Why Running a Business From Another Country Made Me a Better Consultant
I did not set out to be an international market expansion consultant. I set out to leave. I bought a one way ticket out of the US with no plan, a laptop, and the kind of naive confidence that only a 20 something with nothing to lose can have.
That was years ago. Since then, I have lived in Spain, Italy, Australia, and several other countries I did not plan on staying in but did anyway. Along the way, I built businesses, consulted for startups, and learned something that no MBA programme will teach you: the way you think about business is shaped entirely by where you have done it.
The Perspective You Cannot Buy
Most founders I work with operate in 1 market. Their customers are local. Their competitors are local. Their assumptions about how business works are shaped by 1 country's norms, regulations, and culture.
There is nothing wrong with that. But it creates blind spots.
When I was living in Barcelona learning to code while juggling client work across 3 time zones, I noticed something. The way Spanish founders approached sales was completely different from what I had learned in the US. Less aggressive. More relationship driven. Longer timescales. And it worked, because that is what the market expected.
Then I moved to Australia and watched founders there operate with a level of directness that would feel abrupt in parts of Europe but was exactly right for the Australian market. Quick decisions. Flat hierarchies. "Just get it done" energy.
Neither approach was better. Both were perfectly calibrated to their context. And the founders who struggled were the ones trying to import a playbook from another market without adapting it.
That is what living abroad teaches you. Not that one way is right, but that your default way is just one option among many. And that flexibility, the ability to read a market and adapt, is worth more than any framework.
What International Expansion Actually Looks Like
Most founders think international expansion means "sell our product in another country." It is not. It is more like starting a new business that happens to share a product with your existing one.
I worked with a SaaS company based in Sydney that wanted to expand into the UK market. They had strong product market fit in Australia. Good retention. Growing revenue. They assumed Europe would be a copy paste with minor adjustments.
It was not. The sales cycle in the UK was 40% longer. GDPR compliance required product changes they had not anticipated. Their pricing, which felt competitive in AUD, looked expensive in GBP without the brand recognition to justify it. And the decision makers they needed to reach had completely different titles and reporting structures than their Australian counterparts.
We spent 3 months rebuilding their go to market strategy for the UK from scratch. Different messaging. Different pricing. Different sales process. Same product, but everything around it had to change.
That is what an international market expansion consultant actually does. Not just "help you sell overseas." Help you understand that overseas is a different game with different rules, and then build the playbook for that specific market.
The 3 Things Founders Get Wrong About Going Global
They assume their brand translates. It does not. Your brand story, your positioning, even your company name might mean something completely different (or nothing at all) in another market. I have seen Australian companies with names that are unpronounceable in German, US companies with taglines that are offensive in Spanish, and European companies with websites that feel outdated by American standards. You have to localise, not just translate.
They underestimate regulatory differences. Tax, employment law, data privacy, consumer protection. Every country has its own version, and "we will figure it out as we go" is a recipe for expensive surprises. I always tell founders: budget 2 to 3 months and $10,000 to $20,000 for legal and compliance setup before you make your first international sale. It sounds like a lot. It is nothing compared to the cost of getting it wrong.
They send their best salesperson instead of doing research first. Flying someone to London for a week of meetings before you have validated that the UK market even wants your product is backwards. Do the validation remotely first. Talk to 20 potential customers. Understand their pain points. Then go in person once you know there is something to sell.
Why Australia Was My Turning Point
I lived in Australia for a stretch, and it fundamentally changed how I think about business. The Australian startup ecosystem is smaller than the US, which means everyone knows everyone. Reputation matters more than marketing. And the distance from major markets forces Australian founders to think globally from day 1.
That mindset, building with international in mind from the start, is something I try to bring to every engagement now. Even if a founder has no plans to expand internationally, thinking about their business through a global lens makes the local version stronger.
It forces you to clarify your value proposition. It makes you think harder about pricing. It pushes you to build systems that do not depend on being in the same room as your customer. All of those things make a business better, regardless of where it operates.
The Solo Founder Abroad
There is a practical side to this too. More founders than ever are running their businesses from another country. Digital nomad visas are expanding across Europe. Remote work infrastructure is mature. The tools exist.
But the operational challenges are real. Time zones. Banking across borders. Tax residency. Healthcare. Managing a team you never see in person. These are all solvable problems, but they require systems. And most founders figure them out through painful trial and error instead of setting them up properly from the start.
If you are thinking about running your business from abroad, or you are already doing it and it feels chaotic, the fix is usually structural. Set up the right entity. Get the right banking. Build async workflows. Document everything. It is not glamorous, but it is the difference between location freedom and location stress.
What You Can Do Today
If international expansion is on your radar, even vaguely, here are 3 things to start with:
Talk to 5 potential customers in your target market before you spend a dollar on setup. Use LinkedIn. Send a thoughtful message. Offer a 15 minute call. You will learn more from 5 conversations than from 50 hours of desk research.
Map the regulatory landscape before you commit. Spend 2 hours researching: do you need a local entity? What are the tax implications? Are there data residency requirements? What employment laws apply if you hire locally? You do not need all the answers yet. You just need to know what questions to ask.
Find someone who has done it in that specific market. Not someone who has "gone international" in general. Someone who has sold your type of product to your type of customer in the exact country you are targeting. Their experience will save you 6 months of mistakes.
The Bottom Line
Going international is not a growth hack. It is a second business. It requires the same rigour, research, and operational discipline as your first one. But if you do it right, it opens up markets, perspectives, and opportunities that make everything else you do stronger.
The founders I respect the most are the ones who treat every new market like a new problem to solve, not a new place to copy paste what already works. That curiosity and adaptability is what separates the companies that actually scale globally from the ones that just talk about it.
Cheers.