Hiring Across Borders Without Losing Momentum with Matthew Hellrung

Compliance doesn’t have to slow you down. We sat with immigration attorney and founder Matthew Hellrung to map out how smart teams turn visas, I‑9s, and global mobility into a talent advantage while staying out of audit crosshairs. If you’re recruiting engineers, data scientists, or AI specialists, the numbers are clear: a huge share of the best graduates need sponsorship. We walk through the policy choices that keep your funnel open, your people informed, and your risk controlled.

Matthew explains what the latest enforcement push really means for companies, including ICE’s expanded I‑9 audits and how fines stack up. You’ll hear when E‑Verify helps, when it hurts, and how to decide based on your workforce and contracts. We dig into the biggest “oops” moments that burn startups—like inconsistent sponsorship decisions that look discriminatory, sloppy document storage, and untracked location moves that break H‑1B terms. Then we offer practical fixes: a simple, public immigration policy; internal ownership with HR enablement; and direct access to counsel to cut anxiety and speed decisions.

We also hit the realities of a borderless workplace. From social media vetting at consulates to stricter travel screening, we flag issues leaders should address before trips and transfers. If you send U.S. employees abroad, we outline visitor vs. work activities, the rise of digital nomad visas, and how to avoid triggering substantial presence and tax exposure. To close, Matthew shares a founder lesson—delegate and elevate—so you can focus on the few moves only you can make for the business.

If this helped you think clearer about hiring across borders, tap follow, share it with a builder who needs it, and leave a quick review so more founders can find these playbooks.

Transcript

Welcome And Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Skilling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operation finance and people, plus product and leadership to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR. Human expertise, AI-powered impact.

Meet The Immigration Expert

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Welcome everyone to today's Skilling with People podcast. I'm Gwen Recurry, your host and CEO and founder to Guide to HR. All right, borders build for our city. Oh bye!

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Okay, on Skilling with People today, we're tackling the immigration circuits with Matthew Hellrong, attorney and co-founder of Melter Hellrong, whose proven compliance doesn't have to kill your company's momentum. From the big, beautiful bill to green card whiplash and the oats moments that can get founders roasted by regulators. Matthew's here to drop the hacks that keep your global talent pipeline wide open without your business getting slapped at the border. Well, welcome everyone and welcome Matthew. Tell the audience a little bit more about you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Thank you, Glenavir. It's great to be here. I am an immigration attorney by Skills Sets, been practicing for about 15 years, was lucky enough to break off and found an immigration law firm about 10 years ago. And we specialize in helping businesses secure international talent through work visas and green cards. We also help with compliance and building a program around what you want an immigration function in your organization to do for you.

Immigration As A Growth Strategy

SPEAKER_01 1:39

That's great. And you know, immigration is kind of one of those hot topics where I think people mostly see it as a red tape pell and compliance and all these and cost as well. So why should founders think about it as a growth strategy instead of just the headache and costs that are associated with it when people think about immigration?

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. Uh it is there is a lot of red tape with immigration. I think having a good immigration attorney helps with some of that, but it is an extra compliance hurdle or cost that you have to do or incur to sponsor individuals. I would say if you're hiring in STEM fields, you know, the statistic I always think about is particularly for students out of U.S. universities, uh, 25% of all students that are attending U.S. universities and receiving back baccalaureate degrees in STEM fields are international students. At the master's degree level, it's about 40% of students graduating from STEM master's programs are international students. And at the PhD level, it's about 50%. So if you're recruiting in the STEM area for software developers, data scientists, um, mechanical engineers, industrial engineers, consulting, you're gonna run into immigration sooner or later, especially if you're recruiting out of school, because most of the schools now are producing individuals, you know, at least 25 to 50 percent that require um immigration sponsorship as international students.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah, that makes sense. So they're here in the US, and if you can sponsor them, keep them here right after graduation, you can get some pretty good talent that, you know, you may have be limiting yourself to.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Absolutely. I mean, I think that uh, you know, immigration is an additional cost, but like you said, if you really won the best and brightest, a lot of those folks are international students. You know, we are uh a Mecca for education from around the world, and you have countries that are sending really young, bright, talented individuals to school here. Um and I think that if we don't, you know, uh corral those individuals and keep them in the United States, what they'll do is they'll go abroad and start companies that compete against us as a US economy.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

So I'm thinking, okay, but we know our uh politicians and leaders of the US have created this big, beautiful bill, which I think is very cumbersome and is very large. But from an immigration perspective, what should founders actually know about it uh when they're reading the headlines and different things that are coming out of it since it's been put into place?

