Home: Message List - Shifting your base of operations to a different country

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country - MONEY

wordperfect — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:26:59 GMT

"As long as you are not co-located with your workers or your clients (and do not interact with them in person) - being 30 miles apart vs. 300 miles apart vs. 3000 miles apart - doesn't really matter with the conveniences of modern technology!"

In principle this is right, but as David said, the issue of trust comes up, if your clients can't see and "touch" you in the flesh it is a lot harder to build that trust. This is especially hard for us as we are based in China which is an automatic 10 steps back in most people eyes.

Of course if you have the where with all to travel between client base and home base, fine, you will soon clock up some air miles, but for most SME's this isn't an option.

So and it's just my opinion, yes, technology is great, but be prepared to have to do some hard work and maybe travel in the early stages building up good relations.

And uhmmm, yeah, a phone call at 3 AM is less than funny!

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country - MONEY

david28078 — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:32:08 GMT

I am British and a permanent resident of the US -

I do business in my native England thru the 'net - I use a .co.uk address and it is much less costly for UK businesses to get me to do their SEO and Website Design work than in their own country.

I use servers in Canada, LA and Minnesota have the dom names living in Arizona (Yo Bob Parsons)

My main obstacle is trust - I have spent the best part of a decade getting people to trust me - I turn away work if I don't think I'm going to do well but at least the trust factor is there.

I do "SEO" mainly for Charlotte, NC businesses and some old clients from the SF Bay Area ( I lived there for 10 years)

Trust is the main key to international success + I get a write off to visit clients a few times a year

David

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country - MONEY

AsiaAgro — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:22:27 GMT

An FX account is a Foreign Exchange account (or Foreign Currency account), it allows you to keep your revenues in whatever currency you set the account up in. Depending on how you set it up you can also do forward or hedging transactions, etc. with these accounts. Since you have a French entity, I would strongly suggest that you have payments made into that company's Euro account - rather than trying to set up a Euro account for a small American company.

Dealing with US banks on international issues can be difficult since they are US focused (thus the Peso versus Euro comment) - if you want to deal with BofA on this, I would suggest going to a branch manager and having them track things down for you. I use a branch in NC, and although they are clueless on international business they are extraordinarily helpful if I explain what I need - they work the internal channels rather than me having to go through numerous voicemails, internet options, etc.

HK is "Hong Kong" - Hong Kong offers better transparency and tax efficiency for invoicing companies. And if you are not an American citizen, you have a wide variety of options for tax free status. Even for Americans, tax deferrals and holding company operations are far more efficiency and cost effective in HK than with Europe or Caribean based holding companies.

If you spend a lot of time in France, I would suggest Natixis bank (formerly BNP). I have just dealt with them through a client and found them very accomodating - as well as middle market focused (better for SMEs).

My company's website is http://www.agrcorp.com - the main focus is in structuring companies in Asia, development consulting, and business process systems, but I've also lived and worked in Europe for many years. This may help when you reach the next stage of growth in your consulting business!!

Best of luck!

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country - MONEY

gracie — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:31:02 GMT

Merci! It is a small fry consulting firm at the moment and while I have a legal entiy in FRANCE [it allows me to reside in the US] the banks like HSBC are not interested in my current earnings.

What is an FX account? As I mentioned, I tried to explain what I want to B of A hotline: when I say Euros they answer pesos? Please tell me what division I want and what is the name of the kind of account. In France we ask for a foreign currancy account.

Thanks for the advice on the Swiss company - its great to keep an eye on the future....um what is HK?

best gracie

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country - MONEY

AsiaAgro — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:18:33 GMT

GRACIE - Any detailed suggestions would require more information about your structure... but if you are setting up a European entity for your operations, then a Euro account in Europe is the best route. If you are selling to European customers in Euro from a US company, the size of your business or expected growth may determine cost benefit of setting up an offshore company for these European transactions. This can be expensive if you're just doing "small fry" business. Alternatively banks like Wachovia / Deutsche Bank / BofA / ABN Amro / HSBC offer FX accounts, but as you have likely run into, the minimum balances are fairly high.
Again depending on the size of your business and the products or services you provide - there are also alternatives such as setting up a tax efficient Swiss or HK company (and do your banking in Euros). This perfectly legal, but may put undue IRS scrutiny on you if this part of your business is fairly small. Note this is not a way of avoiding US taxes, but a way of maintaining your revenues in Euros, and potentially deferring tax until repatriation to the US (however read about Sub Part F income for more details).
Good Luck.

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country - MONEY

gracie — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:45:18 GMT

I am really glad you asked this question. I am just starting operations in EUROPE and am having a lot of difficulty with banking. I want to keep my EUROS in EUROS and haven't been able to find the division of B of A that can help me. The French banks that offer duo currency accounts - think I am too small fry OR a laundring outfit for the mob..

Any suggestions?

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country

buybigtires — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:11:00 GMT

I agree with Asia...Skype is the ticket, and their video conferencing is great...always have a backup though...

That outage they had a few months ago hurt some of our "Skype-Reliant" customers pretty hard.

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country

AsiaAgro — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:58:30 GMT

I run my business from Thailand and would agree with bigbuytires on the various "tools" you can use to make communications (and living overseas) easier. Rather than Vonage I exclusively use Skype for communications - I have phone numbers in the US and UK for local call from clients through SkypeIn, and make phone calls to to clients landline or mobile phones using SkypeOut. For recurring clients and associates(of which most of my business consists) I use skype for phoning, conference, and use the video feature.

I have a O2 Xda phone from which I can use also use skype from any hotspot - it has Pocket PC software so I can use MS Office software in addition to making calls through my Thai GPS provider (DTAC). I can also connect to the itnernet via GPRS from just about anywhere in the World (except Japan because of their closed system).

Most of my work is in Asia, but vitually all of my clients are in Europe or North America. This does mean late night phone calls and communications but the freedom to live where you like, as you like is (as they say) "priceless".

BTW - I don't miss American TV at all - but if you do - most cable and sattelite services overseas show most of the popular US shows (albeit up to a year or more later).

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country

buybigtires — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:51:29 GMT

AK, Israel is currently high in the tech industry, as you probably know. Intel has one of its major development plants located there. Fabrication, design, and development are all there in the same place. If you currently have BofA and various others as clients, then perhaps you could leverage a business relationship with Intel through them. Just a thought.

Good Luck.

Re: Shifting your base of operations to a different country

akgold — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:43:45 GMT

Thanks BBT. The internet and international cell phone communications is really changing the face of business. Maybe my dreams of operating my company from Israel will come to fruition sooner rather than later.