ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown | Entering New Markets

Join our Host Dave Erickson and Botond Seres as they grill our guest Tyler Johnson about his 20 year experience in entering new global markets, and how he was able to overcome cultural and linguistic challenges and help Dell Computer to enter the highly competitive Chinese market. Find the answer to critical questions about entering new international markets: What should founders do who are looking to go outside of their home market into international markets? What are some of the things they need to think about and look at in order for them to do that? How do you find out the market needs for a certain demographic in international markets? Are businesses going to be looking at starting a business in other countries to get an advantage in taxes, growth and markets? How critical was it when working with Dell and hardware and software services and products to understand what was actually being developed in the local market? How much of that study do you have to do and how did you do that in a market that you are not familiar with the language? For an SMB or a startup that wants to go into an international market, what should they be focusing on first?

Show Notes

Join our Host Dave Erickson and Botond Seres as they grill our guest Tyler Johnson about his 25 year experience entering new global markets, and the excitement of overcoming cultural and linguistic challenges and help Dell Technologies to enter the highly competitive Chinese and Asian markets.

 

Tyler Johnson is the Founder of Laowai Enterprises, a consulting company that specializes in go-to market strategies, product fit, use cases, sales/marketing, revenue streams across foreign countries and unknown environments.  He advises executives and founders across medium sized companies and start-up automation technology companies on new products and alternative markets. He provides strategic views on various countries in order to analyze geopolitical risks, political strategies or geopolitical strategies for products and for offerings. 

 

He spent 20+ years with Dell Technologies in Go To Market, Sales, Marketing across hardware/software/ services, and spent 10 of those years living in Shanghai China building Dell’s presence in China.

 

He is on the Board of advisors for the George H W Bush Foundation on US-China Relations, and is a Board Member Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce.

 

Tyler is also a Published Author with his book "The Way of The Laowai: The Importance of International Self-Awareness for Business.”

 

Laugh, cry and nod your head with our hosts and our special guest as they probe the darkness and opportunities surrounding foreign markets and cultures. 

 

Find the answer to critical questions about entering new international markets: What should founders do who are looking to go outside of their home market into international markets? What are some of the things they need to think about and look at in order for them to do that? How do you find out the market needs for a certain demographic in international markets? Are businesses going to be looking at starting a business in other countries to get an advantage in taxes, growth and markets? How critical was it when working with Dell and hardware and software services and products to understand what was actually being developed in the local market? How much of that study do you have to do and how did you do that in a market that you are not  familiar with the language? For an SMB or a startup that wants to go into an international market, what should they be focusing on first? 

 

Check out Tyler Johnson’s website https://thewayofthelaowai.com/ and to order his book “The Way Of The Laowai: The Importance of International Self-Awareness for Business”.

 

If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here: 

 

Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/

 

Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/

 

GUEST: Tyler Johnson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-johnson-834a163/

Creators & Guests

Host

Botond Seres

ScreamingBox developer extraordinaire.

Host

Dave Erickson

Dave Erickson has 30 years of very diverse business experience covering marketing, sales, branding, licensing, publishing, software development, contract electronics manufacturing, PR, social media, advertising, SEO, SEM, and international business. A serial entrepreneur, he has started and owned businesses in the USA and Europe, as well as doing extensive business in Asia, and even finding time to serve on the board of directors for the Association of Internet Professionals. Prior to ScreamingBox, he was a primary partner in building the Fatal1ty gaming brand and licensing program; and ran an internet marketing company he founded in 2002, whose clients include Gunthy-Ranker, Qualcomm, Goldline, and Tigertext.

What is ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown ?

Join us for interesting conversations about technology and the business of IT.

SPEAKERS
Tyler Johnson, Dave Erickson, Botond Seres

Dave Erickson 00:32
Welcome to the ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast. I'm your host, Dave Erickson, along with Botond Seres. Today we have a special guest, Tyler Johnson. He is the founder of Laowai Enterprises, which provides business consulting for go-to market China and automation technology. He spent 20 plus years with Dell Technologies and go-to market sales and marketing across hardware and software services. He is on the board of advisors for the George HW Bush Foundation on US/China relations, and is a board member for the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce. He is also a published author with his book, ‘The Way of the loud way, the importance of international self awareness for business’. So, Tyler, that's a pretty deep background. Is there anything I missed there?

