For US companies operating in Colombia

A team in Colombia you cannot see.

You hired in Medellín or Bogotá because the talent is real and the math works. Then you discovered the hard part is not hiring. It is that you are in another country, in another language, and your only visibility into the operation is whatever a manager tells you on a Tuesday call. It is also that the workplace itself runs on different assumptions. Authority is structured differently, people come to work for different reasons than your US team does, and the management habits that produce ownership in Denver produce confusion in Medellín. None of that is a talent problem. It is a design problem, and it is solvable once someone names it. I have operated here for eleven years, in Spanish, and built two Colombian entities from formation.

The symptoms

You are probably here because

You cannot tell how the team is actually doing. The reports look fine. You have no independent way to know whether they are.
Contractor or employee is a live risk. Colombian labor law does not care what your contract calls someone, and prestaciones make the real cost of a hire far higher than the salary line suggests.
Nothing is written down, in either language. Your US processes were never translated, so the Colombian team invented their own, and now you have two companies.
Every decision comes back to the US. Time zones and language mean your Medellín manager waits a day for answers they should be authorized to give themselves.
The team waits to be told. Tasks get done well once assigned, and then everything stops until the next instruction. Most Colombian workplaces run on a more directive structure than yours does, so an American expectation of self-direction lands as an unwritten rule nobody was told about. The fix is explicit ownership and decision rights, not more reminders.
The operation runs but it does not grow. Steady state was reached and nothing has moved since, because improving the operation is not written into anyone's job. Nobody owns a target, nobody is measured on it, and there is no forum where a better idea goes anywhere.
Processes are still on paper. Signature books, printed approvals, and WhatsApp threads standing in for a system.

The work

Four ways I work here

Colombia landing

Fixed scope, fixed fee

For companies standing up operations here for the first time. Entity structure and banking, the contractor versus employee decision with the real loaded cost modeled out, your first hires, office and vendor setup, and the ninety day operating cadence that keeps the US side informed. I coordinate with Colombian counsel and a contador rather than replacing them, because you want local professionals on record and an operator who knows what to ask them.

Business health dashboard

Six weeks, fixed fee

The answer to not being able to see your own operation. The five to eight numbers that tell you whether the Colombian team is healthy, instrumented at the source so the data does not depend on someone assembling it. Every metric gets an owner, a refresh schedule, and a threshold that triggers a conversation. Then the weekly rhythm, run in both languages, that makes the numbers mean something.

Operating hub and SOPs

Four to six weeks, fixed fee

One place where the company lives, built bilingual from the start. Document architecture, ownership and access, and the fifteen procedures that carry the most risk, written so a Colombian manager can run them without translating your intent. This is what lets you push decision rights down to where the work happens instead of routing everything through a time zone.

Fractional COO

Monthly retainer

Ongoing operating leadership across both sides. I run the cadence, sit between your US leadership and your Colombian managers, and act on what the dashboard shows. Bilingual, and familiar enough with both operating cultures to tell you when a problem is a process problem and when it is a translation problem.

Selected work

What it looks like in practice

2015 to present

Cross-border nonprofit

United States and Medellín, Colombia

Founded and still lead a US organization operating continuously across two countries for eleven years, with twelve full time staff, fifty seasonal workers, and sixty volunteers. I built the Colombian entity end to end: legal formation, DIAN registration, hiring, governance, and a facility established in partnership with the Medellín Mayor's Office. I also built the retail business that funds it. Everything I know about hiring, managing, and motivating a Colombian team came from doing it in Spanish, over years, without a local partner to hide behind.

11 yrsContinuous operation

2Countries

12Full time staff

50Seasonal staff

60Volunteers

2Entities built from zero

2026

Luxury hospitality activation

Coral Gables, Florida

A 40 day invitation-only activation timed to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, run as General Manager through Boost International with full budget, hiring, and vendor authority. Empty venue to open doors in six weeks, then a decision framework and operating rhythm that let it run without me in every room.

6 wksVenue to open

$900KBudget managed

13Events produced

20+Corporate partners

11On team

5,000+Guests hosted

A few things I will not do, so we both save time. I do not coach. I do not write strategy I will not be there to defend. And I do not take engagements where the owner is not in the room.

Contact

Tell me what you are building, or what stopped working.

The first conversation is thirty minutes and costs nothing. If I am not the right fit I will say so on that call, and tell you who is.

nick@boostinternational.net

United States+1 (314) 330-9303 Colombia and WhatsApp+57 (314) 583-0066

Boost International LLC linkedin.com/in/nick-manderfield