Business Abroad: Legal Insights and Travel Tips

Have you ever thought about starting a business abroad or had a desire to expand your current business abroad?  Join me, Matt Chambers, as I reconnect with old friend and very successful international business attorney Jessica Youngs as we take a little trip trip down memory lane and go in depth about some legal pitfalls to look out for when you're thinking of expanding abroad. From our early days in Champaign Illinois to our adventures in Atlanta. We explore the twists and turns of our career paths, from the humble beginnings of my furniture business in Minneapolis to  how Jessica's adapting to life abroad and built a renown international law practice in Europe. This episode is a testament to the power of building cross-cultural connections and the unique challenges and rewards that come with it.

Embrace the spirit of adventure as we recount travel stories that range from childhood trips to historical sites in West Virginia to her father's awe-inspiring motorcycle circumnavigation of the globe at 72. Discover how these experiences have fueled a lifelong passion for exploration and personal growth. We talk about overcoming the fear of traveling alone, starting small, and the sense of freedom that travel brings. Whether it's scuba diving in Egypt's Red Sea or a spontaneous skydiving adventure, our tales are sure to inspire your wanderlust.

We also delve into the evolving landscape of our global careers and remote work, highlighting the flexibility brought about by technology advancements. From working at a traditional U.S. law firm to embracing a remote lifestyle by creating an international law practice across Europe and the U.S. We discuss how this adaptability has shaped our professional lives. Learn about the legal intricacies of global expansion and the importance of cultural adaptability in professional settings. With insights into the tech and SaaS industries, and reflections on running a car rental business, this episode offers a rich blend of professional wisdom and life lessons.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Matt Chambers Connects, a podcast hosted by Matt Chambers. This is the podcast that transcends boundaries, empowers cross-cultural connections and fosters a more connected world. I'm your host, matt Chambers, and I invite you to join us on this quest to expand our understanding and build bridges between my two favorite places on the planet Latin America and the United States. I've been traveling, living and doing business in Latin America for nearly two decades. Hey, what's up with you? What's new? I think it's been. I don't know when the last time I was that I talked to you. Prior to within the last couple weeks. Prior to that, it's been a couple of years, hasn't it?

Speaker 2: 0:54

Yeah, I think so. Just life is getting on.

Speaker 1: 0:58

It's certainly flying by right.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Yeah, yeah, we're both getting older. It seems like you know. For me, when we lived in Atlanta, for example, that still seems like yesterday, but it wasn't, it was more than a decade ago.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Way more than a decade. It was like 14, 15 years ago, I think.

Speaker 2: 1:16

It was 11. I moved to Europe in 2013.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Yeah, okay, so 11 years ago, wow, but I mean we've known each other, wow, many years before that. Right, because we met in Champaign.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Yeah, when I was like 19.

Speaker 1: 1:29

You were 19 when we met.

Speaker 2: 1:31

A long time, yeah, yeah, a long time ago. I mean what, 20 years or so ago, you would come for a party?

Speaker 1: 1:39

I came for yeah, I came for Tina's birthday party. Yeah, I drove all the way down from Minneapolis to Champaign, which is like a ridiculous drive. Jesus, she owes me for that.

Speaker 2: 1:49

That was a hell of a drive. Were you working in Minneapolis at the?

Speaker 1: 1:51

time? Yeah, no, I was living in Minneapolis, I had just started in the furniture business and I had, you know, I ended up living in Minneapolis about two and a half years and then we expanded out into Wisconsin and Illinois and we expanded out into Wisconsin and Illinois, but at that time I don't even think we had expanded yet. I think I was just primarily working the Dakotas in Minneapolis and I had just maybe gotten back from Venezuela, had recently met Tina, maybe within the last year or something. She had just turned 30 or something, yeah, and I went down.

Speaker 2: 2:18

No, it was her 25th birthday, I think Something like that.

Speaker 1: 2:20

I think she's maybe two years older than me or something and I went down. No, it was her 25th birthday, I think, something like that. I think she's maybe two years older than me or something, so I think it was like her 20th.

Speaker 2: 2:28

A long time ago, 18 years. Then you moved to Atlanta and you were living literally across the street from me, well, from where I was working. I don't know if you knew this, but do you remember that Piedmont Peachtree intersection, that really?

Speaker 1: 2:43

busy intersection, you go over the bridge.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Yeah, so when I first moved to Atlanta, there were these apartment buildings sort of like behind that Chipotle I don't know if it's still there a decade on, but there were these apartment buildings and I first lived there. Then I moved, and when I moved, at the same time that I moved, I took a new job and the job that I was working at had an office in Midtown and I was very happy. You know, okay, I'm done with this intersection, I'm done with Buckhead. For a while. And then that office, within two or three months of me going to their Midtown office, they announced that they were moving office space to Buckhead, literally to the building right next to where I used to live. So I feel as though the entire time that I was living, in.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Atlanta was either working or living at that intersection and you were living right across the street from me.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Yeah, I lived at the Buckhead Grand, right, that was right there, and you guys came over a couple of times if I'm not mistaken, several times, yeah it was a nice apartment that you had.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Oh, the condo was incredible.

Speaker 1: 3:48

That was some of the best years, I think, maybe for sure, in my adult life. Those are definitely the 10 of the most enjoyable years I've had since leaving college 20 years ago. I would say those 10 years they were incredible. I had a good time in Atlanta, yeah yeah. What a great condo too. Right that building. The neighbors were incredible. I miss those guys. I really do miss those people a lot. My years in South America have been incredible too, but it's just been a different kind of incredible.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Different thing. It's definitely a difference to move overseas and to not have this sort of same fluidity, maybe that you do in the States, and I think for me that's been the biggest difference, although you couldn't always tell it. You know, when you first move it's all wonderful and exciting of understanding that's sort of innate that you maybe don't realize that you have. Even that you, you lose, and I'm not saying it's a negative loss, it can be for a better loss, but uh, it's certainly been been a change, I think. Do you have the same?

Speaker 1: 4:57

I don't know if I understand. I think I understand what you're saying, but explain it. Explain what you mean. That I mean, I would say. What I think you mean by that is that you have this innate ability to adapt and to meet people even without being completely in your element and fluent in the language in the beginning. Is that where you're going with that?

Speaker 2: 5:17

No, I mean just to get around life. That's for me the biggest difference, I think, from living overseas. To say that you're going to go to the DMV, right, you know how it works in the States.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know how to make people.

Speaker 2: 5:32

Maybe you don't have exactly the right form, but you know how to make it happen right. You know what you need. You know what you need to say and to do it overseas. It gets done eventually. It might take a few tries depending on the country.

Speaker 2: 5:48

But you aren't always. There's not inside of I don't feel inside of me always that there's this ability, at least at the very beginning, that there wasn't this ability to say how exactly does it work to get this to happen. But it may be quite different for you being in Columbia, different culture, maybe more laid back, for example, than it is for me being in Europe?

Speaker 1: 6:09

No for sure. I mean, let's call a spade a spade. The Europeans, the Americans, are way more uptight than anyone's going to be in Latin America, but you know that's not always so negative, right? Things actually get done for the most part in the States and Europe. In South America, you know, it seems like everything always finds a way to work out. Like you think most things aren't going to work out and it's months later for something that's super simple and you think it's never going to work out, and then somehow it just happens. And then there are like these crazy ways that you know.

Speaker 1: 6:41

I just feel like in the first world you have these uniform set of rules and laws and for the most part people are forced to follow them and do follow them. At least lawyers and people like that actually follow the laws because they have to and they want to. South America is not really like that. You know, somebody tells you that they're a lawyer. It doesn't mean they're a lawyer. Of course they got this two year law degree. There's a real high chance that there's definitely no uniform set of laws and if there is no, one knows what those laws really are, what they're allowed to do, what they're not allowed to do and I don't think they care if they really follow them anyway.

Speaker 1: 7:15

It's just big hodgepodge of weird stuff living in South America, and I think that I was having this conversation with a buddy the other day in a different way. But I think that most of us end up staying in south america, wanting to spend more time here because it's all this free and easy entertainment. I mean, there's just weird stuff going on. You know, you're like going down the street and you're on a main road and there's three people on the same scooter and and actually like no one should be on the scooter on that actual road, but here there's three. There's not only someone on a scooter going through a, you know, riding down a four lane highway, but there's three people on the damn scooter. So there's stuff like that that you know just keeps you entertained 24 seven in South America.

Speaker 1: 7:58

So you know again, I think in large part that's why a lot of us end up staying for so long and we can't get out of here, because you go back to the States and Europe and you're just bored out of your mind because everyone's vanilla and everyone's following all the rules and it's kind of cool to live in a place where not everyone follows the rules and no one cares if they do or not. Right, most of the time in South America, depending on where you are, I would say, if you need to get something done, they always find a way to figure out how to get it done for you. Um, it may not always be most. Most of the time you're better off not caring how it gets done, just telling someone that you think knows how to get it done that you need it done and all of a sudden it comes back done and you don't care how it got done, because if you care, then you're just going to get wrapped up in a big hodgepodge of stuff.

