The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
Building a Large and Loyal Audience with Jen + Yvonne of Simple Germany
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I stumbled across Jen and Yvonne of Simple Germany through their YouTube channel, and boy am I glad I did!
Jen was born and raised in Guatemala and sought better quality of life due to LGBTQ+ rights and security concerns. Yvonne was raised in Germany but always wanted to explore the world and worked for many years on a cruise ship (side note: This is the second Germany Expat Business Show guest that worked on a cruise ship!)
Jen and Yvonne met in Düsseldorf where they became partners in life and business. Together they became the founders of Simple Germany where they create English content to empower internationals to settle into life in Germany more smoothly.
They’ve got some eye popping stats including: A devoted following of 55k YouTube subscribers, 15k newsletter subscribers, 3M Annual website visitors and 1k happy customers
In our conversation we talked about:
- How their own experiences as immigrants and a native German led to the creation of Simple Germany.
- How they were able to leave their corporate jobs in 2022 to focus full-time on Simple Germany after starting it in 2020.
- Their business model which primarily relies on affiliate sales.
- How they build trust through YouTube and SEO efforts, emphasizing authenticity and human connection.
- Content creation on Simple Germany has evolved into inspiring stories of successful immigration to Germany, providing hope and empowerment to others.
- How through Simple Germany Jen and Yvonne aim to inspire people to realize that a life abroad is possible and that they have control over making positive changes for a better life.
- How they ventured into creating digital products like templates and e-books to offer more detailed resources to their audience.
- The challenges of finding the right e-commerce platform in Germany, particularly with regards to European regulations like displaying final prices including VAT and variable VAT rates.
- How and why they ended up getting married three times in Germany!
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. Twenty-plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here. Now I'm talking to other expat business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. Great, I am here talking to Jen Palacios and Yvonne Koppen of Simple Germany and I'm going to jump in with the question I ask everybody. It might be a little bit different for you, yvonne, but what is the two-minute story of how you got to Germany?
Speaker 2Yes, two minutes. That's very knap, as Germans say. So I was born and raised in Guatemala City. Guatemala, that's a very small country in the south of Mexico actually, for a lot of people that don't know where it is actually and after I graduated from the university, I was looking for a place that could give me a better quality of life and a lot of ways I'm a queer woman, so in Guatemala this same-sex marriage is not. It's banned and it's very taboo, the whole topic. So I wanted a country that would support same-sex marriage. I was also looking for a country with a lot more security. Guatemala tends to be the city especially a little bit more violent than most cities in the world and pretty much what the Germans consider basic rights. It's what I was looking for in a country you know access to public health insurance. That was good and all these things.
Speaker 2My journey took me first to Budapest. From Guatemala City I flew to Budapest and I lived there for a year and a half. I got an internship through my university. That's how the connection happened. It's a program called IASEC. It's very popular, I think, in Latin America I see you making a squingy faces. So through IASEC I found an internship to teach English, which, I mean, it's not my mother tongue. It was a very interesting experience. I found a job in Budapest as a help desk at Tata Consultancy Services, actually TSC, which is also very popular, and I wasn't feeling the vibe in Budapest. To be honest, I wanted something more, because still, budapest, hungary, doesn't have same-sex marriage.
Speaker 1That was my scrunchy face. Budapest is where all the American right-wingers are going these days Exactly.
Speaker 2However, it's in the EU, and it was my very first step into Europe and I thought, if I can get close to all the other countries, my chances are higher just because I'm already on the other side of the continent. So I was in Budapest for a year and a half almost two shortly, like that and I applied to all kinds of jobs that I found online. My goal was Germany, until I found a company in Dusseldorf that gave me the very first interview and after a lot of German companies have like five interviews, so it's like a five interview round I got the job as a customer service representative for the Spanish-speaking market in Dusseldorf, and that's how I ended up in Germany, and this was in 2012. So right now it's 2024. So that's 12 years ago.
Speaker 1Okay. So, yvonne, how did you end up in Germany, besides being born?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's very true. Born and raised in Germany, however, also not that straightforward, you know it's, uh, I'd say, at least in my surrounding you. You are either the German that sticks around and kind of like, just like society and flows with it, or you want to escape, and I was always the one that didn't want to have anything to do with Germany. So I always wanted to discover the world pretty much from a very young age, and I did so. Did a high school exchange in the US very, very typical also, and pretty much throughout all my studies, whichever chance I had, I spent abroad. Any internship I was supposed to do in Germany, I always did it abroad, and I ended up working on cruise ships for four years. That actually really was the world exploration that I was seeking, which was amazing, fantastic, especially at that age. All the people you meet, all the places you see. However, I liked some private life at that age. All the people you meet, all the places you see. However, I like some private life as you can.
Speaker 3imagine a cruise ship is pretty much the glorified college life. Just, you cannot escape because you're literally stuck on a boat and yeah. So I saw my bosses there. They were all in their 50s, 60s, 70s and they've lived their lives on the ships and that was it. So I didn't see myself there And's when I decided okay, you know, maybe it's time to give germany a chance. So at 25 years, I pretty much looked for my first place to live, because before I mean cruise ships, I was home four to six weeks in between, so I always stayed with my parents. Obviously, yeah, look for first place, look for a first job, like in a, in an office. You know the traditional route. People thought I'd stay around for a year and then I'd go wander off again, but I didn't. I'm still here. So the job was also in Dusseldorf, still in Dusseldorf, and I actually learned to appreciate the German life and what Germany has to offer. Again, I think what we also emphasize a lot with Simple Germany is perspective.
Speaker 3A lot comes down to perspective, and I believe you get that when you move around and realize for yourself what is it that you value? You know, and not just what other people tell you.
