Excuse me, what time is it?
Well, it depends on where, of course.
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The World Clock in Apple's Clock app is a useful tool for me.
It displays the current time, at any given moment, in each of the locations around the world where I have clients or service providers I work with.
Working with colleagues across different time zones is challenging — meetings sometimes fall early in the morning or in the middle of the night.
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But working with people from other countries also has advantages you simply don't get with a local team.
Working with international teams means encountering business cultures and codes of conduct that are very different from what we're used to, as well as an up-close exposure to cultures unlike our own.
Events like the economic collapse of Sri Lanka or the India–Pakistan war are things I experienced through conversations with people living there, who shared their experiences with me in real time.
That is an entirely different experience from reading about those events online or watching them on the news.
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If you dream of running an international business, the first step is to look beyond your country's borders and start building relationships with people from other countries.
For me, that first step came out of a need to cut costs, since the workforce available in the East is significantly cheaper than local talent.
In the next phase, those connections expanded to conversations with representatives of international companies on behalf of clients I represent — and later, to clients directly.
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The international market holds far-reaching business opportunities.
On one hand, there is affordable labor in developing countries; on the other, an especially large pool of customers who will also pay you more — particularly when it comes to developed, wealthy nations.
The big wide world is calling — all you have to do is listen.