Thrive in Global Markets

Geraint Edwards is Chief Growth Officer at tangerine, a UK-founded international design consultancy that helps companies to make creative leaps through the design of innovative products, services, and customer experiences. Geraint joined tangerine in 2020 and his appointment builds on the consultancy’s offer in growth sectors for the business, expanding its capabilities in service and experience design. He has recently led a project to craft the user experience at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo and has also worked with longstanding tangerine clients LG and Nikon on design and innovation projects looking at future business models and products for emerging market sectors. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Design has always been about creativity and innovation, but in the last few years, it's come to mean something different. Now we think about human-centered or customer experience-driven designs that take into account what customers want from our products instead of just designing them. Merely guessing at what consumers might require is insufficient - you need an understanding not only of your market and their needs/desires; but also of evolving your service for the new market.

BEST MOMENTS

“Product design is now really known as quite a digital product design and a lot of different businesses talk about their product as their offer and this is something that tangerine helped an array of different clients and companies around basically innovating on their offer, and that is often referred to as a product.”

“Decades ago, our offer only we only dealt with the R&D department right of our clients and it was a niche kind of nice to have design engineering side of the offer for that client. But more now we're working with the board level because they're becoming design-led organizations. And they’re actually trying to work out what that means in terms of their purpose and their mission to be design-led and to be human-centered.”

“Customer experience design and design thinking can help nearly every sector. So every sector can really grow and evolve from embracing the new design mindset that the methodologies that you're encouraged to use when thinking about how to evolve your offer for new venue users, but that's the key thing is that you've got to have appetite to go after and you want to have to either evolve your offer or incrementally improve your offer to go and grow to a new sector and new market.”

“To grow internationally, you got to be empathic to the people in those different markets. And that's really what user-centered design human-centered design does and the methodologies that we and hundreds of other design consultancies use is to really go and help our clients understand that market and I think that's the key part of our offer. And traditionally, it was pure product design, but more and more now, that's not enough. You need to think about, you know, end-to-end experiences people talk about in a holistic design solution.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Geraint Edwards is Chief Growth Officer at tangerine, a UK-founded international design consultancy that helps companies to make creative leaps through the design of innovative products, services, and customer experiences.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraintmedwards/ 

https://tangerine.net/

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Chris Walker is CEO and Director of Diamond Hard Surfaces Ltd, a high-growth SME in the Advanced Engineering Sector producing innovative patented coating materials and thermal management products. The business was established in 2005 and currently exports 60-80 % of its turnover to 22 countries worldwide. Chris is an entrepreneur, Chartered Marketer, and Engineer who has specialised knowledge in establishing relationships between blue-chip companies and early-stage technology businesses to exploit new innovations, and markets. He has a broad knowledge of general management in an international environment. He is also Chair of FSB’s (Federation of Small Businesses) International Trade Policy Unit working to forge new policies to encourage and promote International Trade.

 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Embracing cultures and speaking different languages is a great asset to have when you want international trade. The more open-minded people are, the better they can understand their customers' needs because of this mindset. It would also help if there were a compelling and interesting story behind your business. With that story, you will portray your enthusiasm, and, in the end, your story will be awarded.

BEST MOMENTS

“Marketing is the basis of running businesses essentially, although there are days often associated with the activity of marketing communications. Marketing encompasses business planning. Marketing communications and one of the most interesting modules I did was international marketing. And that sort of set me on my journey to internationalization.”

“So traditionally, I think if you would go to somebody like DTI, they would say what's your next country you're going to go to? Well, then I'll say so that's the kind of vertical approach looking at geography by geography we've cut across those geographies and looked at market sectors. And we go aftermarket sectors and the great thing about Diamond Hard Surfaces is that when the customer sees apart and sees for things we can do with coatings, they even if they don't have an application themselves, they say, oh, what have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? A lot of our innovation and ideas come from talking to customers and solving their problems.”

“I'm very passionate about the fact that when businesses start up, they should think about the internationalization or international market for their products right from the get-go. And when developing a business plan, look at the international side of the potential for their business.”

