"Going Global" is an episode from the series "Make It Happen." The main theme for this episodic documentary is to share the stories of hard working business owners who immigrated to the United States for a better life and future. Our excerpt relies heavily on different components to further show the stories of the people featured.
“Make It Happen” tells the stories of underrepresented business owners that have come to this country for a better life. Our main interviewee, Javier Galarraga, is a hard working individual who has his own company: Sumiflex. “Make It Happen” focuses on both the struggles and successes Javier has encountered while owning this company. Javier was originally born in Venezuela, a country in South America that is under major political corruption. Javier left the country for a better life, and brought Sumiflex along with him. However, when moving to a country where there is a different culture, language, and way of life, Javier ran into various conflicts. Javier had to learn a new language, and on top of everything, run a company on his own in a foreign country. “Make It Happen” represents the issues of running a company or business when there are struggles behind it. When conducting our research, we found that around 66 million people in the United States speak another language that isn’t English. This information inspired us to tell the stories of these hard working immigrants.
When creating “Make It Happen” from scratch, we needed to create a “brand” essentially. Our target audience was aimed at individuals from ages 18-40. Our target audience wasn’t as wide, since we were relying on immigrant business owners. As a result of our target audience research, “Make It Happen” was created so that our target audience would fit in perfectly. When designing our brand, we decided to choose a simple logo and color, and posted it on our social media.
Furthermore, when deciding what social media platform to use, we relied heavily on research. Our research indicated that the best choice for our target audience was Facebook. Our Facebook was filled with posts about the production and frequent news about the documentary. Posting behind the scenes clips and quotes were a key component so that our viewers would be constantly updated.
Along with our Facebook account, we wrote a magazine article to further connect with our target audience. This article was also posted on the Facebook page, so that our viewers could easily access it. The article summarized Sumiflex’s story, and how the documentary covered all the information about Javier and what running his company was like.
Moreover, when coming up with questions for the interviewees, we knew that the real goal was to tell a true, raw story of how an immigrant successfully runs a company regardless of all the conflicts that come with it. The questions targeted not only the origin of Sumiflex, but also the issues that came along the way with it. For example, “Could you describe an important moment in Sumiflex's history that tested your resilience as a business owner and how did you overcome it?” Creating this documentary meant finding the true impact that Javier has had in his life while being the owner of a company like Sumiflex. And in the end, that’s what “Make It Happen” came to be.
In our case, we weren’t experienced company owners like Javier is. We were just trying to capture his story for the sake of this documentary. However, we realized we needed to be more involved than that. As my group and I are all first generation Americans, we wanted to truly reflect on Javier’s journey so that our viewers could feel the same way we did when we came up with the idea of “Make It Happen” ourselves. That’s why we decided to include me in the documentary as well. We wanted to include a young business-owner in the documentary, so that our generation can understand the struggles of business owners as well. As a result, we included a portion of the documentary with my dog walking business: Isa Dog Walking. This section of the episode was aimed for the younger side of our target audience. We covered it on the Facebook page as well, showing videos and pictures of my business and how it came to be.
During the interview, questions were asked like the following: “What role do you think resilience played in your fathers personal and professional success?” This was done in order to connect with Javier’s interview questions, since he was asked a similar question as well.
Looking back at this process, it was a learning moment for me. As a daughter of two business owners, I sat down to listen to my father’s story and strived to create a documentary where other people can also learn from his journey. This documentary has shown me that not only is resilience important in life, but patience as well. Sumiflex’s story was highlighted as what it has become since my Grandfather, Gonzalo Galarraga, founded it in Caracas Venezuela. Documenting such an important moment in my family’s life was special. Overall, creating this documentary has been a learning experience for my teammates and I, and we were so fortunate to have this opportunity to make something from scratch.
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