Zach Selch cooked feijoada on an Ipanema beach after 20 years in Brazil. Photos of the dish ended up in a sales pitch to a São Paulo hospital owner skeptical of American companies. The gesture built enough trust to close the deal, showing that real commitment to a market matters more than surface-level effort.
Chapters
I'm just off the beach in Ipanema in Rio eating feijoada, which is one of my favorite dishes. Feijoada is beans and rice. It's a Brazilian national dish, and it's the type of thing you can buy in any restaurant on Monday— on Saturdays and Wednesdays anywhere in the country. And it's a staple of the Brazilian diet. And it's pretty common. Everybody's grandmother makes it. But about— I've been doing business in Brazil for more than 20 years, and I love it. It's one of my favorite foods, but you can't really get it in the US. So about 10 years ago, I decided I wanted to make it for my wife. I brought home some stuff to make it. I invited over 12 or 15 friends because you can't really just make it for 2 people, and we had a nice little party. Oh, that's great. party. But I get a little crazy about authenticity, and I made a very, very solid quality feijoada. And then I was proud of it. I sent pictures to my distributor, and he showed it to his salespeople. Anyway, about a year later, we go to visit an end-user customer, a hospital in São Paulo, the biggest sleep lab in the world, privately owned, about 160 beds. And I'm talking to the owner, and And he says to my distributor, he goes, you know, I've done business with American companies before. I don't trust them. They make a sale, then they pull out of the market. I can't trust them to give good support afterwards. They're not committed. And my distributor pulls out his phone, he leafs through it, and he shows him the pictures, and he says, look at this. What's this? Guy looks at it, he goes, feijoada? And my distributor says, does it look like good feijoada? And the guy goes, looks pretty good. My distributor says, Zach made that. And the distributor goes, like, really? That looks pretty good. And my distributor says, see, he's so committed to the Brazilian market that he makes feijoada at home, and he makes good, good feijoada. Distributor looks at it, he goes, you know what, I trust now that Zach is committed to the market. And they ended up buying from us. So the lesson isn't really about It's about commitment. Everybody's a little concerned that they can't trust you. A lot of American companies sort of flirt with the international market and then pull back. They don't give good service. They disappear. You got to show people that you're committed to the market. That's one of the things that without that, they're simply not going to buy from you no matter how good your product is, how good your reputation is in the United States. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help.
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