Moving to Portugal with the Co-Founder of Work From Anywhere

0:03  

Chase Warrington  

Hey, what’s going on everyone, welcome to another episode about abroad where it’s my job to introduce you to people who have built amazing lives for themselves in various foreign corners of the globe. We’re talking with expats and thought leaders about moving abroad, remote work, visas, and all the fun and practical knowledge that you need to know to follow in their footsteps. If you’ve ever dreamed of making a life for yourself overseas, maybe working remotely or embracing long-term travel, retiring or studying abroad, or even just taking a peek inside life beyond your borders, you’ve landed in the right place.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with wonders of wealth, one of the greatest challenges, and also one of the greatest opportunities for digital nomads, and expats who are building businesses abroad in the world of international taxes. It’s not the most fun subject to talk about. But it’s one of the most important and confusing that I hear about all the time from those of you in the audience. So I had Kathy on the show before she was the CEO of wonders wealth, and afterward, I became a customer of hers because her global tax strategy design course is incredible. It walks you through all the steps that you need to take to take advantage of the international tax system that is set up to help those of us that are living this international lifestyle so highly recommended. You can find the link in the show notes for her global tax strategy design course. Check it out, and let me know what you think. My guest today is my good friend John Lee. You may remember him as the previous guest here on the show and the co-founder of work from anywhere. He’s also a global citizen and world traveler speaks about 10 languages, and has recently moved to Portugal which is what we dove into today. I’ve been dying to know more about this move to Portugal and learn how he made it happen, why he chose where he chose and any of the details that may be useful for those of you thinking of doing the same Portugal is currently ranked number one in the world for expats to move to and it is really easy to understand why when you hear all the great things that John has to say. So I was excited to get him back on the show. I’ve been looking for a reason to catch up with him and this provided a lot of fun catching up with him. I think you guys will enjoy this one, especially if you’re considering a move to Portugal for the short term or the long term. He’s got a lot of great info to share. So please help me in welcoming John Lee abroad. Welcome back. I know what’s been going on in your life. We communicate over all the messaging apps that are in our world but I haven’t had a chance to sit down and ask you about this. You made the move since we last talked from Ireland to Portugal and Portugal is one of those digital nomad hotspots expats are moving there from all around the world. I think it’s number one in the world right now as far as places to move to from abroad. So I am thoroughly interested in Portugal. I know the audience is I get tons of questions about Portugal, the D-seven visa, and all of that you’re also a tax expert and you understand the risks associated with tax and legal entities and moving abroad and all of that. So the wealth of knowledge and but most importantly, from just a personal standpoint, how is Portugal and I want to dive into this

3:20  

John Lee  

The Portugal Chase is incredible. I mean, I suppose you’ve got to go back to what happened back in November. So my eldest Rosa, she’s the celebrity of the family, you’ve got three kids, as I mentioned before, Rosa is five, as many as three embarrassing ones. Rosa has traveled to 25 countries in the five years have been discharged. And what happened was she’d be back in Ireland during COVID, with close to my parents. And basically, she started at the same school that I went to when I was younger. I mean, that was a very special moment last September. And essentially what happened was in November, we were very settled, and we knew we did want to go traveling again, when that would be we weren’t sure we were quite happy in Ireland, essentially, the owners of the house that we were living in said they wanted to move back in. We’ve had such a turbulent couple of years between everything all of us have COVID and whatnot. And essentially, we said what are we going to do here? We initially felt very sorry for ourselves, and we said this is a bit of a real disappointment. And we kind of had a look and said, Well hold on a second. Let’s look at other properties in Arlington, Limerick, where we’re living in basically a three-bedroom house. It was a real property crisis in Ireland and there was nothing available. So we looked at moving to worker filbert away and again, the same problem was reading very little funny property there. Time. So we sat down there and said, again, sorry for the first two or three days, but then all of a sudden got up. I’m gonna say you know, remote work. I’ve been speaking to people all over the world from the comfort of my home office there in Orleans, I could just as easily work remotely abroad. We’ve been doing it for the last six years as a digital but finally anyway, we’ve been working remotely in Thailand and all around Europe and one and all over Asia. And so we said let’s embrace it. So what I did was I sat down by looking at every single country across multiple different dimensions. Cross costs of living, family education, and health care, we looked at all sorts of different aspects. And more or less Portugal came up high on top. And literally within a week, I was on a flight over to Portugal, finding an amazing school, and literally, like everywhere in March this year, we moved over literally four months later. So it’s been a whirlwind journey here in just over four months. But it’s been an amazing world. I cannot say enough, the kids are flourishing my dispersing, and I’m just loving everybody,

5:28  

Chase Warrington  

What were some of the elements that you looked at and evaluated? 