Speaker 1Yeah, 100% Okay. So you mentioned Simple Germany, so let's pivot and tell me what Simple Germany is and how you guys got the idea for it.
Speaker 2Yeah, so Simple Germany. Currently it's a website and YouTube channel where both Yvonne and I are your hosts and we pretty much create English content, and our slogan is to empower internationals to settle into life in Germany more smoothly, and the intent is really to help with the settling part. When one arrives to a new country, there's 1000 culture shocks that happen and there's this whole trajectory right, like you have the honeymoon phase and you crash and then you're like, oh my God, why did I do this? Why am I here? Germans are not nice or whatever emotions we go through, and our goal with Simple Germany is to smooth that process.
Speaker 2And I started the YouTube channel alone, being alone in camera, and shortly after a few videos I told them you know you should come on board, because I think it's so important to tell your perspective as a German, how you see things, because for what me seems super rude or maybe I don't understand it you can share your perspective of how that looks in your eyes and that has worked pretty well, because it's not just a foreigner complaining, but actually a German kind of. Of course, you cannot speak for all of Germany, right, but at least we have one sample size of someone sharing their perspective of how they see things and how Simple Germany came about. Well, we both were.
Speaker 3Sorry, let me do that again. So after we both landed in Düsseldorf it was actually within a year of each other we moved on to different jobs, as the first ones weren't really that satisfactory and at some point, once we reached that threshold where, you know, life was good and glory. It was just this desire to create something more, to create something of our own and meaningful, and we really went down the path to try out all kinds of things. I think we looked back the other day. It was like 12 different ideas that we had. Oh, really.
Speaker 3Initially a lot in the travel industry, because that's what also we both enjoyed very much. I come from travel and so we realized, yeah, we enjoy the travel for ourselves. It's not really that we want to work in it like kind of travel for the work of it. And yeah, I really went down the rabbit hole to discover what is it that we can do to help others to create value. But it comes down to, but also with the dream of being able to replace our office work.
Speaker 3That was the goal and one evening we sat down and actually I asked the question maybe we are blind, we're not seeing what we already have? Because every conversation in our private life because we have a lot of interracial couples as friends and stuff usually always leads down to culture shocks, misunderstandings of the culture and comparing and I don't know what. And also Jen guiding other colleagues at work with questions about you know, being trying to be tricked by an insurance, by a bank lady, into insurances and stuff, and realized you know what we already do this. Why don't we just do this publicly?
Speaker 1Why don't we do knowledge that we have as a seasoned expat?
Speaker 3immigrant, whichever word you want to use, and a German who actually also. I mean, I had to find my own. I had to do the unmeldung when I came back, you know, I had to do all of this by myself, so I went through the same process, just without the language barrier, pretty much.
Speaker 1Why don't we do this publicly?
Speaker 3And that's pretty much how it started and we, um yeah, with that. We started for the first time, after all those ideas, to gain some, some traffic and gain some comments and actually noticed, hey, people are resonating with that we have people on the website, according to google analytics, and they're not in germany, so that means it can't be us.
Speaker 2There has to be someone else, and oh, that's right.
Speaker 1There's probably a lot of people that aren't here yet that need help. I always forget about that. There's like people coming. So is this, right now, a side hustle for you? Do you both still have your corporate jobs?
Speaker 2We successfully I say successfully we left our corporate jobs in 2022. We started Simple Germany in 2020. And it took us two years for the both of us to be able to leave the corporate job and focus full time on Simple Germany.
Speaker 1Oh, that's great. That's really really great. So, if I may ask so, your target audience community visitor, whatever is like an international person, either inside or outside of Germany that just needs help, and so what is kind of the business model? Are you guys building a membership Like what's?
Speaker 2the plan. So our number one, currently our business model, is affiliate sales, meaning that by finding products and services that we believe in also and that provide a good service it's not just any product on the market, but it has to go kind of like through the simple Germany filter of check marks of whether it's a good product or not. And if people, for example, private liability insurance is a classical as a foreigner. If you've never in Guatemala, for example, if you're lucky, if your car has car insurance, you know. And then to think that you have to have private liability insurance is a classical as a foreigner if you've never in Guatemala, for example, if you're lucky, if your car has car insurance, you know. And then to think that you have to have private liability insurance.
Speaker 2It's like I've lived all my life without hurting anyone or doing anything. Why should I get this Right? But in Germany it's a culture that if something does happen, the expectation is that you should be able to cover the cost against third parties. So first is to educate internationals the importance of the insurance, and then we've scouted the market, for example, to see what service providers are out there. In English, that is digital, easy to sign up and as the first step you know to, because already insurance is hard, but they're not understanding it, because everything is in German.
Speaker 2It's even harder, but there are already companies out there bridging that gap. And so when someone gets an insurance policy from one of the insurance providers, then we get a small commission at no extra cost to the, to the client or to the customer on their side that is very smart.
Speaker 1You're sort of like stiftung van test for internationals in a way. But also the product. I mean half-flesh insurance, to your point. My first year here I somehow lost somebody's contact lenses and in america you insure the contact lenses and she kept saying you better check your insurance. I was like what are you talking? You huh what? And then I was like the whole world of liability insurance. So that is like alone really great. Yeah. So a question in there, with my line of work as a web designer and most of my clients all are expats. You know they want to get a lot of traffic and you need like a lot of traffic. I would presume for like an affiliate model, but it's tricky when you are in Germany creating content in English. Has that have you? What has been your approach for that? Are you like trying to do SEO or do you not worry about that?
