ACE Mexico 2011

AGI Update

2011-05-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

A quick update on the team I've been following: Monday night they had returned from their sales activity with 1236 pesos (they were in first place). Monday night we introduced a contest where the team that had the biggest percentage sales increase the next day (Mother's Day) would get a prize of 1000 pesos. Instead of their normal half day, the teams were given pretty much all day yesterday to go out and sell, and we counted their money at the end of the day. The team I've been following came back with 2281 pesos, which amounted to a 59% increase from their previous net worth (we also counted inventory in the original number - for anyone who's checking the math...). Their increase was great, but another team managed to get a 211% increase from 779 to 2424 pesos. Overall, the teams managed to get a total of 50% increase just from one day of sales - not too bad, considering they all started with less than a sheet of paper.

This team (Alfiles) created signs to advertise, and used a wheelbarrow to be able to carry around more inventory so they wouldn't have to return to the Academy as often.

Teotihuacan

2011-05-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (May 10th) was Mother's Day here in Mexico, so the students took advantage of the day to go out and make more sales for their AGI activity. We decided that with all the students gone, and most of our cases being written, to take a trip to see the pyramids at Teotihuacan. This was a very cool place, and it took a full 3 hours just to see everything. All of these pictures are from my camera, so I'm the main subject in the photos - I'll let Ben and Nate post their pictures so their families can see them as well.

I'm standing in front of the Pyramid of the Sun.

Eduardo, Ben and Nate climbing the stairs to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

This shot didn't quite snap in time, but all three of them were taking pictures in the same stance.

Ben Dana, Eduardo Zanetta, Nate Lunt, Brent Jacobsen

On top of the Pyramid of the Sun. You can see the Pyramid of the Moon behind us.

Nate and Ben. Nate's showing his MBA powers.

Pyramid of the Moon (shot from the Pyramid of the Sun)

Standing in front of the Sun Pyramid.

Standing on the Avenue of the Dead. The Moon Pyramid is in the background.

An original Jaguar painting.

A pretty cool carved head.

Standing in front of the Moon Pyramid.

Quetzalcoatl's Pyramid.

Some of the very few detailed carvings left. These are kind of hidden behind Quetzalcoatl's Pyramid.

More carvings.

And more carvings.

My "Foakleys" - I looked all over to buy these, and only found one pair.

A view of the Moon Pyramid (left) and the Sun Pyramid (right).

Same shot, just with a pretty face added...

A shot of the Moon Pyramid from the top of the Sun Pyramid.

Some Cool Experiences Yesterday

2011-05-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

One of the principle aims of the Academy for Creating Enterprise is to help students overcome what they refer to as the "Culture of Poverty." The basic premise is that most of the people are poor not because they want to be, but because they were raised in (and live in) a culture where the societal norms go against the practices and beliefs that allow success and financial prosperity. Overcoming those cultural beliefs is the first challenge that the Academy faces, and the first week is spent mostly teaching the students to believe in a culture of success.

In order to keep this post relatively short, I'll just say that the students had some great (very emotional) breakthroughs yesterday that were very cool to be able to see. One thing that Nate, Ben and I did that hadn't been done previously at the Academy was to have a movie night last night. To go along with the rather emotional day, we decided to show Pursuit of Happyness.

This is one of my favorite movies, and having passed through a lot of similar circumstances to Chris Gardner myself, and listening to some of the challenges some of the students are currently going through, it was a great way to end a really great day.

Teaching Income Statements in a Foreign Language and an Update on Industrial Maqdec

2011-05-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Income Statement day. The Academy teaches a very basic 10-step income statement to the students. Most micro-enterprise owners don't even keep records, and the difference between Gross Sales and Net Profits is a totally foreign concept. The majority of the small business owners in Mexico (and a lot in the US as well...) figure that whatever is in their cash register at the end of the day is profit and can be spent.

Jeremi taught the concept of separate entities earlier in the day, so we had to field a few follow-up questions, but the lessons seemed to go pretty well.

Nate teaching the steps.

I'm answering a follow-up question.

Talking over each other...three teachers can make the lesson a little difficult (although, it also allows us to make sure we understand and answer the questions thoroughly).