Policy Shifts And The “Big Beautiful Bill”

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, I think two things. One, you know, uh corporate immigration has not been as affected this time around in the second Trump administration as the first. You know, we saw a lot of denials, RFEs for H1Bs, TN visas, these very typical work visas. So that's uh a bit unexpected this time around. They're kind of leaving that alone. Where they're really focusing efforts on are individuals that are perhaps undocumented or in humanitarian visas, these TPS statuses, EADs, paroles, you for you, for example, the Ukrainian program. Um, they're going after those. And the Big Beautiful bill doubles up or triples up or quadruples up on that with giving a ton of funding to ICE, which is the immigration enforcement arm inside the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is the boogeyman. That's the organization you see in the news rounding up undocumented immigrants. Um, little do most people know though that a part of ICE's function is also uh auditing and making sure companies follow I-9 regulations. And every company that hires an employee, whether it's an immigration, uh, an international employee or a domesticated employee, green card holder or citizen, you have to put that individual through the I-9 process. And the head of ICE has recently come out and said that with the additional funding uh they just received from the bill, they are really going to double down on US employers that may be perhaps or unknowingly employing undocumented immigrants with fraudulent documents or just going through the I-9 process, particularly in retail, uh food processing, uh, resorts, you know, restaurants. Uh those are all at risk for some heavy I-9 audits. Um, and ultimately, if you're not ahead of that from a compliance standpoint as an organization, you may have to say goodbye to like 25% of your workforce if you're a food processor in the Midwest right now, because uh it's a good bet that some of those individuals or uh uh I would say a high minority are undocumented. And when I shows up, um they're either going to be gone or deported or they're not they're not gonna come back to work after that.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, and I'm assuming there's some kind of fee that get the employer, the company gets attacked on, right?

ICE Audits And I‑9 Risk

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Oh, definitely. I mean, they're the fees per I-9 uh mistake are several thousand dollars uh per mistake per form. Um think about a three or four hundred uh employee business that maybe specializes in meat processing here in the Midwest. You know, maybe a quarter of those individuals may have suspicious documents that uh that may ultimately lead to the fact that the finding that they're undocumented. Um, you're gonna get fined for each one of those. And not only that, but if you are found knowingly employing these individuals with fraudulent documents, that brings in additional fines and then also criminal penalties for business owners. Uh so they changed the regulations recently to allow uh ICE to charge business owners with criminal penalties if they're found to have like claw uh colluded in this um, you know, I-9 fraud scheme that I would say some, you know, some business owners in the US are knowingly doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Interesting. And so what if, you know, as an employer, you're trying to do all the right things and you get a document and it appears reasonably so that it is a legit document, but then through an ice rate or whatever else might happen, it comes out it's not. Is there still penalties on the employer side if you've done everything you can and believe it to be a true document?

