Co-Founder and CEO, Global Impact
His early career included several years of military service. From 1996 to 2002, Simon built and ran Star Marketing Partners and Star Paper, working directly with more than 50 diplomatic missions, embassies and consulates, primarily in New York and Washington. In his twenties, he found himself across the table from ambassadors, consuls general and senior representatives from around the world—often in rooms and situations that were entirely new to him.
In Prague in 2003, Simon noticed the cotton net shopping bags he remembered from childhood. He found the manufacturer, met the owner and brought the bags to the United States. He signed several distributors. The bags sold. Then competitors and private-label versions followed. What stayed with him was not simply the excitement of the first sales, but how quickly early success could be mistaken for something more permanent.
Over more than two decades with Global Impact, Simon has done business in more than 50 countries and worked with hundreds of companies and leadership teams.
Some engagements were focused and short. Dozens became relationships lasting six months or longer, with Simon involved in both strategy and execution. His early work concentrated in technology and healthcare before expanding across a much broader range of businesses. The industries changed. The recurring challenge did not: understanding what is really happening when a company leaves what it knows and enters a market it does not.
Over time, I became less interested in whether an idea sounded persuasive and more interested in what survived contact with reality.
In business, that means asking questions that are often uncomfortable. What is actually happening? What part of this result is likely to repeat? What are we calling evidence because we want it to be true? What are we still defending because we have already invested in it?
Eventually I realized those questions were not only about markets. They were about me, too.
Decisions begin forming before the moment we call the decision. Expectations change what we notice. Commitment changes how we interpret what happens next. We all experience only part of what is happening, yet it is easy to mistake that part for the whole.
That is where my operating work and my writing increasingly meet.
The quality of a decision depends partly on the quality of what we are willing to notice.
Market. Decision. Perception.
For Simon, successful expansion has never been only about finding the right market or building the right commercial plan. It also depends on understanding the people inside that market: how they make decisions, what they notice, what they assume, and how they interpret what happens around them. Those three forms of understanding have shaped both his work and his writing.
Understand the reality you are entering.
A market has its own customers, competitors, channels, economics, expectations and unwritten rules. What worked somewhere else may open the door, but it does not tell you what will work here. Real expansion begins by separating assumption from evidence and learning the market as it actually behaves.
The world of Success Elsewhere · Buy on Amazon →Understand how choices actually form.
Customers, partners, investors and leaders rarely make decisions at a single visible moment. Choices begin taking shape earlier, through experience, emotion, expectation, evidence and accumulated commitment. Understanding that hidden process changes how you sell, negotiate, lead and respond when the answer is not yet clear.
The territory of The Invisible Decision · Coming SoonUnderstand the reality people believe they are seeing.
People do not respond to everything that is happening. They respond to the part they notice, interpret and believe. Perception shapes judgment, and judgment shapes action. The distance between reality and perceived reality can change what people buy, trust, resist or abandon—and can determine what succeeds and what fails.
The question behind The Reality Gap · Coming SoonTo understand a market, you have to understand the people inside it. And to understand people, you have to understand how they decide and how they see.
Simon is usually closest to the work when the decision matters and there is no obvious answer.
He is direct about what he sees, including when the evidence does not support the preferred direction. He looks for what is actually happening, what is likely to repeat, and what may need to change. He stays close enough to the work to see what happens when customers, partners, investors or employees enter the conversation.
Global Impact does the commercial work of entering and growing in a market. Simon leads the firm and stays personally involved where his experience, judgment and relationships can materially affect the outcome.
See how we work →Selective work with founders and CEOs facing an important strategic or commercial decision. Simon works directly on positioning, negotiations, relationships and difficult conversations.
Start an advisory conversation →Focused sessions with leadership teams, accelerators and conference audiences on international growth, business judgment and the assumptions behind important decisions.
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