Building Trust and Inspiring Transformation
Speaker 3No, I mean, yes, seo is very important. So we went down the route with the website and, just like you said, in SEO and getting traffic there, but also through YouTube, to build the trust right, because it's one thing of having a website. I mean there's a gazillion websites that tell you all kinds of things. Often we don't know who's behind that right, it's very anonymous.
Speaker 3So we especially when you're already insecure because, because you know you're in a new culture, you don't speak the language for us it was super important to to show our face right and to show, hey, we're real people we're real humans and we're doing this to the first step to really guide and help, of course, with the intention to also again make a living from it, but not to make a living first and just promote products that are nonsense or that pay the most whatsoever. So YouTube is really also super important for us, just to have that community, to have that brand and to have the authenticity and trust, and also through it we realized there's way more to it to just help to settle, but actually to encourage people to also take steps to change their life, which maybe before they didn't even realize that it's possible.
Speaker 2Like for example For example, the story that has touched my heart the most. We get a lot of messages also for people being super grateful and happy with the content, which we never. To be honest, when we first created content, we were like, oh, we're just going to help out, and maybe random questions like how do you recycle and do you drink tap water and all these little things of life in Germany. However, it just evolved into something more inspiration for others to be able to A know that it's possible to move to Germany successfully. I like to call myself like a happy immigrant. I am so happy in Germany. Of course, it's not perfect, but maybe also because I'm so happy, I transmit that happiness and all the people like that happiness.
Speaker 2And one story that touched me the most is two girls from, also married, from the Dominican Republic, and their goal was to actually move to Canada. But the process there is a lot more complicated, especially as a Latin American immigrant moving to the north of America. It's super hard and struggled a lot and kind of like their dream was gone, so to speak, until they stumbled upon Simple German.
Speaker 2They're like wait, but it seems Germany is also an option and there's a lot of information and they felt the confidence and the empowerment right Like the word that we like to use is empowerment to be like. Maybe we should give that a try. It took them a few years and we met them also in person and after two years of planning or so, they're both here in Germany. So, seeing these transformational stories of of yeah, of people that they might never think of Germany, you know, because it's it's maybe not in the radar, but yeah, just to inspire as well that a life abroad is possible. And it's not about the Germany thing, it's just that you have control also to make changes for a better life if you want to right if you're unhappy where you are.
Speaker 2It's possible to go abroad and to and fulfill your life in other ways, if that makes sense yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1I think a lot of people don't realize that, after the US, germany is the most migrated country, too, in the world it's number two.
Speaker 2You mentioned that, which is crazy, right?
Speaker 1yeah, yeah yeah, I mean, it surprised me when I found that out too, but it is yeah, um, okay. So the YouTube channel, like I mentioned, that's where I discovered you guys. That is a trust building tool, but I notice you're also very active now on LinkedIn. That's like where I am always. Am so like your strategy. Like, if I can ask, which is driving the most traffic to Simple Germany?
Speaker 3Yeah, that would be the website and YouTube, just because we've been doing that for four years.
Speaker 1Okay, so four years. How often do you guys put out videos? Once a month, once a?
Speaker 3week every monday.
Speaker 1Every monday that is youtube. That is so intimidating to me, just like I'm setting up the equipment, like I just have this podcast beating in there, but it seems like it's a lot of work I mean what you're doing right now.
Speaker 2It's already. You already have a beautiful background with your books, you have a good microphone, you already look a YouTuber. You just need to hit, record and upload it.
Speaker 1I guess so. But you also have to have a script. I mean, an interview show is one thing, it depends.
Speaker 3So there's different approaches, right, and at the end of the day, you have to find your own voice. And also, if you look at the videos on YouTube from us from the beginning, the early, the first year to now, there's a massive transition. And yeah, we didn't start scripted. We started with a topic idea, we had some pointers and we really just talked along and had sometimes more of a conversation than really like a how-to guide.
Speaker 3But we realized very quickly that this whole cultural shock sensational wasn't really our thing and that we actually enjoyed talking about the mundane topics. I can just mention the can I drink tap water? Something that I as a German would have never thought. I mean, we had like massive discussions Should we do the video? Should we not? Should we do? And at the end I said let's just do it. And it was a super successful video just because, yeah, depending on where you come from, if we, let's say, don't just have the German goggles or the maybe US goggles, but like the world goggles, it's a very valid question, right? We really shifted more to the how-to world and going down to the nitty-gritty, even if in the not-so topics, let's put it that way and that's kind of like how we found our voice. Yeah, and the LinkedIn you can talk about linkedin, yeah so linkedin has been an experiment for myself.
Speaker 2Really a do I like to be on linkedin um and just really as an experiment. I think one of the biggest lessons with simple germany is experiment all the time yeah try new things, see how one feels and analyze. Afterwards you know how, how you feel about it, what are the results. But and not everything has to be result-driven I think it's also fulfillment. Do you enjoy it? Do you have fun doing it? Otherwise it can easily become a task and not something that you enjoy doing. So LinkedIn has been a massive experiment.
Navigating Life as an Expat
Speaker 2I mean through LinkedIn I've realized also the amount of service providers throughout all of Germany, like yourself, that you have services for internationals in Germany, which through YouTube, you don't really see that much right, or through SEO, you also don't really see that much. But in LinkedIn, I was really impressed by the community and the amount of, yeah, like service providers for the international market, which I thought, wow, it's super cool Because I believe that when you arrived, you've been here a lot longer than me, but at least in 2012, I believe the whole market, let's, so to speak, was super small. There was not even one single English speaking bank when I got here.