Tyler Johnson 01:25
No Dave. So, thanks for having me. This is a pleasure to join in. I appreciate the time. I love talking about some of my background and experiences and hopefully that will help others that are trying to do business. I would like to highlight a couple of things from my background and maybe I can expand a little bit on some of the experiences that I had. So I did spend a great deal of years, two decades, with Dell and half of that time was based in Shanghai, China and that was a unique experience in itself. That was from 2005 to 2015. I was responsible for sales, marketing, and go-to market activities for selling computers, software and services to both the local market and to multinationals that were doing business within China. So it was a great experience. I certainly have a lot of stories and have worked with a number of multinational and local Chinese companies, joint ventures and the likes. And so that was a very cool experience and I would recommend to anybody, if they get the opportunity, to certainly jump on the bandwagon of living abroad and doing that experience, because you'll learn a lot both personally and on the business front.

Dave Erickson
As a founder of a company, what advice do you have for founders who are looking to go outside of their home market into international markets? What are some of the things they need to think about and look at in order for them to do that?

Tyler Johnson
Yeah, great question and it's part of the reason and a lot of the activity that I do today for advisory to companies and startups and larger companies that are looking to expand with different products. So I would say there's probably two or three things that I could highlight for founders. Number one is, you've got to hire the right talent within organizations in order for them to succeed. And what I mean by that is that talent needs to have some background that has international experience. If you don't have people that have international experience, it's very hard to get accustomed to cultures, product services, history, and maybe even potential opportunities. So that would be the first thing, you have got to seek out people that have had a broad experience in the international forum. The second thing that I would focus on if I was a startup or a founder or even a bigger company looking to expand into the market is that you have to solve practical problems. Too often today, I believe that things are created that don't have practical use in any way. So it's kind of like creating emojis with different colors or phones that are different colors. They don't really serve a practical purpose. So what we need to do today and what businesses could do today that would make them successful would be to solve some sort of practical problem that a particular country is having that a particular group is having, or a business need inside of a country or a region and finding that practical problem is part of the knowledge of connecting locally and so that's unique. So that would be the second thing. And then the third thing that I've learned through my experience in my life, living abroad and doing business abroad is that there's more than one way to do things. If you try to tackle solutions, or solve problems with only one thing in sight, or one means to an end, maybe you're looking at it wrong and I had to learn that the hard way. Through some experiences, I always thought that my way was the right way, but I had to learn over time that I had to learn a lot of things in order to get things done. So doing things a different way and getting the same results is okay and in fact, that creates a whole lot of new opportunities and new things

Botond Seres 06:07
If I can circle back and touch on the topic that you brought up, I should find sort of a problem for a certain group of people or a certain geographical location. How would I go about discovering such a problem?

Tyler Johnson 06:24
Yeah, so I'll just use this and this is all my experience. So a lot of times people travel, and they live in different countries, but they only do it for a number, one or two years, or maybe even shorter than that. Or they travel back and forth and they don't allow enough time to get integrated into the society and integrated into the culture. So as a foreigner, having spent 10 years in China, having seen a lot of things, after a certain point in time you start to get accustomed to the cultures, the behaviors, you start to learn the history, you start to understand how people are educated you, understand how business flows, you understand transactions, you understand what really makes a society tick, and in turn, you also understand some of the problems. And so I'll give you a great example of solving a problem. After five years of being in China, I was localized as a local, Chinese, foreign national, so a local hired for national is what they call it. What does that mean? That means that I participated in local taxes, I participated in local health care, I participated in all the incentives that local citizens would be provided. And so when I submitted taxes inside of China, I had to gather up all my receipts and submit those on a monthly basis and I had to learn and understand the tax system that they had. By learning and understanding that tax system, it allowed me to think a little bit differently about solving a problem. And so that in turn that knowledge, I can take that knowledge and in turn, flip that over to a developer, a designer, somebody that could create some sort of solution to that problem that may or may not be part of that particular country, but maybe solving a problem in another country. I'm telling you the story to think back at how complex and Dave probably knows this, how complex the US tax system is. Taxes in China are pretty simple, right? And they have a system that's set up because they haven't been doing a modern tax system for a very long time. And so it takes a guess at how long or how much submission or paperwork is needed inside of China for me to submit my taxes. How long do you think? How many, how many pieces of paper do you think it took?

