Accion Loan Officer Brews the Buena Vida
Kate Novotny
Loan Officer, Accion
By: Haley Marceau
Accion loan officer, Kate Novotny, is just 26 years old but already she has been the founder and CEO of her own business. While attending Marquette University, Kate visited the coffee-growing community of Hoya Grande, Honduras as a translator for a Global Medical Brigades trip. The primary focus of this trip was to provide Marquette students with a hands-on entrepreneurial learning opportunity. What resulted, however, was the birth of Buena Vida Coffee Company, a fair-trade, socially responsible coffee production company. For every bag of coffee sold, Buena Vida provides one meal to one child at Sociedad Amigos de los Niños, the orphanage where the team from Global Medical Brigades resided during their trip. Visit this link to place your order today.
“The first two years were all about getting the right people on the bus,” reflects Kate. There was a group of funders and advisers who provided the initial seed money and advice for the company, and a partnership with Stone Creek Coffee, a Milwaukee-based company, helped to make the idea a reality.
I asked Kate what struggles she encountered in the first years of running the company. She recalls that making sales was the largest hurdle. “The primary operative is to support local farmers, help fund the orphanage, and provide entrepreneurial learning to students. With this in mind, we needed to define a customer-base; a niche market.” She goes on to explain the lengthy re-branding and marketing process that took place after they identified their customer-base. Since that process, the company is profitable and thriving.
In her role as a loan officer, Kate comes face-to-face with other small business owners who are going through similar struggles on their journey of entrepreneurship. “My experience with Buena Vida helps me to better understand where my clients are in the process. I can visualize how the loan we’re providing will help them to succeed.”
Kate offers this advice, “It is so important to have a plan. You need a vision and a clear path marked out for how you’re going to move from point A to point B. You need to be able to look at your progress and see what is working and what is not working. Look at what isn’t working, and do what needs to be done to make it successful.” She also says that the more mentors you have, the better. “You need to soak up all the information and advice that you can.”
You can read more about Kate and her adventure with Buena Vida Coffee Company by following this link.