5:32  

John Lee  

So we had, we had a couple of ones. So it was first of all, and I’m happy to share with you anyone that comes to me. I am always kind of happy to share with them how we did actually walk you through it now basically. So if we look at different aspects that you have, you basically have no mindless disgrace, how high is it ranked there, for example, notice is a great tool that doesn’t have a huge amount when it comes to families or digital with families. But it’s a very, very good tool, you’ve got no less than best ranking for families CEO world’s best to raise kids is a for example, a high-risk country, what’s the crime rate but country with the average temperature healthcare ranking COVID rankings for case fatality ratio, cost of living index, we can’t double taxation agreements, individual tax corporation tax, you know, there’s a whole bunch of different factors that go into so with all of that Portugal came up high. And then we went into each country. Your credit portion was very high: Estonia, Bulgaria, and funnily enough Croatia. There were a couple of different countries they came with very, very hyper. Portugal was the one that was winning it for us. And luckily, we had a neighbor that moved to Portugal only a couple of pony identities a couple of months previously. And so long story short, that’s essentially what we did, we were more or less organized to fight over. And the first school I went to was the school called App and Diseases, which is quite interesting because basically, I can tell you more about it, but I just fell in love with the school. As soon as I got there, there were kids holding hands jumping around, and having a great time. And there’s a bit more than the education piece, which will be touched on in a bit. But for me that did of Wow.

6:51  

Chase Warrington  

Sometimes I love doing a podcast, but I wish that this was like a YouTube channel because I would love for people to be able to see what I was just looking at, like the fields that John was describing, were laid out in this incredibly beautiful, beautiful if you’re a nerd like me, and like Excel, sheets beautifully laid out a super detailed spreadsheet that had so much information packed into its links to tons of resources. That was amazing. Have you thought about publishing that somehow? Like, like, is there public access to that

7:17  

John Lee  

I did anything I could. I can share a link I’m happy to share. I’ve already made it available for anyone who comes looking for it. And anyway, I knew what I showed today. Also, I know you’re a nice guy, but you should sell that as a super valuable tool.

7:26 

Chase Warrington   

I mean, there’s so much info packed in there, if I will confirm after the show, but if we can place a link to that we’ll put it in the show notes so people can see it because tons of information there very very useful in like a great way to break down like analytic analytically look at okay, here’s where we should go. Here’s what makes sense for us.

7:47  

John Lee  

Exactly. And I’ve just shared with you the link and feel free to share it in the show notes afterward. For me, it’s you know, a very tangible example of how you can kind of rigorously put it together. And again, for me, like that’s my thing. I build algorithms, build databases, and am very financially oriented. Again, you’ll get it, we’d like to just like having shared history between the two of us, you know, you’ll appreciate

8:06  

Chase Warrington  

I do appreciate it. Well, Portugal needs no introduction, I think I mean, it’s an awesome European country. It’s safe. It’s beautiful. It’s got history, it’s got great weather, and it’s tax advantageous in a lot of ways for people moving abroad. So I think it is a great place to go. But then again, you also had a million different places you could have gone. So when you finally got there and moved to Portugal, do you mind sharing a bit about where you chose within the country? And what drove you to that particular area?

8:38  

John Lee 

Yeah, more than happy to do so there are a couple of different factors. When we looked at Portugal, one of the things I did for every single country is I looked at the most popular places based on less popular ones, I looked at everything from small towns to big cities. And more or less what happened was, more cascos came off very, very highly. But what happened was a neighbor of ours that had moved cashierless, we wanted to be by the sea, and that was for us as a key drivers. And we wanted it, it was quite simple in other ways. We wanted to be close to the sea, and we wanted to make sure it was a good kid’s education. And luckily, we had a neighbor of ours that moved over to cash about a year ago, basically, and they loved us. So what happened was, I more or less flew over to Lisbon and stayed with them for a couple of days. And I managed to find the school called up conduces. It’s kind of a high boost school, when you go to a destination to go to a new place you’re looking at living in you’ve got two types of schools, you ever have the local schools where it’s all down to the local language location or whatnot, local curriculum, or you have international schools is done typically in English or French or German or whatnot. And it sounds international. So when we went to our producers, what was interesting, it’s a hybrid school and what does that mean? Hybrid school is kind of unusual, basically is led by Portuguese, they speak Portuguese in the morning and English in the afternoon, for example, they get deep into Portuguese culture, very outdoors, and very affectionate, very affectionate people their kids get a lot of loving and as well as that they’re on the International Cricket. So it is the best of both worlds. Fantastic. I’d say go for it. So when I went in there that first day and the kids were holding hands, they were also happy. I said to myself, our kids are gonna love it. You know, that was a major driver.