“International trade is exactly the same. It's a specialism where you can get very good expert advice from an expert but sometimes when you get free advice, it's not worthwhile. You get what you pay for. Yeah. You wouldn't go to somebody on the corner for legal advice. You know, you wouldn't ask somebody standing on the corner of the street for legal advice. You'd go to a lawyer, and it's the same with international trade, go to a customs expert. Go to somebody who's will ease your passage into a new territory for example, because they've been there with other clients, and they've done that before.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Chris Walker is CEO and Director of Diamond Hard Surfaces Ltd and Chair of FSB’s (Federation of Small Businesses) International Trade Policy Unit.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswalker/

https://www.diamondhardsurfaces.com/

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

George Natsvlishvili is Organic Growth at Airapps and a consultant at different companies such as Gamehive, Glovo, Lingokids with several teams leading: UA, Monetization, ASO, SEO, incrementality projects, and AdTeach Team. His team has already saved the companies more than 5 mln euros, with more than 3 mln euros savings coming from organic growth projects. Meanwhile, within the last several years he did a few side growth projects with many games and apps, such as Zalando, Freeletics, Bending Spoon, Schibsted, Dogo, Popcore, Top War, etc with solid results from implementations. With more than 16 years of working experience in different multinational organizations such as the UN, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Zalando, Glovo, Schibsted, Lingokids, Nielsen, and GFK, he has successfully conceptualised, developed, and led marketing, product, and sales initiatives. He's passionate about Growth and believes that it is the present and future of mobile growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The future of growth is organic. The key tactics that help in this new era include ASO, SEO & UA strategies but each country needs its own approach so as not all options work everywhere - monetization and AdTech also come into play depending on what's best suited for your market size/needs.

BEST MOMENTS

“All mobile apps are depending on the amount of smartphones that we have and amount which kind of devices we have, mainly, of course, iOS or Android devices across the world. And it's like, in recent years, more and more people are using not only just mobile devices but smartphones. And the role of mobile industry and mobile apps and games are super like increasing.”

“The main challenges was to organize them to align with all of them what I'm doing and to sell app optimization is a project to all of them so to get that Okay, guys, if we implemented this benefit, not only for marketing department for itself, but for you as well. Yeah, we all gonna get a benefit from it.”

“For different countries, the willingness to pay for the same service is different. So if you want to move forward with monetization strategy, you have to start with a wall so you shouldn't go to deep dive was going on but start with tiny stuff like the first stuff I will I'm recommending is to do like a starting with the pricing segmentation for regions.”

“I try to set up a proper expectation with them and try to set up how long it will take the project to get success and to get the outcome of it before launching the project. Yeah, it's very important.”

“Check the activities, campaigns, new launches with your product team and user acquisition team, be the first in implementation stage in the new stuff like custom product page.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

George Natsvlishvili is Organic Growth at Airapps and a consultant at different companies such as Gamehive, Glovo, Lingokids with several teams leading: UA, Monetization, ASO, SEO, incrementality projects, and AdTeach Team.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.3minutesbullshitwithgeorge.com/ 

3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE

https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgynatsvlishvili/ 

https://airapps.co/

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Shekhar Varma is a Business Coaching Specialist and also Associate Partner at Coach Strategic Growth For Enterprise SGFE. He has 30 years of experience as a business owner, international coach, and trainer. He works with leaders, teams, and CEOs from diverse cultures around the world focused on helping them grow their business by facilitating insights and clarity that take a plan from good to great. He has extensive experience in working with leaders to develop a high-performance culture that creates a winning team. He believes that diversity and inclusion even in SMEs are important in winning talent to propel your business to greatness.

Shekhar specialises in contextual business planning, is a sought-after coach, and is skilful in putting clients at ease and listening. He will challenge and encourage you to push forward and expand your possibilities and potential.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Globalization has been a hot topic lately and there are four major barriers to international trade: language differences between countries, cultures that have never had contact with one another before whereas others do not even perceive them differently due to their similar backgrounds (perceptual barrier), practical concerns such as transportation costs for delivering products across borders without incurring significant losses on either side of an agreement; finally psychological fears. To overcome these barriers, business owners should have a global mindset or they want to develop a global mindset by breaking these stereotypes.

