Crossing the Atlantic

Episode Summary
An American friend of mine moved to France, got his first paycheck, and blew through it in about two weeks. That small, funny mistake is the doorway into something much bigger: why hiring works nothing alike on the two sides of the Atlantic. In this episode I get into why a French company often hires one person where an American company hires three, why it's faster and cheaper up front to hire in the US, and the surprising decision, made back in 1945, that still shows up in every French paycheck today. Whether you're expanding west or east, you'll come away seeing your next hire a little differently.

In This Episode

• Why my American friend's first French paycheck wrecked his budget, and the much bigger difference hiding behind it.
• The real reason it's faster to hire in the US than in France, and why it's only half about the money.
• The 1945 decision that means nearly half the cost of a French hire never reaches the worker, and why that's not the robbery it sounds like.

Sources & Links

• Tax burden on labor, France vs. the US (OECD data): https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/tax-burden-on-labor-oecd-2024/
• French salaries (INSEE): https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8657156
• US employer health insurance costs (KFF, 2024): https://www.kff.org/health-costs/2024-employer-health-benefits-survey/

About Crossing the Atlantic
Crossing the Atlantic is a podcast about how history shapes culture, and how culture shapes business, between the US and Europe. Host Christina Rebuffet-Broadus is an American who has spent 20+ years living and building businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. She helps US companies break into Europe and European companies break into the US, from getting the positioning right to closing real deals. New episodes every other week.

Connect with me
📬 Get in-depth insights 2x/month: https://transatlantia.com/en/crossing-the-atlantic/
💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinarebuffetbroadus/
📅 Book a US-to-Europe strategy call: https://app.iclosed.io/e/TransAtlantia/us-eu-expansion-discovery
📅 Book a Europe-to-US strategy call: https://app.iclosed.io/e/TransAtlantia/rdv-decouverte-US-fast-track

EPISODE SUMMARY

A friend of mine, French and about as American as a French salesperson gets, killed a deal last month with a US software company. Good product, real fit. He walked anyway, because the rep moved too fast. In this episode, I get into why speed, the exact thing that wins deals in the US, is the thing that quietly kills them in Europe, and the small adjustments that keep the pace difference from costing you a whole market.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why even the fastest, most "American" European buyer will walk away from a deal that feels rushed.
• The two very different definitions of "progress" that make US and European teams misread each other in real time.
• The invisible cost of moving too fast, and why the American who loses the deal almost never figures out why.
  

ABOUT CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

Crossing the Atlantic is the show for companies doing business on both sides of the ocean. Host Christina Rebuffet-Broadus is an American who has lived and built businesses in France for over 20 years. She shares what she's learned from hundreds of companies expanding between the US and Europe, so you can avoid the six-figure mistakes most only learn the hard way.

CONNECT WITH ME

I'm Christina, and I write about what really happens when companies expand across the Atlantic: the blind spots, the deal-breakers, and the moves that work.

📬 Get in-depth insights 2x/month: https://transatlantia.com/en/crossing-the-atlantic/

💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinarebuffetbroadus/

📅 Book a US-to-Europe strategy call: https://app.iclosed.io/e/TransAtlantia/us-eu-expansion-discovery

📅 Book a Europe-to-US strategy call: https://app.iclosed.io/e/TransAtlantia/rdv-decouverte-US-fast-track

EPISODE SUMMARY

This week, I'll be in New York City moderating an important event for a French medtech founder I've been working with for about two months.

The event we're walking into looks very different from the one he first described to me, and the gap between those two versions is the thing every French founder needs to understand before introducing their company in the US.

In this episode I take you inside the architecture of what we're actually building for Bruno Aubert and WarnFeet, the principle behind it, and why the part that matters most happens after the slides come down.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why a 90-minute keynote-and-Q&A format empties a New York room twenty minutes before the networking even starts

- What happens when you ask a room of strangers to commit publicly to a scientific advisory board, and the simple reframe that actually works

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Bruno Aubert and WarnFeet:
Bruno is the founder and CTO of SoleCooler, a French company building the first mass-market diabetic foot prevention system, WarnFeet. It's their newest product.