Fines, Fraud, And Criminal Exposure

SPEAKER_02 7:09

So the good the standard with documents handed over by you know prospective employees is good faith review. Uh, I don't expect you know a business owner to understand the difference between a small differences between a fraudulent green card example or a realistic one. So as long as it looks real, you know, reasonably be can be uh uh concluded as real, you're okay as an employer. Uh you're not going to get fined for like knowingly uh employing individuals that are not work authorized in the United States. What could happen though is the idea of constructive knowledge. This is also part of the regulation where if somebody, let's say you I'm an employee, they provide valid documents, what seem to be valid documents, they've been working for you for a few years, and as a result of everything that's going on in enforcement and immigration with ICE right now, they come to you and say, I'm undocumented, you know, I feel very concerned about my position here, my my ability to stay inside the United States. At that point, as an employer, you have constructive or direct knowledge that the individual is undocumented, and you have to take steps at that point to uh re-I-9 the person. If they can't provide you know valid documents at that point, you have to say goodbye. Uh so I think this is something that's coming down the road for a lot of employers over the next year or two. And to give you some context, um, there are about 250 I-9 audits issued by ICE under the Biden administration in four years. There are rumors of a quota under the Trump administration right now where ICE officers may have to issue an I-9 audit per week. Um you're talking 50 I-9 audits per individual officer. Um there are hundreds of officers that do this around the country. So you're talking a 10, 15, 20, 50, 100x uh increase in I-9 audits in general. And obviously, they're uh specifically targeting employers that are uh knowingly or could constructively be proven to be employing individuals that are undocumented, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah, that makes sense. So for those uh founders and leaders out here listening that might be in such an industry that it could be a targeted industry, and of course, they can go to any company, but let's just be honest, obviously they can't go to every company. So they're gonna target certain areas and industries. Of course. What about protecting yourself through just doing the e-verification? Like it what's the pros and cons on going that route?

Good Faith Review And Constructive Knowledge

E‑Verify: When It Helps Or Hurts

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, it kind of depends on your business. So you're not required to use e-Verify, although the federal government has enlisted a lot of incentives, including remote document verification, to try to incentivize employers to use e-Verify. I think it depends on your business. Um, if you are a tech company, for example, maybe you have like five or 10 employees, um, e-Verify might be something you want to use because you're recruiting STEM students out of school. And to employ somebody uh on a second grant of STEM OPT, you have to be an e-Verify employer. That's one of the incentives that they're requiring, right? So it might be a good opportunity for certain businesses in tech sectors, AI, um uh consulting or uh engineering. You probably want to use e-Verify. Um, it helps you uh obviously e-Verify is apart from the I-9 process. You fill out an I-9 form, you provide your documents, and then they run that document information in the e-Verify system when someone is initially hired. It may come back that the person's documents don't match internal government databases, like the Social Security Administration, for example, and then you have to turn around and talk to the employee and say, hey, there's there's an issue. There's a tentative non-confirmation or TNA that was issued by the e-Verify system. You have to give the employee a certain amount of time to correct that. If they can't, you have to let them go. Um now that's probably a good thing for uh tech companies, and I would say in general, because most of the individuals they're recruiting are highly skilled, looking for H1B visas eventually. Um, probably a good thing to do. If you're a you know a uh a resort, for example, or a uh meet uh food processing uh company or a some type of retail operation company, you're not required to use I-9. And I would say in those instances, maybe you shouldn't, because there's a good face standard in reviewing documents. So if they look valid, that's the standard that you've met. You can employ the person. It's on the person because they provided fraudulent documents eventually. Um if you're using eVerify, it may be harder to hire and find individuals for your business if you're in certain industry. So I we we we recommend it selectively. There are also times in which you are required to use it. So if you're a department of labor or excuse me, a department of defense contractor, you have to use e-Verify in some situations. The contracts that you get from the government will require you to do so. So sometimes for certain companies, a really uh good opportunity, you probably want to use e-Verify as much as possible. For I would say companies in the like the blue-collar or lower skilled areas where you're hiring employees, maybe not. You know, you can you can get away with that good face standard uh in I9 compliance. And then for your government contractors, people dealing with Department of Education, uh, Department of Defense, you might have to use it uh depending on the project that you're working on. So uh it's it's a bit of a, I would say, a scale or a range there of how we um counsel clients on whether I not or e-verify is appropriate when you're doing your I-9s.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