Dave Erickson 09:27
I don't know, maybe 10.

Tyler Johnson 09:31
One, one piece of paper. That's it. One piece of paper. And if I compare that to submitting taxes in the United States, that equivalent took about 70 pages. So if you look at the differences in the systems and the processes in what is submitted and the information that is needed, just knowing that information allows you to think a little bit differently about solutions and solving problems. So I'll loop this back to you to answer your question of what do I tell a developer? Well, you have to have keen knowledge of that local market in order to solve a problem That may be a problem, or a fix or solution that could be replicated in other countries, or in a similar country. So you have to know the environment in order to solve the problem. If I was a person, a founder going into a country, I would try to seek out people that had been there and lived there for a long time, that had common knowledge of what it took to do business transactions and or solve problems in that local country. Number two, I would also seek out locals that have grown up or live there so that I could know and understand unique problems and unique solutions from their perspective. Having that trust and knowing that local knowledge is pretty essential to developing products and developing solutions for that market or for other markets.

Botond Seres 11:19
If I understand your main point correctly, your advice is to build an entourage basically first and then add to it?

Tyler Johnson 11:32
Well, it's part of it, you have to ask a lot of questions. But you also have to have people that have local knowledge in order to create local solutions. So you have to have connections. You don't necessarily have to have a large amount of people, but you do have to have people that have common knowledge of local markets in order to create local solutions. The same is true for the United States. If a foreign business wanted to do business inside of the United States, they would have to have a partner or somebody that was uniquely situated to answer expert questions on the market they were trying to serve. So it goes both ways. It's not just a one way street. I don't think you need a whole lot of people, depending on what you're trying to solve. Well obviously, when it comes to the US tax code, probably 25% of all the developers in the United States are just trying to solve problems related to taxes. Whereas in China, they probably only have a few developers working on their tax system. Yeah, well Dave, I think it hits on another hot topic. So there's a lot of countries across the world, China included at the time that I was there, there weren't a whole lot of legacy systems and processes that were in place and so it's easy to create or easier to create solutions. When you have a greenfield approach like that, versus a market that's a bit more developed that has multiple solutions, or past technology solutions that are not no longer relevant, and you're trying to get rid of those or replace them. It's much harder to do the latter than it is the Greenfield approach. So it's a unique opportunity for businesses, for startups and for founders to take a look at maybe some countries or regions that don't have a whole lot of legacy. And you have the opportunity to come in with your technology that is cool to the market and solves an immediate problem and you don't have to worry about switching people's mindset.

Dave Erickson 13:51
So in the United States, one of the things that is kind of interesting is that each of the states has a different way of dealing with business, and one of the trends is that businesses are either moving out of one state into another, because the way to do business is different from another; or they're incorporating in a state that is not their own state because it's cheaper and better. But that concept, I think, is going to be applied globally and I think that people starting businesses are not going to be looking at which state to start a business in,but which country is better for them to start a business in. And I think that that may have an impact on the way businesses are starting. What's your feeling on that?

