Here Today; Abroad Tomorrow

But in France, paperwork is king, and the process requires meticulousness and patience. It took Carroll nearly a year and a half before he could open his shop doors. He says the key to doing business with the French is to leave your American attitude at home.

"You never ask to speak to their superior; you never pull rank," Carroll says. "Once you know those things, you just have to stand there and be polite and do exactly what they tell you."

Carroll is now a decade into his French business, selling books to a large Anglo community in Paris and to Parisians who love Spiderman comics or need a textbook not yet translated in French. The Paris shop has half the inventory of his San Francisco shop, but his annual revenue of more than $200,000 is higher.

Carroll closed his San Francisco book shop in 2004 but admits the profits in France are small and the iron-clad French labor laws make hiring tricky. He has had just one salaried employee for the past eight years.

Up to the Challenge

The employment challenges are different in New Zealand, where former New Yorker John Palino co-owns a restaurant, a cafe and wine bar, a coffee kiosk and a soup kitchen.

Palino, 46, employs about 40 people among his four establishments and has found that replacing employees who leave is an enormous challenge, something he never faced as a restaurant owner in New York. "When I put an ad in the paper, I get two or three people who show up," Palino says. "In New York I'd get 200."