That's fascinating. Uh, because I was thinking, you know, if you're trying to be compliant and you're low risk, if you're a low risk leader and want to make sure that if ice comes to your door, you're not gonna lose, like you said, 25% of your employee population that could actually crumble your business potentially, then this could be a way to help safe harbor yourself. But at the same time, you are gonna potentially create a limitation and risk in finding the right talent to come in the door and do the work that's needed to help you grow your business. So I guess it's like one of those like 50-50 kind of things, right? And and then why you would be customizing the answer based off of the need of the business and where they're trying to grow and how they're trying to do it.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Absolutely. I think it's a rock and a hard place for some employers if we, you know, if we use it, you know. I do think that using A verify in general will probably make you less likely to be audited by ICE, just in general across the board. Um, but if it deters you or it, you know, uh limits your ability to hire workers, um, then you know, there's a downside to using it as well. So there's a pro and con there, especially for I think businesses that are going to be targeted like retail, uh resorts, you know, food processing, uh restaurants, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, so that's actually quite. I actually made the assumption in my mind that if I'm e-verified, I wouldn't be um audited by ICE. But you're saying that there's still a possibility that I could be.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Absolutely a possibility. ICE can audit anybody at any time. Um, I think you're less likely to receive an audit if you use e-Verify uh for sure, but um it's not gonna save you. I mean, it's not uh it's not a defense to an I9.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Guarantee.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah, that makes sense. So in Girl's compliance aspect, what do you see as being the number one oops moment that uh founders, leaders, companies in general um make that blow up their immigration compliance or blow up their company from uh you know immigration perspective?

Audit Probability And Targeted Industries

Biggest Compliance “Oops” For Startups

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Yeah, I think you know, if you're looking at a lot of our clients are high-growth venture-backed startups, consulting companies, and engineering companies, uh, airlines, things like that. I think where they get tripped up the most is consistency in how they apply their program. Um you really need to be like there are regulations and compliance issues, you know, in every visa that you file, but consistency of how you're treating your employees, how you're storing documents, make sure I, you know, and this may be a bit self-interest here, but make sure you're using a good immigration attorney that knows what they're doing, that has worked with your industry, the type of visas that you need to process. Um, there are a lot of immigration attorneys that specialize in other areas of immigration. Uh, most folks don't know that immigration in terms of just the number of regulations is second only to tax in the federal uh regulation code. So it's really broad. There are a ton of things and areas you can specialize in. But in our practice, in corporate or employment-based immigration, uh, consistency and how you treat employees, make sure you have a plan or a uh, I would say an immigration policy in place that documents why some people will be sponsored for work visas and not others, why some people will be sponsored for green cards and not others. You don't want to get yourself into a situation where perhaps you're sponsoring an Indian national for a green card and there's a Pakistani national as well, that you're denying green card sponsorship. That could be perceived as uh discriminating based off of national origin, which will get you in trouble uh with various agencies, uh including the Department of Labor. So consistency in applying the program, storage of documents, making sure that you are complying with public access files, uh, retaining, you know, obviously uh pay records, and then making sure that you know the individual is doing the job that you sponsored them for at the location that we listed in the petition or whatever we filed with the government. Oftentimes they'll move the individual around or you know, during the pandemic, people move themselves around. Uh and that's a huge compliance issue for the individual, but also the company. So uh, and then I think finally just communication on whether the company will sponsor for certain things uh up front. Um, it will help you weed out individuals that may need sponsorship if you don't want to sponsor for a position. Uh, and vice versa, you could get a lot more applicants if you do um advertise that, hey, this is a sponsorable position. I think a lot of folks in the United States, especially students, are looking for one, can I get a job that I like? And two, will they sponsor me? Those are primarily the two top questions that you have to answer to, I think, hire talented immigrants that need work visas.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah, that makes sense. And it kind of gets wrapped up into employee relations, right? And the best course of action is being consistent, treat everyone equally and not be cherry-picking this person's gonna get it, but that person's not. And if you're gonna say no, just like have a line in the sand and be like, no, and these are the reasons no. Maybe it's because it's not a high enough level, maybe it's not because it's these types of roles, but like be consistent. Don't have a senior engineer get get it one time, and then three weeks later the senior engineer or the second senior engineer doesn't get it, right? So I love that. And it's like that's anything with employer relations. Have your policy and live by it and don't make exceptions. And if you make exceptions, then that needs to become the rule going forward because you're just gonna get yourself in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Yeah. I mean, if you have a lot of uh sponsored for nationals on work visas, they talk to each other. They're probably sitting in the in the cube. I mean, maybe not anymore because you know everyone's working remotely, but like they talk to each other, they're sitting in cupals next to each other. Like, where is your green card at? Where is your H1B at? You know, how why was yours process faster than mine? Like consistency across the board, especially if you employ individuals that require work visas is super, super important.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah. And and so talking about you know programs and policies, what is the smartest first move a founder can make to future-proof their immigration strategy?