Tyler Johnson 14:42
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, different countries, different regions have different expertise. Just like different states in the United States have different expertise, different talent sources, different things that they produce, that they report, that they export; the same is true for countries all across the world. So having good knowledge of how things work at a global level, a regional level, or a country level is very, very important for individuals and business owners, both at current mature companies that are out there, and ones that are trying to start up and create something new. One of the premises that I put inside of the book that I published was the eight lessons that I have learned. One of the highlights of that is around people having a global mindset and people having a mindset and knowledge of what happens in the rest of the world. I can tell you through experience that living in China and being disconnected from the United States for an extended period of time, you gain a different mind set on outcomes, perspective, information, ways to solve problems, all of these things happen and you know that transformation is key and critical. For people going forward in the future, they have to change their mindset on how they operate. You can't just operate in your own little world; now you have to operate on a broader scale. And so there's technologies today that allow us to do that. We're talking today with you and people are all over the place. Data is moving freely across the world. You were talking about monetization of, or changes in how money is done across the world, how trade is done; all of these things are changing the dynamics on how people think and operate, and the ones that will take advantage, and the companies and individuals that will take advantage are the ones that are at the forefront, or at least are open to new ideas, new thoughts and new ways of doing things.

Botond Seres 17:19
Turning from my experience, which is relatively small, so I haven't done much business in China or with China. What I do have some experience in, specifically in development, is working with people from India, and Hungary, naturally. But also, in the last couple years, people from Italy, and all of these groups of people require a completely different set of skills. So it's not just a different style of conversation. Everything has a different flow, we use expressions a lot, we use libraries, whatever, just just common sayings and that is something that I think the further we move east, it's less of a thing; at least when we can make it in English. So sometimes communication can be very, no factual. I don't want to say factual, it's more like direct. So that there is definitely a component that is, I don’t know how to put this to be honest with you, but here in this country, honesty is usually the last thing you do in business. Right? It's a weird thing. But it's a thing here, but in certain different countries is the first thing you do. So it's like a complete 180 of communication. It's a thing, it's definitely a thing. I don't know how much it affects developers globally, since we are a market that is on the verge of globalization, it's been there for quite a long time. So all of these cultures, all of these methods of communication are being merged together, albeit quite slowly.

Dave Erickson 19:33
You brought up a very interesting point. You know, language plays such an important role. Probably the biggest thing that changed my life, and even my business life, was when I learned a second language. And I learned that second language while trying to start a business in a country that I had little experience with. Kind of a language on the fly but I did learn it and then learning a lot of language, it opened up like a whole world, and an understanding that people are able to see things differently and cultures have a big effect on how people work and communicate, and what problems or how they solve problems. Daily, I don't know, did you learn Mandarin when you were in China?

Tyler Johnson 20:22
Yes. So this is a great topic. I'm not fluent. And the only words that I know are bad words and things that can get me out of trouble, I guess. I'll tell you a little bit of a story because I've… so I have three children and when we moved overseas, I had two, so my youngest child was born in Shanghai. And so my two daughters grew up and went all through elementary school in the early years in China at a international school, because you couldn't go to a local school they're in China, but in that school, they had to learn language, right, you had to learn Mandarin, not only the the tones in the speaking, but also the writing. So if you're familiar, or you've seen the characters and stuff, it's not, it's not the easiest thing to go out there and learn. As children, the thing that I picked up the most is, kids are easy, they can learn languages very easily at an early age. I think anytime before, you know the age of five or six, they pick up languages very, very easy, because they don't have to do this translation into another language and then translate their mother tongue and then into something else; they just go right into the language itself. The reason why I'm bringing up the story is because, they're older now and that experience for them on the language side, and the culture side has opened so many doors for them to have opportunities, and it's also enabled them to be very open to how things run across the world. So, you know, they're global in mindset, but they don't judge, they speak another language, they learn another language, they respect other countries, other organizations, other people and, to see that is, is a pretty remarkable thing. While it transformed me, obviously by learning some of the language and different culture impacted me in my business and stuff, to see it in kids and how they grow up and how they develop through those development years, and what that's going to do for them in the future. Holy, you know, that is something remarkable and I'm super excited, not not just because they're my kids, but to see what they're going to accomplish based on what they've done so far in their life. And, you know, my eldest daughter is now looking at other languages so that she can have two and three and maybe four different languages under her belt, and that means a lot. I mean, you can take that very far and communicate in different ways. And get a lot of respect, by learning the language in the local area, you gain respect. You know, there's a whole lot of benefit to learning a language not only personally, but in the business side of the world, too. So, anyway, that was a long winded answer to your question, but to see it in the kids is great, you know, that's awesome.