Not sure what I'm pointing at here...

Students love to stand up when they're speaking - I don't know why, but it seems to be even more prevalent among the students that sit in the back of the classroom.

This is a lunch we had with Samuel Ahuacatitan - the owner of Industrial Maqdec. He followed up with Pemex, and they asked him to bid 8 oil pump systems with generators and oil tanks. The oil pumps are used to recover oil from "stripper wells" or "marginal wells." He is asking if one (or all) of us would be willing to accompany him to the meeting. It appears that he is even willing to have us fly back to go to the meeting with him. One of the reasons I took this picture was because this meeting was a lunch meeting, and our "dessert" was these suckers. I just found the image of a bunch of executives sucking on lollipops during a business meeting to be rather amusing, so I just had to snap a picture.

Buying Coke in a 3 Liter bottle makes Nate 3 times as happy!!

A Trip to the LDS Temple in Mexico City

2011-05-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

So, it's Saturday, and the students are out doing sales all day, so we decided to take a trip into the city to go to the temple. It's only about 7 miles from the Academy, but that makes for about an hour ride in a taxi in a city with over 20 million people.

The three MBAs - or as we're called at the Academy - Los Tres Amigos.

A shot of just me.

Us and Eduardo Zanatta - a BYU undergrad originally from Brazil.

All of the interns from the Academy. Ashley and Calvin Skinner are a newlywed couple that will be here until August.

Another shot of me.

Another view showing the fountains.

Eduardo and the Skinners.

The Mexico City Visitor's Center.

This post shows where the ground level used to be. The post is driven all the way down to bedrock, and so it doesn't move, but the ground around it does. Mexico City is built on an old lake bed and is sinking - from the post, it looks like about 2-4 inches per year.

The architecture of both the temple and the visitor's center follow a lot of the ancient Aztec architecture. The building behind me is the visitor's center.

This is about two blocks away from the temple. "La Tienda Prometida" translates as "The Promised Store." For those unfamiliar with LDS culture, this is a play on a story from the Book of Mormon, where a group of people travel to "The Promised Land" (La Tierra Prometida). It's pretty obvious who their target demographic is.

Lunch at Burger King. Ashley is taking the picture, and we're joined by Marvin and Janet - two employees of the Academy who are engaged.

AGI - Day 3

2011-05-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

Update on Day 3 of the Revenue Generating Activities.

One of the teams decided to add some value to their products by using different candies to create a bundled product. I'll have to follow up with them to see how they sold.

The team I've been following decided to get on a bus yesterday and go to a new place. They specifically went to a candy store where they could purchase at wholesale prices, and they asked what was the best selling product. These chocolate nut candies were the best selling product, so they decided to sell those.

They ended the day with about 500 pesos.

Reciclados Roce - Eloy Rodriguez Tovar

2011-05-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

After spending about an hour by the side of the road with our broken down car, we got back on the road, and headed to the area of Conejos and Tula in the state of Hidalgo. We went to visit Eloy's plastic granulating (this is the official term - it's basically plastic grinding/shredding) business.

Eloy bought the machine to do this business about a year ago for 130,000 pesos. He needs to produce 7-8 tons per week in order to break even, but his guys are only producing 3-4 per week. This means that he has to put an extra 25-30,000 pesos per month to keep the business alive. He is a computer programmer by trade, but wanted a business, so that's the reason he invested. He lives in Mexico City, and his business is from 1-2 hours away depending on the traffic. He is really not sure what to do, so he was pretty excited to get our feedback.

The outside of the property.

A very large bag of plastic.

There are two types of plastic they process - PET and HDP. This is an unprocessed pile of HDP plastic.

This is one of his managers (and his son). You can also see the truck they use to go get the plastic from the landfills.

This is their trailer that is also used to get plastic. You'll notice that there is nothing going on here. We arrived, and there were 3 people sitting there doing nothing.

This is the granulator.

A bad picture that was supposed to show the inside of the machine.

Another shot of the machine.

This is what the finished product looks like.

This is the tool storage trailer/shed.

They're taking the machine apart to show us the blades it uses.

Here you can see the blades (and that they recently did a load of green plastic).

The bottom is sort of a cheese-grater-like plate.