Policy, Consistency, And Employee Trust

First Moves To Future‑Proof Immigration

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah, I think uh two things. Uh establishing a person internally at the business that will handle it, you know, who who is responsible for it. Uh if you're like a small startup, it probably might be one of the founders that's just gonna have to deal with maybe bringing on that first talented engineer that requires an H1B or some other type of work visa. Um when you get a little bit bigger, uh usually human resources handles it, but uh not everybody in human resources is familiar with uh immigration in general. It's kind of a niche skill set, you know, even within HR. Uh so I would say, you know, making sure that the individual you uh one, establish an internal stakeholder, um whoever that may be, uh, make sure that they know a little bit about immigration. You know, you can you can you can use Chat GTP to get an overview of HODs, you know, and it'll probably be 95% accurate, right? Um and secondarily, I think it's finding counsel that is a good fit for what you're doing as a business in terms of immigration. There are entrepreneur visas, there are investor visas, there are work visas, there are different types of green cards across the spectrum. Having a council that has experience in dealing with your business and your industry and the types of visas that you want to sponsor and individuals you're bringing either in from abroad or recruiting from school is really important because uh, like as I mentioned before, there are so many tiny little minute details in immigration, especially with work visas, that if you don't have somebody that does it that particular visa often, not that they're not a they're a good attorney, they just don't have the experiential knowledge to understand how these visas work, how the processing times work, what happens when we get a hitch, where do we send an email to to unstick something. Uh so I know I have a I'm the only attorney in my family, and everybody comes to me for their like wills and estates and trusts and all the contracts. Like I'm an immigration attorney, like I know a little bit about that stuff, but I don't do that. Uh and I explain it to them. You know, if you're having heart surgery, you want a heart surgeon that does heart surgery all day, every day. Uh you're not one of brain surgeon, even though they're both doctors.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

So right. Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking that as an analogy, the doctor medical world. It's very true. Well, even if you don't have the funding for a full-time person, that's where fractional people like myself come into play. There's fractional for everything: marketing, sales, finance, operation, HR, and so forth. So when you're at that point where you're not quite ready for that full-time person, but you need the help and support, check out the fractional space. There's a lot of us that are willing to support and want to help you grow your business. So, you know, with the whole change of the world and we're becoming more global and companies are getting going out and having offices and entities outside of the US? What uh should founders be thinking about to support employees when they ask them to go to internal offices, especially when they're you know entering and exiting on a US green card? Is there something they need to be thinking about? Or even on an H1B visa? Like if they're not a permanent citizen born and raised of the US, what concerns or thoughts should they be dealing with?

