International Business Idea #3: An Expat-Based Business

If the place where you want to launch your new life overseas is home to a decent-sized expat community, the best way to identify an idea for a business to launch can be to think about all the things that you yourself miss from home. What products and services do you wish were available? Chances are good that your fellow expats long for these same things. An American I know in Argentina, for example, has been very successful with the Mexican restaurant he opened because he missed Mexican food. Turns out, other expats in the area did, too. There’s an established Italian community in San Cristóbal, Mexico, that might appreciate a pasta restaurant…

Other expats I know have opened a fitness center (on Ambergris Caye, Belize), wine shops (on Ambergris, on Roatan, and in the Dominican Republic), and short-term storage facilities (in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua)…in each case because these things didn’t exist in the places where they wanted to be.