The Accidental Entrepreneur, 2nd Edition

9 LEAPING INTO NEW MARKETS

Travelling for Boost took me back to those early years wandering the world before Boost began — and between missed flights, lost luggage and stumbling straight into meetings without sleep, it sometimes felt like I hadn't advanced much on my backpacker days! Definitely those early years as a traveller helped to prepare me for the rigours and surprises of working in new environments overseas.

I have always been good at solving problems and thinking on my feet, and learning the language of cross-cultural business relations was a new and exciting challenge.

To allow me to focus more on these challenges, however, we first needed to make some big changes at Boost and Retail Zoo.

Pausing to reflect

The birth of Tahlia gave Jeff and me time to reflect on what was important in our lives. After riding this incredible 50-foot wave of business, we asked ourselves, ‘What do we really want out of life and what does the future look like?' We were over 14 years into starting Boost and, even after creating Retail Zoo, we still really had all of our eggs in one basket. We were also aware that we needed more expertise in the international markets — although we were having some success overseas, we knew we could do it better.

Since the beginning of Boost, we have owned various percentages of the business during different times. I had never been overly concerned about the percentage we held — I focused more on the value of that percentage, and having enough percentage ...