Picture this: A few years back, I was running a small tech startup out of San Francisco, specializing in eco-friendly packaging solutions. We’d nailed the U.S. market, but growth was plateauing. One evening over coffee with a mentor, he shared his own tale of taking his apparel brand to Europe – the mishaps with customs regulations that nearly sank him, but also the thrill of seeing sales triple in Germany. That conversation lit a fire under me. We dove into international waters, starting with Canada, then the UK. It wasn’t smooth sailing; we bungled a cultural marketing blunder in France…