When I boarded a flight from South Africa back to Israel in 2019, I had no grand plan. I’d spent almost a year as a digital nomad, testing whether I could run my web design studio from anywhere in the world. And after a chance client meeting in Tel Aviv the summer before, one that kept me in Israel an extra month and a half, I had my answer: I think I can do this here.
What I didn’t have? Any real idea of what “this” would look like.
I’d run Awaken Studio for years in New York. I knew how to find clients, close deals, and deliver websites people loved. What I didn’t know was that moving a business to Israel isn’t just a logistical shift, it’s a full transformation. Some of it humbling, some of it surprisingly beautiful, and all of it nothing like I expected.
Nobody warned me that my first Israeli client would change everything
It started with a referral. A past client from New York connected me with a Tel Aviv startup with a small, scrappy team of about 20 people who had just finished working with a top New York branding agency and needed a website. This was the “chance client meeting” I mentioned at the top. I was still mid‑digital‑nomad at the time, passing through Israel on what was meant to be a quick stop before Croatia. Instead, I walked into their office less than two weeks into my intended month-long stay and ended up staying longer than I anticipated.
I closed the deal. And then something completely unexpected happened: they invited me to come in twice a week. To work alongside the team. To be part of something.
In New York, client relationships were transactional by default. You design the site, you deliver, you say goodbye. With this startup, I was suddenly being pulled into Kickstarter planning, video shoots, and all-hands conversations. I kept pushing my flight to Croatia later and later until I finally just stayed through their Kickstarter launch. That experience planted a seed: if this is how Israel works, I might belong here.
Nobody warned me that moving a business to Israel is its own kind of bureaucratic marathon
Here’s what the Nefesh B’Nefesh brochures don’t tell you. Closing an S-Corp in the U.S. and reopening your business in Israel is approximately one thousand times more complicated than it sounds.
I went from QuickBooks, where my credit card synced automatically, and expenses logged themselves, to a system where I needed to physically keep every receipt, hand it over to my accountant, and pray they would make sense of it all. On top of the manual tracking I had to do myself. It takes up about three hours a month, minimum, just for financial admin that used to take zero.
And the bank. The accountant searches. The question of: should I be an Osek Murshe? A Hevra Ba’am (LLC)? Something else entirely? I genuinely searched everywhere for a guide that would walk me through it, and I kept coming up mostly empty. There are incredible resources for Olim navigating personal finances today. Organizations like Blue and White Finance (which didn’t exist when I made aliyah, but I’d point any new Oleh toward now) are doing wonderful work on behalf of Olim. But almost nothing existed, and still doesn’t, for Olim starting or transplanting businesses.
That gap still exists. If you’re reading this and you’ve figured it out, please write the guide. Or better yet, create a business based on that. I’m sure many Olim business owners will thank you.
Nobody warned me that Israel would help me find my real niche
I moved to Israel thinking I’d be working with Israeli high-tech startups. That first scrappy startup I worked with had given me that impression. Instead, I quickly discovered that the clients who resonated with my work, and whom I resonated with, were almost entirely English-speaking Olim running service-based businesses.
Not what I pictured at all. And yet it made complete sense.
Through English-speaking networking groups, through word of mouth, through COVID (when every business owner suddenly needed to be online), I found my people. Coaches. Consultants. Practitioners. Founders building meaningful, service-first companies. By 2021 and 2022, I was doing some of the most meaningful work of my career, with clients I genuinely wanted to be friends with.
That shift, from “I’ll work with Israeli tech” to “I work with established, English-speaking, service-based businesses who care deeply about how they show up online,” didn’t happen overnight. It happened because Israel kept teaching me.
One recent example, Amichai, a new bilingual English-Hebrew elementary school, came to me through a referral after years of building relationships. Their largely American team needed a website fast for a school deeply rooted in both cultures. I wasn’t just their web designer. I was their audience. I understood exactly who they were speaking to because I am that person. That kind of work doesn’t exist the same way in New York.
Nobody warned me that the culture would make me a better business owner
Here’s the one I didn’t see coming at all.
In New York, I was single, available, and entirely work-focused. I didn’t think much about boundaries because I didn’t need them.
In Israel, I’m a mom. And something I’ve noticed, quietly, gratefully, is that this country gets it. Meetings end at four because everyone has pickups. Holidays are shared. When a client says I have to run, school thing, there’s zero explanation needed. There’s a collective understanding that life and work coexist, not compete.
At least half my clients here are also parents. And there’s something in that shared baseline, of being Olim, of building something in a country that asks a lot of you, of raising kids while doing it, that creates a different kind of working relationship. Warmer. More human. More like the kind of business I wanted to build.
Running a business in Israel is not easy. The bureaucracy is real. The market dynamics are different. And yes, I still rely on my U.S. client base, and I’m grateful for it.
But what Israel gave me is something I couldn’t have manufactured: clarity about who I serve, why I do this work, and what it feels like when a client relationship is built on genuine shared context, not just a transaction.
My business made aliyah. And seven years in, I think it was the right call.