Dave Erickson 24:03
Yeah, I had to learn Hungarian when I was 29. It was really hard. Hungarian, considered one of the harder languages. I made the mistake of learning it basically, with high school students. So I learned all their slang and all that other stuff. I didn't learn formal business Hungarian so I started talking in business in Hungarian as though everyone was kind of a high schooler. And so it kind of caused some cultural difficulties with some of the people I was doing business with, which were very, how would you say, old school kind of style with very formal language, and I never talked to them in that formal language. I eventually learned formal Hungarian but, you know, culturally, from a business standpoint, it really kind of made a difference. In doing that, and even though my accent was really I had a horrible American accent and I was saying all these bad words and everything, people did respect the fact that I made the effort to learn the language and become fluent enough to actually do business, let alone understand the accounting system, the tax system, all that type of stuff. But if we were developing a product, or if I had to develop a product for that inHungary, I would have enough background where I could probably make a product that would succeed in the market. Um, China's probably a lot… Sure, I've done business in China, and with Chinese companies and it's a different style, but if you were, you know, taking a product, a tech product, or a software product that somebody had developed in the United States and they wanted to go into China and sell into the Chinese market, what kind of advice would you give them from the standpoint of how should they look at changing or altering the product for the market?

Tyler Johnson 26:10
Yeah, um, but before I answer that, I want to touch on one more thing about the language though, because the language I think is super, super important. And the other thing that it did for me personally, is it helped simplify my requests back in. So if you've ever been in a meeting where you had to translate three times into three different languages, where you've ever been in a situation where you were translating a complex subject, you have to simplify your language and simplify your tasks, you know. I found that I learned a lot by doing that, because it gets rid of some of the noise that you have in business requests and or personal requests, by simplifying language into common terms in some way. And so part of the trends, sometimes things don't translate so you have to find other ways to translate it. And that's the trick in the mind and the trigger in the mind that may help out as you build products and services. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there on the language front, because there were other outcomes from learning something new.

Botond Seres 27:27
If you don't mind, I would love to add something on the language side as well. You said that some things don't translate. I would argue that most things don't translate, like at all. Yeah, I think both of you guys have started life with pretty good knowledge of English. So I did not, that's a learned language for me and it's absolutely astonishing how many more resources are in English than in Hungarian. We're quite a small country and of course, some books get translated,some don't. Like some scientific papers get translated, others just don't, then there is just an incredible amount of information that gets lost in translation. One of the things that I've learned quite recently, and unfortunately I could not do anything about it, but I just know that I'm quite interested in the forefront of physics, which is fusion at this time and the research into Fusion is quite moot in the EU right now. We've been building guitars for I don't know how many years, but not much is happening on that front. Mathematics and physics, they kind of diverged here in the EU, and as far as I heard in the US as well, they're two quite separate fields. But as far as I know, in Russia, these two fields are still quite interconnected as they used to be here. They have a completely different approach to some experiments and some theories. That is why I would love to learn more about that, but I just can't because I can't even read the language. I can even imagine what is available in Chinese, with such a huge populace, lots of very smart people and huge amounts of money going into research and development as well, and I'm sure they are correct.

Tyler Johnson 29:30
Oh, yeah.

Dave Erickson 29:31
How critical was it for you and you were working with Dell and working with hardware and software services and products to understand what was actually being developed in the local market, even on a competitive side but maybe not even on it? You know, maybe It'll just be a standard, maybe on a side that is not competitive in nature. Just trying to understand what innovation is happening in the market, versus the competitors that were popping up as well. How much of that study did you have to do and how did you in the market not being familiar with the language very much? How did you get that?