Speaker 1I remember it's really in my view. It has seemed to have exploded in the last I don't know seven years. But I think I mentioned I was just living my life and kind of resurfaced in this whole international expat world. I mean, I was just living my life and kind of resurfaced in this whole international expat world. I mean it was in the beginning. We talked about that. There was like Toy Town, that's it. So now I am just astonished by how much easier and how much there is. But I want to go back.
Speaker 1I really appreciate your attitude about being a happy immigrant because it is easy to fall into that paperwork, everything. But when I think back and to your point about like can I drink the tap water? A lot of people say I'm from L originally and like you're from California. What are you doing here in Germany? And it's hard.
Speaker 1And to even my family in the States, I mean they know I'm a lifer now, but it's like, well, the public transportation is really good, we don't have a car. Yeah, the tap water, like you can drink your water. I have a kid too and it's like I don't have to worry about guns. Like there's just all these little like that's not little, but little things like quality of life, things that are really really good, that add up. And you know, every now and then if I think, if I even think about going, it's like kind of a non-starter to go back, because there are just yes, there are all the getting. You know, some I have my bad days where somebody yells at me on the bike path and I'm like these people.
Speaker 1But you know, and then my husband will you know, we have those same conversations to be fair, I've also been yelled at in New York.
Speaker 2You know so from a person from New York.
Speaker 2So I feel like anyone can have a bad day as well, and I think it's so easy because we are outsiders. I mean, I still feel as an outsider, no matter how long I've been here. I think I will never be 100% German, of course, right, because I have different cultural backgrounds, and there are some days when, as an outsider, you still feel like an outsider. I think of all the again perspective, right, like things that add up and just make life, at least my life in Germany, so much better. And through Simple Germany, we've heard so many stories of others living in other countries. For example, we know of a woman from the US who she said you know, after, I think, she was here 12 years in Germany and with the husband they moved back to the US. They lived in Vegas or Nevada.
Speaker 1And they lasted two years. Yeah, I'm sure those three too, one of the. What was that?
Speaker 3This is a new technology that, depending on what motion or movement or word you say, there's these emoticons and every time it happens you try to recreate it by being super excited, but it never works again.
Speaker 1Sorry, okay. So for the listeners at home, a bunch of balloon animations just flew across jenna devon's screen okay, and I think a lot of things added up.
Speaker 2But the one thing that she mentions that was like the catalyst for her to return back back home, back to germany, is that the son came from school one day and she asked hey, how was your day at school? At school he's like oh, we did this, this and this, and we also had to do this like exercise, where we had to all go outside and do these things. And she realized, oh, that's like a simulation Active shooter drill Exactly and she's like wow, ok, no way.
Speaker 1We're moving back, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2So it's all about perspective and, again, I not the country for everyone, by far not. However, I do believe that we have the ability to explore and find if, again, if one is unhappy to in one where one is to find, that country that kind of like adds or or has all those check marks, not all but at least the most, the most, exactly.
Speaker 3Yeah, because I think it's impossible to find a country with all the checks again.
Speaker 2That's like a thing we had a whatsapp chat today like that's the utopia.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah at the end of the day, it's impossible to find a country with all the check marks.
Speaker 1Again, that's like we had a WhatsApp chat today, Like that's the utopia. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3At the end of the day, it comes down to your own values and what matters most, and we discuss this a lot also because, of course, in the comments section on YouTube there's also a lot of people with different opinions, right? Ooh, that alone would keep me on. Youtube it really just depends on your perspective. That's again the key word what you value and what you're looking for, right, if, if, yeah, that's really what it comes down to, and Germany has a lot to offer, but it's not perfect.
Speaker 3And it's definitely like Jen said, definitely not for everyone and you just got to find your your place. If you have again, it's a luxury, right To find your place but it is possible if you are able to go down that route.
Speaker 1Yeah, I want to jump back to the work you guys do with assessing products. That's also a really valuable service If you can share what's the process. Do you look at a bunch of different things and try them out yourself? Do you reach out and say we want to try your service? What does that look like?
Speaker 2So it's a mixed approach because, like we cannot try every single, for example, insurance provider or bank, because otherwise our Schufa also gets a little bit tainted. And even though we want to Wait, can you say what a Schufa is? Yeah, the Schufa is this credit score. In Germany, we all start with a hundred, so we all get a super good score and through time, if you do things that are kind of, how do you say this?
Speaker 2That can affect your credit score, then it goes down, and the lower your Shufa score, then the less for accessing credits and loans.
Speaker 3And, for example, if you open 10 bank accounts within one month, that is very fishy. That's not good behavior.
Speaker 2However, with the products that we can test, we definitely go through the whole process of testing them, getting them contacting customers to support, also to see if they respond at all. How is their responses like? Recently we rewrote a whole article about prepaid SIM cards, for example, and there I got all the SIM cards that we mentioned from the different providers, also to see shipping times. What is it all like?
Speaker 2But this has been an evolution. At the beginning it was based more on our experience of products that we have tried ourselves and still use and are happy customers of, and research online and basing it also on the reviews that people put on the products. Now, with the products that we can, we go the extra mile and actually test them out and see the onboarding process. Compare them also, for example, with insurances. I don't know. I always had the misconception that the insurance is fully in English. How good is it really compared to maybe a German provider? So I go down the rabbit hole and actually comparing with German providers and I've been pleasantly surprised that they're all just as good with the pro that you can cancel monthly and that you can.
Speaker 2Everything is in english and it's digitalized. Um yeah, so I don't know. How else do we test?
Speaker 3the products. Yeah, like I would say, in the main categories we have at least one product ourselves um which is also for our daily life, because, again, it's not just telling, telling something to get without believing the product yourself.