10:12  

Chase Warrington 

Absolutely. Oh, that’s incredible. I cannot say enough about how incredible an experience that must be to have the hybrid of a little bit of both because I think it’s amazing when a family goes to a foreign place and becomes completely immersed in the culture and gives the kids that experience. But I also understand that there’s a bit of loss there, there’s a trade-off there where you lose a little bit, I mean, kids can take a step back, and that in those times, especially in the early years, so I think that’s an amazing concept. I had not heard of that before

10:39  

John Lee  

But like give you an example. And this is where it gets very interesting. So what we found was, of course, we were worried about our kids moving forward, it’d be like, what we find interesting is we’ve got Azmi as our middle child, and she was going through the terrible twos and point three, we booked a five-week trip to Thailand in December in January, which was an amazing experience. There’s another little story about that. But the second we landed, two things had bearers who were our youngest, who were the only ones who hadn’t been having difficulty sleeping. It was like not sleeping for four months straight. As soon as we landed, the second we landed in Thailand, bang, he started sleeping, then as I just blossomed in time we went back to Ireland, where you know, the weather isn’t as nice the neck as the weather was pretty crappy whatnot. And as for me just wasn’t quite herself. The second we moved over to Portugal, all of a sudden, it just blossomed again. So it was really interesting how something as you know, something as simple as just vitamin C from just being around the sun and outside, makes such a difference that there are other factors as well. But for me, that was a shock to the system of validity of how the environment you’re living in, you know, and can have quite a big impact on me. I love Ireland and especially when we get to go out in the summer, it’s a wonderful place and full of great people but I that was quite interesting, just the different physical environments and the different Senate had on the case

12:03  

Chase Warrington 

That I’m sure wasn’t a factor. You were even fully accounting for the sort of bonus. But what is a nice silver lining, be it can

12:10

John Lee    

Imagine a bar and not sleeping for four months. We were going to tear her hair out, and then all of a sudden, he lands over in Thailand, like he’s sleeping. I like sleeping the whole night. It’s no problem at all. So sometimes it is just shaking it up a bit, just changing the environment before kids that can have a massive impact. Like now the kids should see that the social love and the schools are blossoming, the culture of how they teach in the school, the way they approach it, the kids are doing brilliant bearers to raise these families voice now is a little Pavarotti literally tears the place, but he’s doing great. I mean, and D as well for me, she’s that was really important to me, we’ve, we’ve had our turbulence over the last five years between our own first business which failed COVID didn’t help that but you know, going through that and, and then obviously with COVID living in Ireland, and then now all of a sudden, this environment and really we found or tried Chase like that’s the other side is the people that are here, you know, the other like-minded entrepreneurs, the energy of other people who are, let’s say, x Muslims around the world. And what’s interesting for me blew my mind, but all of us that are here, and we’re connecting with our tribe, they’re all people that have lived in different countries. And what’s interesting is we asked them all to say listen, do you have the urge to go traveling again? And every single one of them says no like we’re in paradise? Why would we? Why would you know, don’t get me wrong, we all will go traveling at different stages. That’s part of our DNA. But it’s fascinating that so many people here said we found a tribe here, you know, and we’re just literally living in paradise, which is a big statement to make, but it’s something I can definitely,

13:34  

Chase Warrington  

yeah, I mean that that says something coming from you. You’ve lived in as you recall from our first conversation, you’ve lived in many, many countries. I am still determining the exact number. I don’t know if you define that somehow. But to say that says a lot about Portugal. 

