Laura Pepitone manages the new Textcase Boston office.
Exactly two months ago I arrived in Boston to open up Textcase USA. One of the first things I learned after my arrival is how to accept that there are only so many hours in a day. There’s an incredible amount of fun and interesting things to do around Boston, so prioritizing is important. Yet by far the most important lesson for me these past weeks was getting to know the American way of doing business.
The journey began, obviously, with a lot of basic administrative tasks: getting my personal immigrant paperwork in order (the famous green card), finding the right office, getting to know my way around, buying a bicycle (of course!), registering our new location with search engines, improving our .com website, setting up a bank account, finding out about legal entities, and much more.
The most important thing during these first weeks, however, was learning how to speak the American language of business and social interaction. Harvard Business Review published an insightful article about this last week. Even though I’m married to an American and I lived in the United States as a student, I had never been to Boston and I hadn’t lived in the United States for more than five years.
The Boston skyline.
I’m making an effort to observe the ways in which people interact and communicate, and I’m trying to add my own style into the mix. As an existing company, Textcase has to change its ways a little bit in order to connect with American customers – especially in marketing, sales and customer service. Finding the right path isn’t easy, but it will become clearer as we keep moving forward.
Just like we do with all our translations, we want to fully localize our business. Speaking with many locals, going to networking events and letting everyone know that I’m new to the area has been very helpful. Slowly but surely we’re building a brand and presence.
Just before I got here, I wrote a blog about my passion for language and why I am opening up Textcase Boston. Read that blog post here.