Speaker 3And then it's really market know-how. It's a lot of educating what to pay attention to, what is important, how does the system work, what to look out for, and a lot of it is really also just giving a choice and an overview of what's out there. What is English friendly or not, what is customer friendly or not.
Speaker 1I mean or not?
Speaker 3we don't really have or not, and then to give the reader and the viewer the choice of their own, because, at the end of the day, we're all individuals. We all have different again values and we prefer different things, and it's up to you to choose what you want, but at least you have a better understanding of what it is that you're looking for, or what is in Germany.
Speaker 2Yeah, okay, the one market that is still very German, it's the telecommunications. For example, for home internet, you really just have very few options. I mean, there are the local providers as well, but the big players like Vodafone, telekom, o2, they still have everything in German. Everything is super complicated. When you go to the landing pages it's like whoa, okay, I have a thousand options, what do I choose? So I would say the telecommunications market is, in my opinion, the most behind.
Speaker 3Let's say the most introspective and not in English. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Oh, that's really interesting. I'm literally trying to remember how I think I told you when we talked before like I used to be very good and like rolling up my sleeves and getting things done in the pre-DeBell era, and then I got married to my German husband and got super lazy about everything and I just throw at him and say, what a do this? German can't deal. Or, like you know, german contract, german's good enough. Okay, that's like a super, super valuable service. Do you guys tend to focus on products that are more like okay, there's insurance like liability insurance, and okay, there's insurance like liability insurance, and then there's like compensation. You can't really do that. Okay, although I will say I love techniker, they are so awesome not an affiliate, but they are so great, but so like there's. Are you focused more on products that are like helpful when you're just kind of getting set up here or it?
Speaker 3depends on how you want to look at it. I mean, like both of you, you only looked into liability insurance after you've been here for a few years. Right, it very much depends on when something crosses your radar. But yeah, setting up definitely important, and then we also have lots of topics that only come once you're actually settling, let's say, into more than the crossing, the three, four, five year mark or whatsoever.
Speaker 2However, I would like to add for the health insurance.
Speaker 3Yeah, I was just going to talk about that. Go ahead. And for health insurance, it's such an individual topic where it really depends on your circumstance, so there's again a lot of educating and still we have a lot of beautiful partners in the insurance world that also help guide and help find the right solution for each individual right, because there is no straightforward go to this provider.
Speaker 3It really depends on your solution and on your situation, and there it's about guiding you as an international to find your way, and there's partners that do a tremendous job with that as well.
Speaker 2So in that case it's kind of like the job is to educate, talk about the difference. First, educate that health insurance is a must. You have to have health insurance in Germany. Second, what are the options? And then kind of like guiding you to the right partner to find more information for either public or private in this case.
Speaker 1That's really important because, so, because, as I'm sure you know, like the first thing when I was here, like on my tourist visa, they were just like you gotta get health insurance. That was like number one and I was like I have no idea and I just like walked into some office and got some policy. But then when I got my corporate job, they sent me to broker and I think it's easy to think, okay, this is just some overpaid middle man and you don't need it. But he was great and he at that time I was privately insured and he said use this policy because you're American and a lot of health insurance.
Speaker 1If you're from the States, they will not pay for healthcare if you're in your home country, especially if you're American. And I ended up having a surgery while I was living in Germany but working on a project in Miami, and it was a hundred thousand dollars because it was America, and I kept calling. It was like I'm in a hospital, I'm in America, it's gonna be a zillion dollars, and they kept saying you're covered, you're covered, you're covered, and they paid everything. Wow, and I thought I was like thank you, because you know it was, I have the right policy.
Speaker 2Yeah, definitely, so it's super important, yeah, and I kind of like have the feeling lately and it seems that as a us citizen, it's a lot harder to do certain things, for example, that right, it's right, definitely right, to look for advice because, like Yvonne just mentioned, everyone's circumstances is different. For example, a loan investing in ETFs is something that for someone from Guatemala, no restrictions, someone- from the US.
Speaker 1there's a thousand things to consider. Can't use scalable, can't use a lot of these banking services. They won't take Americans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Exactly.
Speaker 2So I kind of feel like the US makes it super hard for the citizens to live abroad in a way they want to keep them to themselves.
Speaker 1Yeah, Well and they want it to pay taxes Exactly, regardless of wherever.
Building an International Online Community
Speaker 2So it's important because we're talking to the whole world right, and anyone is coming, we don't know. We had a meetup one of our very first meetups that we had for Simple Germany. We were 28 people, I think, from 22 different nationalities.
Speaker 1Another weird emoji popping up on the screen, folks.
Speaker 2So 22 or so nationalities, and they're all from all kinds of different countries, right? So we cannot have a one solution for everyone, because it doesn't work that way. But there's partners for sure that we can guide to, and then they take the step of saying OK, you're from this country, I would suggest this and this. So we're kind of like the lighthouse and we point to kind of, let's say, the right place.
Speaker 1That's amazing, so tell me about. Okay. Then I have another question I want to get to. But the meetup like did you just throw a meetup up there and see who came? Like how did 28 people came?
Speaker 3Yeah, no, no, we limited it to 30 because we wanted to be able to still talk to people and, again, part of the experimenting and testing phase yeah, getting to know also the people that follow us a bit better. And we literally, on a I don't know even what it was on a Tuesday, said, hey, let's meet on a Thursday in the park, it's nice weather, it's a public holiday and let's bring everyone brings their own blanket and drinks and let's just hang out holiday and um and let's bring everyone brings their own blanket and drinks and let's just hang out.
Speaker 3And it was really and is it something you do regularly or no? That was the first test, and then last year we did a few actually like six consecutive meetups in disilov, and we enjoyed them very, very much. But this is something where I realized it's not really fully scalable because it is just the two of us again.
