How to Build a Bulletproof ROI Strategy for International Expansion

All right, well thanks very much for the intro and thank you to Smart Cat for having me, inviting me to this webinar. I'm here to talk a little bit about the experience that I've had around, you know, alignment and adaptability in localization teams. And a lot of the stuff that I'm going to tell you doesn't really specifically apply to localization teams, localization functions. I think it's just kind of good business, you know, sense to actually think about it those ways. And I must say, some of it that's kind of learned the hard way in the 20 plus years that I've been in the industry. So hopefully you will find this interesting and don't hesitate to ask questions, probably at the end, as I just mentioned. So that's me. I've been in localization for over 20 years. I've been both on the LSP side and the BIOS side and I've learned a lot of things along the way and I keep learning. So currently I'm a consultant in globalization and I'm just trying to help others, you know, figure things out in this crazy world as it is now. So the stuff I want to talk about a little bit today, I mean, you know that after a few years of COVID induced uncertainty, you know, some companies have really struggled and the COVID years have been very hard for some companies. Of course, you know, if you were in the travel and hospitality industry, you really felt it really, really strongly at the beginning of the pandemic. And then, you know, at the same time, you had like this boom and this feast, you know, for others, you know, who were actually reaping the rewards of being the only thing that you could do where you were stuck in your house. So a lot of like the streamers and generally, you know, entertainment platforms or any way that you could entertain yourself at home was a lot, was very sought after at that time. But of course, that changed and everything changes. And so now we are faced with a lot of disruption in the tech industry specifically, you know, and especially if you are in the US and I would say, you know, especially where I live in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, this is something that's been felt very, very strongly in the past year, especially the past six months.