It’s a messy time for businesses wanting to grow internationally. The disruption of the 75-year old “international rules based order”, geopolitical situations, and the upending of some tariff agreements create many challenges.
Amidst that backdrop, it can be enticing to delay or defer your international expansion and wait. But it may not settle down soon. And sometimes the best opportunity to be bold is when your competition is caught up in overall market inertia.
Seize the day – don’t wait to explore new markets
Being bold means leveraging an untapped talent pool with deep experience, approaches, and tools available so you can efficiently de-risk and profitably accelerate your international growth. It means that you no longer need to endure constraints in talent, local market knowledge and execution, or cost. Combining these elements helps you thrive, despite daunting challenges, when you have so much at stake.
In fact, it can cost you more not to grow internationally, frozen by the moment.
There are tailwinds from Canada’s diversification strategies away from dependence on the USA. Other countries are also looking for new global partners boosted by Canada’s reputation of being a reliable partner. And you’ll find that international growth diversifies your business mitigating impacts from a slowdown in the Canadian (or your domestic) economy.
Beyond the direct business benefits from international growth, I really enjoy the personal growth I get from meeting people from other cultures, learning their perspectives and customs. I suspect you will enjoy it too.
The point is that you can efficiently bolster your team’s international experience without adding overhead costs. It’s about who you use, when and how you use them, and how you find and access them.
3 key actions to jumpstart your global growth
- Don’t be deterred in your international business ambitions by global uncertainty. The knowledge and tools are available to make it a smoother transition, removing talent, insights, and cost constrains. It may cost you more not pursue it.
- Seek experienced guidance. Value deep experience, proven in the markets you target, for the way it can accelerate your progression, and reduce the inherent risks associated with it.
- Explore available resources.Look for resources and tools to help you quickly and easily find and engage the right expertise, each time as situations and your business evolves.
At what stage in market expansion should you engage with consultants?
This approach to accelerating your international expansion can be complementary to initial steps you may have taken. The consultants we are focusing on here have deep knowledge from real experience in the countries you are focused on. They may not know all the countries you are considering and may not be necessary for basic research.
You might decide to engage them either after completing your target country’s primary research (publicly available data and reports, essentially desk research) to help you on your secondary research (in-market insights) to validate assumptions and draft directional plans. Or you might engage them after your secondary research and after choosing your target country, to inject strong local knowledge as you shape and update your plans.
Either way, FITT has excellent guidance, process steps, and information sources for both your primary and secondary research.
An untapped, high impact source of international experience
I led off this article referencing the global instability and unpredictability we all face. That includes the pros and cons of AI. These cumulative challenges suggest to me that the value of deep business experience has never been higher.
Experience breeds resilience and efficiency from having traveled often steep learning curves.
Fortunately, there is a large and growing, but largely untapped, pool of businesspeople with extensive international experience that you can draw upon.
They are not generally career consultants, rather they have worked inside businesses and know how they work, including their international operations. Their breadth and depth of experience means they can be very efficient in whatever flexible use you need, without adding overhead in a less than full time role.
The untapped talent pool I’m talking about is the growing cohort of businesspeople aging up, with 20+ years of experience. Society’s perception of age hasn’t caught up with the reality. Longevity can mean that people have added middle years of high productivity, not added years of ill health at the end of their lives.
To that point, the latest brain neuroplasticity research found that we are at our peak cognition, conceptualization, and innovation in our 50s and 60s.
[/sws_blockquote_endquote]A MIT, Northwestern, Wharton and the U.S. Census Bureau, found that age 50 business founders are twice as successful as age 30 founders. Because of their experience. And that experience can benefit you greatly.[/sws_blockquote_endquote]
An OECD study found that age 45+ businesspeople are almost always more productive than younger people. And contrary to perception, we are very comfortable driving and adapting to change and technology adoption.
Consider these 4 ways that businesspeople with 20+ years of experience benefit your business, most of it free value add that you don’t pay for:
- valuable combination of knowledge/judgment/wisdom
- enhanced soft skills (communication, collaboration, resilience)
- boosted team productivity by 20% (the benefit of multigenerational teams)
- quick onboarding time, often able to “hit the ground running” due to breadth of cross functional experience
- cost effectiveness from using them less than full time, without benefits and long term financial commitments
Much of this value is not easily quantified, which means that businesses usually do not recognize the full value of aging up workers, whose experience can rub off on your staff and help them grow as a side benefit. Of course, this growing pool includes many people who have earned FITT’s Certified International Trade Professional (CITP) designation.