Speaker 2: 8:44

See, here in the Netherlands, where I am, they want to always say no, that's not possible. I feel like that's a favorite phrase. No, it's not possible. No, we can't do it. No, it doesn't work that way. I've always found the Dutch to be a little bit like that.

Speaker 1: 8:59

I have several friends that are Dutch and they just don't have that like entrepreneurial mind in any way. That that says like let's just bend this rule a little bit. It's like no, that's not how it works. Like I have a buddy that every time, every time you tell him about a business deal or an investment, he'd be like well, maybe you should just go do that, because that guy already has this business established, maybe you shouldn't try that new thing. Or you'll tell him I'm going to start this podcast. He's like well, there's like 2 million podcasts out there. You're like to me, that's kind of how the Dutch have been in every interaction I've ever had.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Exactly, exactly, most of them. Well, I don't want to generalize because this is not at all to brag on the Dutch in any point whatsoever.

Speaker 2: 9:40

I've made my home here, so that's okay, but a lot of times, yeah, there's certainly not that much of an entrepreneurial spirit and the culture doesn't support it. You know they tax entrepreneurs much more. They don't have the systems in place really to support it. In a lot of ways I think it's getting better. I think in the Western part of the country that there's certainly more promotion of trying to do your own thing of trying to start a business, especially if it's in the technology or sort of this eco, green space.

Speaker 2: 10:20

There's a lot of support for that, but it depends on where in the country you are as well.

Speaker 1: 10:36

I think, and that probably holds true for any country. To be honest, I just think that that is kind of the MO or the. What I've noticed from the people that I've met is there. But the thing about them is man, they work, they get their work done, they save their money and, you know, they probably freaking retire at 40 years old. I don't know, I don't know how it works there, but maybe that's not true. I could be completely off with that, but anyway. So let's do this, let's go back through your life. I mean, I know we met a long, long time ago and you know I think it's probably important for people to kind of see where you've come from and where you are now. So won't you take me back through some highlights of your childhood, up until when I met you in college?

Speaker 2: 11:17

My childhood. You know, I know that your focus is on traveling and doing this, and I think that my childhood was very instrumental in giving me this travel bug as well, if you want to call it that. Both of my parents were teachers and they had three months off right for the summer holidays, and so every single summer, from my very first summer, we traveled around to somewhere, primarily in North America, but when I was maybe 10, 11, with my father, I started traveling in South America, central America as well. I mean, we spent a summer in Chile and Argentina. We spent a summer in Guatemala and Belize, mexico, and one of the really cool things about my parents and maybe this was because they were educators, but every year there was almost a theme to it. So, for example, one year I was really into Little House on the Prairie.

Speaker 1: 12:15

I don't know if you know what that is. I think it's more marketed. No, absolutely. I grew up in small town, west Virginia. My mom used to turn that on all the time, for whatever reason. I loved it, but go ahead.

Speaker 2: 12:24

Yeah, these books right, and maybe there was a television show as well, out in Missouri and I don't know, kansas, oklahoma. I'm sure I knew better where they were when I was seven, eight years old but I was absolutely obsessed with it. So with my parents we went and spent the summer sort of going to all of those places because it was a real book series right. It was sort of autobiographical in a sense that you could go around you could say this is where their house was, look at the wagon ruts in the ground as they had the wagon trains out West Another summer. I was absolutely obsessed with American.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Indians.

Speaker 2: 13:02

So we went and stayed in these sort of sky pueblos in the Southwest, we visited various sites and traveled all around and sort of had that educational aspect to it and so I really appreciated that about my parents. And that continued really until I would say until I was in high school. And then you know, you get other interests boyfriends, sports whatever. And in recent years, my father. He's such a cool guy. In recent years I say recent, but more since I moved to Europe he retired and he bought a motorcycle.

Speaker 1: 13:41

I don't know if I told you this story. I remember this, but I definitely remember this. Go ahead. I want people to hear that.

Speaker 2: 13:47

So he bought a motorcycle. He named it Odysseus. You know, was was very excited about it and he circumnavigated the world with with his motorcycle at age 72, maybe 2022, maybe. It took him years to do it and I joined him for a lot of those trips. I was already in Europe at that time, so I did parts of it with him. I did some in Romania with him, went up to Scandinavia with him, I joined him in Australia, I joined him in China was most recent and now he's telling me so his motorcycle adventure has ended.

Speaker 2: 14:25

Now he's 80. And he has decided that he wants to buy a sailboat. Not that he has any sailing experience, really, but he wants to buy a sailboat. Take it from Kentucky Lakes and somehow there's some trajectory that you can do down I don't know the Missouri or the Mississippi, down the bottom of the states around Florida, and then up the intercoastal waterway to I don't know New York, over through the Great Lakes and back down. So this is the environment that I grew up in and I think that it was a really blessed environment on reflection, to sort of give you more of a freedom and not a scariness.

Speaker 2: 15:08

I think what holds a lot of people back is this feeling of uncertainty right Of oh, I don't think I could do that.

Speaker 1: 15:14

I don't speak the language. That's the first one. They speak English over there, you know.

Speaker 2: 15:18

That doesn't matter. The language should be no one's worry whatsoever. Yeah, it should never be anyone's worry, but it is. I think it's a fear of maybe not being used to it, not having been outside, even outside of the country. Or maybe people have been to the Caribbean, for example, but not doing things on your own, and I think that that was, for me, very instrumental. And then I went off to college, went off to law school, met you.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Meeting me was the highlight of all that To Atlanta. It was. It was a highlight of all of you in my life, exactly.

Speaker 2: 16:01

Always coming up with crazy things to do.

Speaker 1: 16:03

It's so awesome that you got that as a kid and I certainly got that on a much smaller level, but I think you just go one place. It doesn't matter where it is, it's just get in the car and start, or get in the boat and start, or get in the plane and start, whatever it is, start and go somewhere, and then one thing leads to another and it just becomes a drug.

Speaker 2: 16:31

It's an addiction. Yeah, and were you traveling by yourself? I feel like in my 20s and in my 30s, I always traveled by myself as well, and I meet a lot of people who say that they've never gone to a restaurant by themselves, for example. And I say, really, I had this conversation with a girlfriend of mine. I remember it quite clearly a few years ago and it was really.

Speaker 2: 16:45

I had this conversation with a girlfriend of mine I remember it quite clearly a few years ago and it was during COVID, I think and she wanted to go somewhere in France. And I said just go, do it. Go, book an Airbnb, Go for two weeks, Bring a book or whatever. You'll have fun. And she said but I've never even eaten at a restaurant by myself. How can I do that? Have fun. And she said but I've never even eaten at a restaurant by myself. How can I do that? And maybe it's that fear of being alone or maybe that fear of people are going to look at you You're going to be strange that holds people back as well, but did you go do those things by yourself?

Speaker 1: 17:19

I had no choice and I don't know exactly where it started, but sure, when I was in the furniture business, they you know my first two and a half years in minneapolis and my job was to travel all of minnesota and north dakota and south dakota and visit these furniture operations because I was selling b2b. So you know, I'd be in fargo, north dakota God forbid, what a place I mean, especially in January. You're like ice skating to try to get up there. But you get to freaking Fargo and what are you going to do? Right, you're in a hotel for one day, two days, three days. I mean you're obviously not.

Speaker 1: 17:56

At that time Airbnb wasn't a thing, it was hotels. I was getting on Priceline getting a $95 hotel room for 46 bucks and getting a $95 hotel room for 46 bucks, and that's what I did. And so obviously you can't cook the hotel. Food is kind of crappy most of the time, so you're going to go out and eat and I don't know if I know that. That gave me more confidence because I had to do it 3 times a day, 4 days a week for 10 years or 11 years that I was in the furniture business, always on the road. I don't know if I had.

Speaker 1: 18:24

I've always had this innate confidence to where I really didn't care much about what anyone else thought. I know that that fear of walking in and the bartender or the people there thinking I was a weirdo didn't matter to me. What I'm not sure about is if I ever had that fear. I know I do remember having that fear of going and eating alone at some point I can't pinpoint where, but I do remember having that. But at this point I would say 90% of my meals in my life have been alone, because all I do is travel and I think you would agree with this. But if you waited around on your Think back when you were a kid and even now, if you picked out your top three or four girlfriends and you waited around on all three or four of them before you went on a trip, how many trips would you have gone on?

Speaker 2: 19:12

It would have never happened. You would have never left Illinois.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Ever You'd be in Champaign still, or wherever you grew up.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Would have never happened.

