Amel Derragui, the guru of expat spouses

Spending your time traveling the world and growing up between a multitude of cultures, you learn in particular to get to the point. And Amel Derragui is the direct type: “the objective for an expat spouse is to have a sustainable income, not to be dependent on the other ”. His fight is that of equality in the couple, or in any case of balance. And for her, that goes through entrepreneurship.

Daughter of an Algerian diplomat, Amel Derragui spent her childhood and adolescence moving from one country to another, before studying in France and starting a career in advertising. “I was delighted to finally be installed somewhere, I was tired of moving. I said to my parents: ‘I will never travel again and I will never give up my career for a man’ ”. And of course, that’s exactly what happened. She meets her future husband, an Austrian diplomat, during a visit to her parents in Iran.

Having become an “expat spouse”, she launched her business as a marketing consultant, but when her husband’s career brought them to New York, she found herself “Very alone, lost: it’s as if what I had done before arriving in the US had no value, you had to start all over again”. From this experience, and from her fierce desire not to be dependent, will be born more than a career, a vocation, that of evangelizing the idea of ​​“portable business”. She created Tandem Nomads, first in the form of a podcast, then an online platform to help expat spouses to be entrepreneurs.

Not all online business is a portable business

Since then, its mission has become a full-fledged company, whose clients come to seek the expertise of Amel Derragui to create their own “portable business”. “It’s not just a matter of saying to yourself: ‘I’m going for it’, you have to do it by thinking from the start of the move, of the next step”. In short, an informed expat is one who, from the start of his entrepreneurial adventure, integrates nomadism into his project. So necessarily an online business? “Yes, she replies, but beware: if all portable business is online, not all online business is portable ”. If, for example, you have to do the logistics of your e-shop yourself, your business is not portable. “But there are so many solutions today, for example the ‘drop-shipping’, that it is only rarely an obstacle ”.

Another frequent mistake of the expatriate candidate for entrepreneurship: confusing portable competence and portable business. “A yoga teacher has a portable skill: she can be anywhere, she says. The problem is that if it moves, it will have to start from scratch, rebuilding its clientele. The challenge is precisely not to have to start from scratch with each move ”. To do this, Amel Derragui recommends the 60/40 rule: make sure that at least 40% of income is not dependent on where you live. “This does not mean at all that the yoga teacher cannot see a portable business, but for example, beyond the classroom classes, she also develops online courses, for example ”.

New post-Covid nomads

Forged by and for expat spouses, the concept of “portable business” has changed dimension over the past six months: “all of a sudden the clients who come to see me are no longer just expat spouses, but simply people who want to leave the big cities, or simply change their way of life ”. And as if by a miracle, these ideas that Amel Derragui has worked hard to promote for years are “Become ‘mainstream‘, there is no longer to convince anyone! ”

Above all, the pandemic will have made it possible to break down the last barriers to digital technology, and at the same time open up the fields of the possible for “portable businesses”. “Who would have agreed to do yoga classes online 6 months ago? Very few people, millions have since! ” The most unlikely sectors are doing it, like this client of Amel Derragui, coach for competitive riders: “Hard to imagine that without a physical presence, well she did! She has started an online training program that her students love ”.

Workshop with French Morning and Tandem Nomads

To help candidate entrepreneurs -expats or not-, French Morning and Tandem Nomads are organizing a free “workshop” for help you come up with a “portable business” idea. Presented in English, this interactive workshop will allow you to learn:

-the 10 steps to find the right business idea for you

-How to transform the idea into a viable, profitable and portable business

The workshop is free, as is the exercise book that will be given to you. Much more than a webinar, it is an interactive session where you can brainstorm and get advice and advice from the expert.

October 14 at 5pm ET (4pm CT; 2pm PT)

register here