Speaker 3Again, to have meaningful conversation, it needs to be a small crowd and we just realized so. First of all, it was super, super impressive and also again like humbling, because when you're just in your online world, it's super important to also have faces right. One of the reasons why we chose to do that to see the people, to meet the people, to hear their stories and again, we have so many different nationalities and there's so much, I would say, prejudice and stigma in the world and the media very often and this is the number one best activity to open your own eyes and realize we're all human and every single person that we have met so far whether on the streets, because sometimes people stop us on the streets oh, wow, they are very warm, kind, human beings.
Speaker 3And that is, I would say, the, the underlying message, and that is also the community that we are, we are fostering. We've recently opened a discord server also to because we realize again, we are in an online medium and we have more impact on people on a bigger scale online. So we use the life in real life meetups to grow an online community and the discord server is it's growing slowly. It's called the smoothler club a smooth is a word that we made up.
Speaker 3It's a combination of smooth settler because again so much stigma around expat, immigrant, migrant and all that fast so we just create our own fantasy word. Okay, good idea. And it is such an active community. Every day there is conversations and help and it's a mix of people who are here already, people who are wanting to move and exchange, and that's exactly what we are looking forward to build. So in real life we might you know, we never say no to maybe spontaneously again having some, but we are limited in what we can do just because of resources and online there is just so much more grasp for people.
Speaker 1There's a lot more people, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that I meet with a networking group and go to different things, but it's kind of a nice. I like to balance the all this stuff online with like face-to-face, but it is like you only have so many hours in the day. A quick question, a little side note or question Will you help me for someone who you know pretty technical but maybe is a generation ahead of you? What is the difference between Slack and Discord? Like why?
Slack vs Discord for Community Building
Speaker 2Discord. Very good question. So Slack for me, actually, what is the difference? They're very similar to begin with, and the main difference is that Discord is created. I don't know how advanced Slack is nowadays. I'm opening my Slack, but Discord is really created to have an online community. In it, they have a lot of perks and you can create channels that have sub channels, and it's just been the standard, so to speak, to create an online community. I looked at Slack between Slack and Discord Also. I think in Slack, after a certain amount of people, you need to pay A lot a lot.
Speaker 1I have a Slack group and go ahead.
Speaker 2And versus Discord. It's free unless you want to, I think maybe after a certain like massive threshold. But right now we're around I don't know, maybe we're like 60 plus people inside and so far it's been for free, and there's things that as a community, you can do together. We just learned the other day that you can boost, so in Discord your channel is called or your place is called a server and people can boost your server, meaning they can add perks by paying Discord. I mean, it's a very interesting platform because it seems to be very community driven and you can also do online events there. You can create events like real life events. As an example, a server he's doing like a coffee crawl next weekend to go into spes spesiality coffee houses and all that happens through discord. But at the end of the day, I think they're very similar. It's just one is maybe targeted more to community building, I think, and for me, slack has always had this stigma of corporate and for a job Okay.
Speaker 1Okay. It's really tricky with these kinds of things because you always have to get people onto a new platform. And I run a small group, it's like 30 women, but it's like, oh, I'd like I'm on some circle communities and but then everybody's like I don't want another thing, like I don't want to get it, and so, and now whatsapp has this community feature that I haven't used yet. But slack okay, sorry, and then I'll shut up about slack. It's, i't love Slack, I never have but after a certain point they want you to pay like seven bucks per user, per user.
Speaker 2Per user a month.
Speaker 1So I'm just like okay.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's more like for a business right For a corporation. I think yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1I think they're like just maybe pushing people off. That should be on Discord. Okay, enough about that, enough about that, but thank you. You're very welcome, but I do want to stay on the topic of tools, because, jen, you posted about your e-commerce odyssey. Yes, can you share a little bit about that? And then, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2So kind of like, as you're growing something, you're evolving into different aspects. So we had the website, we had YouTube and then we thought how cool would it be if we can create digital products as well, because there's a certain there's just how do you say this? There's kind of like a cap to the amount of detail we can go into on a blog post or on a YouTube video without actually losing the audience. As an example, we created a template it's called the CV template German style CV template where we educate also what the expectations from Germans are in terms of how a CV template looks like and certain other guidelines. And so it's like okay, cool, we write an ebook, we have the template and then we can sell it as a digital product. For those who want to have kind of like an all-in-one solution, we gave 99% of our content is free. So also, if you watch the YouTube videos, we go into so much details about like creating your CV and all these things, and through that process we're like super simple.
Speaker 2I mean I see people selling things online all the time, by people I mean actually people from the US. So that's first mistake. So when I wanted to sell, so we wanted to create this like sale funnel. It was super hard, first of all because I worked before at a e-commerce that sold books online. I knew that ebooks had a different vat tax rate than any other product, so that's like seven percent versus nineteen percent in germany. So, and second of all, one of the requirements if you want to sell something in germany is that you should show the final price, which sounds super simple, you know, like the price with the vat included, and all the tools that I tried did not do that all the tools that everyone recommended on youtube and blog posts.
Speaker 2Every none of them had that simple feature because it seems to be like a european thing and not a us thing and online a lot is focused, influenced by the us yeah, totally so. So we tried different tools. We tried. Thrive card is a very popular one. We tried. Send owl is another popular one. We tried different tools. We tried.
Speaker 3ThriveCard.
Speaker 2It's a very popular one. We tried SendOwl. It's another popular one. We tried all kinds of things. I looked at any other platform as well and nothing really had this criteria until Shopify popped up. But Shopify is like a big monster, right. It's like I never wanted to really set up a Shopify shop because it's like really a lot of work and it's quite expensive and it's quite expensive when and it's quite expensive, it's quite expensive.
