Joseph Castillo came to China after struggling to find work in the United States. Wang Jing / China Daily

When the economic crisis hit the West, many people were left looking for alternatives to the poor job prospects on offer.

Joseph Castillo was among them. He moved first from his hometown Chicago to Montreal in Canada for work, and was then forced to consider new horizons again when opportunities there eventually dried up.

He was struggling for work in April 2009 when a friend in Beijing asked him to visit and he decided to take him up on the offer.

Castillo first found work as a private English tutor, but it was not long before he realized China offered more opportunities.

"I saw an opportunity here because there were a lot of people, like me, out of work or struggling financially in the States," he says. "They have degrees, masters degrees, bachelor's degrees, very educated and they are working at Starbucks, or some other kind of insignificant job. They might as well come to China, experience a new culture, try different foods, do some traveling, do a bit of tutoring to provide some of their expenses, and I thought it was just a great opportunity."

The revelation led Castillo to start Nations Abroad Consulting Ltd, a consulting and cultural exchange company with offices in Beijing, Chicago and Dallas.

When it first started the company's aim was to bring Americans to China to tutor English, but as time passed, Castillo began to broaden the company's focus.

"I saw a lot of companies in China. They were not as professional as the foreigners were used to so I began to broaden my vision in regards to what we could do here and we began to help foreigners find great jobs, and help Chinese companies find great foreigners," he says.

Cross-cultural barriers have long been an issue for foreign companies doing business in China, and Castillo was struck by how little was understood by each other on both sides of the Pacific. "I saw a lot of ignorance in the West, a lot of misconceptions and wrong ideas, and of course in China, you saw the same thing," he says.

Nations Abroad Consulting began to branch out, finding American staff for a wider range of Chinese companies and providing services such as helping foreigners new to China find apartments and helping Chinese in the US to buy real estate.

Despite not speaking Mandarin, Castillo says he has found it easier to start a business in China than perhaps it would have been in the US, in large part because of the relatively low cost of employing high-quality staff.

Among the many services the company now provides, recruiting skilled people is still the core.

"A lot of capital is spent in the States. We want people who want a long-term commitment, people who want to make a difference and help China to advance."

Castillo has learned much about how to run a successful business in Beijing over the years.

"In China, knowing the right people and having the right relationships is very important," he says.

He likes to make sure the people he employs from overseas to work in China are aware of the cultural differences they might encounter before they start work.

"In China, you have to be patient," he says. "The Chinese do things differently. There is 5,000 years of culture here, you are not going to change it. You have to appreciate it in China, understand it."

He also recognizes a need to teach his Chinese staff about Western culture so that they can interact with foreign staff and clients without misunderstandings.

Castillo now employs 28 staff members worldwide, with seven key team members in Beijing. The company has been operating for four years without a single negative month. Part of the secret to this has been pushing himself and his staff to perform well, says Castillo, who now wants to expand into other business ventures.

(China Daily 05/26/2013 page5)