BEST MOMENTS

“I would say that working with people abroad, you have to be aware of local customs, and you'd have to be aware of, if you like, local habits, but you shouldn't be intimidated by them. And I think for me a lot of the time I found people very welcoming.”

“One of the interesting things about international culture and working in international business is we have a tendency to look at how we tolerate other people's cultures. And I believe quite strongly in the benefit of diversity is that you can actually find that there are different ways of doing things in different cultures. And maybe by understanding the way that somebody thinks from a Middle Eastern background or from a far eastern background might change the way you might improve the way that you do things and you go from tolerance to embracing to change.”

“In regard to international trade, then you need to understand the working practices. You need to understand how that country how the people there might view you and that might be both political. So I think majority of people in this country would be ignorant of how a lot of other political systems in the world work. And I think equally, people from other countries don't necessarily understand how politics, for instance, works in this country, and how therefore that influences the economy and the way that people do business.”

“I think you've got those language barriers. I think there's a perception that it's much more difficult. And I think, you know, some of these are realities. It's not an easy thing to do. And you, therefore, need a plan. I think there's concerns that people have about Will I get paid? And if so, what how do you manage, for instance, currency risk, and I myself in different ways, and just evolving that over time as to how I've managed the currency risk. So I think there are perceptual barriers. I think there are practical barriers. And I think also to some extent, where does somebody start?”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Shekhar Varma is a Business Coaching Specialist and also Associate Partner at Coach Strategic Growth For Enterprise SGFE. He has 30 years of experience as a business owner, international coach, and trainer.

CONTACT METHOD

www.sgfe.co.uk 

Phone: +447973727803 

Email: [email protected]

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Priscilla Knoble is Senior Director of International Strategy & Product Management at Adobe. She was born and raised in Japan, she is fluent in the culture and the Japanese language. She sees the world through an international (non-English) lens. She and her team are responsible for the strategy behind the foundational requirements for developing localized products that allow them to focus Adobe's business on international markets.

She’s also an entrepreneur outside of her high-tech career. In 2011, she launched a publishing company, Stitch Publications, where she translated and published over 25 Japanese quilting and craft books into English. They have been best sellers in the industry.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The world is globalized, and companies need to think about customer experiences. Companies used to only create English versions of their product or services, but this is no longer enough for the modern marketplace with too many competitive options out there today. The goal should be delivering on expectations rather than just having "the best" product because sometimes that won't work for everyone as well. In order to meet customer expectations, Adobe uses three strategies: internationalisation, localisation, and culturalization.

BEST MOMENTS

“When somebody bought a subscription or even today buys us a subscription to our products, even though we might default for you assuming on what language you might want to use for a download, you can easily go up and change the language version that you want and download and use. So, I think that was one change that customers appreciated is that they could choose the language they wanted. But now what we're dealing with even further and more different is this concept of and I think it's really because of AI, MT, ML all these things were trying to anticipate what a customer wants, whether it's content or email or marketing materials.”

“As more start-ups come in, more apps come in, they're able to start from scratch and do amazing things. I think often oh my gosh, I bet their day is fantastic because everybody wants to do culturalization of the product or transcreation. They're not fighting, you know, the kind of the old methods but we are working on trying to bring product and the globalization closer together and trying to figure out how do we do that better.”

“Our engineering globalization engineering team they are the ones that really work alongside the product teams to make sure that things are fully internationalized. Then we have localization, that's our second pillar. And for us, we define that as really just the translation of the UI and the components to make it work online or the translation of content. So, it really is that translation factor. And that's more of a business decision around what we do there. And then the third one is culturalization.”