Nate with one of the bags they use to transport the unprocessed plastic.

A full bag.

The following photos were provided by Eloy:

This is what the business should look like (not empty).

The machine in action.

The processed chips are put into these bags - about 35 bags is equal to a ton.

You'll see in the video below, but this can be a very dangerous job.

A stack of finished product.

A few pretty cool videos of Eloy's recycling business that he provided.

Here's another video showing the process.

An Interesting Day

2011-05-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Like the title says, today was a pretty interesting day. We traveled to the city of Conejos in the state of Hidalgo (about 2 hours by car) to visit a business.

We passed this pretty cool statue.

The car broke down.

We were by the side of the road for about an hour waiting for our driver's wife to bring their other car and for the tow-truck to arrive.

We made it to the business, but I'll post those photos in a separate post.

We ate lunch at Eloy's (the business owner) mom's house. It was spaghetti noodles with Mexican creme as the sauce and refried beans. There was also a mystery stew that only Nate was brave enough to try - we'll see how he feels a little later tonight.

A better view of the statue that I took during our return trip.

A slightly better photo...the graininess isn't the camera - it's the air. I feel like I've smoked a couple packs of cigarettes today from being out on the highways (with no air conditioning, so the windows were open to not die of heat).

Day 2: AGIs

2011-05-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

An update on day 2 of the Income Generating Activity.

This is the group that I went out with yesterday. They learned last night that it's a good sales technique to sell 3 things for one price in bundle style, so they did the same thing today, only with chocolates.

They came away today with over 200 pesos. They even did this in less than 4 hours, because their supplier closed at 7:30, so they ran out of things to sell 1 hour before the activity ended - another great lesson learned.

Another group counting their daily sales.

A Fun Lunch

2011-05-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

Eduardo Zanatta, Brent Jacobsen, Jeremi Brewer, Nate Lunt, Ben Dana

This is a small restaurant about a block away from the Academy. Lunch was delicious, and we fed the 5 of us (to beyond full) for less than $18 - how awesome is Mexico!?!

Income Generating Activities (Actividades que Generan Ingresos AGI)

2011-05-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a long post, but it's a pretty cool one. One of the activities that the Academy does to teach salesmanship, confidence, and creativity is an activity where the students are divided into groups, given an object with very little value (if any) and told to go out and make money. For this generation of students, each group was given 1/4 of a piece of 8x11 copy paper. Each group left the campus at 4:30 pm and had until 8:30 pm to earn as much as possible from their piece of paper. The rules were that they had to make 5 trades before they could sell anything, and that each person in the group had to do a trade before anyone could make a second trade. One more rule was that the MBAs (me, Ben and Nate) couldn't help, and they couldn't use their own money in any way.

Yesterday, I was assigned to go out with one of the groups and document their experience. The following is a photo journal of their journey from a piece of paper worth less than a peso to about 90 pesos.

Here the group is strategizing.

They decided to make a little paper box out of part of the paper, and use the tiny piece that was leftover to write a little saying on that they could sell. (The interesting thing is they weren't able to ever trade or sell the box...)

This is the leftover piece of paper.

Their first trade attempt - they almost got it, but put too much pressure on the girls.

They ended up splitting the leftover piece of paper into 4 pieces (ending up in pieces less than 1 square inch).

Here's one of the guys inside a paper store trying to trade the paper box.

You can't see him very well, but here Gabriel (with glasses, facing this way) is trying to trade one of those tiny squares of paper. He succeeded, and ended up with a little bracelet.

Gabriel at it again, but without success this time.

They were able to trade the bracelet for a pink baseball cap.

Another unsuccessful trade attempt.

More strategizing.

Yet another unsuccessful attempt.

And another...

They were able to trade the hat for a bag of chips here.

The bag of potato chips.

Here is one of the students really working his magic.

He traded the bag of chips for two packages of cupcakes/muffins (mantecadas).

This is a mobile locksmith.

He traded the mantecadas for a keychain (with the name Erick).

Trying to trade the keychain.

I think he managed to sell the keychain here.

Nefi traded the mantecadas for a cheese slicer.

Another unsuccessful attempt to sell the cheese slicer.

They wanted something they could easily resell, so they went to a florist.