Travel, Social Media Vetting, And Location Rules

Preventing Surprise Moves And Who Pays

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah, uh there's certainly a bunch of new ones with the Trump administration. So uh one, I would say uh they just released a you know a rule that's or not a rule, but a policy change inside the USCIS where every time you file a visa, they have the ability to search your social media, to vet you, to see if you have any type of uh anti-Semitic or pro-Palestinian or anti-US government uh propaganda on your on your social media pages, or you're associated with groups that uh purport to you know uh further those causes. Uh so that's really important uh to communicate to employees. Unfortunately, I hate to say it's constitutionally, it's like uh we call it um limiting speech, essentially, or chilling speech. Um that's really what they're I think trying to do, intimidate immigrants right now with some of these additional vetting policies. Uh when individuals travel in and outside the United States, that is becoming more difficult, even if they're traveling with valid visas or green cards. Um, the vetting principles at the Department of State, which runs all the consulates and embassies around the world, which issue the visas for people to get into the United States, they are doing the same type of social media vetting. Background check betting, particularly for students and people are on J1s, which are kind of training visas. I think the you know, going forward, you really have to be careful of where your employees are physically located as well. Um, if you're on an H1B and you have an hire an employee who's working in Oklahoma and all of a sudden they move to Minnesota, that's a compliance issue. You're gonna have to file an amendment as a business if that individual moves. And you might should have a policy around maybe employees not being able to freely move around the US if they're on particular types of visas that would incur or cost the business to incur additional fees to maintain their immigration compliance. So uh those are a couple of things, you know, the vetting issues, travel is becoming more difficult. I also think that from a communication standpoint, which we talked about a little earlier, um, communicating to your employees what the business is doing to help them out in terms of immigration, who their immigration attorney is, maybe introducing the immigration attorney to the population, we talk to all the employees of our clients directly, you know, all the time. Yeah, because we don't want we don't want to filter there. We want to answer the question that the employee has without having it to go through like HR to counsel, back to HR, to the employee. Like the telephone game is inexact. Uh it's slow. Um, and I've always found that if an employee has uh you know some issues or is very anxious about something, talking to the attorney who's handling the case often calms them down pretty well.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

So I got a question. You were saying, you know, like with the moving, an employee moving around. And we all know uh probably almost every company, I feel like, at least the ones I talk to, have people who do it and don't tell them. And then they finally find out for some reason, some way. So can you put in your policy like that that is a violation of the immigration policy? Can you also like maybe even if they tell you ahead of time, hey, I want to move and this is where I want to move, could you actually make the cost of preparing and submitting that updated documentation be on the employee cost? I know that's not very employee-centric of me to ask, but a lot of employers. I mean, if I'm gonna do this, it's very expensive to have an immigration, um, you know, and to support someone, I want to do it. But at the same time, I shouldn't have to pay for everything as the employer, in my opinion, my thinking.

Sending U.S. Staff Abroad And Nomad Visas

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah, my answer there is maybe. It depends on the visa type. So for H1B employees, the general rules you have to cover all the costs, filing fees, attorney's fees. So if they move, you know, the employee moves to someplace else and you have to file an amendment, you're still on the hook as the employer to pay for that. Um, one way, something that we've done a lot of immigration policies that we've drafted for clients is we we use language that says that the employees are allowed to move anywhere within their authorized work area or like geographical work area. Um, and for US citizens or green card holders, that's the entire United States. So no issues there. But for H1B employees specifically, they're only authorized to work in the city where they're originally uh the petition was originally um filed. So it does it walks both lines. It allows individuals who do not require immigration sponsorship to move freely throughout the United States, but at the same time restricts individuals that have uh location-specific work visas, it restricts them from moving, or at least having to notify the employer when they move. Um it is uh it's a it's a policy that like I think our clients fall in many different areas on. We have clients that are very much like we'll pay for everything, no problem, move whatever you want. And then we have clients that are like middle market or smaller market, where like we just can't pay for another H1B cost that's not in our budget this year. So you're gonna you're gonna have to stay put. Um and that that's a totally fine policy. Um, you know, we we write those policies for our clients all the time. The downside of restricting H1B employees from moving, which you absolutely can do as an employer because it's a business cost, business operation, business necessity issue, uh, is that they may get unhappy because they want to move to Miami and not live in New York, right? Uh so then you might have the you might have the risk of losing the employee and they're transferring their H1B easy to another employer. Um, but all that's possible. It's kind of just like reading your employee population, understanding who your competitors are, who might be stealing your talent and what their policies are in terms of benchmarking these compliance issues. And uh at the end of the day, you're allowed to do whatever you want to do within the regulations as a company, but there are some downsides to potentially losing uh talent if you do so.

