Shanie Matthews

Seven Tips for Starting Your Business Overseas

Seven Tips for Starting Your Business Overseas

Entrepreneur profiles
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When my husband Jamie and I left our U.S. home in Lake Tahoe, California for our new lives in Argentina, we were looking to learn a new way of life, meet new people and explore a new culture. But we needed income, and both being entrepreneurial souls, we knew that to live our life to the fullest while living abroad we needed to create our own businesses. In the past 12 years we’ve created and run nine successful businesses, from managing a vineyard in San Rafael to creating a bustling vacation-rental company in Patagonia. To say the least, we have learned a few lessons along the way. Here are seven tips to help you create your own successful business abroad…

“We knew nothing about farms, and couldn’t speak Spanish…so we bought a vineyard in Argentina.”

“We knew nothing about farms, and couldn’t speak Spanish…so we bought a vineyard in Argentina.”

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My husband, Jamie, and I moved to a small village outside of the bustling town of San Rafael, Argentina, in June 2005. We started our lives in the Southern hemisphere as the owners of a beautiful 65-acre farm with a new, 1,900-square-foot house, a vineyard in need of a little TLC, a plum orchard in need of a lot of TLC, and plenty of open land. This was by far the nicest home I had ever lived in and cost us about 30% less than we would have paid back home in California.