It's a Small-Business World After All

It's a Small-Business World After All

"The challenges of navigating a foreign terrain are large, but the potential rewards make it worth it."

by Joe Mullich

"Lou Hoffman used to share the common misperception that overseas markets are only open to the big guys like McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble. In the past eight years, though, he's proved his own theory wrong, as his 105-person public relations company, The Hoffman Agency ( http://www.hoffman.com ), has built thriving offices in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore, Germany and the United Kingdom.

"Small businesses can do it, too," Hoffman says. "It just takes a certain amount of focus, guts and understanding that it won't pay off right away and you'll have to make some course corrections along the way."

- Expanding overseas can be very challenging. Like most other things in life the biggest thing it requires is patience. Reading about the adventures of others is always a good idea when you are trying something new and this article will give you that, and then some. -ed.

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