And due to their experience, consultants can help you adjust and pivot when things don’t quite seem to be going to plan – they can be an early intervention resource.
Select consultants based on the specific needs of your business
Consultants with deep international experience span many different functions, so you can choose the one that best suits your needs. They may be very accomplished in B2B or B2C, product or services, sales and business development, marketing, finance, operations, general management, channel development, partnerships, technology, legal, logistics, and more.
You might even find you want to engage more than one consultant, each with complementary expertise, to help you make sure you are taking a comprehensive approach and not missing any key success factors or risks.
Imagine how much acceleration a medium-sized manufacturer, with no international experience, would get from temporarily injecting proven experience in its target countries without adding overhead. There’s no need to build those capabilities internally, with all the fixed costs that adds.
This kind of support can also buy you time to make informed decisions. See how the business does and identify when to invest in employees after some time in market – a lagging investment decision compared to investing in overhead before your business can sustain it. Using proven experience in part-time roles means you can afford people with top tier experience – an equalizer with your big competitors. A real game changer.
There are now numerous ways you can engage consultants, as non-employees, to leverage their experience in ways that suit your budget and needs, such as:
| Interim | Usually full-time for a short/defined period, and fully embedded so have decision-making authority. |
| Fractional | Usually part-time for a longer period, with a leadership role, accountable for results. |
| Consultant | Usually project based, for specialized requirements, external advisory role providing strategic advice and solutions recommendations. |
| Freelancer | Usually for specific, skills-based tasks, with defined deliverables, skill rather than knowledge-based. Not really a focus here. |
Where to find and access international trade consultants
The traditional way for businesses to find consultants is through their networks. But what do you do when the expertise is more specialized, like knowledge of specific industries and countries, which makes them harder to find?
As Statscan reported, although there’s a shortage of tradespeople, knowledge workers are not in short supply. They are just hard to find, so there’s a mismatch. They may not, for example, be as many social media stars. But there’s no correlation between how easy they are to find and how much value they create for you.
There’s a growing number of ways to find the expertise you need, including specific online services marketplaces, traditional recruiters with offices in many countries, boutique Canadian recruiters with an international network, and of course LinkedIn. There’s a growing use of AI to speed up the process of finding and matching consultants to your requirements.
Each of these options can have drawbacks such as high cost, slow turnaround times, an overwhelming number of candidates, or serving a narrow set of needs (which forces you to use multiple sources for multiple requirements). There can also be a lack of verification of someone’s experience. Which makes FITT’s CITP designation helpful.
Building a bolder vision and true competitive advantage
Injecting temporary deep experience doesn’t have to be a one-off or a rare exercise. You can use proven consultants flexibly anytime you face some challenges or opportunities but find that you have knowledge gaps. Quickly scale up or down. Proactively, or reactively when crises hit.
Sequentially injecting experience can make you more agile, more customer-driven, and can improve your execution and results.
Frequently bringing in these “guest workers”, not just for advice but embedded as the situation warrants, can help develop your people and even be a recruiting strategy.
In short, it can help your vision be more ambitious, not resigned to constraints, and improve the odds that you’ll achieve it.
Try a two-pronged approach for market-entry support
Having firsthand experience initiating international business, I know how daunting it can be wading into a different country, culture, and business community. To be successful, it’s vital to use deeply experienced consultants who know your target country, to help you plan and execute your market entry. I only wish these resources were available to me when I began my journey into international business.
You may want to consider a 2-pronged approach to engaging consultants for your international growth:
1. Home based
Engage a consultant based in your home market, i.e. a Canadian-based consultant with 20+ years of experience, for a Canadian company, someone who has experience in your target country but also knows your culture, to help you draft a market entry approach, assess risks and opportunities, provide guidance on what to look for, and help in choosing the right local partners. There’s a saying: “trust but verify” – deep experience can help with that.
2. Locally engaged
Engage a local proven businessperson in your target country to provide the most current insights, feedback on your plan, and leadership in helping implement it. Recruiters with international offices, partnerships, and marketplaces can help you find the right fit.
In uncertain times, waiting can feel prudent — but momentum favours those who act with intention and insight. By tapping into seasoned international expertise at the right moments, you can reduce risk, accelerate learning curves, and compete far beyond your size.
Global growth doesn’t require building everything from scratch; it requires knowing who to bring in, when to engage them, and how to leverage their experience.
With the right support, international expansion becomes not just possible, but practical — and a powerful source of lasting competitive advantage.
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