Speaker 1: 19:18

And so I figured that out. I tried and tried in high school and college. I know that I started off going to Virginia Tech to meet You'd have these friends that were a couple years older and I'd go to Virginia Tech to meet this one for the weekend because they were there gateways. I think that's what your dad did for you. He gave you the gateway drug. And now it's just, if somebody called you right now and said, hey, you have to be in Shanghai tomorrow, you'd be on a plane, like who cares, let's do it Right. Yeah, and I think for most people it's just you know the people that ask me like, how do you do that?

Speaker 2: 20:08

And I'm like well, your first step is, you know you go to orbits and you buy a flight to wherever it is you're going, and then, once you have the flight, yeah, make sure to sign up. Sign up, though, first for frequent flyer miles. So many people I talk to don't have frequent flyer accounts, and they are missing out. So get yourself a credit card that gets you points.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Sign up for your frequent flyer account before you book your trip and then go to orbit, absolutely, absolutely, but wherever it is, buy your flight first, because once you bought your flight, and if it's non-refundable, if it's non-refundable you're forced. You either lose the flight or you have to get a hotel room. And then, once you have a hotel room and a flight, you're probably not going to cancel it, and then from there you're going to figure it out.

Speaker 1: 20:43

That's what I did, um but, let me, let me ask you what brought you into the law business? What was your?

Speaker 2: 20:56

was your reasoning for wanting to be a lawyer? You know everybody when people ask that, they always want a response about something like I I wanted to uphold the constitution or I wanted to defend the innocent or defend the criminals. You know whatever it is and I've had clients over the years write me emails that say things like I know you went into the law to uphold the constitution. That seems to be a phrase that people like to write.

Speaker 1: 21:22

We need someone to do that, by the way, but I'll keep my opinions on that to myself. We do.

Speaker 2: 21:26

But no, I went into law school because I graduated university really young and much younger than most people and I really liked school and I didn't want to go out into the workforce at age 19.

Speaker 1: 21:42

You finished undergrad at 19?

Speaker 2: 21:44

And get a job, I job oh my God.

Speaker 2: 21:46

Yeah, you didn't know that Different story. So at 19, I said I don't want to go to, I want to continue in school. I like school, I'm good at school. How can I stay in school? The longest Sort of my thought process. And I said, okay, well, really, my two options are I could be a doctor or I could be a lawyer. Those are, you know, a master's degree. That's only going to get you two more years. I want to prolong it a little bit more. Most people, probably you are thinking hell, I just wanted as quickly out of school as I possibly could have.

Speaker 2: 22:22

I would have loved to stay in school forever, and so being a doctor was obviously off the table. There's no way that I was going to pass any of the entrance exams. You know, I hadn't really had math, I hadn't had a good science foundation in university level, and so I signed up. I took the LSAT about two weeks later and I went to law school really without knowing very much about it other than knowing I like to talk. The LSAT was doable and it seemed like a good career choice for me, but there wasn't a lot of thought that went into it.

Speaker 2: 22:57

So that's how I ended up being a lawyer and I think on reflection, that was sort of the universe guiding me into a job that was perfect for me. Not necessarily the practice of law, although I really like being a lawyer but the flexibility that the way the practice of law has changed has been instrumental for me, because if I had ended up going to medical school, that's a job that requires you to maybe not so much with telehealth these days, but to be more tied to a hospital, to a practice, right Physically, to be there with a patient, and for me, with the law, it's been wonderful and has led to a good lifestyle of sort of adaptability as things come up. There's a lot of interesting changes in the law. You know I work with software and technology clients, primarily sass and sass I don't know if you know what that is, but it's software as a service.

Speaker 2: 23:54

So this riverside that we're using right now is like a sass product right, yeah, cloud, cloud stuff, and there's so much happening there in the future. There's so much happening with the AI and that respect in the future, with data in the future, and I think it's just going to grow and grow.

Speaker 1: 24:12

So ultimately it was a good decision for me that I didn't, as a teenager, put a lot of font into, but I'm very happy that there was something guiding me into a good career decision and not yeah, and you know, interestingly enough, when I was sitting down writing these questions, I think I texted you this I was like you know, it's interesting I didn't realize how much that we had shared and how much we had in common until I really sat down and was trying to figure out what information that my audience might want to hear and that I wanted to hear from you. But we've shared a lot one and I don't know. Secondly, I don't know where I was going. With that.

Speaker 1: 24:51

I might have to edit this part out because I completely forgot where I was going. But yeah, we just had a lot of history together, but what ended up taking you to Europe? For that, I mean, I assume all the travel. And then you pair that with the law practice that you ended up doing, and then your travel experience, your law practice, and somehow you ended up in international business in Europe.

Speaker 2: 25:19

I did so. I was when you were living across the street from me. I was working for a law firm that doesn't exist anymoremower. I was doing the defense work for that across the seven-state territory and what we did was have local firms in those different regions it was Florida, it was the Carolinas, virginia, georgia and say okay, lawnmower company, you are the ones that put the lawnmower into the box. It's your fault that it didn't have an instruction booklet with it. So although we're being sued because we sold it, you have to come and pay for the defense and settle this with the plaintiff. So that was the kind of work that I did for quite a few years.

Speaker 2: 26:20

Then I got married and my husband at the time he had an opportunity to do a fellowship in Europe. That was supposed to be for two years. So we said this is a great opportunity. We were in our mid late 20s and it's not far enough in our lives or in my practice at this point where that's going to be a hindrance if I want to come back to be at a bigger law firm. So let's go do it.

Speaker 2: 26:49

They're not paying him anything, really not very much but enough, and we get to travel around to three different locations. So it was two locations in France, in Prague, and then in the Netherlands. And when this opportunity for him came up, I went to my law firm and I said hey guys, can I just go away for two years, then I'll be back, but I can work remotely. Because even at that point and this was 2013 or so we were not really seeing the clients very much right, everything was already through email, through phone. Very, very, very rarely was somebody in the office, at least for the type of work that I did.

Speaker 2: 27:34

Of course, if you needed to go take a deposition or go to court overseas and I think these days everybody's doing it right and all of these law firms, not just law a- few hundred bucks right a month. Maybe I'll make something small and I thought that I would do it working with like product manufacturers, because that was sort of the background that I had right.

Speaker 2: 28:18

I was working a lot with companies whose products had been sold and then they'd injured somebody, companies whose products had been sold and then they'd injured somebody. So I thought I can work with product manufacturers and say these are the warning labels. You have to have the type of insurance you have to have your risk exposure if you're going to sell in the US markets and for whatever reason. It's very quickly morphed into working with software technology, saas products, just because that's what people are doing these days right, some e-commerce sort of products up, but mainly these days it's quickly diverted. And that was 11 years ago.

Speaker 1: 28:55

Wow.

Speaker 2: 28:57

And still doing it, so very happy with it.

Speaker 1: 29:00

So I don't know if you know this, but when I was writing these questions and really thinking about the information that I wanted to take from you, I recognized and I realized that I remember a time in my life when you had just left Atlanta and you had gone abroad and you had just started working as an attorney abroad. I don't know if you remember, but you did a couple of contracts for me and a couple of bios that I believe you wrote up for me For your mattress stuff.

Speaker 1: 29:24

When all that was happening, you actually became a big time inspiration for me, and you may not know that, in fact, I didn't remember it until now, right when I was putting those questions together, because I was in the furniture business at the time. I was making great money. It was incredible. But at the time some things had started to change in the industry, where I was just feeling like I could do more and wanted to do more, not necessarily monetarily, but just something that would help me grow more. And then I see you right this time you're like living in all these cool places and you're doing your work from wherever you want to be. And again, like you just said, that was way before COVID seven, eight years before COVID and not a lot of people were doing it. Then I spent so much of my time trying to figure out how I could set up something to be completely location independent, like you were doing. So you were definitely a big time inspiration for me to move on.

Speaker 1: 30:20

It was you and as funny as this is going to sound, it was Tim Ferriss that wrote the four hour work week. I'm seeing you do all this, having a good time, and then I'm seeing this dude, tim Ferriss write this really cool book. That just sounded absolutely incredible, and a couple of years later I was doing it. So thank you for that. It's been incredible.

Speaker 2: 30:39

Well, thank you for saying. Nobody's told me that I'm an inspiration.

Speaker 1: 30:41

Yeah, no, no it was. And again, I did not remember it until I started writing down. You know what I wanted to talk with you about? And then I remember like, oh, she was.

Speaker 2: 30:51

I remember this, you know so yeah, well, you know it was so much harder back then that it would be for somebody starting out today. I remember I was talking to somebody else about this back in 2013 or so. There wasn't as crazy as it sounds. There wasn't good internet right In a lot of places. So I was in France and it was really difficult to get internet. You couldn't go to not every restaurant had internet. The phone packages that you were getting at the time still had quite restricted amounts of data.