13:47  

John Lee 

Oh, yeah, no, completely. I mean, if you look at the, you know, the countries are properly lived for several years. And I mean, I’ve lived in Germany, I’ve lived in the Netherlands, Thailand, Ireland, and Portugal. But then the countries spent more than a month and year, you can start adding a whole bunch of other countries. And there’s gonna be at least 70 countries overall. But then speaking the six languages for them fluidly, and our sevens with Portuguese, for example, I’ve seen my fair share of different countries. But I think they do a couple of things here that stand out. And I think we’ve got to be careful here because, of course, it is so popular. But we’ve got to be careful that the Sony people don’t come here, they overrun the locals, and you have to watch out for that with property prices. That’s a very, very important thing. But if you look at it, what makes Portugal special, there’s a couple of key factors that really kind of come very, very strongly. I mean, for me, it’s the weather, the lifestyle, you know, cost of living, it’s not ferocious, expensive here, if I want to get a taxi, you know, like a 10-minute taxi into cash goes, it’s probably going to cost me maybe four euros. Generally speaking, the cost of living is good. Obviously, from a tax perspective, there are components there that certainly are very, very attractive, but it’s also just the energy that you have here as well. Great healthcare, and a fantastic education system. There’s so much that’s the other thing. Some of the most innovative educators and education systems in the world are going on here. I could go into the details of it but there are a lot of Just things that do stand out. And of course, I think one of the things to watch out for is managing that and making sure that’s sustainable for the long term. So they’ve, they’ve kind of pulled back a bit on the golden visa, for example, recently, fair enough, and quite a bit in HR will that stay going for the long term, but we’re already seeing a lot of people moving from places like London, you know, places like Silicon Valley, for example, there’s a lot of people that we’ve met that have moved over there and use the geo arbitrage play to be able to come over.

15:25  

Chase Warrington 

We’ll be right back to the show after a quick break. For a note from our sponsor. This season is brought to you by my good friends over at insured nomads. They’re the absolute best in the business when it comes to providing health travel and medical insurance for nomads, expats, and just all forms of world travelers. I know insurance is often something that’s overlooked when we’re fantasizing about traveling the world. But it’s an absolute necessity that we address this because often the policy you have in your home country isn’t going to cover you while you’re abroad. And it’s also a requirement as a lot of people may not realize to buy private travel or expat insurance, as it’s called sometimes to obtain a visa or even enter certain countries. So, fortunately, there are companies like insured nomads to help us with this. Not only do they have excellent coverage and great prices, but they’re also providing a first-class experience with additional perks and best-in-class technology via their app. It’s an amazing experience. I can’t recommend it enough. Now, this is a company that was built by world travelers for World Travelers so they know what it’s like to find yourself in a difficult medical situation abroad and they want to keep you from having that same bad experience. So the next time you’re planning a trip abroad, whether it’s for a week or a lifetime, check out insured nomads via the link in the show notes. Hey guys, if you’re still around and enjoy this episode, then I think you might like our once-a-month newsletter as well. If you’d like to sign up, just open up the show notes of the episode you’re currently listening to scroll down, and look for about abroad.com/newsletter It takes about 30 seconds to sign up. It’s a fantastic way to support the show. And I think you’ll be pleased with the information that we provide every month as well. Thanks a lot for listening. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Ken, can you tell me a little bit about the test case? I find this is a place that is popping up on the radar a bit more and I bet a lot of I bet it’s not on the radar for a lot of listeners.

17:13

John Lee    

Okay, so where exactly is Kafka? First of all, it’s about 25 minutes west of Lisbon. So in Lisbon, you know if you’re someone that likes to live by a beach Lisbon itself isn’t quite a beach but cash is the mirror kind of cash base in Estoril that would be the closest to it. And so what have you got you’ve got these beautiful beaches. I would describe it as a kind of a place where a lot of maybe the world’s Portuguese would have gone, maybe in years gone by they would have maybe had a summer home here would have been a relatively quiet town for example. But what’s happened since then is that in the last couple of years, people have seen what remote work is, if I’m not mistaken. We can work remotely there. We can be totalizers if you want to go in for anything like that, but it’s lovely. It’s a lovely town. It’s a real Portuguese character, you know and yes, you’ve got everything that you need locally here as well. So you’ve got a lot of kite surfing, a lot of windsurfing boards beaches, great schooling import that’s crucial great schools so it’s kind of the balance of it has been more international complement the local so you have your but still a very kind of authentic local Portuguese field

