Global Class Podcast Aaron McDaniel and Klaus Wehage

In this episode, we are excited to welcome Xavier Mufraggi, Chief Executive Officer of SVN International Corporation and Partner at Eloquem Consulting. Prior to his role at SVN, Xavier was the CEO at YPO where he achieved a new record of 34,000 members in 150 countries. He was also previously the President and CEO of Club Med Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

In this conversation, we talk about why speaking the same language as locals can increase your ability to develop an understanding of the culture that’s required to build a successful expansion strategy in that market, the power of the authentic self as an integral part of personal and professional success, why skills are overrated in building teams (and what is the more valuable metric to look for instead), and the power of stories in better communication and reinforcing organizational vision.

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets at ⁠https://www.zedra.com ⁠

Get your copy of our Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, GLOBAL CLASS, a playbook on how to build a successful global business⁠. ⁠⁠https://www.amazon.com/Global-Class-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Globally/dp/1637742185



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SHOW NOTES:

1:10 - Video starts

2:42 - Xavier’s formative experience that started his interpreneurial career. His father was an executive at a big American company, so Xavier was able to travel around the world at a young age. For example, he lived in Africa as an 11-year old

7:54 - How he learned that understanding culture and people is a very important skill early on

13:54 - They key in turning around Club Med in North America (During his time as the CEO, the company achieved historical records every year from 2011 to 2019)

20:15 - Building trust and ensuring organizational alignment in YPO, the world's most influential global leadership community

21:45 - What Xavier, who was then the CEO of Club Med North America, learned from going undercover as in the CBS Series, “Undercover Boss”

29: 00 - How organizations and business leaders could impact millions of lives in a positive way

40:16 - Why skills are overrated in building teams (and what is the more valuable metric to look for instead)

47:37 - The power of stories in effective communication and reinforcing organizational vision

49:19 - The power of the authentic self as an integral part of personal and professional success

In this episode, we are excited to welcome Omar Zenhom, the Co-Founder and host of the award-winning $100 MBA Show, a top business podcast with over 90 million downloads. He’s also the Co-Founder & CEO of WebinarNinja, named one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in 2018. Omar is a former educator and university manager-turned-entrepreneur. Today, he applies his passion for teaching and learning to the business world.

Here, we talk about Omar’s strategies for entering new markets and reaching customers, tips for giving timely and culturally sensitive feedback, examples of effective localized marketing campaigns, and why there's no such thing as "over-communication" in a remote workplace.

For more information, go to: https://globalclasscompany.com/podcast/episode32-omar-zenhom

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets at ⁠https://www.zedra.com ⁠

Get your copy of our Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, GLOBAL CLASS, a playbook on how to build a successful global business⁠. ⁠⁠https://www.amazon.com/Global-Class-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Globally/dp/1637742185

In this episode, we are excited to welcome Freddy Marcos, Founder of Rentbrella, the world’s largest and most successful umbrella-sharing company. Today, Rentbrella has 800 stations with hubs present in the biggest urban centers of the world such as Sao Paolo, New York, and London. Freddy began his career as Finance Director and Consultant, then as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Before he launched Rentbrella in 2018, he lead the operations and developed business strategy as the Chief Operating Officer of Ezconet. Here, we discuss why it’s important to start with a global mindset from day one, how to build feedback loops and two-way innovation across teams, tips for building a successful career in international business, and strategies for localizing the business to fit the local market while staying true to company principles.

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets at https://www.zedra.com

Find our entire podcast episode library at https://www.globalclassbook.com/podcast 

Get your copy of our Wall Street Journal Bestselling Book, Global Class, a playbook on how to build a successful global business.SHOW NOTES:01:55 - The start of Freddy’s career, beginning with his education 4:21 - How Freddy’s Lebanese father has inspired him to become an entrepreneur 8:45 - Rentbrella’s founding story 24:11 - Why Rentbrella had to hire and hire the New York team several times until they found the right culture and people 32: 46 - How Freddy thinks about localizing for new markets through the lens of government regulation and culture 37:00 - The “people” culture of Rentbrella and why they hire English teachers to make English the main language in their Brazil HQ 47:11 - Building and managing distributed teams 47:44 - Why effective communication and two-way feedback loops between local teams and HQ are important 54:14 - Rentbrella’s approach to hiring and how they find, hire and manage interpreneurial talent 1:00:57 - Freddy’s thoughts on closing the gap between company knowledge and local knowledge which are important in getting traction in new markets 1:03:26 - Freddy’s answer to the “3 pieces of advice” section: Advice to someone interested in building a career around an international business, to an executive expanding a business to new markets, and to his younger self

In this episode, we are excited to welcome Troy Malone, the Co-Founder of Relevant, a company that helps SaaS startup founders successfully enter new markets. In this role, he supports founders in unlocking an unfair competitive advantage in new markets through a uniquely profitable marketing system.

Throughout his 15-year career as a growth and scale-up business leader, Troy has helped companies like Evernote, Weebly, All-Turtles, mmhmm and Drata to scale internationally. He loves the challenge of building teams for hyper-growth. Troy also embodies the global mindset and cultural empathy of a true “interpreneur,” as proven by his successful expansion efforts to Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

Here, we discuss how to hire the right people who will lead your global growth initiatives, the importance of going on “Localization Discovery Tours” to truly understand a market, and examples of unusual marketing and promotions campaigns Troy came up with that drove results in new markets.

Get your copy of our Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, GLOBAL CLASS, a playbook on how to build a successful global business. https://www.amazon.com/Global-Class-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Globally/dp/1637742185

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets at https://www.zedra.com

Find our entire podcast episode library at https://www.globalclassbook.com/podcast

In this episode, we are excited to welcome Jack Mardack, Co-Founder of Oyster. Oyster is a global employment platform that empowers companies to hire, pay, and take care of their employees anywhere in the world. In Jack's career as a data-driven marketing and growth leader, he has helped broaden the global footprint of companies like Vonage, Chartcube, and Prezi.

In this discussion, we talked about why embracing diversity is the most important lesson when building a global company, how trust is a lynchpin for distributed organizations, and WHY aligning company strategy with core values enables growth for companies like Oyster.

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets at ⁠https://www.zedra.com ⁠

Get your copy of our Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, GLOBAL CLASS, a playbook on how to build a successful global business⁠. ⁠⁠https://www.amazon.com/Global-Class-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Globally/dp/1637742185

In this episode, we are excited to welcome Sébastien Marotte, the President of Box Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Box is a Cloud Content Management company that empowers more than 87,000 businesses globally by revolutionizing how they work.     

In Sébastien’s 30+ year career, he has held executive roles at high-profile software companies like Google, Hyperion, and Oracle. He led Google Cloud's EMEA Channels as Vice President, having also served as Vice President of Google Cloud EMEA for almost a decade. As an early leader at Google Cloud, Sebastien was responsible for much of the foundational growth and development across EMEA, including the launch of G Suite (now Google Workspace).    

In our conversation, Sébastien talks about the importance of diversity in building international teams, strategies in balancing corporate strategy and localization, why customer engagement is everything in business, how digitalization changed the way we innovate, work, and hire and why there are more opportunities for global businesses now more than ever.    

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets at https://www.zedra.com   

Get your copy of our Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, GLOBAL CLASS, a playbook on how to build a successful global business. https://www.amazon.com/Global-Class-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Globally/dp/1637742185    

Find our entire podcast episode library at https://www.globalclassbook.com/podcast