Tyler Johnson 30:16
Yeah, that's an outstanding question Dave. China is a pretty unique market because, there, it's massive and people have the perception that it's not competitive. It's super competitive, it's probably more competitive, because there's more people and more business and more transactions that happen all over the country. And so with that, you have more companies, more competition, more people, all of these things happening. So in China, it's a little bit different, because the structure is much different. Knowing and understanding Policy and Government direction is pretty key to being successful inside of China. So the good news about China is that they create a five year plan and they refresh that plan every year and they go towards that plan at building, developing, research, all of these things are guided by whatever this plan states. And that could be in education, it could be in quantum computing, it could be in all sorts of different things, but they have a plan. So knowing and understanding that plan is pretty critical for a foreign company that wants to do business inside of China, but also understanding the do's and don'ts. So who do you actually partner with if you cannot get into the market and you have to prove that? You have to get a partner who you partner with and know which partners are critical. Also, the only way that you learn that in a market like China is to have pretty good relationships with the people locally and it takes years and years and years to build a lot of that relationship up. In fact, it takes decades or lifetimes. I have only lived there for 10 years and I'm by no means an expert on China. I just have nuggets here and there and I know some people and some things and can navigate around a little bit. And the only reason I can navigate around some of those things is because I got into trouble a lot. Right? I fell into the holes. And when you fall into the holes, you have to dig yourself out of those holes, sometimes you learn, sometimes you don't. So having good advice at what type of industry and what type of product is pretty critical and maintaining a close connection to government regulations, government initiatives, that is pretty critical at being successful inside of China. I think you've seen it recently in the news, right? You see a lot of companies that are getting clamped down by government regulations or directions that Xi Jinping wants to take them or doesn't want to take them. You know, some of those are true, some of them are not true, you'll never understand the underlying reason for a lot of them, but you have to keep tabs on that and you have to understand or have people close to you that understand that quite well so that you don't get into too much trouble. So examples of that could be what type of software are you selling? Right? If you're selling software inside of China. Well, it’d better align with what those initiatives are and you’d better be ready to protect your IP or not protect your IP around some of that software. The same goes for products, widgets or whatever you're making. It couldn't be cars, right? Evie cars are another great example. You know, you see Elon over there and Tesla's is pretty big. Well, the China market is huge. It's the biggest market in the world for cars and could be the biggest market for electric vehicles and stuff. But you've got to go into that with eyes wide open at what type of risk and what type of trouble because I've seen companies go in spend millions and millions of dollars doing business development partnership contracts that are told that they have or writing of contracts and those are taken away at a blink of an eye and they're gone, those companies are gone, they can't exist anymore. And that's hard to deal with, for a lot of companies. So you really have to know and understand what you're getting into before you get into it. You have to have some air cover, you have to have some support at the government levels. You know, it's never airtight, but you got to know what you're getting into. And that's why there's other things besides China. There's other markets besides China and maybe those are the markets that you go into.

Dave Erickson 35:35
Yeah, I mean, no, just culturally, China doesn't want certain things. A lot of the even the film and TV studios, they can't put in the films the way they want to, because they, the statements are not what the Chinese government wants. But I also know software. There's certain software the Chinese government will not allow to be sold in China. So if you're doing development of a global product, one of the difficult things is trying to figure out which country is allowed what and you have to kind of make several versions of the software dependent on the market.

Tyler Johnson 36:14
You know, we actually at Dell, had localized products. We had products that were only sold in China and not available for the rest of the world for that very point. You have to have a cost effective solution to that local market. We also did the same thing in India, because there was COSHH, cost conscious customers there and markets that were there, it was massive. We had to create products that were localized for those markets in order to be successful at what we were doing. But again, Dell was huge. We had millions and billions of dollars to spend. If you're a startup, you don't necessarily have that behind you. So unless you've got the hottest technology in the world that nobody has, you know, it's a tough thing to get into. And that's why I say there's other, less challenging markets, unless you're part of a bigger solution to go after. And, you know, maybe it's Africa, right? Maybe you go after Africa.