Speaker 2: 31:28

So I would be at somewhere like McDonald's trying to download email or get instructions from a client or upload a contract, and now a huge amount of the work that I do is in data, is in cybersecurity sort of field, and I think I'm so horrified now that I think about that that I was on the public Wi-Fi at McDonald's.

Speaker 2: 31:55

Downloading classified information hustle, get the business running, trying to get a contract that probably took 40 minutes to upload on this Wi-Fi in the south of France. And how big of a change to now. Because, for example, in Europe I don't know when this started, maybe 2017, 2018, I don't remember but now you can have one SIM card that works everywhere in Europe and I have unlimited data because things like phones and data are considered a utility now. It's really a lot cheaper actually in Europe than in America to get data and phone cards. I think I pay like 30 bucks a month for completely unlimited data and it works everywhere in Europe. They said no, it's sort of this free market. We're not going to put you on roaming. If you go to Germany or to Belgium or to France, One card will work everywhere. That wasn't the case two years ago.

Speaker 1: 32:57

Yeah, you had to change SIM cards everywhere you went. It was terrible.

Speaker 2: 33:01

And how much the world has changed without me really paying attention to it is kind of crazy. But to think that I was doing all of that without Wi-Fi and we were also I mean, we were in places. That one, we were traveling a lot. You know, we probably traveled a third of the year to Timbuktu, anywhere and everywhere. We were traveling a lot anyway, sort of maybe a third of the time. And because of the program that my ex-husband was in, they had us living in almost like student housing as well. So here I am, around all of these Erasmus students and they're maybe 18, 19 years old. I'm trying to run a law firm, the internet doesn't work Half the time, my phone doesn't work, we have laundry hung in this dorm room, everywhere, and somehow, a decade later, I look back and think, wow, it's been a crazy adventure, but it's been a good one.

Speaker 1: 34:07

So in many ways you were kind of the backpacker lawyer in the beginning, which is not most attorneys' typical story.

Speaker 2: 34:15

Well, no, not really, but definitely. What people would not think of the nomad.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Let's say, like the nomad, maybe the nomad attorney, you know something like that yeah and it's, it's not that way anymore, um, but it's, it's been an adventure. I mean, I was in nepal, I did uh, this was back right before covid happened I sort of took a, took a um spirit, not a spiritual journey. That makes me sound like a, like a hippie, but you know, I thought I would go, I had been. Crazy story Actually, I was you and I both like scuba diving and quite a lot, and I had been on a scuba diving trip in Egypt, which I'm obsessed with, scuba diving in Egypt. If anybody's not been to Egypt for scuba diving, I highly highly recommend it.

Speaker 1: 35:06

I saw your pictures. That was your Red Sea trip.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Oh, but I do it every year.

Speaker 1: 35:09

Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 2: 35:11

So you should come next year yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:13

I should. Yeah, you're right, I agree. No-transcript.

Speaker 2: 35:31

I will.

Speaker 1: 35:31

Yeah, I want to do that.

Speaker 2: 35:32

We'll do it. But I was on this trip in Egypt and met somebody who said you seem a little sad. I was going through some difficult things in my life. He said you seem a little sad, we're going on this trip to Nepal in a month or two months. Do you want to come? So I came back home and I thought I think, okay, I'll come. So I was in Nepal. We did this Annapurna circuit up at 5,400 meters, so at the high base camp.

Speaker 1: 36:02

Shit, we're losing it.

Speaker 2: 36:03

Everyone there was working. There was internet. We're all sitting there on our laptops working. Just, it's amazing how much the world has changed, how much. You sort of run into people who are doing whatever they're doing, whatever kind of business they have. You know, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, that you walked for two weeks to get to, and here we are. Here is here is Internet. Everybody's sitting there with a cup of tea.

Speaker 1: 36:29

So yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's definitely changed. You know, I'm in Colombia right now and I don't know how many countries I've been to since COVID, but several. I traveled most of last year I was in Mexico, and everywhere you go you're seeing Americans all over the place and they're sitting on their laptops working from there and back in the day. These were guys. And then there's still a significant amount of them that are just teaching English online, making 800 bucks a month or something like that. Right, but then there's also these guys now that are, you know, iBankers, guys that have their own real estate Businesses in every sector are traveling all around the world now right, because it's just everything's changed.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Do you, you know, speaking of scuba diving, you know we also jumped out of a plane together. I don't know if you remember that you did. I do remember that and I remember that we um. Do you remember that we played kickball together? Yeah, I do remember that with uh that was in um, with like holly and those. That whole group played right, and then there was a, the blonde-headed girl yeah, and I remember that we planned that that skydiving.

Speaker 2: 37:33

We were at a pool, we were at a swimming pool. I, for whatever reason I I'm not very good with mim, like with, uh, remembering images at all, but I very clearly remember this we were at a swimming pool, probably drinking a bit, and that whole kickball group was there and I was looking at groupon. We bought our our skydiving tickets from Groupon.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Is that? I remember that now.

Speaker 2: 37:58

We're maybe a little bit intoxicated at a swimming pool with our K-PAL team, and so that group of us went. I can't, I can't. Now I'm a little horrified to think that we did a Groupon skydiving, but we did.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And then yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's coming back to me. By the way, that's not the only crazy thing that I've done. After a few drinks, I've made a lot of decisions that could have kept me from being here today. Did you jump out of any more? But I don't remember doing it after Groupon. I think they were all pretty well planned and I was sober at the time, but maybe the first time that's what it took right. Maybe I needed a little Jack Daniels to get the guts to be able to jump out of a plane, because that wasn't easy, man, that was hard.

Speaker 2: 38:52

It was a pretty well. I don't think we were drunk when we jumped out of the plane, but it was definitely sort of we booked it on a Friday and then we went and did it on a Sunday or something very very quick, the discounted, you know, 75% off Groupon's got $13, jump out of a plane.

Speaker 1: 39:09

That is not a good idea. I don't recommend it to anyone listening. Right now a good idea. I don't recommend it to anyone listening right now, but we survived.

Speaker 2: 39:17

We survived, all of us survived.

Speaker 1: 39:20

Had some cool pictures my buddy jumped out of a plane in South America, I think it was in Columbia, I can't remember where it was. He said literally they took a bungee cord and closed the plane door on the way up. He was like by the time I got to the top I was so scared that it was better to jump out than it was to stay in. So I didn't even care. I was like let's get the hell out of this thing.

Speaker 2: 39:41

Oh, have you ever been bungee jumping?

Speaker 1: 39:44

No, and I don't even know if I could do it. Honestly, I could jump out of a plane a hundred more times, no problem, but I don't know that I could even bungee jump. There's something about seeing how close the ground is that messes with me.

Speaker 2: 39:57

For me it's the whiplash that you must get. That doesn't seem fun. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 40:03

I love jumping out of planes, though, and in fact, I thought about taking it to another level and learning how to do it myself. And then I was like you know, I don't know, I'm so ADD, I'd forget I was. I'd forget I was flying, I'd forget to pull the cord. You know, I'm gonna leave that up to someone else.

Speaker 2: 40:19

you know, forget to take my adderall you know, speaking of nepal, I I did the coolest thing in nepal. I did this um parapunting.

Speaker 1: 40:25

I don't know what you call it in, in, in.

Speaker 2: 40:28

Yeah, they in europe they call it paraplegic, paragliding right, which is also a sort of a tandem thing. You have like a hill and then you run. It was the most chill experience.

Speaker 1: 40:38

I've done it. I've done it several times in Colombia.

Speaker 2: 40:40

Yeah, I really liked that. I really really enjoyed paragliding in Nepal, so highly recommended to anyone who says going to go to Nepal. It doesn't seem like it would be on top of anybody's list for Nepal, but it was great, really calm, chill.

Speaker 1: 40:58

I know we've indirectly hit on this, but to be a little more specific, how do you feel like travel's changed you now that you're looking back on it 20 years later, 25 years later?

Speaker 2: 41:08

Well, my whole life later, right With my parents, I feel as though, hmm, that's a good question. I think it's made me a braver person, a much more self-reliant person.

Speaker 2: 41:21

I think that I can always figure my way out of it whatever situation comes up and a more understanding person, I think in the States not at all. I don't want to talk about politics, but you have sort of this big polarization happening right and you have this camp things that they are 100 correct about everything. You have this camp over here. They're 100 correct about everything, but they don't have the exposure right.

Speaker 2: 41:52

They don't realize there's 5 000 other camps that think different things and I think for me it's made me more of a calmer person uh, in that sense it's made me more like accepting, maybe accepting of accepting, yeah, of anyone's point of view doesn't mean I agree with it, but uh, but accepting. I will say living in the netherlands is quite, quite good for that. The dutch people are on the surface, although I think in reality they're not, but um, on the surface there very much is this attitude here in the culture of you. Do you as long as it doesn't harm me yeah um, and I really appreciate that's not.