They had to work hard to convince this guy to trade them flowers for the cheese slicer, but they made their case.

The trade.

Demonstrating the end use of the product...

Gabriel had traded for this health calendar (Jenni will like that it was a Splenda calendar...) and here he is trying to sell or trade it - Gabriel was a force to contend with - he had no fear of trying to sell to anyone.

Trying to sell the flowers.

Trying to sell in the street.

Maybe another face would work...

Gabriel had traded his calendar for a stick of deodorant, and he was trying to get rid of it for over an hour.

He never lost faith...

The money from the sale of the flower.

With their money, they decided to buy something small they could easily resell and make a good profit. Candy seemed like a good idea, so they negotiated with the candy store to get a good deal.

These are mango candies (with chili powder).

Gabriel ended up selling his deodorant for 20 pesos.

Here's Nefi selling candy to the taxi drivers at a stoplight.

We all ended the day tired, but like I said at the beginning of the post, they started with almost nothing, and had 90 pesos by the end of the day. Today they went out again, and I will post their earnings in another post.

Dekor Clean - Samuel Teoyotl

2011-05-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

Samuel is a great example of a recent graduate on fire. Samuel ran his business for 10 years doing everything himself before entering the academy. Since graduating from the academy he has come up with some innovative ideas.

Here is Dekor Clean world headquarters. They clean carpets, furniture, curtains. They also reupholster furniture and sell window treatments. Samuel converted the front of his home along the street into two new storefronts he rents out for additional income.

Here is Samuel in his workshop. This area used to be dirt with Chickens and he converted it to gain more workspace.

Samuel now outsources most of the reupholstering because he can still make a nice profit and focus on his core business.

Another great innovation- Samuel wanted to expand to another city so he found another graduate of the academy who lived in that city and got permission to install a phone line in his home. Now he has several phone #'s that residents recognize as local that all ring to his office.

Samuel is bidding on a contract with a large client. After meeting with the client for the first time, he waited an hour after the meeting to speak to the head janitor of the building to get a carpet sample. He then used the sample to test 16 different cleaning product combinations to see which worked best for their carpet.

These are just a few of the ideas that Samuel has implemented since gaining a greater vision of what his business could be. He has grown very quickly to 3 trucks and 8 additional employees to keep up with all the new business.

ServiNet - Enrique Ahumada

2011-05-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty cool story. After attending the Academy for Creating Enterprise in Mexico City, Enrique Ahumada returned to Tlaxcala with the entrepreneur bug. He had been working at a business providing computer services, but after he got home, he decided he was going to open his own business. He got a lease in a great location in downtown Tlaxcala, and is opening officially today. The coolest thing is that he has a leas e for 2,000 pesos a month and he was able to do 2,600 pesos worth of sales before he even opened the doors.

Enrique's space. He is the one in the green shirt and black tie.

He was able to get a friend to loan him some inventory and the furniture to equip the store, so he got started for almost no money down.

The banner went up today officially.

ServiNet is going to have a small internet cafe as part of the business. The three computers against the wall are for the internet cafe.

Another view of the business facing out towards the street. The business is located right in the heart of Tlaxcala's downtown area.

Mauricio

2011-05-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

This is Mauricio. Jeremi and I conducted an entrance interview with him Saturday night. He lives with his younger brother in Mexico City. They support themselves by selling popsicles in the streets everyday. His mom died a few years ago while he was away and before he moved back his dad had married another woman and moved away. Jeremi accepted him into the Academy along with his younger brother. They arrived today at the Academy with hopes that what they learn will help them provide a good living in the future. By the time they leave in six weeks they will have the tools to build a business that can provide not only for themselves, but also their future employees. When they apply the lessons taught they will be working for their future, not just for their daily needs.

Blancos Naomi

2011-05-02T12:40:00.001-07:00

The father of this family sold his car and took six weeks off from his family and his business in order to attend the Academy. He had been back for five days when we visited him at his business. Since he had returned he has put into practice multiple lessons learned while at the Academy and for the first time in ten years he knew how much profit he was making on a daily basis. He has began to up sell his current clients embroidery services, and has begun the process of expanding his client base. His vision of what his company can become has increased greatly and he is on his way to making it happen for his beautiful family. I asked him how long it will take to purchase himself a replacement vehicle and he told me that he will have one within twelve months. Amazing sacrifice!

