The Decision That Changed Everything
For years, I was an Accenture employee in Manila.
Stable. Seasoned. Stuck.
I don't say that to be ungrateful. Accenture gave me a foundation I still build on today. But there's a particular kind of restlessness that comes when you know you're capable of more than the role in front of you — and the role isn't getting bigger fast enough.
In 2018, I made the decision most people around me thought was risky: I left.
Not for another big firm. For an offshoring company that was placing consultants with a Finnish ERP firm called Staria Oyj. The engagement was NetSuite. The client was European. The opportunity was real.
I said yes before I fully understood what I was saying yes to.
Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Border
The first time I boarded a flight to Finland, I didn't know what to expect.
What I found was a completely different way of working. Precise. Direct. High-trust. The kind of environment where you are expected to know your craft deeply and deliver without a lot of hand-holding — which suited me perfectly.
I traveled across Finland. I went to Sweden. At one point, I found myself near the Russian border — a long way from Manila by any measure, geographic or otherwise.
That trip changed something in me. Not just professionally. It showed me what was possible when you stopped limiting yourself to the geography you were born into. Skill doesn't have a passport. Expertise doesn't have a visa requirement.
But reality does.
I couldn't stay abroad indefinitely. The logistics of building a life in Finland while being based in the Philippines — work permits, timelines, the practical weight of uprooting — meant I had to go back. I continued the work remotely, which was manageable. And then the pandemic arrived and made remote work the default for everyone.
The Pandemic, and the Choice I Didn't Want to Make
When COVID-19 hit, Staria was growing fast. Genuinely fast — the kind of growth that changes what a company needs from its people.
What they needed was someone physically present. Building a career from Helsinki. Embedded in the team, not remote from the other side of the world.
I understood. But I also knew what that would mean — relocating to Finland permanently, building a new life in a country I admired but hadn't chosen as home. For a time, it looked like that might be the only path forward.
It wasn't the path I took.
Instead, I made a different decision: to bet on myself.
Going Solo
At the start of 2024, I stepped out on my own as an independent consultant.
It wasn't a dramatic announcement. It was a quiet commitment — to deliver the same quality of work I'd always delivered, but on my own terms, under my own name, building something that was mine.
The early months of going solo are humbling in ways nobody warns you about. You are the consultant, the salesperson, the project manager, the admin, and the support desk — all in the same afternoon. The work is familiar. The business is not.
And then Trimtex reached out.
The Client That Came From Trust
Trimtex is a Norwegian sportswear company — the kind of brand built on precision and performance, which tells you something about how they run their operations.
They had been working with Staria. They knew the quality of work that had been delivered. And when the time came to structure their NetSuite engagement differently, they reached out to me directly. In effect, they bought my contract from Staria and brought me on independently.
That moment mattered more than it might sound.
When a European company — having worked with a respected Finnish ERP firm — decides to bring a Filipino consultant on directly, that's not a default decision. That's a vote of confidence. They knew who was doing the work. They chose to keep working with that person.
It was the first real signal that going solo had been the right call.
Norway and Estonia, September 2024
In September 2024, I boarded a flight to Norway.
Not as an employee of a company. Not as part of a delegation. As a consultant visiting the client whose systems I had been supporting remotely.
I visited their offices. I walked their facilities. I sat across from the people whose day-to-day operations ran through the system I had built and maintained. I understood their business in a way that no amount of remote calls could fully replicate.
Then I went to Estonia — another Trimtex location, another team, another set of faces behind the support tickets and integration flows.
There's something that happens when remote work becomes physical presence. The work doesn't change. But it deepens. You understand the stakes differently when you've stood in the warehouse, walked the floor, shaken the hands of the people who depend on the system working correctly every single day.
I flew home knowing something I hadn't fully known before: this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
What This Means — For Me, and Maybe For You
I grew up in the Philippines. I built my career in Manila. And the work eventually took me to Finland, Sweden, the Russian border, Norway, and Estonia.
Not because I was extraordinary. Because I was consistent. Because I kept showing up, kept learning, kept delivering — even when the path forward wasn't clear, even when the safer option was to stay in the role I already had.
The lesson I carry from all of it is simple but not easy:
Your geography is not your ceiling. Your commitment is.
The world is full of companies that need excellent ERP consultants, integration architects, and system administrators. Most of them don't care which side of the planet you're on — as long as the work is excellent and the communication is clear.
If you're a Filipino professional wondering whether the international clients are reachable from here — they are. I'm living proof.
The flight to Norway wasn't a reward for getting lucky. It was the result of years of showing up.
How My Work Took Me to Europe — And What It Cost to Get There