Speaker 1: 42:35

That's not the case in the States at all. I mean, it's very judgmental on all sides. It's very just a judgmental place and I was speaking to a guy yesterday who's had a very interesting take on this and I thought through it a lot last night and I totally agree with him. I've thought about it myself. But you know, when you're in the States and you only stay in the States, no matter where it is and no matter what side of the spectrum you're on, right and don't get me wrong, hands down, I would rather be in the US than most anywhere in the world.

Speaker 1: 43:22

When it comes to personal freedoms, I'm not saying that it's not free there, it is. But there's also this more freeing feeling of being somewhere like South America. As an example, in South America, if you're speeding and you're going too fast, no one cares. Just don't kill anyone, right? No one really cares and for the most part, people don't drive like total idiots as a result. It's not like you take the cops away and you take the speed limit away and all of a sudden people just think it's the Autobahn where they don't think it's a racetrack all of a sudden.

Speaker 1: 44:01

So there's this freeing feeling of being's kind of big in the state police and I think he has a high position and I remember we're at family dinner and he's like, yeah, we did a sting yesterday and he wrote 16 speeding tickets and he's a really good guy. He's not the guy that's going to, he's not trying to just get people, he's an incredible dude. But the system teaches them that that's their job. Your job is to go out and write tickets for people speeding.

Speaker 1: 44:39

So me as a citizen, I have to worry. I have to sit behind the wheel and drive 10-2 and stay in my lane and then I have to make sure that I'm not going more than three to five miles an hour over the speed limit, because there's a good possibility that in that big forest up there there's a cop hidden in the bushes so I can't see him and trying to write me a $250 speeding ticket. So he was given his examples on that and how much freer he feels living outside the US and I was like, wow, he's right, right, yeah, now I also the other side of that, though, is just.

Speaker 1: 45:16

I do like being able to go to the US and tell the president I think he's a fucking idiot, without any repercussions. That's kind of cool Right, and you can't do that in most other countries, so there's two sides to the story.

Speaker 2: 45:30

There are, and you know, it's like the arguments about the drinking age in Europe, right, that people are not going crazy when the drinking age is 16 or 18, versus they are because it's, you know, off limits, hush, hush. You can't be drinking in the States, right? It's the same sort of thing that you're saying about the speed limit or driving and somewhere in South America. It's not as if people go crazy when you have fewer restrictions that are being enforced. It's more just. This is how it is. So why should we go crazy? And I think that there's certainly things to be said.

Speaker 2: 46:08

I think something else that how travel has changed me is for my own work has changed me is for my own work and maybe for yours as well, but I work with very much teams that are quite globally dispersed, right? So again, a lot of software tech companies. They are not just having a headquarters in I don't know New York City and only people sitting in New York.

Speaker 2: 46:33

City. These days they're having teams all over the place, so maybe their development is coming from Ukraine or Poland, maybe their customer support or customer success is located in India, maybe their sales team is located in Norway, who knows right, but that sort of setup is quite normal. And if I had never traveled, I don't think that I would have been able to assimilate into working in those types of environments because I wouldn't have the cultural adaptability right. I wouldn't. I would just say this is America, this is how it's done. We have to do it this way versus knowing that actually there's teams that are doing as equally, if not better than what an American employee would be doing right.

Speaker 2: 47:29

That are all over the all over the globe, right? There's sort of this narcissism that can sometimes come with thinking the American employees, we have to hire American, we have to do this, we have to do that, the company has to be here. And the reality is, at least with whom I work and I have worked with, and I still do work with quite a few tech unicorns, right, who have really, really massive amounts of investor funding in the millions, in the billions, and they're coming out of places in Eastern Europe, they're coming out of places in Northern Europe and the teams are everywhere. And there is no way I think that I could have been as respected by those teams, that I could have been as valuable of a team member as a lawyer, if I came in and said I'm from Kansas.

Speaker 2: 48:17

I've never left Kansas, no no, and especially because a lot of my focus is on Europe, right, because a lot of the companies that I work with and maybe they're starting out sort of in Europe, they're wanting to move into the North American market Primarily.

Speaker 1: 48:33

You're working just to clarify primarily you're working with people outside the US that would like to into the North American markets Primarily. You're working just to clarify primarily you're working with people outside the US that would like to penetrate the North American markets.

Speaker 2: 48:40

Sometimes, or they're US and they want to get into the European or Australian markets, right, so I do a lot with Europe, North America and APAC. But yeah, people just do.

Speaker 1: 48:53

Well, I don't think you'd be able to balance if you hadn't had your travel experience. You'd have never been able to balance those languages, cultures and 50 different legal systems. You know, you wouldn't have even understood how to go about learning Right.

Speaker 2: 49:08

Exactly, exactly. And if you're thinking I don't know for Latin America, that's, that's a jurisdiction that I don't know that much about, an area of the world, that I don't know that much about an area of the world that I don't know as much about as you do. What I know about is Europe and North America, when we talk about software and tech, and Eurasia or Asia, but especially if you look at the Europeans, the Europeans are not used to working insularly within their own country.

Speaker 1: 49:33

Right, they are very much used to they're worldly by birth.

Speaker 2: 49:37

They're worldly right, so they're not here in the Netherlands. A company is not just going to be a Dutch tech company. They're going to have teams all over Europe. They're going to have team members from all over Europe. So you need to be able to fit into that and not come in sort of as the American bulldozing bulldog that I think that so many people have this mindset in America and without the travel, without those experiences, I'm sure that I would have had the same mindset.

Speaker 1: 50:08

Yeah, for sure so it's been invaluable.

Speaker 1: 50:11

Yeah. So, with the technology sector obviously ever changing right it never it's been invaluable. Yeah, yeah. So with the technology sector obviously ever changing right it never. If it's like, if we don't continue to advance technology, no, I don't know. You just see, it's just evolving rapidly, constantly. What's working today? If you're not constantly working on it, it's going to be completely irrelevant tomorrow. Where do you see this going globally? To be completely irrelevant tomorrow. Where do you see this going globally? Do you see more, I guess, globalization in terms of technology? And what kind of opportunities do you see for a new entrepreneur or an existing entrepreneur, maybe trying to enter the North American markets?

Speaker 2: 50:47

Yeah, of course I see that. I think that it's both expanding and contracting at the same time, if that makes any sense. So we have the expansion with the dispersed workforces. We have the expansion with AI, of course, and there's so much that can be said about AI and how that's going but we also have a bit of contracting that's happening.

Speaker 2: 51:09

We have countries that are looking around, whose populations are looking around and saying we're not sure that we want to be as global as we are being, so maybe we want to put up restrictions, maybe we want to put up trade restrictions, and you think software technology does that have trade restrictions? It does in similar ways, not exactly the same way as importing, exporting goods from China, but there are import export laws that impact things like software and things like technology products. So I am seeing, on the one hand, I am seeing a lot more flexibility, especially if we look at Europe at the moment, because, again, a lot of my practice these days focuses on data and cyber, and in Europe, until just a few months ago, we had that. I don't want to call it a blockage, but we had a lawsuit that had come out from the European Court of Justice a few years ago that made transferring data from Europe to the US much more difficult, and software technology, cloud products they're transferring your data left, right you have no idea, right and now that has sort of been lifted. There's other restrictions there.

Speaker 2: 52:21

So I think that that is going to become easier for the short run, so there will be more of an opportunity for these cross-border transfers in the very short run. I think we're going to have another decision that's going to make that a little bit more difficult in the next year or two, but for the short run it's easier. So there's more flexibility, there's more opportunity for growth for these companies that are working in North America and Europe and transferring the data. There wasn't for the last few years, not that they couldn't do it, but the compliance was more difficult. At the same time, I am seeing my US clients and entrepreneurs and startups that I talked to. Whereas before maybe they were more willing to hire outsourced teams, I am seeing that shrink a little bit, that there is starting to be again a little bit more focus on let's hire closer to locally and um, I don't know necessarily what's driving that.

Speaker 2: 53:20

Is it politics? Is it fear of what's happening in the world, with um, with with wars and the economy? But that has been interesting. But obviously the world is just going to continue to globalize and expand.

Speaker 1: 53:34

Be more interconnected, yeah. I think so too.

Speaker 2: 53:39

There's Internet everywhere now, not just at McDonald's.

Speaker 1: 53:42

I was going to ask you how much better is McDonald's in Europe than it is in the US? I don't even eat McDonald's in the US. I think it's disgusting. But I do eat it sometimes when I'm international, because it's actually good.

Speaker 2: 53:54

I don't think it's any, but it's so expensive. So here in the Netherlands I don't know exactly the prices because I also don't ever eat at McDonald's, but you know they have this dollar menu in the States right, I don't know what's on it. Maybe it's like a hamburger and a cheeseburger and a small fries or something that doesn't exist. I think to get a hamburger it's probably four or five dollars.