This is a picture of his two best selling products. He sells hospital clothing and sheets to both hospitals and hotels.

This is the first order that he completed after graduating from the Academy. A large order of sheets to a nearby hotel.

Grupo GM - Jesus Gonzalez

2011-05-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

This is Jesus Gonzalez. He is the owner of Grupo GM. He is a serial entrepreneur and is involved in a ton of different businesses. We have pictures of some of them, but here's a comprehensive list: Laundromat, Commercial Cleaning Business (carpets, upholstery, tile, etc.), Cleaning Supplies Business, Bus Maintenance Company (he is slowly getting out of this business). He is in the process of starting: an Executive Transport business (he bought the van for this), a dry cleaning business, and a convenience store (like a 7-11).

A picture of his home on the second floor and the laundromat.

He has all three sections of this building - the Laundromat on the left, the Cleaning Business in the middle, and the Cleaning Supplies Business on the right (this doesn't have a sign on the space).

Jesus and his wife. She runs the laundromat.

Another shot of the laundromat - this is actually a full-service laundry business, where you drop off your clothes and they wash them for you, so laundromat may not be the proper word.

Jesus showing us his equipment for the cleaning business.

The Cleaning Supplies business.

This is an example of the collaboration that occurs through the Alumni Chapters of the Academy. Here Jesus is answering questions some of the other chapter members are asking him about his business.

Can you translate the sign?

Gamaliel Martinez - Searching for a Business Idea

2011-05-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

Ben and I met Gamaliel in Tlaxcala during a meeting of the Tlaxcala Chapter of Academy Alumni. He is still working as an employee, but after his time at the Academy he is constantly thinking of ideas for a business to start. One idea that Gamaliel had stemmed from a lot of the vandalism that happens in his "unidad" (subdivision). He saw a need for security, and is pretty sure people would be willing to pay for it. He wanted to start what would essentially be a homeowner's association that would collect money to pay for security cameras. We talked with him about some of the challenges he would face with this idea: collecting the money (who would do it, what happens if they don't pay - you can't really withhold security...), vandalism to the cameras, etc. We recommended that it might be better for him to start a security company that provides security guards, but that it would have to be separate from the homeowner's association - otherwise it wouldn't really be a business. We didn't talk with him for too long, but hopefully he was able to be more aware of some of the potential pitfalls that particular idea had.

It was personally very gratifying for me to see the open discussion of ideas between the members of the Chapter and the collaboration that is occurring because of the training the people received at the Academy. The fact that Gamaliel is actively looking for businesses to start, and ways to be self-sufficient is great.

Industrial Maqtec - Samuel Ahuacatitan

2011-05-02T11:39:00.000-07:00

Industrial Maqtec is a business that designs and builds machines that produce cinder-blocks and other cement products. Samuel is th owner. He is incredibly smart, and is able to design and manufacture almost anything (he also has a machine that can take a raw pineapple and completely skin it).

This is Samuel and his property. He currently is renting two small factories, and he wants to move all his operations to this new factory.

As you can see, it has no roof, so it's missing that to be finished. It also needs to have electricity run to the building so he can get things taken care of. He needs about 250,000 pesos (about $23,000) to finish everything up.

The location is right next to a highway, so it's a great place as far as getting exposure.

Just another view of the building.

Samuel has quite a bit of property. This allows him to have a couple of greenhouses where he grows tomatoes.

A view from inside the building. You can see Ben chatting with Samuel about his business.

Samuel has an interesting problem in that he can get a large order from Cuba (at least 1,000,000 pesos), but they won't give him any money down, and he can't really complete the order without the new factory. Bank loans in Mexico are very expensive (18% + interest rates), and he doesn't want to take out the loan and risk not getting the order. After talking with him, he remembered about another project he had worked on a few months ago to produce some oil pumps for Pemex (Mexico's state-owned oil and gas company) that recover oil from wells that had been sealed many years back. The Pemex project would be a partnership with another company, and they have capital to invest so he could probably finish the new building. He's going to follow up on the Pemex deal.

