True Stories of Growing Globally

Opportunities for small businesses to expand overseas are growing, thanks to technology and economic conditions; however, getting started without big business resources may be a deterrent. Many business owners are making international initiatives work for their companies regardless of their size and are sharing what they’ve learned.

NY Report produced The International Business Conference, sponsored by Citibank, an event that brought together small business owners who have successfully expanded globally and other international experts. The conference kicked off with a panel discussion featuring Jenna Arnold of Press Play Productions, Inc., Jordan Finger of Ardis Health, and Mitesh Lakhani of Reliable Group, who all shared their stories of successes and their challenges in going global.

Fostering the Entrepreneurial Spirit

In the early 1990s, Lakhani noticed the opportunity to expand his company to

Rajkot, India, and opened a computer training institute in 1993. However, a big obstacle Lakhani had to overcome was not the work ethic of his employees, but inspiring an attitude of achievement by getting them to understand that rewards are limited only to how hard they work. “In the United States, the majority of people understand that there is an opportunity for personal and career growth out there for them and they can become valuable to that market, if they really reach for it,” he said. “In India, that idea is very hard to instill. They don’t understand that they don’t have to steal from their neighbor to get something, but they can reach goals on their own.”

To overcome this difficulty, he educated his staff on how the business functions, decisions, and opportunities can contribute to the company’s success. “Fundamentally, we care, and so we translate every element of our organization to our employees,” Lakhani said. “We explain the reasons behind business decisions and how to bring new business in.” This transparency helped his team to be more successful and share the entrepreneurial spirit. “With their efforts and their work, they have some element of control over how they can build their lives, their careers, and how they can contribute to the greater good,” he said.

Evaluating Risks

Evaluating the risks when pursuing opportunities overseas involves a new set of variables than it does stateside. Finger’s business, an Internet marketing company that develops health and beauty products, was introduced to the idea of expanding internationally through one of Finger’s vendors.

“I wasn’t looking into going international, I was very happy as an entrepreneur, fulfilling my dream,” he said. “My main manufacturer in the United Kingdom convinced me to expand to Europe.”

For Finger, expanding his business overseas meant dealing with a completely different–and inferior–technology infrastructure. Back in 2000, e-commerce may have been an established industry in the US, but it was nascent in the UK. The communication and Internet technology in Europe was also a few years behind the US, and while this may have been perceived as a barrier for Finger’s company initially, it actually provided him the opportunity to be one of the first Internet retailers in the health and beauty space on the continent and become established before the market was flooded. “I had the ambitions and the desire to be in this market, but we needed to build the infrastructure ourselves,” he said. “We had to engineer homegrown system to prepare for international currencies, call centers, and more. It forced me to be a little more patient and let the process play itself out so I could get the right processes in order to keep the business from collapsing.”

But according to Finger, the biggest risk of all would have been not taking one. Today, the European sector of his company accounts for a large share of his business.

Learning the Culture

Arnold created Press Play Productions with two primary objectives: to help younger generations across the globe understand each other better and to create better content abroad. To date, Press Play has produced youth programming, such as like “Exiled” on MTV, to raise awareness of issues affecting populations around the world through programs, and others.

However, to be able to create international content for popular networks, Arnold had to overcome some cultural boundaries. In the Middle East, where a large portion of Press Play’s shows are created, hiring terms aren’t exactly what they are in the US. “We [Americans] want a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer, and to put faith in God to finish a task is hard for us,” said Arnold. “If you ask someone to do something [in the Middle East], they reply with ‘God willing.’”

To overcome this obstacle, Arnold created and implemented procedures to ensure the work she needed was completed by incorporating American business practices, while still reaming respectful of the cultural norms. Hired some of her crew members on location who were able translate her American perspective into the native language in a way that made sense to those she was communicating with. This paid off for Arnold because she could relate on a cultural level, her message remained effective for audiences around the world.

While every entrepreneur’s story of going global differs, having the ability to translate goals across borders, work efficiently and effectively with locals, and being flexible are were components to the success of these three. To learn more about international business, visit nyreport.com/how-to/grow_global.