My business partner, Kelly Richmond Pope, is an accounting professor with a PhD in accounting. Her research is in white-collar crime. It was her idea to figure out how to make learning more exciting. She’s like, “You make things fun. I’ve got a lot of teaching experience and I understand this field. Let’s figure out how to make accounting sexy. Can we do that?’

I don’t know if we made accounting sexy, but we certainly made it more interesting.

We were workout partners. At five in the morning we would solve everyone’s problems, including our own, and that’s where we started Red Flag Mania. That was the beginning. We’ve been around for six years now.

Although we are very US-based, professors at universities in five countries are using Red Flag Mania and they are telling their friends about us. They found our product and adopted it into their classrooms. Now we’re doing webinars on Red Flag Mania in different countries, and it’s been pretty cool.

Our issue with working with international clients has to do with content, not shipping or production. We sell digital licenses that, thanks to the World Wide Web, go into the cloud and then go everywhere. It is easy to send and share our content. It makes scaling easy.

Global has been secondary to us, versus something we approached head on. We are still new, but to have an international footprint and repeat business in areas we were not even searching for has been a tremendous growth area for us.

For women who want to start a business, just in general, I recommend making a list. Who is your client? What solution do you provide? Is your solution different from anybody else? How do you fund it? How do you maintain your lifestyle while you’re funding it? Create the list, think about it, and share it with a few people who will give you good feedback—not just “yes people” who are like, “Yes, you can do anything! You’re a rock star!” People who can give you real solid advice that you can trust. Then bounce your idea around a little bit more because there’s so many good ideas, but what if there’s not a market for your idea, or what if you can’t execute on it because you’ve got children, or a job, or a parent to care for—all these external issues?

Weigh these issues against starting a business, because running a business is all-consuming. There is no time off. There are no days free. There is no time where you’re not accountable to someone for something. So, yes, start a business and go get it, girl! But first investigate and understand what it takes to start a business, build a business, and drive growth. Each of these are different compartments.

If you want to start a global business, you need to learn about the marketplace and who your customer is in that country. Again, investigate. What cultural differences are there between the US, or your home country, and the country you want to enter? Another issue I’ve heard other co-founders talk about is the need to find great talent in the international marketplace. True talent you can trust and believe in, and who can run part of your business, because they will be the face of your business when you expand elsewhere.

Everybody’s got a great idea. Execution of that idea is something different. You have to be able to iterate and grow and process along the way. If you can do that, then go for it.