Name of business/website: Escuela de Isabela, www.escueladeisabela.com
Host Entrepreneur (HE):
Name & surname: Javier Gonzalez Expósito
Country: Spain
Sector of activity: Active tourism
Experience in running a business (in years): 7
Name of business/website: Trivity, www.trivity.es
Period of exchange: 07/09/2021 – 07/03/2021
Duration of exchange: 6 months
What did Javier gain during his exchange with Izabela?
Host entrepreneur Javier posted an announcement on his website where he informed that he is looking for a new entrepreneur. Izabela thought that she would be a good fit for this collaboration so she applied.
Izabela was looking for a company where she could learn more about outdoor education aimed at learning languages. Javier was looking for a new entrepreneur who would bring some fresh ideas to the company and help in different fields such as marketing, design etc.
During the entire program, many smaller and larger projects were implemented, in many fields, such as outdoor education, learning languages, active tourism, sustainability, and recycling. The host and new entrepreneurs worked with audiences of all ages: children, teenagers, adults and elderly people which made this exchange even more valuable.
Both Javier and Izabela benefited greatly from this program. The program gave Izabela the chance to gain valuable experience in the field of outdoor education. She gained new fresh ideas and developed her own ones such as the ‘’Learning through mindfulness’’ activity which she carried out with Erasmus students. This exchange also helped her to understand how the market for this kind of linguistic outdoor activities works in an island such as Tenerife and what she should bear in mind while planning her own business. Thanks to Javier she has learned a lot about the WordPress platform and she created her own website. She also looked after the company’s Social Media accounts to improve efficiency and quality of the publications. The end result of this exchange was the creation of a products related to the learning of the Canarian dialect.
Javier had the opportunity to receive daily support from Izabela in this multitasking job. He has learned more about communication strategies in the Social Media world and he has learned how to improve his Social Media design and how to engage his followers. He has also learned how to ask for feedback from his customers. He started to actively use tools such as a blog on the website or a story on the Instagram platform to get closer to his clients. He gained new ideas of activities for his business such as connecting active tourism with mindfulness and meditation or taking advantage of the fact that he lives on the island of Tenerife and knows the Canarian dialect inside and out so that he can incorporate it to his activities. Both Javier and Izabela would like to stay in touch and continue to work together and develop each other’s businesses.
Concluding Remarks
Izabela Filipowska (NE): “Not all classrooms have four walls. During this exchange I have discovered how much potential there is in activities in the nature and how much the nature reduces stress and helps in a learning process.”
Javier González Expósito (HE): “Always keep an open mind for changes, improvement and fresh ideas. You might actually learn something very valuable from others that may help you become an even better entrepreneur!”