Substantial Presence And Tax Triggers

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so really quickly, let's flip it, right? You're a US uh citizen and you've been asked to go to uh an EU company or uh, you know, somewhere out in the world, Australia or somewhere, right? I've been noticing that a lot more countries are requiring some work visa or entry documentation ahead of time. So, what should founders be thinking about when they're asking their team members to go to an office in in the international space?

Founder Hot Seat: Delegate And Elevate

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, I mean, depends how long they're gonna be there and what they're doing. You know, it's very similar to the US structure. You can come in on a visitor visa and take meetings and you know, do litigation, you know, sign a lease, you know, start a company, but you can't actually work. You know, you can't be a W-2 employee and take a salary. So uh what I would recommend founders really focus on is what country are you sending the person to, what are they doing in the country, and how long will they be there? That those three things, those three pieces of information would allow you know a corporate immigration firm like myself to engage one of our resources for the proper work visa in Australia or the UK. There are also a whole set of um nomad visas that are now available in some of these countries where all you need to have is a contract for work, maybe uh pay a uh like a healthcare fee, you know, that uh a lot of countries have free healthcare. If you're not a citizen, you're not entitled to it, so you have to buy a rider to get healthcare there. Um and then some of those visas are available for a year or two. Um and I think the last thing, and this is a slightly outside of my area of practice, but it's substantial presence. Whenever you as a corporation send an individual into another country, depending on what they're doing, they have substantial presence laws in that country that would dictate taxation on whatever activities the business is doing there. So you want to be careful about substantial presence. Some of these visas exempt it and the nomad visas specifically, but you have to do your own research. Um, but you want to be careful of not establishing substantias uh substantial presence in a country because ultimately that would make you taxable uh to, you know, let's say the UK or Brazil, even though you're a US company and you have like one employee that goes down there once in a while to do uh some work or sign contracts. So you just have to be careful with that.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Oh, that's a great uh tidbit. Okay, so as we wrap up, you're a founder, co-founder, and I love to put my founders on the hot seat. Would you mind sharing a lesson learned as you've been growing your business that might help a founder listening that maybe they'll sidestep that lesson and not fall down?

Closing Notes And Resources

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Yeah. Uh I always think of the phrase like delegate and elevate. Um when you have the ability and resources to hire folks underneath you, do so immediately. You'll free up your own time. And honestly, I have a head of HR, I have a head of finance, I have a head of business development, sales. They're way better at their jobs than I ever was. I had to do their job for a while just because we didn't have the resources and the revenue to do so. But when you have the opportunity, you really have to let go of the things that you were previously holding on to and always asking yourself as a founder, what is the number one or one of the best things that I can be doing for the business, of the only thing that I can do that no one else can do for the business? And that evolves at every stage of growth, uh, you know, 10, 20, 30, 50 employees. I'm I have a much different job now at a 40 employee company than I did when we were 10. And I think you just have to embrace that that is a natural progression of growing the business is uh not being in things that you're not good at anymore or you know, focusing on things that really drive value and growth for the business that no one else can do.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah, I always say, like, am I working on the right thing that's gonna move the needle the way based off the goal that I have for this year or my longer term goal, right? And if you're saying no, then delegate it or don't do it. Because we can't create more time in a day. And yeah, I I hope all those founders that are listening have a life outside of their company and they should be enjoying that just as much as they are enjoying their company and growing and being successful. So, Matthew, uh, thank you so much for joining us today and talking about immigration. We have not talked about this at all in any of my past podcasts. So definitely a new topic and appreciate your insights. And Matthew and his company, a link will be below in the description so you can reach out for more questions or to get support if you're looking to do some immigration.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah, thank you, Whenever. It's been a pleasure and always happy to talk immigration and uh growing businesses.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Awesome. Well, thanks, Matthew, and thanks everyone for listening. We will see you on the next podcast. Have a great one. That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, share me a message, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Gwynaver Curry, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high-growth companies build smart with people for strategies and AI powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.