If you're in NYC, come to our medtech breakfast!
🗓️ Wednesday June 3, 8:45-11:00AM
📍 Maison de l'Occitanie à New York
🎟️ RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/pRGMGLY8pbqZl3qbuG9s

ABOUT CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

Crossing the Atlantic is a biweekly podcast for business leaders expanding across the ocean.

Hosted by Christina Rebuffet-Broadus, an American who has spent 20+ years in France and founded TransAtlantia, each episode tackles the cultural blind spots, strategic mistakes, and hidden dynamics that make transatlantic business harder than it looks. New episodes every two weeks.

CONNECT WITH ME, CHRISTINA REBUFFET-BROADUS

- Website: transatlantia.com

- LinkedIn: Christina Rebuffet-Broadus

- Email: [email protected]

A French founder I work with was sure his US deal would close. The American buyer kept telling him "we're excited, let's keep moving forward."

Eleven weeks later, still no contract. Around the same time, an American sales VP walked out of a meeting in Paris and told me to write the deal off. The French team had grilled him for an hour. Three weeks later, they signed.

Two opposite mistakes, same root cause. In this episode I break down why an American "yes" and a French "oui" are almost never the same word, how French vs American business culture turns the same signals into opposite meanings, and why the warm responses you're tracking in your pipeline are probably lying to you.

Then I give you four questions you can run after any cross-Atlantic meeting to find out what's actually real.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why an American "yes" is cheap and warm, and usually means "keep talking," not "we're committed"
• Why a French team that grills you with hard questions is often interested, not rejecting you
• How each side prices risk and time differently, and why that shapes the language they use

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

MedTech breakfast on a ground-breaking innovation in diabetes prevention: June 3, NYC at La Maison de l'Occitanie.

Featured speakers: one of the world's leading doctors in the field and Bruno Aubert, founder of SoleCooler and inventor of WarnFeet. I'm moderating the event.

If you're in med tech, health insurance, or the medical field and you'll be in New York, come join us.

Save your spot here: https://partiful.com/e/pRGMGLY8pbqZl3qbuG9s
----------

My next book: working title False Friends.

It's about doing business across the Atlantic and the gap between what looks similar in the US and France and what actually is.

If you've had a transatlantic "false friend" moment, a conversation or meeting that hid rough patches due to cultural differences, reach out and tell me about it!

I'm looking for stories and companies to feature in the book!

SOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED

• Diabetes Prevention Breakfast, June 3, NYC. Sign up: https://partiful.com/e/pRGMGLY8pbqZl3qbuG9s
• Share your "false friend" story for the book: [email protected]

ABOUT CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

Crossing the Atlantic is a biweekly podcast for business leaders expanding across the ocean. Hosted by Christina Rebuffet-Broadus, an American who has spent 20+ years in France and founded TransAtlantia, each episode tackles the cultural blind spots, strategic mistakes, and hidden dynamics that make transatlantic business harder than it looks. New episodes every two weeks.

CONNECT WITH ME, CHRISTINA REBUFFET-BROADUS

• Website: transatlantia.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinarebuffetbroadus/
• Email: [email protected]

This week, we explore another challenges of transatlantic business : the alignment trap and decision-making differences.

We'll delve into the impact of cultural nuances on decision-making and give you strategies for understanding how deals move forward in different cultures on both sides of the Atlantic, and more importantly, how to manage the decision-making process so things really do move forward.

Chapters

• 00:00 The Alignment Trap
• 05:26 Cultural Differences in Decision-Making
• 14:13 Consensus First Decision-Making
• 20:22 Strategies for Transatlantic Deals

  About Crossing the Atlantic

  Crossing the Atlantic is a biweekly podcast for business leaders expanding across the ocean.
  
  Your host is Christina Rebuffet-Broadus, an American advisory consultant in transatlantic deals with 20+ years in France and founder of TransAtlantia.
  
  Each episode tackles the cultural blind spots, strategic mistakes, and hidden dynamics that make transatlantic business harder than it looks.

  New episodes every two weeks.

  Connect with Christina

    •  Website: transatlantia.com

    •  LinkedIn: Christina Rebuffet-Broadus

    •  Book a conversation: Schedule here
  
  

If the Familiarity Trap is the disease, the hidden cost of assumptions is the bill. In this episode, I put numbers on what happens when companies cross the Atlantic without questioning their instincts: 68% of failed transatlantic expansions trace back to cultural assumptions made in the first 90 days.