“There's a lot of talk about diversity and inclusion, and it never seems to really reach the localization sort of story, but that's kind of what I want to bring in if we are truly trying to be a diverse company that has inclusion, it shouldn't just be about our employees and what we do in the company, it should be about our products as well and what are we offering to the world.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Priscilla Knoble is Senior Director of International Strategy & Product Management at Adobe and owner of Stitch Publications.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.linkedin.com/in/priscilla-knoble-067920

https://www.adobe.com/ 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Pilar Cardenas is Chief Growth Officer at Meditopia. With extensive experience in launching, developing, and successfully scaling Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) and Subscription brands, Pilar has worked with top international brands including Adidas, Savage X Fenty, and Fabletics (part of the American fashion group TechStyleOS) for over a decade.

A strong believer and advocate of the importance of mental health at work, Pilar has successfully been able to combine her personal focus on health with her expertise, by working on building scalable and cash-sustainable business strategies for firms linked to health.  

As part of Meditopia’s Executive Team, Pilar is responsible for driving global growth by leading user acquisition, retention, and brand teams, and by helping shape the firm’s strategy and growth vision, including full global B2C and P&L responsibilities.

Pilar loves nature and tries to spend as much time as possible in the outdoors, hiking or walking along the coastline. She is also an avid yogi, with an RYT teacher training certificate, Pilar practices Hatha Yoga almost daily.

Meditopia gives a free one-month premium membership for only our audience. You can reach it at https://meditopia.com/promo/1m-thrive

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Mental health is an issue that affects people around the world, and their views on it vary. Each culture has its own way to deal with mental illness so changing mental well-being content for each individual group would be necessary in order not only to recognize but also to address these issues properly. It can be said that no matter what the subject is, localising the content is the key to global success.

BEST MOMENTS

“We believe that mental health is a need is not a trend. It's not something that is just happening now. It's something that has happened always that now we are more vocal than ever on that and that it happens to anyone sitting in any country, anywhere.”

“I think that's the keynote on remote is not only about having a colleague and talking about work, it's about going beyond and just making these connections that you just feel part of it naturally.”

“Growth is, of course, the reaching to as many people or as many companies so they can offer our services to employees as possible, as well as also generating like let's say also the business for the company to make it sustainable long term.”

“We continuously create content on sleep, anxiety, stress, and these ones we do on an intimate level, but then our local partners will always keep the local touch. So we have these two things because as you said, being a global company and having tools to provide content to our users could be extremely complex if we will only do it by market. We have global topics and then detail injections of content that will be relevant.”

“When you feel this deep connection with what the company you're working for thus it's just so easy to wake up in the morning. And just start your date. And the team also like it's not only about the brand, but the team like we have so much time.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Pilar Cardenas is Chief Growth Officer at Meditopia and is responsible for driving global growth by leading user acquisition, retention, and brand teams, and by helping shape the firm’s strategy and growth vision, including full global B2C and P&L responsibilities.

CONTACT METHOD

https://meditopia.com/ 

https://blog.meditopia.com/

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Alan Temple is the Chief Revenue Officer at Paligo, an enterprise-grade cloud-based Component Content Management System (CCMS). He has over 20 years of leadership and sales experience in the tech Industry. His professional journey started out in Dell when it was in hypergrowth during the late 90’s/early 2000s. He moved then to Oracle and LinkedIn before stepping more into the start-up world. He has learned a massive amount about growth and start-up in the last 6 years. He has a specific mindset as a leader based on consistent improvement (better this week than last). He based his leadership style on seeking the correct attitude and being.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In order to be a great leader, you need the ability and commitment of your team. You can't just assume that they will do what needs done or care about their work as much as possible because each person has their own unique personality. While growing into new challenges with heavier workloads comes naturally for some members of your group - others might find themselves struggling under pressure without support within this changing environment; making sure everyone feels included would help you all succeed together.

BEST MOMENTS

“As you can imagine, in any leadership role, or if you're achieving taking a sporting role, you would even take same as a football manager. It's easy to be the manager when everything's going well and the team are winning, you're wearing your costume how you behave when the team aren't doing so well when you do need to make some changes are some tough decisions.”

“I do think you as a leader, you have a responsibility to have a work-life balance to set an example for your team. And, you know, there's no point preaching about work-life balance and sending emails on the weekend or in during the night or thing.”

