Finding employment in Sweden is no easy task for the newcomer. We recently spoke to Ryan Faulkner-Hogg, an ABCS Member, who shared his story about how his entrepreneurial curiosity and expert skills from Australia helped him find success.
A lot of us share the same story. We meet a Swede. We fall in love. We move to Sweden. We fall in love with said country. We miss readily available and reasonably priced vegemite, but we’re excited about our new Scandinavian adventure. That is, until reality hits and it’s time to (re)build a career.
Ryan Faulkner-Hogg, ABCS Member
This story is not untrue for Ryan Faulkner-Hogg who followed his heart and moved to Stockholm in September 2020 with his Swedish girlfriend, Emma. He landed in a new country, surrounded by a new language, all in the middle of a pandemic! Ryan has a solid resume in sales and SaaS, but it was his curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit which had him successfully running in his own business within just two months.
So how exactly did he do it?
It starts with passion
When meeting Ryan it doesn’t take long to become enthralled by his curiosity and passion to understand the world. Conversations can be anything from Geography, Geopolitics, Energy, Carl Jung or really any of the different topics he has covered on his website. As a passionate writer, Ryan invests a lot of his time in his blog, Atlas Geographica, which also doubles as a hosting platform for several podcasts.
Ryan says, “This is really what I am most passionate about! Naturally, it is SEO optimised to the gills (making it easy to find in Google). But this is that one thing I would do forever, even if it never made a dime”
Fail fast
While blogging ignites Ryan’s creative side, one cannot survive in Stockholm without a dime. I mean, the guy likes to eat and fika costs money. While spending his savings on kanelbulle and extra strong brewed coffee, it didn’t take long before Ryan realised that Swedes really love their coffee. After some research he discovered that the Nordics by far consume the most kilograms of coffee per capita globally and as such he quickly identified an opportunity to get into the coffee wholesale business.
Ryan playfully says, “ I wanted to import the worlds best Arabica beans from my mate in Veracruz, Mexico. I had it all figured out. I thought of branding everything Koala Kaffe to leverage the unearned love Swedes have for Australia, and then battabing-battoboong, roast it, package it, sell it, and have a successful coffee wholesale line”.
Ryan later admits that he had quite naive and lofty ideas of the coffee business in Sweden. After speaking with some of the big coffee providers in Stockholm, he realised that the margins on coffee (no matter how good) were too thin to justify the capital and risk, so he put this idea to bed.
Merging passion with possibility
After another ‘påtår’ of coffee Ryan’s entrepreneurial spirit was re-energised by a sludgy dose of Swedish caffeine. While deep diving into the process (pardon the pun) for kopi luwak, Ryan realised that content wasn’t so easy to find on Google. With his passion for content creation and expertise in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), he realised that this line of business was in its infancy in Sweden.
Ryan explains that Australia is at the forefront of the industry. A good SEO strategy has a higher ROI per dollar than any other means of marketing available. He states, “It really is amazing the things that can happen when an algorithm starts paying attention to you”.
Could this be a possible business idea?
Leveraging the ABCS network
In Sweden, it’s often not what you know but who you know (especially when you can’t find the answers you’re looking for in Google). And that’s where the ABCS can play a big part.
Ryan explains that he heard out about the ABCS via word of mouth from two Aussies living in Sweden (Dan and Anna) whom he had met previously in Amsterdam.
“I immediately reached out to them and coincidentally met with them on the same day the ABCS held its last in person gathering. I joined the drinks, thought the crowd was brilliant and then signed up!”
Ryan leveraged the fantastic professional networking opportunity that the ABCS offers, which helped to springboard his business. He met with one of our Members with experience in the industry who shared insights on the Swedish marketing landscape. He says that this “serendipitously, ended up being a brilliant point of conversation and research”
“From there I spoke with Alana and also tried to figure out the idea’s viability, and then took out the hfhdigital.com domain”.
“I also was lucky enough to borrow one hour of Warren Campbells time earlier this year as well. Speaking to him really inspired me to think about all the business potential Sweden has to offer. This country seems to ironically, given its state centric reputation, to somehow foster extraordinarily innovative business”
The challenges of starting a business in Sweden
Ryan explains that while peer support was strong, starting a business in Sweden is not without challenges. His Visa (Family Of An EU Citizen) was approved within weeks of application, but the processing of his personnummer is still, to this day, pending.
“It is because of this reason that my business is still registered in Australia, and not Sweden. The Australian government are the ones who are reaping the upside of my tax revenue without the cost of consumption - whereas Sweden currently are doing the opposite”
SEO services in Sweden just got better
While Ryan is juggling the red tape, he is still well on his way to running a successful business.
“HFH Digital is an SEO Agency whose specialty is exclusively that - SEO. That might sound a tad trite, but the case is that most ‘SEO Packages’ are simply an extension of an entire ‘Digital Strategy’ and therefore the most important part - SEO - is barely given a once over from the top, rather than given the fundamental attention it deserves”
So if you’re looking for better visibility in search engine result pages, or want to hear more about starting a business in Sweden, you know who to contact for a coffee and a chat!
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