Speaker 1so when you say expensive, do you mean the transaction fees or just the base price.
Speaker 2The base price plus transaction, what?
Speaker 1is it? I used to have a shopify store and I loved it, but I thought for like eight euros you could use, you could use their. They had this is okay, 10 years ago but that you could have an account and you could just use it as a feed and any other tool like you could. Ah, like just a checkout, you mean just use it as a feed in any other tool Like you could. Ah, like just the checkout.
Speaker 1You mean just pull the checkout, yeah you could pull it into your website, you could stream it. You could just put it in Amazon. You could do anything with it. Do they still have that?
Speaker 2I think they still do this checkout solution, but we have the whole shop now, the whole thing, yeah, and that runs at about.
Speaker 2Here are my numbers 150, 200 a month, really, yeah, for the whole blown thing. Oh, that is steep. Yeah, wow, it's been so far the only one that we have found at least I have found in my research. That ticks all the boxes where it has dynamic vat. It shows the vat at the end, it says and it sends the right invoice it has also plugins that you can add to deliver your digital goodie.
Speaker 2Yeah and it's. It's. Yeah, but it took, I think, a year of experimentation and every time migrating for prefer for platform, it's not the funnest thing oh god that.
Speaker 1Have you written a post about this? Have you done that? Because, like, I'm a squarespace designer and people want e-commerce. I'm like, if e-commerce is your main thing, don't use Squarespace, just go to Shopify. I mean, you can sell things and I sell things with my Squarespace and digital products and stuff, but If I was doing anything complicated, no, it just doesn't work.
Speaker 2Yeah, Shopify has to be the one. And what was your question? If I've done, I know I haven't written.
Speaker 1Yeah, because I would just send people. I'd be like go look at this post, read how.
Challenges of Running an Online Business
Speaker 2Jen did it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So that has been a journey. Finding the right tools, to be honest, to run an online business in Germany has been one of the challenges, for sure. And then you find German solutions. First of all, some German websites are still stuck in, like the 2000s, that is not very clear what they do. And then you look at the pricing and you're like, oh my God, it's like 400 euros a month just to just to.
Speaker 3I don't even know what they do, yeah, or they take kind of like your privileges away and they kind of like own the product, so it becomes like a third party thing, which is also super weird. So, yeah, definitely a whole different maze which when you start something, you don't realize what you're getting yourself into. Yeah, but that's part of the growth process, right?
Speaker 1It is. It is. I have a client right now and she's in berlin and they a lot of people. This happens a lot with multilingual sites like. The bottom line is for better, for worse, if you have an online business, you're gonna just be spending money on software. There's no getting around it there's no way getting around it.
Speaker 1There's no way getting around it and they wanna like. They're like, well, maybe we could just create a duplicate site and do one in English and one in German, and I'm like it's not going to work. You're going to ruin your SEO. You're going to save a hundred bucks a year, but you're going to call me because it's going to break. And or maybe they'll find some app on Fiverr. I'm like when that guy stops, is no longer interested in supporting that app, you're going to be stuck. You just got to pay the big company, yeah, the big money, that's it, okay. So on that note, is there any lessons learned or advice or things you would do differently if you had started all over again?
Speaker 2I can give my lessons and then you can give your lessons For me, for sure, because me still consuming content in English is the best, the easiest thing for me. However, I realized really quickly that, as we already mentioned, a lot of the content on how to do things is very US focused, and what seems to work marvelous and amazingly in the US, for example, it doesn't work or transmit to our or at Simple Germany. So the biggest lesson is actually stop listening to what others say you should do and just focus on experimenting and trying things out for yourself. I think it's still important to gain inspiration and kind of like ideas from what others are doing, but I'm falling into the trap of like I said, right, for digital products, all super easy, let me just do what this guy does, and then it doesn't work. So it's important to to yeah, to kind of like I don't know like shut the noise off and just focus on what you do and try to make the best that you can from it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1So you mean, like not from the language that you're publishing in, but just the style and the, the, the content itself, the content type oh, not necessarily.
Speaker 2I mean, I find a lot of. I found, I follow a lot of creators online, both on linkedin and also youtube, and, like I mentioned, like they, they say as a very clear example, like what I mentioned, right, like, if you want to sell an online product, just go to thrive card. Here are the pros oh right and then you buy the software without doing more research and just follow the advice until you realize.
Speaker 2Actually this advice is not applicable to me because I'm not in the us and I just paid a lifetime fee and now I cannot get it back and yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. So my biggest lesson has been to not listen to, to stop listening to the people how they do it and try to follow what they do Okay, and just kind of like carve the path for yourself, even though it's a lot harder.
Speaker 1So the methods yeah, I was at an event a while ago and it was like startup people in Munich and one guy he was from the States he's South Asian, but from the States and he has a startup here and he said you know, things can be a lot harder here, but he was. I would describe him also as a happy immigrant. He said, but the benefit is there's, in some ways, less competition. So it's, some of these fields are not as saturated as they are. So if you do the hard work of hacking through all these difficult things, you're like one of a handful rather than one of thousands Of millions.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's also a very fair perspective.
Speaker 1Yeah, so what would?
Speaker 3you say Yvonne Question. I mean, obviously we have a lot of conversations so we kind of often not always, but often agree on things. So I would definitely follow that. It's so easy to be be influenced by others, yourself and and so pretty much, even though we're already doing it even more so, like, focus on yourself and what you find your own voice and stick to that and, yeah, and enjoy the process and be grateful while for what you're doing it right, even though you have all the struggles. I mean, you have the luxury of having those struggles right. So that's kind of like something, I think, that is easily forgotten. You just look at what doesn't work, but, yeah, let's take a moment to also appreciate what is working and the impact you are having. I think that is something that we we have, but you lose it and then you need to bring it back and then you lose it and then you need to bring it back.
