-THE BIG MOVE- from Belgium to Panama.

STATUS UPDATE:

During the past few months, I’ve been taking a break from social media, to focus on what’s important. Adjusting to my new life in Panama, focus on setting my business up here, with a new website ready to release.

— Getting ready to move out of Belgium

On a personal level, I’m doing very well. (Just got married to the love of my life, Mounir. And feeling blessed I got to move with “mi marido” to Panama. We both dreamed of living abroad and feel very fortunate we are making our dream come true. I would highly recommend everyone who dreams of living abroad, to at least try it in this lifetime. You can never prepare yourself enough (our departure to Latin America got delayed by several weeks, with no roof over our heads due to renting our house out, what a mess). But it’s definitely worth it if you are open to adventure, something new, and have a flexible mentality in life.

— Starting a coffee business in a country of origin

Professionally I feel excited, challenged and a little scared I must admit. Leaving a successful business behind after 10 years, to practically start all over again, isn’t that straightforward. I was fortunate to have a big professional network back in Belgium, and so many referrals, I didn’t need to search for clients, do cold calls, or make a big marketing effort,… It wasn’t always peaches and cream, the first 4 years of my business in Belgium were a struggle, but the last 6 years were filled with lots of clients, positive cashflow,.. and moments of being overworked due to too many clients, which I always considered a luxury as an entrepreneur.

So I’m back to the drawing board, adjusting my business model to the Panamanian market and learning on the way. It’s an exercise in getting out of my comfort zone, and any challenge I overcome, just makes me a stronger person.

Coffee farm “Finca La Calera” @ Ciudad Bolivar, Colombia

— Our inspiring time in Colombia’s Coffee scene

Before we arrived in Panama, my husband and I spent a few months in Colombia to decompress and just take some time to explore and adjust to our new surroundings. We were very fortunate to meet a lot of welcoming Colombians and a fellow female entrepreneur from Belgium, Ilse Geyskens, who has a coffee bar and roastery in Medellin Colombia and (a roastery & bar) in Brussels Belgium.

I took the opportunity to interview Ilse from Cafe Velvet while she was in Medellin. My next post will be the interview in short, where I ask her about her start in the Specialty Coffee business… and how she ended up opening a Specialty coffee bar in Medellin in 2014. I have a lot of respect for Ilse, that she started a business on the other side of the world, in a developing country, in a foreign language with a different culture than the one we’re used to in Europe. Because my ambitions are quite similar (starting a business in a country very different from the environment I grew up in), I had to grab the opportunity to interview Ilse, which she gladly accepted.

During the interview, I also focused my questioning on the topic of Specialty Coffee education being accessible in Colombia, and how this translates for her to find trained baristas.

— Publication in Standart magazine (issue 31)

This topic; making specialty coffee accessible to everyone, and in particular for aspiring baristas in coffee-producing countries, is something that interests me on a personal level. You can find in this month’s issue of “Standart coffee magazine” a small section called Shout Out where I write about my frustrations around this topic.

Writing this article for Standart was really fun and something new for me. I had a childhood aspiration to become a journalist, but due to many other interests in life, I chose a different path of art, music… and coffee. So this Standart assignment triggered the investigative journalist in me, and I started interviewing coffee industry experts in Colombia and was fortunate that the right people surrounded me. They gave me the opportunity to visit SENA, a Colombian school institute dedicated to offering free education across different industries, in collaboration with the Colombian government and companies. This is another post coming up, where I discuss my visit to one of the SENA schools in more detail.

🖤 So stay tuned for more interesting interviews and photo reportages. Sign up for our newsletter down below to receive notifications directly in your mailbox.

Would you like to read more personal blog posts like this? Did you also experience a big (coffee) adventure recently? Let us know in the comment section below.

You can never prepare yourself enough for a move to a foreign country. But if you are open to adventure, something new, and have a flexible mentality in life, it’s definitely worth it.

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