Claire Naughton: Freestyling a Business, and a Self, Abroad

Some milestones arrive without a clear feeling attached. This September, Claire Naughton marks eight years in France — and she still hasn't decided whether to celebrate or mourn it. That honesty sets the tone for a conversation that turns out to be far more layered than its starting point.

Claire is a self-described "freestyling marketer" who helps international service-business owners stay visible without losing their soul. But this episode isn't really about marketing. It's about what happens when you try to build something — a business, a community, a sense of belonging — while you're also learning a new language, a new rhythm, and a new version of yourself. Mickelle and Claire move from the mechanics of visibility into the quieter territory underneath it: intuition, impermanence, and whether you ever truly arrive in a country that isn't yours.

In this episode

• Comparison abroad hits differently — building a business is hard enough; doing it in a foreign country adds "invasive mental measuring sticks" no one warns you about
• What "freestyling" marketing really means — adaptive, human, and writing-first, meeting founders where they are instead of flattening them into templates
• Staying human in the age of AI — why original writing is the foundation everything else has to feed from
• Belonging and the myth of arriving — why full acceptance in France may never come, and how that reframes what belonging can mean
• Moving abroad for love — the brave, romantic version everyone celebrates, and the 700 quieter things no one mentions
• Bringing your whole self to the work — building a business, motherhood and nervous system included, around the life you actually want

What "freestyling" actually means

The word came from Claire's husband, whom she met volunteering in Peru — he used "freestyling" to mean we'll figure it out, we're in this together. It stuck, and it turned out to be the most honest description of the marketing she does. She meets founders where they are, matches their rhythm, and stays flexible about where the work goes: "I clocked you, like I'm here, I got you, I'll match your rhythm, we'll be okay."

Underneath the playfulness is a truth about international life — what Mickelle calls collaborating with known impermanence. Not every client is forever; not every friendship survives the next move. Naming that upfront, Claire argues, actually builds sturdier, more honest relationships rather than weaker ones.

Staying human when everyone's reaching for AI

Claire isn't anti-AI — she uses it daily. But she's firm about the order of operations. AI is a guardrail, not a voice: "you will not have an original platform if you don't have original things to feed your AI." The real work is the unglamorous part — understanding yourself, your clients, and what you actually want to say.

It's here that Mickelle offers a phrase Claire immediately falls for: nutritious marketing. If we're all swimming in marketing all day, why not put something nourishing into the world instead of more noise? Notably, Claire avoids the word authentic — because the moment you try to perform authenticity, you've already lost it.

Belonging, and the myth of arriving

Eight years in, Claire describes a particularly French kind of acceptance: quiet, coded, and rarely announced. There's no triumphant "I've made it" moment — just a slow easing of scrutiny once you've learned the social codes. For Americans, who tend to read silence as disapproval, that can be disorienting.

This is where the episode meets the heart of House of Peregrine. A peregrine is an outsider — endlessly adaptable, able to thrive anywhere, but an outsider all the same. Full belonging abroad may never fully arrive, and even returning "home" carries its own reverse culture shock. The work isn't to erase that outsider status; it's to build a life that holds it.

You don't just marry a person — you marry a country

Claire is candid about a conversation that rarely gets its due: moving abroad for love. The romantic version gets all the applause — so brave, what an adventure — while the harder truths go unspoken. As Mickelle puts it, if you marry someone, you marry their family. But if you marry someone from a different country, you also marry their country.

That means visas, language, in-laws, and a whole psychology of building yourself as a young adult in an unfamiliar place. Neither of them is warning anyone off the adventure — they're arguing for going in with a little more wisdom, and a lot less romanticized blindness.

Building a business around your whole life

Some of the episode's most resonant moments come when the two founders talk about designing work around a real life rather than the reverse. Claire pushes back on old advice that women should make themselves endlessly available; Mickelle describes building her business structurally around motherhood, and reframes the tired "career or kids" question into something more blended — where a woman might need her children near her to do her best work, not despite it.

For internationally mobile people, this isn't a luxury but a necessity. A fractional, many-skilled career often fits life abroad far better than a rigid full-time contract — especially when you're on a partner's visa and holding several worlds at once.

Claire's closing advice lands it all: when it gets hard, stop measuring yourself against everyone else and ask a better question — when is the last time I've compared myself to myself and not anybody else?

About the guest: Claire Naughton

Claire Naughton is a freestyling marketer who helps expat service-business owners with marketing that actually feels human — writing that sounds like them, strategy that doesn't flatten their personality, and community built on real connection rather than growth for its own sake.

Originally from the Chicago area, her path to France was anything but straight, winding through New Zealand and South America before she landed there in 2018. A background in English literature and creative writing shapes the writing-first heart of her work, which today leans into ghostwriting, thought leadership, and community-led marketing for internationally minded founders.

Find Claire:

• The Millennial Abroad — her travel blog, where she shows up open to friendly connection — https://www.themillennialabroad.com/
• Instagram — the real, unpolished pieces of her — https://www.instagram.com/themillennialabroad/
• LinkedIn — where she's most active professionally, and always open to a virtual coffee — https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-naughton/

Your network just went international — don't build it alone

If you're finding your feet in a new country, remember what Claire and Mickelle keep circling back to: everyone here is starting over, without the local network they once took for granted. That's exactly where House of Peregrine comes in — to help you fill in your international network faster, so you're not doing the hardest parts of this alone.

Listen to the full conversation with Claire, then come build something that feels like yours. It's now.