Zach Selch, who has expanded into roughly 150 countries, argues that regulatory fears are overblown. In 30 years, he's hit real delays in only two places: Japan and Europe, both due to software language issues. Competent regulatory consultants cost $50-100 per hour and are available worldwide through local embassies.
Chapters
I'm on the— hi, I'm on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda. When the first British explorers were looking at their global expansion, when they were looking into adding this part of the world into the British Empire, and they came here, there were really serious things to be scared of. Hippos, crocodiles, natives, different types of diseases, all sorts of things. And a lot of those things still exist, but they got past them and they were able to really explore the lake, understand the source of the Nile, and colonize this part of the world, rightly or wrongly, but that was part of their global expansion. What I find is today one of the biggest fears people have in terms of their global expansion is regulatory affairs. And I hear this all the time. I find it in almost irrational type of fear. Sort of like people are scared of public speaking. And why irrational? Because there are so many other things to be scared of that really can sink you. Whereas regulatory affairs, typically I find you can find good people who can do this, and you can pay them on an hourly basis. I know of regulatory affairs consultants all over the world. Typically you can find them relatively easily. I've worked with dozens of them over the years. I've expanded into about 150 countries over the past 30 years. Some of those countries I've gone into with 6 or 8 different product lines over the years. So I've done a lot of this global expansion, and only twice can I think of where I've had my operations held up because of regulatory affairs, and those were typically in very advanced countries like Japan and Europe where there were linguistic issues with software that were really holding up the regulatory part. But the regulatory part itself was something that was relatively straightforward and something that we could deal with, with a proper regulatory affairs person. Finding a regulatory affairs person, in my opinion, isn't that difficult. I know of dozens myself, but typically you can reach out to the local commercial office at the local embassy, and they'll typically have a list of people who do this, and they charge per hour. So it'll take you a certain number of hours of work at $50 or $100 an hour. And you can deal with it. Regulatory affairs shouldn't be something that you're scared of, even for medical or communication or automotive or those type of industries where typically regulatory affairs can be, can be a little bit daunting. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help.
When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
