Have you ever imagined running off to another country to open a bed & breakfast? It may sound like a long-term extension of a dream vacation, but the trials and tribulations of running a small business in a foreign country are plentiful. A mere six months after tying the knot in Los Angeles, one young couple put their wedding gifts into storage, sold their cars, quit their jobs, and opened a B&B in Medellín, Colombia. Marcela Swenson reports on 10 things she wished she knew before embarking on this journey of a lifetime.

The decision to move from Los Angeles to Colombia isn’t as arbitrary as it may sound: My mother was born and raised in Medellín, and I had visited the country throughout my life. I came to love the destination and its people, and never understood its lingering reputation as a cartel-ridden danger zone. I brought my husband to Medellín for the first time in 2005 and he was impressed with everything about the city.

When we decided we wanted to leave the United States for a couple of years, Colombia was at the top of our list. It’s a country of great diversity, unimaginable beauty, and rich culture, and we wanted to show people the side of Colombia they didn’t read about in the press.

What better way to do that than open a bed and breakfast and host visitors in our home, introducing them to experiences only locals know about? So we move into my grandparents’ old home and opened it as Su Casa Colombia. Like any new experience, particularly starting a business in a foreign country, we’ve run into challenges and learned lessons along the way:

1. Learning The Local Language

Part of our B&B business involves providing personalized tours, so having a good grasp of the language is essential. When we arrived I could more or less get by on my Spanish, but there is a BIG difference between “getting by” and not butchering the language every time you open your mouth.

I thought that once I was fully immersed in a Spanish-speaking country, I would magically learn the language. Turns out, that is not the case and I’ve had to work much harder than that.

I tried Rosetta Stone and quickly discovered that it is not the magic bullet it is advertised to be. Sure, it’s easy to understand the crystal-clear enunciation of each word or phrase on the computer, but in the real world with ambient noise, heavy accents, and the rapid-fire speed in which native speakers spit out each unfamiliar word, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game.

Instead, I’ve taken a multi-pronged approach. I began taking Spanish classes five days a week at a local university. A large part of speaking a foreign language, I’ve learned, is not feeling self-conscious about making mistakes when you speak, and speaking it daily was great for my self confidence.

I also studied the language on my own using a Web site called www.studyspanish.com which does a wonderful job of breaking down the seemingly endless rules in Spanish grammar.

Finally, I began reading the Harry Potter series in Spanish and underlining words or phrases I didn’t understand and looking them up in the dictionary.  After all, I learned English grammar by reading so why not take the same approach for Spanish?

2. Obtaining Citizenship is No Easy Task

After moving, I learned that because my mother is Colombian, I have the option of obtaining citizenship in Colombia. On paper, it sounds like the ideal opportunity: I can stay in in the country for as long as I want, work without a visa, get my husband a visa, register our business, open up bank accounts, and get a Colombian passport.

But in reality it has been a frustrating process. Nearly a year and a half after applying for my citizenship my application has been lost or refused twice. Fortunately, I have the temporary ID that allows me to function as a citizen, but I most likely won’t have my permanent ID for another year at the earliest. If only I had known sooner!

3. Avoid Doing Business with Family and Friends

Yes, this is coming from a husband-and-wife team, but fortunately that’s not the kind of family that I mean. We knew that our first step to getting customers and establishing ourselves as a legitimate business was to have a Web site. Our cousin generously offered to help us set up our site for free and we eagerly took him up on his offer.

We quickly realized the drawbacks of this service. It’s hard to demand things from someone you’re not paying, and even harder when it’s family. It’s doubly hard when you’re a perfectionist.  We finally figured out that what we needed on our site demanded more time than he could commit so we decided to pay someone to help us. Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

Rather than paying someone to build a site from scratch, my husband taught himself the basics of WordPress, a type of blogging software. When we had problems we’d pay a friend, who is a freelance Web developer, to step in. We assumed that by paying him, he’d complete the task in a timely fashion.

Wrong again.

He was never available when we needed him, didn’t respond to emails, couldn’t find the time to fix simple problems, and was … how do I put this nicely … unprofessional. So now we’d learned our lesson about friends.

Finally, we got a reference from a friend who described a hard worker with great ideas and even better work ethic. Within a month we had a brand-new site that we loved.

The important lesson is you get what you pay for. We tried to cut costs by using family and friends, but in the end we lost time and money. It’s far better to do it right the first time around.

4. Online Advertising is Everything

At first, we tried good ol’ fashioned print advertising in a travel magazine. Sadly, that venture has not been successful. At. All.

We love the idea of supporting the tangible world of magazines, but unfortunately for a growing business like ours it’s neither affordable nor effective.

So further into the digital realm we go into Google and Facebook, where we can specify whom we’re targeting, and we don’t have to pay until they click on our ads.

