Building 8-figure Growth from Across the Pond

The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests

Michael Nieves shares an international expansion story: taking a UK company from a tiny six-figure USA footprint to the $25M to $30M range of US revenues within eight years, from a one-man-band to a 12-person team, required a certain mindset, a willingness to take the long view, and also the humility to accept failures along the way.

4:40 - “What can happen, especially overseas is there can be a perception we should be in Walmart, Target…get a meeting and we just start shipping to them next week…year one, year two you’re not anywhere set up logistically to be going in that direction.”

6:52 - “What were some surprises in that journey? Were you surprised…about what it took to translate a UK product and marketing to US retailers and consumers?”

13:41 - “before joining Paladone… I think a little of everything that I started to learn and I think you’re right I wanted to kind of expand on that, I enjoyed all the different facets it took to get there.”

14:19 - “One of the first things you said is ‘I showed up with a plan to the UK owners’...great salespeople are great at overcoming objections and be more Jiu Jitsu fighters than planners, but you (knew) you had to manage expectations.” - “We thought six months out, we thought two or three years out, where could we be five years from now?”

24:30 - “It does take a lot of patience and commitment, because even they saw it was successful… but there’s still a lot of tweaks and improvements we can make to elevate and that’s what we did together.”

24:58 - we started to talk about retail shelf analysis vs. consumer insights research… 28:37 - “you have to take that retail analysis to see what is in there, because I like something, but that department is sticking with a certain trend, a certain category and that’s what’s going to be successful there. That’s the context the product is going to live or die on.”