Speaker 1: 54:15

You might as well just get a good one at that point right Very expensive. You might as well get like real beef at that point. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:21

It's interesting. It's interesting what's more expensive here and what's more expensive in the US. You look at these studies right that I don't know that Forbes or US News and World Report publishes those sort of metric studies where they say happiest country or most expensive cities to live in or most expensive place to buy a cup of coffee. They sort of compare the cost of living and I always think it's really interesting because they might say, oh, it's so much more expensive to live in Europe. Some things are more expensive, weird things that you wouldn't think are more expensive, but then things you wouldn't think about that are more expensive in the States. You know, it's just different. Food is much cheaper in Europe, at least where I am, which is not a cheap country at all.

Speaker 1: 55:05

It's probably actually real and they're not actually manufacturing it in a plant. That's probably why.

Speaker 2: 55:09

Maybe I don't think so. You know the Dutch, they are one of the biggest consumers of unhealthy food in Europe. But it's a little bit cheaper. But then there are things in the States cars. Cars are much cheaper in the States. Clothes are much cheaper in the States. The same sort of pair of tennis shoes is going to cost you $100 in the States and $200 here. Personal care, stuff like to go get a massage or things like that way, more expensive in the states, which makes no sense to me.

Speaker 1: 55:39

but well, it's the same. It's the same in south america you know, and especially in columbia.

Speaker 1: 55:44

They just don't see health as a profit center. I think that's the difference. I think I think most other or many other countries that I've visited around the world they see health as just something that you know it should be everyone should. Everyone's number one priority should be their health. Right, and it looks like in Columbia.

Speaker 1: 56:02

There's a gym that I go to and not all of them are like this, but there's a gym that I go to and you pay like $20 for the annual membership $20, $25 for the annual membership and you get discounted monthly rates which are like $20, $25 per month after that membership and you get discounted monthly rates which are like $20, $25 per month after that. And along with that comes one doctor appointment per year which they go like head to toe. They check everything, they send a plan over to the personal training team and then they put together a personal training team and you have a trainer every time you go to the gym for the same $25 a month. So it's like little stuff like that they just see as health. They're not trying to make profits from it.

Speaker 2: 56:35

Yeah, yeah, the same thing here. The gyms are cheap here. Surprisingly, they're open hours that would make Americans cry, I think you know from like eight in the morning till six o'clock at night, but I couldn't go, I wouldn't go. There's no 24 seven concept, but you know things are changing so quickly.

Speaker 1: 56:54

going back to the entrepreneur thing, but if I'm an entrepreneur and I'm trying to expand internationally right now, what are some of the biggest legal pitfalls that someone should watch out for? Obviously, there's going to be a million of them, but what are the two most common ones? You see?

Speaker 2: 57:11

What is your product? I'm in.

Speaker 1: 57:12

SaaS. Are you doing e-commerce? Let's say, I'm in SaaS, you're in SaaS. Let's say I'm in SaaS, you're in.

Speaker 2: 57:15

SaaS Biggest pitfalls Do you have insurance that covers North America and that covers Europe? This insurance is something that people don't think about and it is by far the number one protector of your business. So if you're a SaaS company, do you have E&O? So that stands for errors and emissions insurance.

Speaker 1: 57:42

Do you have cyber insurance as part of your policy? You should make some notes here.

Speaker 2: 57:46

If you're going to start a new venture, I have it recorded, my system automatically records so I can get an affiliate link set up. But you know, cyber, cyber is so critical A lot of times these days they'll roll your cyber policy into your E&O policy. But if you're doing SaaS, anything, you have an app, you have cloud computing, something, a new software. If you are selling actual products, right, and by products I don't mean digital goods, but I mean products You're doing drop shipping, you're doing FBA or whatever, you have your own e-commerce store that you also need to get insurance for. And here's the tricky part, for that is that North America, so you can get a global policy that covers everywhere. It'll cover Latin America, it'll cover Australia, it'll cover Europe, Asia maybe not Asia, but most of it all under one policy. The outlier is going to be the US. You have to get a separate policy for the US because there will be exclusions that say we're not letting you do this. Why? Going back to what I told you back in Atlanta, what I was doing was that tort law, right, I buy a candle, it explodes, it burns my house down, my grandchild is in the house and my pet rabbit, right, so I'm going to sue for $500 million against Joe's Candle Company. So because of that, you have to have a separate policy for the US. You absolutely have to do it. So that is something I would watch out for.

Speaker 2: 59:21

Legally, I would watch out, for how are you classifying your workers? Are they employees or are they contractors In the US? That's important. Everybody gets it wrong. Everybody wants to just hire contractors. You need to look at the cases on Uber and Lyft and Uber Eats and all of this. Make sure you're doing it correctly.

Speaker 2: 59:43

If you want to hire people overseas, an ERO, which is an employer of record that allows you to hire actual employees, say that you want to hire an employee in Columbia. You can use an ERO. You have employees then in Columbia who are your employees, but they're hired through their named employer is a different company. That's a great service that you can get pretty cheaply and that allows you to really enter this sort of global workspace. So if you want to have customer service in Indonesia and India and wherever you want to have it, there are these EOR firms. Many of them are online. Many of them are targeted at startups, at small businesses. Check those out. Get your privacy policy, your data stuff correct.

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

You can go from tiny, tiny to sky's the limit on how much you want to do, but there are a lot of fines and something that I'm seeing come up. Two things I'm seeing come up a lot that especially small businesses, sort of entrepreneurs well, three things, but I'll keep it to two. We can do another podcast and we can go into more depth, but I'll keep it to two. I see companies really screw up. These are companies that are trying to get the conversions. They're trying to get the sales.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

You're a sales guy, you're focused on this. I'm not a salesperson really, but I work with sales team members every single day, so I understand they come to me and I don't want to be the department of no where I say we're not doing this because they're going to go do it anyway. But where I'm seeing things come up a lot very recently are TCPA violations, which is where companies are signing up and they're texting people through their platforms right In the US. It's not so common to do that. In other countries Central America, I'm sure, south America, europe not so common, middle East, very common you know, people are, companies are sending text messages, sign up for our services. You know. Do this, do this. Companies are doing that more and more in the States and they're getting massive lawsuits.

Speaker 1: 1:01:50

It's totally illegal yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:51

I'm also seeing companies get in a lot of trouble in this SaaS realm with pixels, with chatbots that are violating wiretapping laws. The claims say so. If you want to talk about that more, you can find me. We can talk about it, but there's certainly interesting things that are happening that people don't think about.

Speaker 1: 1:02:14

But obviously you can help with all this, right? So if there's an entrepreneur out there and he needs your services, you, that's what you're doing, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:02:20

And what's? What's difficult, I think, matt, is that people like you OK, you've, you've been around the block, you've talked to me before, so you know some of the things that you want to focus on, but if you are a new person, you just quit the furniture business. You think I have a great idea for an app to do. I don't know furniture rental, right. We're going to rent furniture sets to college students for their dorm rooms. Whatever it is. We're going to get an app for this and you want to make the app and you're 22 years old. You would have no idea of the legal pitfalls. At 22 years old, you would have no idea of the legal pitfalls and there are so many things that can be disastrous. But they're so easy to manage if you get good advice right, if you take the moment to pause and make sure that you're not jumping into it without any.

Speaker 1: 1:03:10

Don't do it yourself. Don't jump off the boat alone if you will, for lack of better, have you had any?

Speaker 2: 1:03:17

have you had anything come up that you thought, wow, that was not something that I knew about or thought you know?

Speaker 1: 1:03:23

as far as lawsuits. No, I've been lucky in that regard for sure. I mean, for the most part, you know, I've had good backing and good, you know, good help with getting contracts together and those types of things. I've had good backing and good help with getting contracts together and those types of things. You know, where I was the most worried was definitely the car business, the rental car business, because I was just sure that that was going to turn into. I mean, I did it anyway because I knew there was going to be a lot of money in it.

Speaker 1: 1:03:46

So as an entrepreneur, you're like, okay, I can definitely see this being a massive insurance issue, but I know I can do very well at this and it's kind of a cool business. So I'm going to do yeah. Yeah, I will say, yeah, we had insurance from the beginning and we were in some ways, double covered with some third party people that we were using. That also covered the car when it was out on rental and but I mean, we did a lot of things in the beginning. I would say I went six months before I really said, okay, maybe I should get like an umbrella type policy for this. Like I mean, we just kept renting and renting and renting and there were things that happened.

Speaker 2: 1:04:26

I mean, we had some pretty here's something that I would have told you is I see a lot of people, especially when they're just starting out, that are entrepreneurs, that there would have been ways to protect you, matt, even without the insurance of course I'm going to say insurance, but there would have been ways to protect you by making corporate structures.

Speaker 1: 1:04:48

Well, we had that, so that was what I think.