“If you don't learn about your team and what makes them tick as an individual, you will actually go wrong, you know, assumption can be the worst thing you can do you know, so you need to know what makes people tick. Some people you know in simplistic terms, some people are very financially orientated. Some people are praise orientated. Some people want to be challenged, but you don't know them until you take the time to learn them as a person.”

“Having a massive increase in sales can have a massive negative effect on the rest of the company. You know, simple, the team that on board the customers the team, the train the customers, you know, their workload went absolutely through the roof, without their increase in headcount or without increases in efficiency. So that certainly stands out as the biggest thing.”

“Key from a sales process is everything starts with the discovery call. And if you as a sales team, get your discovery call right with the customer, then everything else is simple. It's like building a house and not doing good foundations if you don't have the foundations right you're gonna continuously have problems.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Alan Temple is the Chief Revenue Officer at Paligo, an enterprise-grade cloud-based Component Content Management System (CCMS).

CONTACT METHOD

https://paligo.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alantemple

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Kate Anderson is a consultant with business growth experts, SGFE, and founder of B2B insight agency morph b2b.  Kate has 25+ years of experience supporting global corporates in designing, planning, and implementing strategic change through insights-based consulting.   She is an expert in understanding and optimising B2B global value chains with a particular focus on tech, industrial, and logistics.  Kate helps clients address today’s critical business issues: from portfolio management, diversification, digitisation, and servitization, to CX, channel, and pricing strategy.   

KEY TAKEAWAYS

One of the most important aspects of any business is to be able adaptable and flexible. Especially, if you would like to grow globally, you should be flexible. The strategy you are using in your local market can work very well for that dynamic. However, each market has its own unique structures and needs, so it is important to change your strategy based on the new market’s needs.

BEST MOMENTS

“I think there's more of an understanding that it's worth investing in insights, it's worth investing in an understanding rather than going out with what is quite an arrogant approach to think that you can just walk up in another country and do the same thing and it's all gonna work.”

“I think starting points should be thinking about other markets where there is a similar dynamic. Now, that won't necessarily be a market that shares the language with you so a similar dynamic and also a market where there's some logic to you starting out there, do you have a head start in that market? Do you have good commercial relationships? Do you have customers importing from that market already? So you can see a desire there already? That's coming in, even though you haven't tried to expand. So some kind of starting point in that market, emphasize it as a good opportunity for you.”

“We found quite differences about what premium means and we're looking at the whole aesthetic experience of premium so not just what the product is but your whole experience of how you buy it, how it's packaged, what you get along with that, what the experience is of using and owning that product moving forward.”

“The amount of data and information that you have at your fingertips is enormous. And with networking sites like LinkedIn, you can make contact with people in local markets and engage with them. Ask them questions, understand how the market works. So much can be done, even without leaving your desk. So you can do some groundwork to already establish a lot of that.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Kate Anderson is a consultant with business growth experts, SGFE and founder of B2B insight agency morph b2b. 

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateandersonmorphb2b       

https://morphb2b.com/

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Brian Coultrip is CEO of Shirlaws, The Shirlaws community of business professionals encompasses coaches and consultants, CEOs and senior teams as well as HR and L&D professionals across all sectors. With their world-class IP, training and global community of experts help to overcome the source issues that affect most businesses and create an environment in which businesses, and the people who work in them, can flourish.

It was in his early 20’s that he fell into Recruitment and through the next 25 years he built teams, businesses, relationships, and much more. He exited two of his own and was in the final stage in a couple of others. He was always hungry for more. He took a break from the norm of Recruitment and meandered into the world of Intellectual property (namely business growth methodologies) and has already achieved great things, he’s going to go further too!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The best way to grow your business globally is by understanding cultural differences and how those play out in different countries. For example, some cultures want quick sales while others may be more interested in getting to know your company before making any commitments or buying anything at all; there are no one-size fits all approach when it comes down to doing what works well with each culture. Next, it’s worth considering the price - each country's economy varies so there will undoubtedly be different costs. However, in the end, you will have great global opportunities considering these cultural differences.

