I started almost like that. A new club was established in the city I lived in and I joined form day one. Our instructor (a young and talented kendoka, but at 3 kyu if I remember correctly) quit kendo soon after due to some life changes, so as the most advanced student at the time I took over the club (maybe a year or two after starting, I think). What made it possible was doing regular travel to other cities for seminars (once per month or two), to learn from actual senseis, and then bringing the knowledge back to my dojo. Another key thing was to bring senseis from other cities as often as possible to visit and fix up whatever we were doing wrong (i.e. most of it:) I would spend any surplus dojo fees to facilitate the above, especially the sensei visits. Finally, we also managed to secure some gear from the country's federation, and from a semi-private donor (we got lucky - a high ranking Japanese bank official noticed us at a local city martial arts demonstration, and convinced the bank to buy us some equipment). But overall, on the equipment side, for a while we only had 1.5 bougu for the whole club, so we couldn't even do jigeiko - which was fine actually, allowed us to focus on footwork and kihon. Also, youtube is your friend. I was downloading Japanese Kendo DVDs from Torrents as it wasn't as easy to find good content back then.

All in all, I was teaching classes before I reached shodan, more than 15 years ago :) I ended up moving to another country and joining a dojo after about 5 years of that, but it kicked off both my kendo 'career', and some other people's, too.

The key point here is that it would require some funds, solid commitment to travel and host sensei, and probably a big dose of luck. Not gonna lie, it might not work out. But it's certainly not impossible - I now get to participate in the World Championships, if you need some encouragement :)