5. Expect the Unexpected

Typically, potential clients contact us a couple of weeks, sometimes even months, before their trip. As part of the process, we exchange several emails to learn what they’re interested in doing, how many days they plan to stay, and even advise them on what to do after they’ve left Medellín. We practically feel like we know them before they’ve arrived.

And that’s why we were so surprised to hear the doorbell ring and to find our first walk-in guests…

Let me set the stage first: We knew (or thought we knew) we weren’t going to have guests for a week so we planned to do some renovations on one wing of the house the following day. We had moved the furniture to different parts of the house, including some of our guest rooms and common areas. In addition to that I had recently gotten over some terrible, energy-zapping stomach bug so the house was in a bit of disarray. On top of that, I had woken up that morning with an inflamed cornea thanks to my contact lenses so I had tears streaming out of my right eye all day long.

So imagine our panic when two potential guests wanted to see our accommodations first before agreeing to stay. I scrambled to tidy up the house and wipe the tears off of my face, and thankfully they decided to stay for four nights. In the end, it all worked out wonderfully and we had a great time with them. But we learned our lesson and have officially adopted the Boy Scouts’ motto: Be prepared.

6. Say Goodbye to Guilt-Free Vacations

In the same vein of expecting the unexpected, we’ve learned that we can no longer leave for a week or even a weekend without feeling guilty for leaving our business behind.

The last time we spent the weekend at our family’s beautiful home in the country, we crossed our fingers that we wouldn’t get an email from a prospective guest. Sure enough, the next day we got not one, but two emails from would-be guests that we had to turn away.

These are the times we wish we weren’t married to our business partners!

7. TripAdvisor is Our New Best Friend

We didn’t realize how many people use TripAdvisor to find accommodations until we listed our bed and breakfast on the site. I thought we’d maybe get a couple of clients a year from them, but it turns out we get nearly all of our bookings from them—and it’s free.

The other surprising revelation is that people from all over the world have used TripAdvisor to discover us.

We’ve had guests from Canada, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Norway book with us thanks to TA, and the majority of our guests actually come from outside of the United States. Not what we had expected, but a welcome twist.

8.  Our Business Would Take Over My Husband’s Brain

Speaking of which, my husband, Noah always wants to talk business.

It turns out that there is no off switch in his brain for that and, as a result, countless dinners, cuddle sessions, and conversations are interrupted by his latest thought, concern, or idea for our B&B.

The surprise business “meetings” can be annoying, but reality of running a B&B is you can’t leave your work at the office.

9. Being Your Own Boss is Hard

Many people dream of being their own boss and answering to no one but themselves. In living the fantasy, we’ve learned just how difficult it is to organize our efforts and motivate ourselves to do the not-so-fun, yet-necessary things. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve said “let’s have weekly meetings to talk about the things we need to do” and haven’t followed through. Plus, there are so many temptations out here to distract us from the boring stuff. When you’re your own boss, who is going to tell you no?

But while there isn’t a risk of being fired, per se, if we don’t do our jobs to the best of our abilities, we won’t have a successful business and we’ll have to find other, probably less fun careers. So while taking our guests on tours around the city or exploring new bars, restaurants, and cities all in the name of research is both rewarding and fun, we must find the time and inspiration for the mundane administrative tasks that are necessary in every good business.

10. Less is More

When we first moved here in January of 2010 we wanted to lead tours throughout the entire country ourselves. Our idea was to accompany our guests in each city for the duration of their trip so they wouldn’t be passed from guide to guide. In theory it wasn’t a bad idea; in practice, we were in way over our heads. Colombia is an incredibly diverse country.

There is literally every type of terrain contained in a space roughly one-tenth he size of the United States: beaches, mountains, snow capped mountains, plains, rainforest, deserts, rivers and even one type you’ve probably never heard of, páramos. With each terrain comes their own activities and attractions such as the coffee region, lost cities, paragliding, sailing, canopying, waterfall rappelling, camping, fishing, cave exploring, horseback riding, and scuba diving, just to name a few. And of course each unique region has its own equally unique cultures and traditions. In the face of this variety we came to the realization that we couldn’t possibly do it all and do it well.

That’s when we decided to take the In-n-Out approach. In a nutshell: Only make burgers, fries and milkshakes and make them better than everyone else. You’re not going to find them serving mediocre fish sandwiches, chicken nuggets, salads, or tacos because they’re busy grilling the best darn hamburger made with high-quality ingredients.

What that philosophy means for us is that we’ve narrowed our scope to Medellín and the pueblos within two hours of the city. We know where to go and what to do every night of the week, which restaurants are worth your money and which attractions are worth your time. If you need to see a dentist, replace your phone charger, or get a massage, we can help you there, too. In fact, we know the city and surrounding area better than most locals, and that’s what being the In-n-Out of Medellín tourism is all about.

For more ideas in the area, check out the South American Travel section

By Marcela Swenson for PeterGreenberg.com. Swenson is a former Peter Greenberg Worldwide producer-turned-B&B owner in Medellín, Colombia.