Speaker 3So that's definitely an ongoing process, just because, also, whenever you are embarking on an adventure on your own, there is no path right. You need to walk the path yourself, and that is sometimes not so easy.
Speaker 1All right, well said, I want to wrap this up so it doesn't get too long, but I do want to take a couple minutes to ask you guys we talked about a little bit in the green room, but so you're a queer couple and you're married, yes, and so did you guys meet in Germany? Yes, yes, okay, in Dusseldorf, to be specific, in Dusseldorf. So you guys met here and the getting married process when did Germany legalize same-sex marriage?
Speaker 3So we actually had a very interesting experience because it was legalized in 2017. And the usual is with law, Probably in any country.
Speaker 3it's just where we have a law that is passed, let's say, in the current government, it takes a few months to be actually implemented and take effect. So we decided to get married. Well, jen proposed to me, and then we decided to get married while it was still a same-sex marriage. It was not a marriage per se, it was not a thing in Germany, but civil union was. That has been. Civil union has been there, I don't even know, for maybe two decades nowadays I don't know.
Speaker 3So we actually got our appointment at the Standesamt, so at the registrar, to get a civil union, and after we've gotten that appointment the law of same-sex marriage was passed. But of course it would only take place, come into effect after we already had our civil union. So we actually got married three times within three months Because we had our civil union first, which was our official wedding like legal wedding.
Speaker 3Because at the end of the day and very careful now what I'm saying. Of course there are differences, but for the life that we imagined what we want to do, the difference wasn't that severe.
Speaker 3Then we had our celebratory ceremony because we had them separate First the legal standesamt, then the actual party, the wedding, and then a few months later we had another appointment at the registrar to change the civil union into an actual marriage. So that was kind of fun. But to be honest, just like anything and that is the lesson also that we have that we're trying to portray Germany has processes. They are slow sometimes, sometimes not. It highly depends because also they're federal states. So everything is a little bit different.
Speaker 3Everywhere. The process is more or less the same, but the way it goes about it and the speed is different and the process for us worked beautifully. I mean, you do the research, what documents do you have to provide? You gather all those documents, you have your first appointment, you make sure that that is all correct and then you just have the second appointment to get the thing done. As it is with so many things and, yeah, it worked beautifully, there was no hiccup whatsoever.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's fair. I mean, there are a lot of things where it's like there may be a lot of steps, but if you do them and you just have your work, your list, it'll do it. I just got to. After many, many years, I finally got my German driver's license and next, my next Baustelle, is my citizenship. But I'm like if I pass that theory test, I could do anything.
Speaker 2For me, out of all the bureaucracy things that I've had to go through through Germany from here getting my permanent residence to citizenship, driver's license, getting married driver's license was by far for me the hardest. Yeah, and maybe not because of the process but because of my teacher. He was very not kind so he had like a lot of stress to the situation. But the marriage and I don't know, I think everyone is different, right, like we hear a lot also from others that getting married has been so complicated, like what you mentioned. Right, you have to get all these weird papers. I mean, we also had to get paperwork from Guatemala.
Speaker 2Yeah, but it was no problem, we had to ask friends to go and do that, ship them over, translate them, do the whole shebangs, but it wasn't something that I could remember being super complicated or overwhelming, no like you said, it's a list, it's a process, it's steps.
Speaker 3They are very crystal clear. The thing when it becomes tricky is if your country does not provide one of those documents then, it becomes
Speaker 3tricky, but in our case, guatemala provided the documents that we needed and, like you said, I mean of course you need to be on top of it to make sure you get them and you translate them and that they have all the nitty gritty that it needs, because, for example, a birth certificate for the German government to accept, it needs to have also the city where you're born, and some, for example, in the US we know from other smoothlers it's not always the case and that is an issue.
Speaker 3So, again, it depends on what you're working with.
Speaker 2Also an additional, maybe, example from a queer couple that they want to get married and, like we mentioned, one of the requirements is that you need to have this certificate that you're single and for him to get the certificate that you're single, he needs to provide, I think, the information of the other person who they're going to marry and queer marriage is not, or same-sex marriage is not, recognized in the country that he's from. So by sending the paperwork of the future husband.
Speaker 2It's not going to work yeah, in this case, I think the easiest thing is to go to denmark and get married yeah, I know people that did that christiania. Yeah, because denmark has a lot less requirements and bureaucracy. So, like yvonne says right, it depends what you're working with, what you're starting with and the limitations also that you might have from your home country.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And that one is really case by case basis right. We were so lucky that we didn't have any complications. We know of another couple of friends, or they're a woman and she is German, but she was born in.
Speaker 3Kazakhstan and it was a really difficult time to get the birth certificate, for example.
Speaker 2For example, that took months, but like months and it was super complicated and that really was a very hard time for them and as a German person you know. So it highly depends on each your circumstance. Yeah circumstance yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Your next blog post. Well, jen and Yvonne, it's been a real pleasure talking to you guys and I'm sure we will see each other on the interwebs and hopefully in person one of these days.
Speaker 3Yes, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having us. Yes, I was just going to say that, yeah, great gracias thanks for listening.
Speaker 1You can find this episode and all other episodes of the Germany Expat Business Show at my website at wwwEleanorMeierhofercom slash podcast. That's wwwE-L-E-A-N-O-R-M-A-Y-R-H-O-F-E-Rcom slash podcast. See you next time.