Episode 218： How To Take Your Business Global
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
213.14474
Summary
In this episode, I talk about why you should take your business out of your home country and into a new market. I also talk about how to break through the language barrier and break into new markets. I hope this episode gives you some tips and tricks on how you can do it.
Transcript
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Number one, prior to you building a global brand, you must ask the most important question,
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For instance, I was mentoring a CEO who's from Romania, and they have a business where
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Somebody had one contract, somebody had the Energizer battery contract.
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And they were the two competitors, and they said, listen, for the battery market, it's
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I have this, he has this, he has these stores, the markets that sell it, I have these markets.
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So either we're going to have to build our own stores, or we have to leave our country
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That argument makes sense for that CEO to take their business global.
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Now at the other end, somebody said, I want to be able to say that our business is global.
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I said, does it bring you that much credibility if you put an office in London, and you pay
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seven grand a month just to say your business is global?
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Go brag to people, it doesn't make sense, hang tight first.
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The next thing to ask about when it comes down to why.
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Are you already that capped out where you're at right now that you have to leave to another
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If not, ask the question over and over again until it makes sense.
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Number two, say it makes sense for you to go to another country, you want to go global.
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Then you have to make a list of countries and study the cultures.
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So we're thinking about going to such and such place.
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Okay, we're thinking about going to this place, to that place.
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Because it is like, for instance, we wanted to go to Mexico, okay?
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We went to Mexico, and we spent time with the biggest life insurance company in Mexico.
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What I wanted to find out is, is insurance sold in Mexico face to face?
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Because I want to find out exactly how that culture responds to the product.
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If I wanted to go into Qatar, how does Qatar feel about insurance?
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How does London feel about insurance, how does UK, Britain, how do Germany, how do they feel
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How does your product connect with their culture?
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And not only that, how does their culture work?
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There's certain things that you do that you have to embrace their culture, or else it's
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Many, many countries in the Middle East, you do business, certain behaviors are extremely
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disrespectful when they want to do business with you.
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So you've got to study that culture that you're thinking about going into.
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Number three is breaking through the language barrier.
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Any time I go to another country that I want to do business with, that is non-English speaking,
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let's just say their main language they want to speak is their language.
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If I'm going to France, if I'm going to South America, if I'm going to Mexico, we went to
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Mario translated everything because Mario speaks a language.
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If you already are out, your marketing material, your brochures, your website, email, translating
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everything, customer service, communicating with the customers.
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Your employees that respond back, there's got to be a translation where automatically anything
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Or certain employees, customer service reps that are working for you, speak that language
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You've got to be able to break through the language barrier.
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Number four, visit the country and build one-on-one relationships.
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For me, I like the relationships always to be through word of mouth because it's got the
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So if I say, hey, I'm looking for somebody who does ... I know this guy in Australia, great.
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Because it's always face-to-face, personal relationship, it's the highest level.
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But you may do a Skype and say, I don't really know if this is something we want to do right
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I've got to go to this place to build that relationship with them.
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When I say marketing trends, Facebook is working for your country and may not be working for
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YouTube may be big where you're at, but YouTube may be bad where they're at.
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They may do pay-per-click, and you may not do any pay-per-clicks where you're at.
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You need to study their marketing trends, their groups, their people, the populace that's
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Number six, currency exchange, friendly billing and payments.
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Some websites, some portals you use, they're not currency friendly.
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You've got to make sure you have currency friendly.
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So if the payment's being made, to convert that currency, it's got to be easy to be done.
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I've done business for someone, all of a sudden, I made a payment for $6,000, wouldn't go
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through because the currency exchange, the bank didn't accept it.
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You've got to ask those additional questions from your bank and your merchant services
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You go seven at a time, you're spreading yourself too thin.
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Unless if your name is GE, and you have a $17 billion budget, different story.
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If you're not GE, you don't have that kind of a budget, then you've got to make sure you
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go one country at a time, is to keep it focused.
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And then you're learning every time you do a country.
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You make that other adjustment on the other countries.
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Any time I go to a new market that I don't know, that market, but I'm moving somebody
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I move an ambassador because that ambassador brings one thing.
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When Toyota came to the States, the reason why Toyota did very well in the States is because
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they moved their VPs from their main plant that they had to America because they had
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They noticed it was a little bit more sloppy, a little bit more casual.
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This took you three seconds more than it's supposed to take.
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When we're building all these cars, you can't be doing this mistake.
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This is how we do it in our plant, and this is how you need to be doing it.
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An ambassador spreads that culture into a market that doesn't yet do that.
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Number nine is government laws and regulations.
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A lot of times, people don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.
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You've got to think about taxes, like how China works with 51% ownership, or you have
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to find the right people who are among many countries you go into, you have to get a relationship
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with somebody in the government that favors you, that you know of somebody.
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It's not the same as doing business in every single country.
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Some are a lot more complicated or difficult, and sometimes you go look at it and say, I don't
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I'm only going to make 13% on this, not including all the other fees and things that they want
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So study the government laws and regulations, taxes.
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Spend that additional money with CPA's attorneys for doing that research for you.
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To find out what worked in that country, what didn't work in that country.
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We're going to change this service call that we have.
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This FAQ is going to have these three new objections that are added.
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The more you test this, then you eventually are getting better.
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And by the way, this helps you when you're moving to the next country because you've done
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You may learn 19 new mistakes that you would have never learned.
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But you don't make those mistakes on this next country you're going into.
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So it's test, test, test, test, test until you have a system on how to take your business
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So those are the 10 points I'd give you today on how to take your business global.
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And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
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And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
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And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.