18:15  

Chase Warrington  

sounds like a pretty perfect combination close to Lisbon. I mean, you’ve got all the amenities that Lisbon has, which is, you know, like a big international airport, you can fly all over the world and within Europe from there, you’re just 25 minutes from that. The city is amazing. I love to visit Lisbon. I don’t know that I want to live in Lisbon to look a little crazy. I mean, I get it, people love living there. But like if that’s not your thing, you’re right outside of it. You’re right along the beach, you get all the amenities and the good weather and the infrastructure of Portugal and being within the EU, but you’re just outside the city. The

18:48  

John Lee

The biggest surprise honestly, chase for me and this applies to probably all of Portugal. The food is amazing. Yeah, so the amazing Portuguese food is so underrated. I mean, I came here when I was younger in Portugal on holidays with my parents now and again but I never really appreciated how good the food is. And if you look at Portugal on a high-level map, where can people go you can go to the Algarve that’s typically where the people the stag parties or the retirees might go it’s kind of quite often picks up from the summer but you know you run it twice and then you’re left with pretty much either don’t live near the big cities you don’t listen to Porto or you’ve got these beautiful villages like a Sierra for example. There’s a whole bunch of them up along the coast or it could just have to be beautiful. It depends on what your energy is if you want to know like Ericeira is one of the most beautiful signs of probably I’ve been in again great food but again if you’re a surfer to get that would be a small 10 to get away from all that can be great you can also go into the mountains it takes all of a camera’s inland as well or if you want that center energy of the likes of the Lisbon supporters you can go for that as well. And of course, the weather will get a bit better as you go further down south you know so that was essentially why we moved in essentially with no effort honestly chasing with no effort at all. There were just so many great people We were here to meet. I make those help having the kids in school. It’s an easy way to get to meet people. But we’ve found that there are now really open-minded people here. I know, I know what I’m doing now, probably overstating it, there’s going to be a whole lot of people moving tomorrow and the price will go up. The only downside is house prices, honestly, being open and honest, is that because it’s been so popular, and it’s people that can see how special it is, is, you know, like house prices to rent or buy, I’ve just gone through the roof, you know, they have like, they have been speaking to people who are like, for argument’s sake, they were renting a place three years ago, they got a deal for like, for argument’s sake, you know, 2500 euros, and they go to try and extend this and this kind of movie fight, as you know, like, literally, rental price 30 tilting, because 533 years ago, there wasn’t as many as before, and now does a lot more. And I think that’s the fascinating thing for the whole remote work movement. You know, the fact people are recognizing you had the first wave of people post-COVID embracing this gamble to get up and use COVID to reassess my values and figure out where I want to live, they’re moving to a place like this, but what’s going to happen over the next 345 years, I think it’s gonna be a lot more moving to different places and figuring out just like, just like I did, and just like you’re doing as well.

21:06

Chase Warrington    

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s one piece of advice I give to people when they’re talking about where they want to move if they look at things like the cost of living and prices and things like that. And I always kind of recommend to, like consider that but don’t make that like your P Won’t your top priority or like the thing that you’re focused on because, in the end, a lot of it does even out in some way or another like you might look at someplace that oh, that housings cheap there. But then you might find those little luxuries that you want. Like, which could be a pizza or coffeemaker or something is super, super expensive, or the fact that there’s, you know, really bad infrastructure in terms of flights. So when you travel, if you’re gonna travel anywhere, those flights might be really expensive, or perhaps the taxes are lower, but then you end up having to pay other fees and such for social needs and things like that. So there are, of course, differences. Some places are more expensive than others. But I think in a lot of ways those things can balance out to a degree to where you shouldn’t make that like your focus when you’re looking to move somewhere. Well,

22:02  

John Lee  

I mean, we spoke about it the last time as well, and if not mistaken, are looking at him interculturally as well. Like, we often talk about material things about, okay, how much does it cost or whatever property doesn’t have a physical beach or location. And that stuff is really important. But also, you know, how important is it for us as individuals to connect the grid? Why, why, why are we enjoying this chat, someone says rejoice because we have a good personal connection or personalized match numbers having read the flow. But likewise, the same thing for countries, you know, you have intercultural components, like countries have an average of how people typically are and you can still have wide variations on it, but they can have intercultural dimensions of how people typically behave when people don’t recognize that there’s a whole bunch of data points where you can build your questionnaire like a personality questionnaire here that maps on to, you know, the country, you’re going to just to see, for example, or the different storm, it can be a very time, every time for example, we spoke to people who have been living in New York, and I said, like, how are you finding us and we’re just loving it here. It’s great. We’re so happy. You know, it’s been great. And they said, Yeah, we do love it. We love the house, and we love the patient. And we’ll do it on each of us, for the schools who are perceptive when one thing is repugnant, it’s just how they see time as we want something done for us in America, getting it done straight away. But over here, like they’re just, you know, I was like, Well, if you think about here, try Spain, we’ll say it’s happened yada, but that’s an interesting component of how people, they don’t look internally themselves, what are their values? What are the things that are important to them, and recognizing that like, just because it might be a place that might have a nice beach, or you might be able to get a nice house, or it might even have a high school if your value set is very different from the people, they’re trying to look at that show and assess that before you go there. Because that can be the thing that breaks you that doesn’t make a fit.

