The Fedtrade® podcast recently interviewed Joanne Farquharson, CEO of Foothold America. With a dedicated team of experts, Foothold America provides the tools and resources to make U.S. expansion easy and hassle-free and supports your business journey with turn-key and bespoke solutions catered to your business needs. They recognize that not “one size fits all” and evaluate the key variables of your business to further your growth and success.

Learn more about Foothold America on their website or follow them on LinkedIn. Connect with Joanne on LinkedIn.

Key Takeaways

  • Foothold America supports companies in U.S. market entry.
  • Engagement can range from one-time services to long-term partnerships.
  • Understanding the U.S. market dynamics is crucial for success.
  • Legal and regulatory compliance is a top priority for companies entering the U.S.

[a copy of the written transcript is here]:

Hello, welcome to Fedtrade®. I’m James Hastings of Rothwell Figg. Joining us on the program is Joanne Farquharson, President and CEO of Foothold America. Joanne will be sharing Foothold America’s mission and how it helps international startups and emerging companies successfully enter the lucrative U.S. marketplace.

Joanne, welcome to Fedtrade®.

Thank you, Jamie. Nice to be here.

What is the mission of Foothold America?

Well, in a nutshell, we want to be the trusted partner of choice for people operations and business operations for non-U.S. companies expanding to the U.S.

How did Foothold America begin?

It’s an interesting story. Foothold America was born out of an absolute need. The original co-founders are two British life science consultants based in London. And they thought to themselves, “we should go to Boston in the U.S.” And they did that. One of them got a visa and moved his family. But then when he arrived, he had a difficult time getting payroll and benefits and all of those kinds of things set up. And when they finally did figure it out, it ended up that other UK life science companies wanted assistance doing the same thing and Foothold America was born.

In your experience, what needs do you see that international companies going to market in the United States require?

There’s lots of nuts and bolts kinds of things. So like I mentioned, payroll or benefits or setting up your entity or, you know, all of those kinds of things. But what I find that people really want is someone to be on the end of a phone or the end of the virtual meeting where they can just ask questions. And they ideally want a one-stop shop, although as you know, it’s nearly impossible to find someone that can do legal and tax and human resources and all of that. So I think what they really want is someone who is trusted and also has a good ecosystem of other trusted partners.

Is there a typical engagement that Foothold America undertakes with companies seeking to go to market in the United States?

Our core services are based in people operations and business services. Sometimes those services are a one-time transaction or activity that we’ll do, like setting up a U.S. entity. Other times we’ll work with clients for years and years. We’ve had a client that just had their nine-year anniversary with us because we’re managing their ongoing people operations. So companies and individuals engage with Foothold America at a bunch of different levels.

You raise an interesting point about managing operations for companies who are going to market in the United States. What are some of the benefits of that model?

I’m sorry, can you repeat that please?

Sure. You had mentioned managing the operations of companies going to market in the United States. What are some of the benefits of that model to them?

With the way we interact with our clients, going to the U.S. for their operations usually means boots on the ground instead of trying to provide service from afar where you have your employees in the home country answering questions for clients in the U.S. The idea of bringing your operations or even just your business development to the U.S. means that you’ve got U.S. employees who have networks within the U.S. They understand the landscape and the dynamics of doing business in the U.S., and I think it just makes it more efficient and more comfortable for people to buy from non-U.S. companies.

What types of international companies or entities does Foothold America serve in terms of the size of the company or stage of that company?

That’s one of the things that makes life at Foothold America very interesting because there is a broad array.  We are very proud of the fact that we talk with everyone. We’re sort of people before platforms. You can get in touch with me, get in touch with my colleagues. And so we’ll have a lot of conversations that are very early stage. So some companies are in the pre-seed stage and we’ll be having conversations with them even if they don’t need our services for quite some time. If I were to generalize, our clients tend to be, if they’re funded at all, in the series A or series B stage of things, but not always. And then some are bootstrapped, so they will have proof of concept going on 10 years and be very successful in their home country. And in terms of industries, our primary industries that we serve are professional services, tech services, life sciences. And it just happens to be that that’s kind of how it’s grown. We do have some manufacturing or product-based clients.  But for the most part when our clients are trying to expand to the U.S. they’re looking for sales in the U.S. So they want to grow their business development side of things.

Do you work with a professional network of providers who potentially can partner with you to provide certain services that Foothold America does not directly provide?

We do. It’s an interesting balance and I think transparency is a big part of it. I’m sure you’ve gone to a website where you look at the services that a provider indicates that they can provide and there’s a huge, huge list of things. And a lot of times the company may not be experts in that area, but they have partners who are. For us, for sure, we have partners behind us, some providing back-office work. Some of them are more of a referral partner. So it’s just very upfront. We’ll let our clients know these are the things that we’re providing in-house and these are the things that we rely on providers to support. And these are our partners outside of our company that can help you with areas of services that we don’t provide. And I think the value of that is, at least for Foothold, we facilitate those connections. We’re not simply saying you should call Bob at this tax firm or Jamie at Rothwell Figg, but we want to stay connected with our clients and help put all those pieces together.

