New Entrepreneur (NE)
Name & surname: Nicolae Sovaiala-Ionescu
Country: Romania
Age: 30 years
Sector of activity: Education and training services
Have you already started your business? Yes
Name of business: Argument Antrenament
Host Entrepreneur (HE)
Name & surname: Sarah Andiel
Country: Germany
Sector of activity: Education and training services
Experience in running a business: 3 years
Name of business/website: DebateConsult / www.debate-consult.de
What is your business? DebateConsult is an institute for professional debating culture. It cooperates with debating companies in Estonia and the Netherlands.
Period of Relationship: 18/11/2019 – 15/05/2020
Duration of Relationship: 6 months
How did Sarah Andiel further develop her business DebateConsult thanks to the feedback and new input from New Entrepreneur Nicolae Sovaiala-Ionescu?
Sarah Andiel is the founder and director of DebateConsult, an institute for professional debating culture. She offers consultancy services for companies concerning argumentation strategies, leads a team of debating trainers, is in charge of quality assurance and the development of the company’s marketing strategy, and takes care of the institute’s international relations. Sarah’s main motivation for taking part in the programme was to gain a fresh outlook and new beneficial impulses for her business as well as supporting a new entrepreneur in setting up a business like hers.
Thanks to the programme Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, Sarah Andiel started an international business relationship with New Entrepreneur Nicolae Sovaiala-Ionescu from Romania.
Nicolae also has experience in the field of debating and therefore he and his HE Sarah “spoke the same language” and knew the same concepts content-wise from the beginning of the business relationship on. This allowed them to fully commit to the exploration of the business aspects of their collaboration. Their common goal was to learn creative, innovative and efficient ideas for training methods and practices from each other. Sarah wanted to use this input to further develop her institute for debating culture DebateConsult.
During the relationship, Sarah and Nicolae worked closely together. Nicolae observed Sarah’s work during trainings to learn more about possible training methods for his company, he reflected on Sarah’s practices regarding negation, learned marketing strategies from her and observed the creation of products. In exchange, Nicolae gave permanent feedback and input on the host company’s processes, products and needs, like the training methods and practices as well as training products.
His main achievement, though, was a fully working training product. The product is an Online Debate Training for groups and single customers, which is of course of high importance right now during the Corona crisis. Nicolae also created the corresponding resources – like handouts, presentations, and online articles – that will help the customers during their learning process. His Online Debate Training can immediately be sold by the host company and therefore provides it with a direct revenue despite the challenges COVID-19 poses. The NE Nicolae has thus opened up new paths for the development of the host company DebateConsult due to his expertise in teaching and online trainings, and the product he developed during the business relationship. Therefore, the main objective of Sarah Andiel, to gain a fresh outlook on her company’s training methods and to discover new paths for the development of DebateConsult, was completely fulfilled thanks to the New Entrepreneur Nicolae Sovaiala-Ionescu and the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme.
All in all, Sarah perceived this business relationship as very enriching and intense, with a main focus of giving each other feedback and working on new training methods. In the future, Sarah and Nicolae plan to set up joint business activities.