23:47

Chase Warrington   

Absolutely, yeah, that always cracks me up. I mean, I’ve done my fair share of complaining about things, it’s natural, something just frustrates you. But you have to take the quote-unquote good with the bad because I mean, that’s all part of the adventure and the experience. If you wanted to stay home and just be comfortable and do the same thing and do what you’re used to then you should have stayed home. This is all part of the fun and in a way so you know, that’s about I want to ask you one thing real quick, you’re EU citizen moving within the EU is fairly straightforward, although I think it’s a little bit oversimplified and people’s minds that aren’t from the EU. So I would love it if you could just quickly touch on you don’t need to go into much detail but was there anything that caught you off guard as far as your experience you’ve moved around to different countries within the EU but for someone that maybe hasn’t, you know anything any advice you would give them you’re moving from one EU country to another and then maybe as a second part to that if you know of anything that a non-EU citizen may really want to kind of keep in mind as part of this if there’s anything specific to that I think it would be good to touch on it. 

24:45  

John Lee  

So it gives you from two angles they give you from the person as being you and also not to you but then under your example, I’m going to give examples from France or the UK. So as an EU citizen, obviously we have huge benefits for freedom and work, and moving to one of the big things for me is that you don’t meet your You know what the business works on your team, we primarily help companies but I had to get individual tax advisers before he moved over from both Ireland and Portugal. And so for me, the big thing was just before he moved over figuring out, what are the how do we what’s the process? What are the risks? What’s the structure we should adopt? Moving over to make sure for example, that the thing called NHL regime in Portugal, is fantastic, but what is the structure that you should use for that? Should you basically take a salary? Or should you, for example, take it for dividends? Or what structure should you use, which is set up as a contractor in Portugal, or do it via the Irish company? Or what are the different components, what’s in the double taxation agreement? And to be honest, for me, I know a lot of attacks. But I also know the value of making sure you get the right advice, because we’re going to be here for a couple of years, we said look an investment scattery shorter, give us peace of mind, make sure people and that was one thing that I knew could catch me off guard, I have known I’ve spoken to people who didn’t think this through and it has caught them off guard, it’s no point looking at this, once you get over, you got to set this up, the certain documents need to be signed and whatnot and logistics, getting that done. So for me, you know, like a lot depends on how much you’re earning. Or if you’re learning a very huge amount, not, you might not see the value in it. But if you are, you know, earning a large amount, it’s something worth thinking of because it’s that piece of it is one piece. So for me other than that, once we got those advisors to look at us, and in particular, what was interesting was the nuances in the double taxation agreements. So you can say one country might say one thing, and another country might say another, and if you look at the double taxation, which sometimes they’re not 100% of what this means for X, Y, or Z, we can, that’s why you need the expert sponsors. That was one aspect, the other than that you get the rest of it was pretty fine. It was easy enough to get the registration with the local authorities and get all the different aspects of need, I have to say, from a bureaucracy or administration perspective, it’s been an absolute for the most part three to be honest if you’re non-EU very different ballgame. And some examples of that would be people from the UK, we spoke to friends who, you know, they have to look at make sure how much savings they have in their bank account, for example, there’s a process a much longer process that they have to go through to get the residence data permits or whatnot. You know, there was one case where there was a husband who had a business and they were able to get a residency permit and whatnot. But then the prognosis for their wife, they had to take longer, for example, and they couldn’t leave the country, they could not leave the country to see their family in the UK until they got this. And the problem is, it could take anywhere from six to 12 or 18 months, like simple things like oh, we’re looking to buy a car, we have enough money to buy the car. But, we actually can’t, we can’t go buy the car because we’ll have to limit the bank limits that are in our account that we need to have proof to authorities that we have efficient savings. So all of these logistics like reading can, in that case, if you’re not from your beauty, but speaking to a visa and immigration expert is critical. So before we even go near the tax advisor, speak to the visa expert. Goodmans would be the visa DB that I owe. For example, they’ve got a good global network of visa experts and tax experts as well to help individual staff like that they’re quite good. And they’ll also tell you what kind of fees you need. There are other companies as well. And everyone that can help. David, thanks for my experience of speaking to people.

