I’m not well traveled, globally. I used to think that I’d get to see large parts of the world up close and personal and somehow become a citizen-of-the world. But time flew by and I pretty much kept myself anchored to where I was born. The tough thing for me is that my global curiosity isn’t restricted to a single or even a couple of countries. I want them all!

A silver lining is that my hometown is a truly international city, New York, where evidence of global life is always around. Something else that takes me out of my immediate environment is reading. My outside The United States deficiency gets some cover by reading serendipitously, favoring non-fiction about culture, commerce and investing abroad. Influencers have been Tom Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat), Jim Rogers (Investment Biker, Adventure Capitalist and Street Smarts), and Fareed Zakaria (The Post American World).

Point is, I envy these guys for their world vision and the on the ground time they spent in so many countries. It dawned on me that I want to work with an international flavor and focus, too, but I lack the adventure gene to transplant myself. If I traveled as a vacationer then I’d be squeezing what I could into two weeks away once or twice a year, hardly enough time to really get to know another culture. I’d be caught in the travel and tourism tunnel, being herded to travel guide destinations that make continuous grabs on my money. Oh, incidentally, an eye-opening take on the travel and tourism business is the book, Overbooked – The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, by Elizabeth Becker.

I don’t visualize being the same as Tom, Jim, Fareed, or Elizabeth. But I can make up for my world-less-ness by getting and giving education about planet earth by drawing on The World Wide Web, absorbing insights and views from within the international blogosphere, gathering, sorting, curating and sharing world information and stories. Lifework and, hopefully, legacy, is to reduce my ignorance about the world outside The United States.

In recent years I began to sense a possibility to act on my dreams of being more global without having to leave home and separate from family for long stretches. An idea took shape, but I sat on it. Sat? I squashed it. Then another feeling took over. How long can you keep something to yourself that you feel strongly about? These days I mean to try to take my global curiosity and make a fresh career with a business of my own design.

Core concept is that there’s money to be made in the world outside The United States, provided you know the territory. But many of us don’t. The name of my baby business is FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE COMMUNICATORS, world-watching assistance for global sellers. Focus on global local identity and literacy.

For me the fun of research is finding out about things I don’t already know and sharing what becomes known with others, expanding horizons for others, and myself. That’s what I’ll be using some of this blog space for. Everybody from everywhere is welcome to contribute or pass on comments.

Follow the money … globally.
“Much is not dared because it seems hard; much seems hard only because it is not dared.”
– Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz; Austrian Statesman –