“In Brazil, we have a saying, ‘You have to kill a lion every day!’ This is a country that everything is against you, every little thing is against you.” Marcelle Bottini

Today listeners we are joined by a Brazilian entrepreneur that I am very excited to have on the show. Marcelle Bottini is the founder of FalaBrasil a Brazilian cultural and language school. Marcelle started off bootstrapping her business as a teacher and has built FalaBrasil into a full brick and mortar and online school. She has nine people on her team and created a place for foreigners to come to Rio de Janeiro, get high-quality Portuguese classes and become immersed in the culture.

Here is what is very impressive about Marcelle. Brazil isn’t a place where the entrepreneurial mentality is common and on top of that, the political infrastructure in Brazil makes it even more difficult to have a business. Marcelle created a successful business doing what she loves in a place that is very difficult to do it. After spending five months in Brazil and learning about the country.

If you asked me which countries in the world would be easiest to create a business, Brazil would be one of the last on the list. Not only that, when I met her, she informed me that she uses mediation to make all her business decisions. This school that has had hundreds of students, and hired many employees over the years was all created first while Marcelle was meditating! I imagine this has the most impact on creating a successful business in an environment that does not cater to entrepreneurs.

3:00 Where Marcelle gets the idea to start a business as a Portuguese teacher

15:37 How Marcelle used meditation to build her business

Honorable Mentions:

NLP - Neuro-linguistic Programming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

Carioca

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carioca

Social Starters

http://www.socialstarters.org/

United Nations

http://www.un.org/en/index.html

Contact Info:

http://www.falabrasilschool.com/