Simon Mundell: Setting up business in the US

Simon Mundell. Photo / Supplied

Simon Mundell is the Co-founder and Director of RESULTS.com. He speaks locally and internationally about successful business execution.

New Zealand is a great test market for new businesses. Primarily conservative and comparatively resistant to new ideas, New Zealand has nearly non-existent capital markets, higher interest rates than most OECD countries, and the challenge of raising finance. The bottom line is, if you can make a business work in New Zealand, you can make it work in the United States.

The challenge of launching in the US market is being able to see through its sheer size and scale. A subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory is still a huge market, so a laser focus is needed to identify your target.

A company I launched in the US was successful in creating a new category. Icarus Canopies (high-performance parachutes) revolutionised parachute design and immediately became the global leader in its category. Previously there wasn't a significant brand in high-performance parachutes, merely a wider market in which most manufacturers produced some kind of high-performance product. No one had claimed ownership of the category, so we did.

Icarus Canopies took a very different approach, delivering the best-performing and fastest canopy the industry had seen, and rapidly became the global leader in high-performance design. At the time, the market featured players who chiefly produced mid- to low-performing products, so in creating a new category we emerged as a market leader. This resulted in a massive brand presence and awareness that positively influenced the entire product range.

Results.com has taken a similar approach. We were fortunate enough to buy Results.com as our URL in October 2007, and rebranded from The Results Group. It was a bold move to invest seven figures at the beginning of the global financial crisis, but we needed a powerful brand in order to take on the US market.

We then carved ourselves a new category in business execution, as 'The Business Execution Experts'. We are not consultants, coaches, mentors, or business advisers. We are experts in business execution and endeavour to own this area, already ranking high on Google from just about anywhere on the planet.

As a speaker, my experiences with these companies have given me a platform to share my expertise on topics that are relevant to our target market. I present to a multitude of businesses in New Zealand and having been in this market for 15 years, our business has a strong presence and partnership with leading banks and professional services firms who regularly populate our seminars with their business customers.

One of the burning questions for me when looking to gain traction as a speaker in the US was, how they would rate a Kiwi alongside the abundance of high-profile speakers and gurus? Just like Flight of the Conchords, they loved it!

Our strengths? Having a Kiwi accent immediately makes you different and quite possibly lowers people's expectations, which is a huge advantage. When you knock the presentation out of the park, the expectations are well and truly exceeded, resulting in very high ratings and a memorable experience. My two most recent US presentations for the Entrepreneurs' Organization received ratings of 9.55/10 and 10/10 respectively. These ratings are generally unheard of within these networks.

Things to think about when taking your business into the US:

1. Be the category leader. If you are not the category leader, create a new one so you can be;

2. Focus - geographically and demographically. The state of California is the eighth largest economy in the world;

3. Single-flight advantage. Flying to Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Vancouver is easy. They are all direct overnight flights. (It's routes requiring connecting flights that kill you.) Base yourself one flight away from your destination and close to the airport. The Results.com Los Angeles office is 15 minutes from LAX (even in rush-hour);

4. Don't expect everyone to know where New Zealand is. We're not as famous as we think, but the good news is, it doesn't matter. Americans don't care where you are from. They treat most Western companies and businesspeople with equal respect;

5. Get up-to-speed with modern communications. Skype is clearer than a phone, you can talk face-to-face and it's free. You can get a Skype number that appears to be a local US number and have that forwarded to any phone you wish, or simply use it as a voicemail service;

6. A URL ending in .co.nz will not serve you well. If you want to operate in the United States, you must have a domain extension (.com or .net) that is not country-specific and could be of US origin. .com is by far the most powerful, but often hard to acquire.

7. Consider webinars as a business tool to get your message or service across to the international audience.



Simon Mundell