27:56 

Chase Warrington   

Excellent, great stuff. I’m gonna let you go. I know you’ve got lots of things to do. And I appreciate you joining me at this cafe this morning. I want to get you out of here on a new tradition that we have had here since the last time you joined abroad. So the previous guest on the show left a question for you. They didn’t know it was going to be you. They just left a random question. And it pertains to foreign content. I’m going to ask you the question, and then afterward, you’ll leave a question for the next guest. Sounds good? 

28:22  

John Lee

Yeah. Sounds good to me. All right.

28:23 

Chase Warrington   

I’m really, I’m reading it right now for the first time. And I’m pretty excited about this one for you. In particular, what do you think is the difference in mindset between someone willing to leap to start their own business, or to start a freelance gig versus someone who has been stuck in their nine-to-five job? What can you advise is the first step towards mindset change?

28:41

John Lee   

Okay, well, the big thing, you know, we look at how we focus on two major things for a kid that we want them to have, we want to have 99% Love, we want to have 1% resilience, and maybe we can change or 5% of times or whatever you define it. But basically, the combination of love and resilience is critical. When we want our kids, the kids are growing up in a world where social media and all the different challenges make it tricky for them, and having that resilience is critical. And if you look at it from a founder setting a business perspective is so much someone’s through that is the key differentiator you know, being a founder setting up your own business does require a tremendous amount of resilience. And if you have that mindset, you’re ready for the roller coaster. The roller coaster means it’s going to be amazing highs and there are going to be amazing lows, and you’ve got to it’s how you respond to those that redefines how you get yourself off the canvas. So knowing how for once a better word, you know, setting up as a contractor, yes, it does require a certain amount of receipts, no question you that bit of uncertainty or whatnot, but setting up your own business or your startup to go for something big that then now you’re talking about the big league of massive open failure and massive potential success that you can have. And again, it’s resilience. That’s the big thing that can take you through it. So they are the ones under resilience. Even if you’re not in doing any of those interviews, you have your job and you don’t want to sort of as the contractors are so resilience is still very, very important, but it just becomes a much greater magnitude resilience that you need if you are going to set up your office,

30:02

Chase Warrington    

I think you hit on something really important there. It’s that combination of resilience and passion, you can be excited about something, love something, and want to go for it. But if you’re not, if you’re not prepared for those lows, if you’re only focused on the potential highs, then then I think you’re setting yourself up for failure. And I think that that’s really good advice to expect that you’re going to need resilience and resilience is a really important interesting word. If you get into it like you want a boat to be resilient, right? You want a boat to be able to take on waves and craft like it can’t be firm and not flexible. It’ll be too rigid and that’ll break. You need it to be resilient and be able to take on the waves as well as the days that are, you know, smooth sailing. So I think that’s important. Good advice and I’m glad you used the word resilient

30:43

John Lee  

Yeah, no, that’s it

30:45

Chase Warrington    

Excellent keep on living resiliently and beautifully there and beautiful Portugal. I hope I get to visit you sometime in the not-too-far-off future. So thank you for joining again, John. Great to see you. Great to catch up and awesome information as always

30:57  

John Lee  

Great catching up, Chase. Thanks so much for having me on. Enjoyed

30:59  

Chase Warrington 

We’ll see you soon. Thanks for tuning in today from wherever you are in the world. Once again, I’m Chase and this has been another episode about abroad. For those of you wondering how you can best support the show, I have made it super simple for you. Just go over to the show notes of the episode that you’ve just finished listening to and click on one of the two following links about abroad.com/newsletter to get our monthly newsletter, no spam guaranteed, or rate this podcast.com/about abroad where you can quickly and easily leave a review for the show. It’s not just important to me it also helps more wonders just like you find us. Finally don’t forget to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. And we will see you again next week. Thanks again. Hasta Luego Amigos!