Dave Erickson 37:28
Well as the world globalizes and becomes closer in its access is easier for different types of products and stuff, I think you'll find companies are focusing on other areas of the world. I know from a development standpoint, there's the standard concept of localization. But most people take localization on the development side as meaning the language, but a lot of it is about how the software functions and acts. And it's really hard to determine unless you have some understanding of the market that you're trying to localize.

Botond Seres 38:06
To be perfectly honest, data localization usually starts and stops at the language so there isn't much we do about the design or the user experience, even though I do think that will be pretty important. But it's not something that you can easily convince a business to spend money on.

Tyler Johnson 38:25
Dave, we struggled with that too, man, I mean, trying to get a US headquarter product group to make a unique tool or a unique interface for something inside of a local market was a task in itself, to try to convince them to spend money on that. Now China has a lot of money behind the market itself, meaning, you know, you could put a pretty big business case to do that. But you could also do the same thing for India and for Japan, and for parts of Africa, or all of Africa, and the same would be true. And the numbers would be very similar. And so it's up to individuals to have the strength, the business strength to go up, if you're at a big company, to put forth some plans in order to do that.

Dave Erickson 39:20
Well, that kind of brings you back to this question. If you are putting yourself in the shoes of an SMB or a startup that wants to go into an international market, say like China, what is the kind of advice you would give them? What should they be focusing on first? In trying to figure out how they can enter a market like that.

Tyler Johnson 39:44
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple. It goes back to the people and the process and the technology. I think you look at those three aspects of it, and they have to line up right. So the technology has to be something that is needed or wanted in that local market. That would be the first thing. You know, you look at the second thing around the process, right? How do you analyze how hard it's going to be or what that length of time is before you can generate some sort of revenue stream out of it? So do you have a risk? You know, what kind of risk is in there for it? And what kind of money are you going to need? And then, and then the third thing would be around the people, right? Do you have the right people with the right knowledge that will help you be successful in that particular market? And if you don't, they're easy to get people, people are everywhere, right? It's easy nowadays to go find people that have expertise in certain areas, but lining up all three of those is typically the hardest thing. Now, you can easily go back, if you're a startup, and you can look at the world, right? You take out a global map, and you can start to pick out what markets that you want to go into. If you got a cool technology that's hot, hot, hot, right? You kind of have a feel for where you can go and if I'm looking at something right now, I'd be focused on the African market. By 2040, this African market is going to be the largest market in the world. It's going to have the most people in the world with the youngest population. And that's 2040. So it's not too long to go. If you don't build technologies and solutions today to support what is needed for that, holy crap, you know, you're going to be left out in the cold and I guarantee you that not only are some US companies looking at that, and I can guarantee you that Chinese companies are looking at that and they already have initiatives across the world and large parts of Africa, through the Belt and Road initiatives and through the digital Silk Road and through all of these things that are going to turn things up and down. But if you're not a part of that, as a tech founder or an entrepreneur, hmm, you might be missing something out in the near future. That's what I would look at. I would look at the markets that are out there in the future, in the next 5, 10, 15 years, which are the ones that are going to be the up and comers with both population, need for technology, need for advancement, need for, you know, digitalization, that kind of stuff. That's what I would be looking at if I was the founder out there.

Dave Erickson 42:48
China's looking at it because Africa is part of one of their five year plans. Right? So sure, and that is a very interesting market from a development standpoint, but also a technology standpoint. My personal belief is that the markets, you know, on one hand, culturally and linguistically, all the different markets are very different and have a lot of issues of going into those markets. But the common language is technology and that common language is spread through the use of say cell phones and tablet computers and things that are easy for young people and old people to get and use, that's making the market not a regional market, but a global market. You kind of have to have two mindsets. One is the mindset that your product can be used anywhere in the world and the second mindset is, well, if you really want it to dominate a market, you're going to have to really get into that market and as you said, have the experts, the partners in the mindset to explore each individual market to get a foothold and to dominate that market.

