You want to move abroad, but you have no idea what would happen to your business.
I moved internationally four times and my business never closed. This is how I plan the life first, and what we work through in a Global Life Planning Session.
It’s 6:40 am on a Tuesday morning and you’re responding to a team member’s slack message from your phone before the school run, with searches open that you haven’t closed in three weeks. Schools abroad, a visa page, and a cost-of-living spreadsheet you’ve updated twice.
You’ve read the threads and watched the videos, and nothing has moved. That isn’t a motivation problem, because you make decisions all day about hiring, pricing and delegate tasks with ease. This international move has stalled because nobody has handed you a structure for it.
You don’t have a research problem. You have a planning problem, and it covers your life and your business at the same time.
If you run a business and you’ve started to wonder whether it could come with you, this article shows how I kept mine open across four international moves, and what we work through together in a Global Life Planning Session.
Who I am
I started my business in April 2011 in New Jersey, US, that was built on referrals and speaking. In 2015 I moved to London, UK for love and the business came with me. After that came Copenhagen in 2016, back to the UK in 2020, and Doha, Qatar (in the Middle East) on August 15, 2024. That’s four international moves and two daughters, with one business that never closed 10 years.
In October 2016 I went on maternity leave, and when our daughter was eight months old we moved. The business stayed open the whole time. The team kept running, clients kept getting served and money kept coming in.
It wasn’t always big. When my life needed it I scaled the business back on purpose, and I rebuilt it each time.
Each move taught me the same thing in a different city. A business survives a move when the decisions come in the right order.
I’ve watched women stall on moving for years, and the quality of a move is decided long before the move. It is all in the first decision you make and how clearly you make it.
If you’d like to prepare your own move with me, book a 75-minute Global Life Planning Session.
What I do and how it works
I help women who run businesses prepare to move abroad, and the business that goes with it, in a 75-minute one-to-one conversation called a Global Life Planning Session. We use the Global Citizens Framework, which puts the decisions in order across three steps.
Desire: should you move at all. We start with your non-negotiables, who in your life is on board, and how much risk you can absorb.
Direction: what your life and your business need to look like where you land, and whether the business is steady enough to carry it.
Design: how the move happens, including where you live, what changes in the business, and the order and pace of it all.
By the end of Desire you have a yes, a no, or a not yet, and a not yet tells you exactly what has to change first. Most women skip that step and start at Design, which is where it gets expensive.
The results I want for you
I want you to have a clear plan, so you don’t end up jumping off a cliff.
Dr. Nadia Brown ran an agency in Phoenix, AZ when she came to the Your Expat Life Summit on January 18, 2025, and that is where her move started. It took her a year.
In January 2026 she landed in Mauritius with her husband and their daughter, and the agency came with her.
The plan decided things she hadn’t expected. A visa issue ruled out one country she had considered, her daughter’s school determined which part of the island they could live in, and her US clients are now 11 hours behind her. Taking time off also showed her gaps in the business that she should have systemized earlier. She worked out what the move had to satisfy first, and chose the country inside that.
That is the result I want for you. You know whether to move, what the business needs first, and the order to do it in.
My own result is a business that stayed open through four international moves and a maternity leave, and it came from decisions I made in a particular order.
Before our older daughter was born, I hired an implementation lead and trained her on every client project. She stayed on my team for nine years and delivered most of our client work, from technical implementations to launches to client reports, and she onboarded other team members too. That is what kept the business running when I couldn’t be in every part of it.
It worked because everything was documented. When she needed to know what came next, she went to her SOPs and playbooks, not me. I built client delivery to succeed without me first. I scaled the business back during those years because I had a new team and didn’t want to bring in clients I couldn’t support from where I was.
Doha was the third move for our older daughter and the second for our younger one. They had friends, school, cousins and family back in England, so before we went I decided I would be fully available to them for the first year. If it didn’t work for them, we wouldn’t have stayed.
We still got something wrong. We chose their first school on a strong recommendation and a good reputation, and then the school changed its leadership and combined two campuses. Many families moved their children, and so did we, in our second year. Because I had kept myself available that first year free, I was there for my daughters to switch schools.
That is where the Global Citizens Framework earned its place. It helped us decide how much risk we could carry, and living in the Middle East carries real risk.
When the war happened in March we left, and we knew when to go because we had already decided what we could and couldn’t handle. You can plan as carefully as you like and things will still happen, so the plan has to leave room to shift.
Why most advice falls short
Most advice about moving abroad starts with where, through country lists, visa guides and cost of living comparisons. That works until you have a business and a family, because none of it asks whether the move suits your life or whether your business can survive it. The other kind of advice says to take the leap and figure it out when you land, and it treats the business as an afterthought.
I see women get three things wrong, and all three come from not planning.
They don’t set expectations with themselves or with their clients. They assume everything will stay the same, and it won’t.
Buying cultures differ around the world, and a client in one country decides, trusts and pays differently from a client in another.
They underestimate US hours. Keeping your clients in America is fine, and you’ll be working US hours wherever you live. Your family lives on the local time zone, so you’re working while they’re out having the adventure you signed up for, and after a while you start to resent the business for taking all your time. This is where systems and AI matter, because when the business runs on documented processes and the right tools, the work that needs you shrinks and you can step away from those hours.
They think the business is the same as when they started it. After 15 years it isn’t. With AI, people can do much more on their own and won’t pay for what they paid for 15 years ago. It takes effort to earn attention now, and relationships are what convert to sales, which holds true around the world.
A move without a plan is a dream. The Global Citizens Framework puts the order in, so you decide the life you want first and build the business behind it.
What’s inside a Global Life Planning Session
A Global Life Planning Session is 75 minutes. We work through four things:
Where you are right now.
The life you want, because that is what we’re building for.
Your plans, if you’re thinking about moving.
What’s holding you back.
We work with the Global Citizens Framework, so you can see which phase you’re in and where the gaps are. You leave with your next best step. We won’t plan everything in 75 minutes, but you’ll see what’s missing and know where to start.
We also look at where the business depends on you, because that decides whether you can step away. The Global Citizens Framework shows the gaps, and we support businesses in closing them by implementing the systems and AI that let you step away, support the move, and enjoy the adventure you’re moving for.
If you want your own Global Life Planning Session, pick a time here.
Who this is for, and who it’s not
This is for you if:
You run a business and wonder whether it could move with you.
You’ve thought about moving abroad more than once, and you haven’t said out loud how seriously.
You want a plan before you decide anything.
This is not for you if:
You want me to pick a country for you.
You’ve already decided and only need immigration, tax or legal advice. Those need a specialist, and I’ll tell you which questions to bring to one.
You expect everything to stay the same once you move.
Questions you might have
“I don’t know if I want to move.” That is the first step, and the answer can be no. A clear no is a result.
“My business can’t run without me.” Most can’t yet, and that gap is the first thing we look at.
“Is 75 minutes enough?” Not to plan everything. It’s enough to see the gaps and know where to start.
“My partner isn’t on board yet.” You don’t need agreement first. You need to know what you want, so that conversation is a clear one.
“Do I need to know where I’m moving?” No. The Global Citizens Framework doesn’t pick the country for you, it shows you what the country has to give you.
The Cost of Waiting
Every month you wait costs you three things.
The first is time. Nadia’s move took a year from the day she decided to plan it, so the day you start sets the day you land. School years and visa windows move on whether you’ve decided or not.
The second is energy. The decision keeps running in your head at 6:40 in the morning while the business stays built around you being in the room, so you carry both.
The third is the business itself. It isn’t the business you started, because clients can do much more on their own with AI now, they pay for different things than they did 5 years ago, and relationships are what convert to sales. A business that waits keeps selling the old way and stays built around you. One that can run without you by spring only exists if you start building it now.
A year from now
Imagine it’s a year from now and you’re at your kitchen table at two in the afternoon, with your phone face down. The business ran the morning without you.
You know which place is on your list and why, and you know what has to be true before you book a ticket. Nothing about it feels like a leap.
Your next step
You don’t need to move this year. You need a plan you can trust, and a Global Life Planning Session is the first step toward one. Pick a time here.
Plan the life, then build the business behind it.
P.S. If you’re still undecided, picture the next twelve months with nothing changed. If that feels fine, you don’t need this yet, and if it doesn’t, that is what the call is for.