We don't just write decks about China.

We built a life here.

Iron Lion International is an American-founded, China-based consulting firm that helps companies navigate cross-border commerce. We’ve been providing AI-native consulting for SMBs entering China — and Chinese companies expanding overseas — since 2015.

Fluent in Mandarin and the art of fixing GTM systems built of cardboard and held together with duct tape.

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What We Do

Over eleven years of mainland China business experience. A network that stretches from San Diego to Shenzhen. Equally comfortable in the boardroom or on the factory floor.

We specialize in three things:

1) China Market Entry

Compliance, operations, local recruiting, and GTM strategies for Western companies entering China

2) Overseas Expansion for Chinese Companies

Brand building, cross-border e-commerce, and localization strategies for Chinese companies going West

3) AI-Native Operations & Consulting

Custom automation, revenue systems, and agent-backed execution that scales without scaling headcount

Meet the Founder — Kole Maravilla

A Californian currently based in Guangzhou, Kole speaks Mandarin, English, and a little sarcasm. He runs on Mexican food, dimsum, and the stubborn belief that most problems are actually just information siloes, outdated systems, and ill-defined processes in a trenchcoat. And he is obsessed with AI in the specific way that lets you see exactly where the hype overshoots the reality — and exactly where the reality is still underrated.

Outside of work, he's either in the water (swimming, surfing, freediving, etc), running, at the movies, or home with his cats. He's a micro-influencer by the slimmest possible margin: 5,000-ish followers across RedNote and WeChat — which is just enough for strangers to squint at him with vague recognition. One day he’d like to write a novel, or maybe a screenplay.

The Iron Lion Story

  • Iron Lion started as a side hustle in Cangzhou, a gritty industrial city in northern China most people have never heard of. Kole moved there in 2014 with a degree in English, zero Mandarin, and a clear goal: learn the language, build a network, get into business.

    Three years of full-time English teaching funded the immersion. No titors, no textbooks— just daily life, local friends, and the stubborn refusal to stay confused. HSK 5 in under two years. A growing web of collaborators: factory owners, traders, small-business operators who needed someone to bridge the language gap and think like a Westerner.

    By 2017 the freelance work — translation, interpreting, sales support, business English training, localization — had grown enough to quit teaching.

    Iron Lion went full-time.

  • The next three years were about scale and presence. Trade shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou. International travel to Thailand, Cambodia, France — anywhere there was a deal to be made or a relationship to build. The network expanded beyond Cangzhou. The work expanded beyond translation and sales support.

    Iron Lion was becoming something else: a cross-border strategy partner.

    Not just "we speak both languages" — we understood how both sides think. What works in a WeChat group doesn't work in an email campaign. What closes in a steel factory doesn't fly in a tech boardroom. We learned that "yes" over dinner doesn't mean the same thing as "yes" in a signed contract. Language was the easy part.

  • The Covid-19 pandemic pulled us back to the US.

    Kole joined Flock Freight, a Google-backed freight-tech unicorn, and climbed fast — new software, new certifications, new awards, new networks. First-hand experience in American startup culture: the pace, the tooling, the expectations.

    But Iron Lion never stopped. Nights and weekends went to local clients building GTM strategy, marketing automation, revenue systems.

    The pandemic also brought ChatGPT. We were early adopters, daily users, obsessed with what AI could do for business operations. That obsession has never faded.

  • We returned to China in 2023 and found a landscape that was recognizable but fundamentally altered. Two rounds of trade war and tariffs had hollowed out demand for the industrial goods that were our original staples — steel pipes, fittings, heavy manufacturing. The old playbook didn't work anymore.

    So we pivoted. Hard.

    We joined Diversitech Global in Hangzhou, modernizing their CRM and building a suite of custom tools covering sales, quoting, and marketing automation. We worked with Lovense, a Singaporean sex-tech company, optimizing e-commerce operations and building AI agents for content generation and localization.

  • We're evolving our core services to be AI-native. The custom strategies, the automation, the cross-border GTM systems we built for clients over a decade — all of it can now be delivered through autonomous tools at a fraction of the cost.

    What used to take a senior consultant and six months of discovery now takes an agent and a week.

    The expertise hasn't changed. The price tag has.

Our Values

  • Relevance Before Revenue

    Invisible firms don't get hired. So we write, we publish, we give away what others gatekeep.

    The trust comes first. The revenue comes when we've earned it.

    We build what matters — solving real problems, not chasing trends.

  • Evidence Over Ego

    Every claim we make is backed by specifics.

    Not "we're the best" but "we cut ramp time from 3 months to 1."

    Not "we understand China" but "11 years, Guangzhou-based, Mandarin-fluent."

    Show, don't tell —and own the outcomes.

  • Friction to Flow

    Our default question is: "What obstacle can we remove?"

    Complex processes, manual busywork, teams that don't talk to each other — these are the enemy.

    We prototype quickly, iterate based on feedback, and maintain high standards to build systems that let smart people focus on smart work.

  • Two-way Traffic

    China → US is half the market. US → China is the other half. We don't pick sides.

    We understand both directions because we've operated in both directions. The expertise is the same; the application is reversed.

    The seams between cultures and disciplines are where innovation happens.

  • Stay Curious

    Continuous learning is non-negotiable.

    We expect everyone — human or agent — to improve daily, document learnings, and flag uncertainty.

    Research-backed expertise. No guessing.


Frequently Asked Questions

  • We focus on SMB and mid-market companies (<$100M revenue) and growth-stage startups with Series A or later funding.

    Enterprise: we can discuss, but our model is built for speed — not the procurement cycles that come with Fortune 500 engagement.

    Not there just yet? Check our standalone digital products, blog, or free newsletter.

  • Speed, specificity, and no retainers.

    We don't hand you a 100-slide deck and disappear. We build the system, train your team, and make sure it works before we leave.

    You get senior consultant expertise without the junior analyst hours, the travel budgets, or the six-month discovery phase.

  • Discovery call → diagnostic assessment → proposal with scoped deliverables → execution → knowledge transfer → ongoing advisory (optional).

    Most engagements run 3–6 months.

    We don’t do open-ended retainers.

  • Book a discovery call. That conversation costs you nothing.

    And if we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is — because a bad engagement is worse than no engagement.

  • Both.

    About 30% of our work is Western companies entering China. 70% is Chinese companies building overseas presence. The expertise is the same; the application is reversed.

  • Then we change it. No engagement is carved in stone.

    If regulations shift, if a platform changes its rules, if your competitive landscape moves — we adapt.

    That's the advantage of working with a small firm: we can turn faster than a 200-person team.