In your experience, what common challenges do startups or established companies have in seeking to go to market in the United States?

I’ll speak from the perspective of professional services, because that’s going to be a whole different ballgame than when people are moving products into the country. I think one of the big challenges is the people aspect of things. So not knowing should I be hiring someone in the C-suite or can I hire a junior business development person and still be successful in the market? I think some of the common challenges are to determine what is your staffing plan and also making sure that you stay connected with them. It’s not enough to hire someone in the U.S. and say, okay, they understand the product, now they’re going to sell it. It definitely takes a level of coordination with your U.S. employees to make sure they really feel connected so that you can get the results that you want.

Legal and regulatory requirements are always top of mind when entering the United States market. Do you find that to be true?

Absolutely, absolutely. It’s interesting over the years. You work with entrepreneurs and you can get a sense when you work with someone what their risk taking appetite is. Some people will contact us and they have done all the homework, all the legwork, and you can see that managing risk is a very high priority. Whereas others, maybe the startup entrepreneur, is ready to just jump into the U.S. And you can be successful either way, but regardless, there’s very much an undertone when people come to the U.S. to say, I don’t want to mess up the U.S. It’s very confusing. There are 50 states. It feels like 50 different countries. I’m not quite sure if I’ve missed anything. I don’t know what I don’t know. So there’s very much an understanding that when you come into the U.S., you want to make sure you’re following the rules. Certainly, no one wants to be fined or go amiss of regulations. But it’s also because many companies come to the U.S. to either seek VC funding or maybe go IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. So they know that they need to do things right from the beginning. Otherwise, at the time of going public or having a merger and acquisition, all of the due diligence that has to happen can uncover some problems. For sure, they want to get it right from the beginning. And just assessing your risks and understanding regulations is a key part of that.

Particularly for the high tech sector and life sciences, U.S. intellectual property protection is important and advisable.

Yes, absolutely that’s the case. As I mentioned, tech is a big part of the work that we do. And we would absolutely recommend speaking with an IP firm in the U.S. because the company may feel quite protected in their home country or in the markets where they are currently. And essentially you must speak with someone who is an expert in the U.S. to make sure you’re fully protected. And for us on the people side of things, we are always looking out for our clients when it comes to compliance and employment regulations. But beyond just the typical employment regulations, you really do have to think about protecting your IP even from employees. So it’s definitely one of those things you want to make sure you have thought about and put the correct protections in place before you go stumbling into the market and then find out, wow, something you’ve worked for years and years has now been taken from you. So yes, definitely would advise that.

We understand that Foothold America will be attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit taking place in National Harbor, Maryland next month. Tell us about your participation.

Yes. I’m so excited about that. So it’s in Maryland and that is a place not a whole lot of people know about. It’s a tiny state, but I lived in Maryland for 30 or so years. So I’m going to SelectUSA, which also gives me an opportunity to see family and friends. And in the past, Foothold America has been a sponsor of SelectUSA. I’ve been a speaker in the past. This year I’ll be hosting a panel on Sunday afternoon about expanding your operations. So it’s always a great place to meet people at various stages of their U.S. market growth and it’s a great place for us to be. And so we’re happy to be there again this year.

Does Foothold America have any success stories from either SelectUSA or through other means that you would like to share at this time?

Oh, goodness. Yes, tons of them. Let’s see. I think maybe I’ll share two if you don’t mind. One is we worked with a client in about 2019 expanding to the U.S. and they had a tech academy that was working with financial services and they were just doing incredibly well in their home country, which was the UK. And they expanded to the U.S. and were implementing the same academy and then COVID hit. And within a short time, they ended up retreating from the market, which happened to quite a few companies during that time. And they recently expanded again and they’re doing great. So in some ways, the timing is everything and I just love the fact that they haven’t given up. They just regrouped and so that’s lovely to see.  Another one I just absolutely love. We have an employer of record service which means that we would hire an employee on behalf of a client. And this particular client, had only one employee and they’d been with us for seven years. So this one employee had been with them for seven years. And there was an equity agreement with this employee. And at some point, well, the client went public and when that transaction was being done, as one of the pieces that we were doing was payroll and we had to make sure that this lump sum this employee was going to receive had the appropriate taxes taken from it as a part of the due diligence the client had to perform. And it was so satisfying to see $3 million going through payroll. And what that meant was that was just the tax that this individual was going to receive because of the work that they had done with our client for seven years. And it is just one employee. That makes me just want to let folks know there are so many different pathways where you can be successful and it can be a tiny footprint can have a big, big, big impact. 

That’s a fantastic example. How can people find out more about Foothold America?

Well, that’s easy enough for sure. Our website, footholdamerica.com. And even though my name is hard to spell, you can find me on LinkedIn, Joanne Farquharson. And again, I welcome people to contact me, talk with me if they have questions. And I also host a podcast called U.S. Expansion Min iPod “Three Questions, One Voice.” And I bring in experts such as yourself, Jamie, and different partners, different founders, things like that, people who have been through the U.S. expansion experience. So lots of different ways where you can connect with us.

Joanne Farquharson, President and CEO of Foothold America. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Jamie.

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