I'll talk about the concept of “cultural operating systems”, the invisible rules governing how business gets done on each side of the Atlantic and explain why running your American operating system on European infrastructure (or vice versa) breaks things in ways you won’t see coming.

In This Episode

• The French energy company whose growing US revenue masked a team falling apart and why nobody saw it coming
• Why 68% of failed transatlantic expansions trace back to assumptions made in the first 90 days
• Cultural operating systems: what the computer analogy reveals about why business cultures are incompatible without translation
• The American OS (speed, individual accountability, 70% and iterate) vs. the European OS (depth, consensus, 85% before you move)
• How one fintech company hired a single local advisor and rewrote their entire go-to-market in three months
• The three-phase framework: Observe, Translate, Pilot and why the companies that slow down spend less money

Sources & Links Mentioned

Studies & Data:

• 70% of international business ventures fail due to cultural misunderstandings : Academic research on cross-border failures (GRIN)
• Cross-border M&A failure rates of 70–90% : Harvard Business Review: A Better Approach to Mergers and Acquisitions
• EACC Transatlantic Expansion Barometer (survey of 200 US & European mid-size businesses) : EACC France / OCO Global

Previous Episode:

• Episode 1: The Familiarity Trap: Why the Atlantic feels easy and isn’t
  

About "Crossing the Atlantic"

Crossing the Atlantic is a biweekly podcast for business leaders expanding across the ocean.

Hosted by Christina Rebuffet-Broadus an American transatlantic expansion expert with 20+ years in France and founder of TransAtlantia.

Each episode tackles the cultural blind spots, strategic mistakes, and hidden dynamics that make transatlantic business harder than it looks.

New episodes every two weeks.

Connect with me:

• Website: transatlantia.com
• LinkedIn: Christina Rebuffet-Broadus
• Book a conversation: Schedule here

Next Episode

Decision-Making: Consensus vs. Command
How Americans and Europeans make business decisions differently, why neither side understands why the other “takes so long” or “rushes into things,” and what to do about it. Drops May 5, 2026.

Why does doing business across the Atlantic feel so easy, and why does that feeling cost companies more than expanding into markets they recognize as foreign?

In this episode, I break down what I call The Familiarity Trap: the false sense of alignment created by a shared language, shared tools, and shared conference circuits that leads companies on both sides of the Atlantic to skip the cultural preparation they'd do for any other market.

I share two stories of transatlantic deals derailed by invisible cultural assumptions, introduce the Cultural Operating System diagnostic and explain why the companies that succeed aren't smarter or richer, but the ones who start by questioning what they think they know.

In This Episode

  •  Why companies entering Japan prepare for culture shock but companies crossing the Atlantic don't, and why that costs more

  •  The French CEO whose "hot pipeline" went silent after enthusiastic American meetings

  •  The American team that walked away from German prospects who were actively trying to buy

  •  The Cultural Operating System diagnostic: five questions to ask before you spend six figures

  •  What "yes," "no," "fast," and "direct" actually mean on each side of the Atlantic

Sources & Links Mentioned

Studies & Data:

  •  70% of international business ventures fail due to cultural misunderstandings Academic research on cross-border M&A failures (GRIN)

  •  Cross-border M&A failure rates of 70–90% Harvard Business Review: A Better Approach to Mergers and Acquisitions

  •  EACC Transatlantic Expansion Barometer (survey of 200 US & European mid-size businesses) EACC France / OCO Global

  •  US-EU trade totaled $1.5 trillion in goods and services in 2024 — Office of the United States Trade Representative

  •  The Transatlantic Economy 2026 report — U.S. Chamber of Commerce

About Crossing the Atlantic

Crossing the Atlantic is a biweekly podcast for business leaders expanding across the ocean.

Your host is Christina Rebuffet-Broadus, an American advisory consultant in transatlantic deals with 20+ years in France and founder of TransAtlantia.

Each episode tackles the cultural blind spots, strategic mistakes, and hidden dynamics that make transatlantic business harder than it looks.

New episodes every two weeks.

Connect with Christina

  •  Website: transatlantia.com

  •  LinkedIn: Christina Rebuffet-Broadus

  •  Book a conversation: Schedule here

Dans cet épisode, Christina Rebuffet explore la réalité des cycles de vente aux États-Unis, en déconstruisant le mythe de la rapidité des affaires américaines.