Tyler Johnson 44:07
Yeah. And People will, you will fail, people will fail. This isn't like, Hey, I decided to go into a certain country and you know, magically, it happens if the stars align. It doesn't work that way, right? You've got to hit your head a couple of times, and you fail, you learn, you pick up and you get on to it. And so the same is true for any technology that's hot too. Even if you got hot technology doesn't mean you're going to be successful in a particular market.

Botond Seres 44:40
I'm interested in your take on why cultural awareness is so important in doing international business, because I myself find that it's incredibly important. But I cannot put it into words. So maybe you can.

Tyler Johnson 44:58
I believe that it's a mindset I believe that people need to have a couple of things. Number one, I believe that it starts with just knowledge, right? People have to have knowledge of different parts of the world. Maybe they start with geography just, where is a certain country in the world, I mean, I've dealt with this before. Maybe it starts with that. It's just a common knowledge that here, here, or here are the different countries in geography of the world. And then let's start with some basic facts of you know, here are the big countries, here's what the future looks like, here's where it's gonna go. And that's step number one. Step number two is, okay, now that I know and understand a few things, I can learn and understand the history of that particular region, that particular country, that particular language, that particular culture, and you're never going to know 100% of it, but if you start digging into and asking the questions of why people do things, why a certain language is the way that it is, why do you use certain words that we don't write? If you start asking those questions and you start asking about how they are educated, how is the education system? You start to understand the pieces of how society is put together. You understand how things potentially work and how does that help you in business? Well, if you know those things, you're more suited to create a product or service that potentially may fit that market. And you may not step on some landmines, fall in holes, and you may have a straighter route to being successful within that market. So I think it's important to have a good knowledge of culture, and ask a lot of questions. And I believe that will help people be successful in the future for whatever they do. So I don't know if that answered your question, but I tried to answer it as best as I can.

Botond Seres 47:28
Thank you. That's a great explanation.

Dave Erickson 47:32
Well, obviously Tyler, that's kind of the basis of your consulting company, Laowai Enterprises IT. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what services you provide or what consulting provides.

Tyler Johnson 47:53
Sure, yeah. So when I came back from China, I decided to get into the startup world and part of that was advising and consulting companies primarily on go-to market strategies, product fit, use cases, sales, marketing, and just setting up things related to how you generate revenue in countries or organizations that you may not be aware of. So my business today advises companies and start-ups. We advise medium sized companies on products that they want to expand. I advise start-ups on new products for new markets. And I love doing that stuff. I also do a lot of streaming strategic views on countries to get into geopolitical risks and so forth, and political strategies or geopolitical strategies for products and for offerings. So you can reach me at LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn heavily and I also have a website, which is thewayoftheLaowai.com. You can reach me at Tyler@ thewayoftheLaowai.com. And my book is also listed out there. So if you're interested in some lessons to learn or some stories, it's a quick read, and maybe you’ll pick up a couple of nuggets. Dave, I'll float you over a new copy of that, and, you know, maybe maybe we can go from there for sure.

Dave Erickson 49:48
And we'll make sure all the links are in the description. Whatever platform people are listening to, for this podcast. Tyler has been wonderful. I learned a lot myself even though I've had businesses in other countries. And it's been really interesting to get your take on how products can enter a market. We look forward to talking to you again in the future. Until then all the people listening to ScreamingBox technology and business on down podcast. We will have a new episode next month, and we will look forward to exploring new topics in Business and Technology. Thank you very much for taking this journey with us. Join us for our next exciting exploration of technology and business in the first week of every month. Please help us by subscribing, liking and following us on whichever platform you're listening to or watching us on. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and please let us know any subjects or topics you'd like us to discuss in our next podcast by leaving a message for us in the comment sections or sending us a Twitter DM. Till next month. Please stay happy and healthy.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Tyler Johnson, Dave Erickson, Botond Seres, Go to Market, China, The Way Of The Laowai, consulting, international marketing, business, SMB, Start-ups, Dell Computer, technology, web development, web design, mobile apps, programming, gaming, developers, development, mobile app development, computers, business, web design, software, coding, eCommerce, screamingbox, digital product development, China