Update and Explanation of the Forthcoming Posts

2011-05-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of the third generation of students at the Academy in Mexico City. The first day for the student consists of cleaning the entire campus. This serves to give them pride in the campus - after spending hours cleaning it, they will respect it a lot more. We are spending the day writing case studies about the business visits we did last week. We have visited and evaluated over 25 businesses, and should be able to write close to 40 case studies based around the information we collected.

A few pictures from our travels last week:

This is a not-so-flattering picture of me, but it's a pretty cool view. You can see the American influence in one of the oldest cities in Mexico. The church on the hill is the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (Church of Our Lady of Remedies), also known as the Santuario de la Virgen de los Remedios (Sanctuary of the Virgin of Remedies), which was built by the Spanish in colonial times (1594). The church is actually built on top of the Great Pyramid of Cholula. The pyramid is a temple that has traditionally been viewed as having been dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl. There's a lot of cool history here.

This is a model of the church and pyramid in the museum located near the base of the pyramid. It shows a cutaway of what the pyramid under the church looks like.

This part is actually excavated and can be seen.

A close-up of the church on the model.

We had a few minutes between appointments, and we were close to the pyramid, so we took a minute to go to the musuem.

This is a pretty cool treehouse we saw.

Ben and I talking to Polo about his trucking business. One of the upcoming posts will give a little more information on his business.

The following posts will be small snapshots of some of the businesses we visited, the problems they are facing, and some of the solutions we offered to them. I'm not sure if the case studies will end up being publicly available, but these posts will give a quick glimpse.

A Quick Update and a Few Photos

2011-04-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

Today, Ben and I spent the day in Tlaxcala visiting with some of the Academy's alumni there. Nate spent the day in Puebla visiting with Academy alumni there, and later in the day, he and Jeremi Brewer (the Academy Director) taught the final lesson for a group of students being taught at the satellite location of the Academy in Puebla. They graduate tomorrow.

Rebecca, Katelynn and Jeremi Brewer

Jeremi and Rebecca are the Academy Directors. Katelynn is their boss.

This gentleman serenaded Ben and I at lunch today. He was playing Hey Jude by the Beatles with his guitar and his wooden flute instrument. It was played to perfection (he even has the haircut going...)

Ben and I with some of the presidency of the Tlaxcala Chapter of the Academy Alumni Association.

We have a lot more to post from today, but it may be a day or two before there's time to post it.

A Photo Tour of the Academy

2011-04-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

A view from the back porch of the Office Building

The back of the Office Building

The front of the Office Building

The dining hall - Adrian (red) and Alejandro (yellow), two of the greenhouse workers, on their lunch break.

The kitchen at the Academy (part of my project is to help this run more like a commercial kitchen - i.e. more like a restaurant).

The entrance to the dining hall/kitchen building.

The passageway between the dormitory buildings. There are three dormitory buildings - 2 for male students and 1 for female students

A snapshot of inside one of the male student dormitories. Each dormitory has beds, desks, and closet space for up to 20 students.

A view inside one of the largest greenhouses on the property. The plants in the picture are tomatoes. Part of the contract with Mexico for the property is that it must teach some agriculture. Fortunately, the Academy property is located above a well (not common in this part of the country), so irrigation of the plants is a possibility. These tomatoes will be sold to help pay for student scholarships to the Academy.

An exterior view of the 2 largest greenhouses on the property. The Academy has 4 greenhouses and 2 large open gardening areas. They are growing radishes, carrots, chiles, peppers, lettuce, and many other things.

The laundry facility (these washers and dryers are better than the ones I use in Provo...)

An exterior shot of the classroom building.

An interior shot of the classroom - this is where the most important stuff happens.

The computer lab inside the Office building. Students are taught how to use Excel to keep financial records for their businesses. The lab has 13 computer stations that all have internet access so that more advanced students can learn other skills - like how to use social media to market their business.

A view of the mountain behind us. Look closely to see the insane architecture - all of Mexico city has pretty much the same architecture.

ACE Mexico 2011

2011-04-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

This blog is to document the 3 weeks that we will spend in Mexico City working with the Academy for Creating Enterprise (ACE).