Elle explique que, bien que les Américains attendent une réactivité rapide, le processus de décision peut prendre jusqu'à 211 jours. Elle aborde les concepts de MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) et SQL (Sales Qualified Lead), et souligne l'importance de maintenir un momentum tout au long du cycle de vente sans brusquer les prospects.

La patience et la présence active sont essentielles pour réussir sur le marché américain.

Takeaways

• Les salons peuvent générer des contacts, mais le suivi est crucial.
• Le cycle de vente américain peut durer jusqu'à 211 jours.
• Il existe un décalage entre la réactivité et la décision aux États-Unis.
• Les MQL et SQL sont des étapes clés dans le processus de vente.
• Maintenir le contact sans pression est essentiel.
• La réactivité est évaluée par les prospects américains.
• Un prospect peut être enthousiaste sans être prêt à acheter.
• La patience est nécessaire, mais la présence est primordiale.
• Comprendre le tempo américain est vital pour réussir.

Chapitres

00:00 Retour du CES : Réalité des salons américains

01:55 Le mythe de la vitesse du business américain

07:02 Cycles de vente : Comprendre le MQL et le SQL

14:20 Maintenir le momentum : Stratégies de réactivité

20:22 Conclusion : Patience et présence dans le cycle de vente

Dans cet épisode, Christina Rebuffet-Broadus aborde les défis rencontrés par les entreprises françaises souhaitant pénétrer le marché américain.

Elle partage un cas concret d'une PME Tech qui a transformé son approche de prospection, passant de 1200 prospects à 1,4 million de dollars de pipeline en se concentrant sur la personnalisation et la qualité des contacts.

Elle souligne l'importance d'une méthode adaptée et d'une compréhension approfondie des besoins des clients américains pour réussir sur ce marché.

Takeaways

• Les entreprises doivent éviter de tirer des conclusions hâtives sur le marché américain.
• Une approche personnalisée est essentielle pour la prospection B2B aux États-Unis.
• La qualité des prospects est plus importante que la quantité.
• Les outils d'automatisation ne remplacent pas une stratégie de prospection réfléchie.
• La recherche minutieuse sur les prospects peut transformer les résultats.
• Les PME doivent être prêtes à investir du temps dans la recherche avant de prospecter.
• Un bon message de prospection doit répondre à des besoins spécifiques.

Chapitres

00:00 Défis d'Entrée sur le Marché Américain

02:25 Analyse d'un Cas Concret de Transformation

05:16 L'Importance de la Personnalisation dans la Prospection

10:25 Stratégies de Prospection Efficaces

12:44 Développement d'un Outil pour Optimiser la Prospection

15:32 Réflexions Finales sur le Marché Américain

Dans cet épisode, Christina Rebuffet-Broadus aborde le défi auquel font face les entreprises européennes qui tentent de vendre leurs produits sur le marché américain.

Elle explique que même si un produit est techniquement supérieur et moins cher, cela ne garantit pas le succès. Les acheteurs américains évaluent également le risque associé à un changement de fournisseur et cherchent des preuves de la fiabilité et de la sécurité de la transition.

Christina propose des stratégies pour transformer cette différence en un avantage compétitif, en mettant l'accent sur la sécurité, la preuve sociale et le coût de l'inaction.

Pour challenger votre offre avant de le présenter à vos contacts américains, prenez rendez-vous avec moi sur https://transatlantia.com/

Takeaways

• Le syndrome du meilleur produit peut nuire à la vente.
• Les clients américains évaluent le risque avant d'acheter.
• La transition doit être sécurisée et sans interruption.
• La preuve sociale est cruciale pour gagner la confiance.
• Créer une nouvelle catégorie peut aider à se démarquer.
• Le coût de l'inaction doit être mis en avant.
• Vendre une décision plutôt qu'un produit est essentiel.
• Les acheteurs américains cherchent des justifications solides.
• Le statu quo est un avantage pour les concurrents établis.
• La présentation du produit doit évoluer pour résonner avec le marché américain.

Chapitres

00:00 Le syndrome du meilleur produit

10:42 Vendre la sécurité et la transition

15:00 Transformer la différence en avantage compétitif