BEST MOMENTS

“So I think my first barrier is always understanding the culture and the ways perceived to be the right way to do business. Right. So do we wine and dine then sell or do we just drop a proposal then we wine that we dine and do we sell afterwards? Do we wait to be invited to sell this? So that for me is the cultural part and then it comes down to research of the local markets. To try and find good resellers or distributors. I've always found that incredibly difficult.”

“Very simply, you couldn't build a process that works in the UK and expect to leave the UK on a plane and land and start deploying that same process. “

“It's important that everybody becomes unified by a simple product by a simple logo by a simple brand. I'm aware, Russia has just got a version of McDonald's but I suspect it will never outlive McDonald's, their global brand. So yes, it's really important to us that the words Powered by Shirlaws and Compass on every street corner.”

“Why not have a foot in both camps? Why not have a small exposure school entity? And if that's a franchise market, if that's a reseller or distributor relationship go look, go ask the questions, go hunting around and listen. If nothing else, you will meet some great people and you've just given yourself some brand exposure, whether you touchdown in that particular territory or not.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Brian Coultrip is CEO of Shirlaws, The Shirlaws community of business professionals encompasses coaches and consultants, CEOs and senior teams as well as HR and L&D professionals across all sectors.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancoultrip/

https://twitter.com/BriCoultrip

www.poweredbyshirlaws.com

www.shirlawscompass.com

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR

Alessandra Binazzi is the founder of Alessandra Binazzi Consulting. She is a multi-lingual professional with a surprisingly varied experience and one common thread: International markets and customers. Proficient in all major European languages, Alessandra has dedicated her professional life to marketing, selling, supporting, and educating customers on all continents. She was raised in Italy and university-educated in Boston, MA, she was exposed to global technology companies from the beginning of her career, with a particular focus on globalization and multilingual digital content.

Alessandra Binazzi Consulting combines Alessandra's background in languages, technology, and business to develop globalization strategies tailored to the needs of organizations in a growth stage. Alessandra received a BS in International Business from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from Northeastern University in Boston. She has lived and worked in 10 different countries.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Italian culture is a complex one. The country has many different regions with unique traditions - this means every business relationship should change according to the region for better or worse depending on where there are located geographically. The hierarchy should be considered, too. You should know who is at the higher level and act accordingly.  It can be said overall that Italy needs detailed research for every region and all businesses should look at their cultural and business etiquette.

BEST MOMENTS

“We know that networking and word of mouth is important everywhere, but I would say in Italy it's particularly important. So personal relationships, I would say are top of the list. So, you know, when you're doing business in Italy, you should expect to get a little deeper knowledge of the person you're doing business with”

“The business culture in Italy actually in terms of working hours, I would say is much longer than like in the US or even the UK for example. So you do find people's workday extending to seven to 7.30 very often and you know the myth of the long lunch breaks doesn't really exist anymore.”

“It's fairly hierarchical in Italy. So yeah, your level within your organization definitely matters. So you know, when addressing especially if it's your first encounter, you really should be addressing, you know, the higher levels first, and then you know, and then as you meet the broader team and understand maybe the stakeholder that you will be dealing with directly then you can start that direct relationship.”

“We do use hand gestures a lot. In fact, you know, you can go online and look at tutorials for hand gestures. And I will tell you also the different regions have different gestures as well. So you may find different regions using different hand gestures to mean different things. So, you know, it's not only a national thing, you may even find regional variations.”

“If you're foreign, if you're an exporter, or trying to do business in Italy, you know, you may find more affinity with the business culture in the North. The other thing about the north and this business culture is also that it's just, you know, in terms of business is more developed. So services may be easier to find and just work better.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.

CONTACT METHOD

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren

IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Alessandra Binazzi is the founder of Alessandra Binazzi Consulting which combines Alessandra's background in languages, technology, and business to develop globalization strategies tailored to the needs of organizations in a growth stage.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandrabinazzi/

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/

Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR