I used to be a proud go-to-market (GTM) strategy consultant.
And honestly, I still am proud of that experience.
But whenever I shared this part of my background, I occasionally encountered a familiar reaction: a knowing smile, perhaps a little wink, followed by something along the lines of, “Why not actually build something instead of just talking about it?”
I always found that reaction interesting.
On one hand, it reflects a common perception of consulting: smart people producing impressive presentations, offering recommendations, and eventually leaving someone else to figure out how to make them happen.
On the other hand, having worked on the consulting side, I know how much depth, analytical rigour, and genuine expertise can go into those recommendations.
Good consulting is far more than making slides. It requires understanding complex business problems, challenging assumptions, structuring uncertainty, and helping organisations make decisions that can have significant consequences.
I still believe that work matters.
But over time, I’ve also come to appreciate something about that slightly teasing remark.
What if there is a way to combine the depth of consulting with the ability to actually make things happen?
Consulting Isn’t the Problem
Let’s be fair to traditional consulting.
Businesses engage consultants for good reasons. External perspectives can reveal blind spots. Structured analysis can bring clarity to complicated decisions. Experienced advisers can help companies avoid expensive mistakes.
When entering a new market, this kind of thinking is especially valuable.
Should a Taiwanese company expand into Japan? Which customer segments should it prioritise? Should it work with local distributors, establish a subsidiary, or develop its own sales organisation?
These are not questions that should be answered based on intuition alone.
They require careful consideration of market demand, competition, commercial feasibility, and organisational capabilities.
And a good strategy consultant can help answer them.
The limitation often appears not in the quality of the thinking, but in what happens after the thinking is complete.
The Moment After the Presentation
Imagine a company that has just completed a market entry consulting engagement.
It now has a clear strategy, an attractive target market, a prioritised customer segment, and a roadmap outlining the next twelve months.
Excellent.
Now, who is going to introduce the company to its first potential customers?
Who will identify and engage the right local partners?
Who will help evaluate whether the business needs a local entity, an employer of record, or another operating arrangement?
And when the company starts gaining traction, who will coordinate the different specialists required to support its operations?
These questions are not necessarily outside the consultant’s expertise. They may simply fall outside the engagement’s scope.
That distinction is important.
The consultant has delivered what was agreed. The client has received something valuable. Yet the company may still be facing the hardest part of its expansion journey.
Knowing what to do and having the capability to do it are two very different things.
For businesses with established international teams, this may not be a major issue.
For startups and growing companies with limited resources, however, that gap can become the difference between a promising strategy and a stalled expansion.
The Missing Link Is Often Coordination
International expansion is rarely a single problem.
It is a collection of interconnected challenges.
A business might need market research, local customer access, commercial partnerships, legal advice, accounting support, employment arrangements, and ongoing operational services.
The expertise exists. There are excellent specialists in each of these areas.
What is often missing is the connection between them.
A market entry adviser might recommend establishing a local presence. A legal adviser can explain the incorporation process. An employment provider can outline hiring options. A business development partner can help approach potential customers.
Each provider may be excellent at what it does.
But who makes sure the recommendations make sense together?
Who helps the client determine what is necessary today, what can wait until tomorrow, and what might not be needed at all?
And who stays involved when the business moves from planning into execution?
This is where I see an opportunity for a different kind of advisory model.
Not necessarily one that does everything itself, but one that can bring the right expertise together and maintain continuity throughout the journey.
From Advising Businesses to Enabling Them
I don’t believe the answer is to turn every consultant into an operator.
Consulting and execution require different skill sets, and there are good reasons for specialist roles to exist.
But perhaps we should be less rigid about where one ends and the other begins.
A market entry strategy could naturally progress into customer validation and partner development.
A recommendation about local presence could be followed by introductions to appropriate legal, incorporation, or employment specialists.
An initial GTM engagement could evolve into ongoing commercial support as the business begins developing its pipeline.
The objective is not to promise that every strategy will succeed.
Nor is it to guarantee outcomes that depend on customers, market conditions, or decisions outside anyone’s control.
It is to make the transition from advice to action less fragmented.
Instead of treating the strategy as the final deliverable, we can treat it as the beginning of a more connected process.
Sometimes the most valuable contribution is not another analysis. It is helping the client take the next informed step.
A Network, Not Another One-Stop Shop
There is another misconception worth challenging: that an integrated service model must provide everything in-house.
I don’t think it should.
In fact, attempting to own every capability can create the very problem we are trying to solve.
No single team is likely to have equally deep expertise across market strategy, business development, legal services, taxation, employment, and operations in multiple jurisdictions.
Rather than trying to become an expert in everything, a more practical approach is to build a trusted network of specialists and coordinate their capabilities around the client’s needs.
But this introduces an important responsibility.
If an adviser works with referral partners or receives commercial incentives from service providers, how can the client trust that the recommended solution is genuinely appropriate?
I think the answer lies in transparency and the willingness to recommend what makes sense, even when it is not the most commercially attractive option for the adviser.
A company may not need to incorporate immediately. It may not need to hire locally. It may not even need to enter the market it originally had in mind.
Being able to say that is part of the value of good advice.
A connected advisory model should expand the options available to clients, not quietly narrow them to the services within its own network.
Doing Things Differently
These ideas have influenced how I think about BeyondBorders.
The ambition is not to reject traditional consulting. Quite the opposite.
I want to preserve what makes good consulting valuable: structured thinking, independent judgment, rigorous analysis, and the ability to see the bigger picture.
But I also want to explore how those strengths can be connected more directly to commercial networks, local expertise, and practical execution.
That is the thinking behind bringing GTM advisory, market establishment, ongoing operations, and business growth into a more connected model.
Some clients may only need a strategic discussion. Others may need introductions, specialist support, or help coordinating multiple activities across borders.
The right engagement should depend on what the business actually needs, rather than on a predetermined consulting package.
There is still plenty to learn about how to make this model work effectively. Building the right partner network, maintaining service quality, and balancing commercial incentives with independent advice are real challenges.
But those are challenges worth working on.
Beyond the Advice
Looking back, I don’t think those comments about consultants were entirely fair.
But I also don’t think they were entirely wrong.
They point to a legitimate expectation: that business expertise should ultimately help businesses move forward.
I remain proud of my consulting background. The analytical discipline and strategic perspective it gave me continue to shape how I approach business problems.
What has changed is my perspective on where the work should end.
Perhaps the future of market entry advisory isn’t about choosing between thinking and doing.
Perhaps it’s about getting better at connecting the two.
Because a good strategy deserves more than a presentation. It deserves a real opportunity to become something.
BeyondBorders connects market strategy, commercial networks, and local execution capabilities to help businesses navigate expansion and growth. Our approach combines independent advisory with access to specialist partners, including coordinated business operations through OmniOps.