Speaker 2: 1:04:51

IP yeah, and I see a lot of people they might get the LLC and they think I have an LLC. This is it, but they don't do things correctly to protect themselves and they breach the corporate veil.

Speaker 1: 1:05:02

This is so common.

Speaker 2: 1:05:03

They breach the corporate veil, especially for high energy entrepreneurs. I have a client right now who is absolutely lovely. It's a couple of guys that have come together. They do some guitar related stuff. I won't go into too much detail, but one of their members, he's constantly putting it. Not now he's doing cash injections because we've been over it. But you know that would say, oh, I want to develop this new, I don't know guitar doohickey, Right, and I'm just going to go out myself, I'm going to pay to have it developed. I'm not going to use the company for it, but it's the company's. I'm going to say it belongs to the company, but I'm going to use all my own funds. And there we go. It's easy things. We just have to make sure that you've sat down, had a strategy and don't breach your corporate veil. Maybe that should be number one tip.

Speaker 1: 1:05:59

Now that we're talking about breaching the corporate veil, let's go into that a little bit. The way I understand breaching the corporate veil is it's very. It doesn't take much for an attorney to come in and prove that I've breached my corporate veil, and from what I understand it can be as easy as if they can prove that I've used that business bank account for personal funds or those personal funds for business funds. They can prove that I've breached the corporate veil in any minor way, then that lawsuit holds up from the other side right, essentially in layman's terms.

Speaker 2: 1:06:31

Yeah. So when we talk about breaching the corporate veil, we're actually past the lawsuit stage in most instances. So what's happened is somebody again you're Joe Candlemaker your candle blew up and they want to say your candle company's bankrupt. Now, obviously, right, because you, you killed the rabbit and you killed the grandchild and you burnt down the house. So there's no money left in the company. So what do they want to do? They want to go to joe because you've sold 50 billion candles, uh, on your e-commerce store. And you go on youtube and you keep talking about how you've made, you know, 300 million in the last five years. So they say you have some money, so we want you to pay for the rest of this. So you're usually sort of past that lawsuit. You're at the settlement's already there, the judgment's already there. They're just trying to get the money now, right, and your company doesn't have enough. So they want to get the money from you.

Speaker 2: 1:07:29

I think you give good examples, and you give good examples of what I would tell my clients too. Right, because I want to put a lot of fear in them. But if you have a good bookkeeper, they can fix that. You can use the company bank account once in a while. I'm not saying, do it, but you need to record it correctly, right? The company gave you a loan. Did you sign a loan agreement with the company? Have you paid back the loan for? I'm not saying, go buy a jet ski, but did the company, you know? Did you I don't know did you buy two meals that you shouldn't have with the company bank account? Right? That's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1: 1:08:08

Absolutely no. I just wanted to. I wanted to put that on the, you know in the layman's terms. So that people actually understood it, like there's so many small things that a good attorney can can flip on you when, in terms of, in terms of breaching the corporate veil, Get a good bookkeeper that knows how to do things like structure things as either expenses from you or loans to you.

Speaker 2: 1:08:33

There are rules that have to be followed. You need to be signing a note every time if you're going to take debt from your company. But really, what we're talking about is this theory of alter ego. So is it Matt's car company or is it Matt the car company? Right? And there has to be a difference. You have to sort of treat the car company as a separate person than you.

Speaker 1: 1:08:58

It is a separate person, essentially.

Speaker 2: 1:08:59

And that's a lot of what it comes down to. It's this alter ego.

Speaker 1: 1:09:02

Yeah, I mean we had some issues in the car business where I mean we definitely had some major, major lawsuits, but luckily we had. I was structured and set up in a way to where it all came down on the insurance company every time, and so I didn't actually have to go and do anything and none of it was our fault ever. It was always people that we had driving. You know, it was always. It was nothing we did, just car crashes where everybody tries to sue every like in georgia, for example. You basically you have to name everyone. When you, when there's like a lawsuit with cars, you have to name everyone's on every title, you know, so that you get these, these suits in the mail that really don't have anything to do with you necessarily, but your name's on the title. So you get letters in the mail and questions and I mean, yeah, so so are you fully out of the car business now.

Speaker 1: 1:09:48

Yeah, I'm out and I actually thought about, I've thought about getting back in, but the capital and you know I'm at a point where it's you know it's everything that I want to do going forward is either using someone else's money or something that's low cap X. Right, I injected a lot of money into the car business and I injected a lot of money into the mattress business. I lost every freaking dime I put in the mattress business, by the way, but the car business I didn't. I mean, we did really well with the car business, but it's such a big capital investment and that business changed too to where before we were making $2,000, $3,000 on a lot of our better cars every month, one car and now you can't do that. It's just not the same. There's more competition doing the same thing we were doing and I just frankly, to make it work, you can't just go out and put one or two cars on the road like I did in the beginning.

Speaker 1: 1:10:40

I got really lucky looking back on it, because I had a really good car that I started it with and then I went and bought some really good cars to follow it up with kind of slowly, and I was very lucky that no wrecks happened the first six months to a year and no major mechanical problems happened that first six months to a year, because it allowed me to build up some capital and then invest, invest, invest somewhat from what we had made from profits. But then I was also putting money out of my own, what I had before, into it. So now, if I were telling someone to start that business over again, you really need about 10 cars to just start, because out of the 10 cars, you're going to have three or four off the road at the mechanic all the time, because there's always issues with cars and in order to just get cashflow coming in enough cashflow coming in every month where you can pay for those issues that arise, there's no way to even start. I mean, it's not that there's no way, it's just you're really putting your back up against the wall.

Speaker 1: 1:11:37

If you're starting with less than 10, based on what our numbers were three or four years ago, maybe now you probably need 15 or 20, because I just don't think you're making the same money you used to be or you used to in that business. So I mean we're talking about, even on used cars, $130,000, $150,000 investment, in my opinion, to get back in it, and that's just a start. That's just to get off the ground and you know, at this point I just want to do things that are like low-cap bags.

Speaker 2: 1:12:04

Seems like an exhausting business.

Speaker 1: 1:12:06

Oh yeah, you know, at this point I just want to do things that are like low cap Seems like an exhausting business. It's crazy and in the beginning it was me. It was me and one other guy. It's a 24-hour-a-day business because you're renting to Uber drivers and so if I'm renting to you from 8 am to 4 pm, somebody's there at 4 pm to pick it up at 4.30 or 5, right for your 4.30 guy and it's going 24 hours. So if there's an issue, I mean, and these things get wrecked, they have mechanical issues 24 hours a day and when you're the CEO, the janitor, the investor, the security guy, you're everything right In the beginning.

Speaker 1: 1:12:37

In any business, as you know, you don't have all these people to help you out, so you're getting these two out 2 am phone calls consistently, actually, of stupid people. I mean, I had a guy call me one time that didn't know how to put air in a tire. He said this tire, the car, is saying that the air is low in the tire and you know, I don't know how to put air in a tire. I need you to tell me how to do this, or I'm just going to leave it on the side of the road and I'm like, dude, if you don't know how to put air in the tire as a licensed driver man, you got a bigger problem than me.

Speaker 1: 1:13:08

I'm not. Maybe shouldn't be, I'm not the problem, and well, I am the problem because I rented to somebody like you that doesn't know how to put air in a freaking tire, Right. So it's stuff like that and it's 24 hours a day and then once you get 30, which is what I had in the end Once you have 30 cars and it's you and one other guy doing it, it's a total disaster because you just can't keep up with it. These people sometimes would leave these cars on the side of the road and they just leave them. I had trackers on.

Speaker 2: 1:13:36

Did you have any cars get stolen?

Speaker 1: 1:13:37

All the time they get stolen. All the time I would find them because I had them tracked. Now none of my cars luckily got stolen to where I never got it back. Now none of my cars luckily got stolen to where I never got it back, but they got stolen consistently and I had the trackers. So I would send people out to track them down and tow them back to me and you would not believe we could do a whole entire show on that car business. It was wild. It was like the Wild West, 24 hours a day of just unbelievable stuff. People slept in them. You wouldn't believe how many people brought the cars back and you'd find quilts and pillows where they literally had rented the cars to sleep in the back of the car.

Speaker 1: 1:14:15

Really it was cheaper than renting a hotel or something. I think that was probably some of it. Some of these Uber drivers figure out that when you rent a car you can't drive enough to pay for a place to stay and pay for your food and pay for the car and gas and all that stuff. So the only way to even be able to take enough money home to pay your basic necessities is you got to cut something out. You either have to cut food out or you have to cut your apartment out. So I did this.

Speaker 1: 1:14:46

When I got in this business, I wanted to study every piece of the business and my drivers kept lying to me. They were lying about how much they were making all this stuff. So after about a year I was like all right, I got to figure this out and so I signed up. I signed up as a driver and I went and took one of my cars and I drove it for a month and I took every single note. I'm like, literally, if I start at 4 am to 12 noon, how much am I making? How much is it costing me in gas and all this stuff? Because I was trying to figure out that balance of price. And then also, how much can I charge these people and me make money and be able to allow them to make money? Because, in fairness, I'm not the guy that's going to charge so much that people like, screw this guy, he's gouging me and I'm never going to come back. I want them to come back, so I want them to leave with money in their pocket.

Speaker 1: 1:15:34

So I did this for a month and I did it all at different hours and different days and actually a little longer than a month, about six or eight weeks, I did it, but I did it over two different kind of sessions, if you will and yeah, it's. I mean Uber's the only people winning in that right. I mean those drivers are getting screwed and there's just no reason to even do it. I mean you get done at the end of the week after you've rented a car and you've bought some food and bought gas and you might have a hundred 200 bucks in your bank account and you've laid out there 50, 60 hours a week to get it, and 50, 60 hours a week when you're driving and you have all that stimulation, all that stress of keeping someone safe all day in your car and you're in Atlanta watching six, seven lanes of traffic. It's stressful, it's a hard gig, and so to end the week with a hundred bucks in your pocket obviously sucks right.

Speaker 2: 1:16:29

Yeah so.

Speaker 1: 1:16:30

I don't know, it was just. It was a big mix and again we could do a good hour or two hours of just stories about this car business. It was incredible. I had a great, had a great fun. We were making incredible money. I actually tried it again.

Speaker 1: 1:16:42

I went to Miami. I had done some research and I did about three months worth of research talking to insurance people, all these different people, and they were like man, you can really make money doing this in Miami. We recommend Fort Lauderdale. We studied the zip codes in Fort Lauderdale and we narrowed it down to three different zip codes that I should park these cars and do the same thing. And I went back and bought five cars and I went and talked to every police officer in fucking Fort Lauderdale. In Fort Lauderdale I don't know how much you know about it, but parking is kind of the Wild West. You can basically just park on the side of the road, you can park in people's yards. It's crazy in Fort Lauderdale. And so I learned that by doing this.

Speaker 1: 1:17:20

I went and talked to cops in these zip codes. I went and talked to security people, neighbors. I just want to make sure I can park my cars here, right In this place, no problem, right? Well, I roll in with a truck, one of those car trucks. It's big, huge, long, because I had shipped them into Florida. I found them cheap and shipped them into Florida. And this big truck comes in and unloads my five cars it had temp tags on them right Unloads my five cars and I parked them all on the side of the road where they told me I could park, by the way, and within 24 hours some curmudgeon-y old lady had left a tag on my car that says these need to get out of here.

Speaker 1: 1:17:55

I'm towing these cars and I'm like, whatever, she can't tow them. The cops already told me I could keep them there. Well, I go back. It was like 48 hours later, something. I'm like I need to go check on these and see if this lady really called. And I get the stickers on all of them from the city, official stickers from the city of fort lauderdale. You gotta get these cars out of here. And I'm like, man, fuck you guys. I went to all you guys and asked if I could park here and you said no. So I found I kept moving them around like musical chairs to four different places through fort lauderdale over like a month and a half.

Speaker 1: 1:18:25

They didn't rent fast enough for whatever reason. In Fort Lauderdale, after three months of research, they didn't rent fast enough to keep these people off my back Right. And so these people are just waking up in the morning and all of a sudden there's five cars in front of their house and they're like who's this asshole parking these random cars in my yard? And so I shut it down. I was like screw this. And then the guy we bought them from luckily gave us every dime we paid for them because they didn't rent enough to depreciate the car any. So he gave us every dime. We paid for them and we lost money on the shipping and things like that. But for the most part we got our money back and I got out of it and I just was like you know, I think the universe is telling me to get out of the car business, right.

Speaker 2: 1:19:07

Yeah, and so now you're thinking about moving into SaaS, sort of?

Speaker 1: 1:19:12

Platform. Well, I don't know about that. I don't know if I would consider it SaaS. Where I'm really focused right now is this trying to build out this property management platform. I have some investors that are interested in putting their stuff on my platform. I have one guy who already committed and a couple of large investors that I'm talking to this week One guy I'm hoping to finalize the deal with, this week another guy. So let's see.

Speaker 2: 1:19:42

An application, I guess yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:19:45

Yeah, and in a sense let's see what it ends up being in terms of that. But right now I've just kind of put out a platform. I've built it out kind of the prototype and shopping it around to some investors to see what we can come up with in terms of clients. But I'm enjoying this podcast thing. Man, I love this. Honestly, I've been wanting a podcast since I've known you For 10 years. I've wanted it but I didn't really know what I was going to talk about back then. Now I think I've been around enough to where I can really offer people some serious value. I think the niche we have we should be able to execute on. I'm excited about this. It's fun. I'm doing what I do all day anyway and you know having cool conversations every single day. It's awesome. So let me ask one more what?

Speaker 2: 1:20:37

kind of advice would you give your younger self if you had to do it over again?

Speaker 1: 1:20:41

In life or in travel. Give me both, both.

Speaker 2: 1:20:44

Teach me. I would tell my younger self.

Speaker 1: 1:20:49

I would never get married.

Speaker 2: 1:20:51

Well, no, you know, you had sent me that list of questions and I had said I don't want to talk about this. Because I don't want to talk about why I ended up in Europe? Because that is a sore point. And then I thought about it and I thought, you know, actually there could be something valuable here. I would get married again. I have absolutely only good things to say now a few years down the road from that, from that.

Speaker 2: 1:21:23

But it gave me all of this. It changed my life radically to move overseas. You know I had-.

Speaker 1: 1:21:33

Gave you a hell of a niche, by the way, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:21:35

And I had lived overseas before. I mean, I did some of my university in France, so it wasn't completely sort of out of left field that I would do move, but I don't think that I would have had the kick to actually do it Right and I so I would do it again, maybe. Maybe make different decisions, though is do more things for me and not for other people, not what other people expect that you're going to do, be it in business, be it in life, be it in really any aspect. Maybe it's staying in America. You know, people were not everyone was supportive of going overseas.

Speaker 2: 1:22:22

For sure, my family still says, yeah, it would be great if you're back home, right? So I think, to decide what I want to do and to do it, and that's what I would recommend to everybody, because I've known you for 20 years, right More or less, and our lives have changed radically, but they could have probably changed even radically more, because at some point you're in the stream, you get caught up in it, at least for me. I'm doing what I'm doing and life is just sort of continuing on and can carry you with it, right, and for me it's led to wonderful things happening career-wise, wonderful friendships. Interesting things have happened, but sometimes it's necessary to make your own diversions. So that's what I would say. I would say that I wish that I had done more for me. Part of me says, man, I wish that I'd gone and been a scuba diver instructor in Bali.

Speaker 1: 1:23:17

I mean a large part of me says that I think you could still do that. You could still do it right With what you do. Why not? Yeah, I think you could still do that. You could still do it right With what you do. Why not yeah?

Speaker 2: 1:23:24

But I've also said yes to a lot of things and I'm really proud of my younger self for saying yes to crazy things, crazy adventures, crazy ideas that have come up.

Speaker 1: 1:23:39

Well, I think that your current self should continue saying yes to those crazy things and crazy ideas and that way, when we get to 80, we don't have any regrets, right? I don't think there's many people that get to that age and don't have regrets. So my goal and I think yours probably too is to get to that point and say, man, I did it and I think you're well on your way. I appreciate you sharing your story. This was incredible, as I knew it would be, but let's keep in touch outside of the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:24:08

Yeah, we got to go scuba diving. I'll send you the info. Shark Safari every year, egypt, wonderful times. I've had clients that have come with me before, so go have a business brainstorming session.

Speaker 1: 1:24:22

No, let's do. It Absolutely Sounds awesome. Thanks so much, and you know let's. If people want to reach out to you. How would they do that? Like business people that need an international attorney your LinkedIn, maybe, or?

Speaker 2: 1:24:32

Yeah, my LinkedIn. You can find me Jessica Young's LinkedIn or you can shoot me an email, jessica, at octanslegalcom. It's O-C-T-A-N-S legalcom and I'll be happy to get back to you.

Speaker 1: 1:24:48

Young's Y-O-U-N-G-S right.

Speaker 2: 1:24:50

Yes, S like Sam.

Speaker 1: 1:24:52

Awesome, awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:24:53

Thanks, jess, and we'll be in touch, thanks again.

Speaker 1: 1:24:55

Bye, all right, have a great day, all right, bye-bye. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Matt Chambers Connects. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes where we'll dive deeper into these two fascinating worlds. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, matt Chambers Connects. You can also find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts, youtube Music and many other major podcast platforms, so you don't miss a show. Also, please join us on our social media channels so you can connect with other listeners and ask your most pressing questions, and also tell us what types of guests you'd like to see on the show. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.