I first got the idea from an entrepreneur named Greg who had moved his family to Geneva for a mid-life sabbatical.
As I started to explore the possibilities of moving to Europe, I realized that – at least among the entrepreneurs I know – it was more popular than I had at first realized. My friend and the founder of Gazelles, Verne Harnish, had moved from Virginia to Barcelona, Spain with his wife and four children.
Robert Barnard, another friend and the cofounder and CEO of DECODE, had left Toronto for London, England with his wife and young family.
I think a sabbatical abroad appeals to an entrepreneur’s sense of adventure and is often more feasible for a business owner than it would be for a big company manager who has to stay on the career ladder out of fear of being passed over for a promotion or wait years for an overseas assignment that might never come.
Inspired by our friends, my wife and I moved our young family (we have two boys age four and six) to a town called Aix-en-Provence in France, which I picked after exhaustive research: I googled “the sunniest place in France.” The extent of our family’s understanding of the language was a rusty old twelfth grade French credit I had taken twenty years before. We recently celebrated our first year over here, so I thought I’d share a few reflections in case you’re planning a similar adventure:
1. Send them to camp
Most entrepreneurs on sabbatical plan their arrival around the beginning of the school year, but I’d recommend moving in mid-summer to give your kids a few weeks of summer camp. Most developed countries have a network of camps (in France they call them “Stage”) where working parents can drop their kids off for the day. For the type A crowd, there are “language camps” that offer kids a fun way to learn a new language.
We decided to enroll our kids in a half-day sports camp to minimize the shock they would soon experience in full-day French school. The first few days of summer camp were full of tears, as our kids felt alone in a country where they neither spoke the language nor had any friends. But at camp they knew they were only ever a couple of hours away from seeing their parents again and they soon acclimatized. I think getting the tears out of the way in the summer made the first few weeks of the school year much easier.
DECODE’s Robert Barnard took a different approach to integrating his kids into a new country: “We took a one-month trip to London a year before we moved. I worked and the kids did some camps and museums, etc. Then when we said we were going to do London for the year, it was not a big deal.”
2. Picking a school
Picking a school for your kids can be a tough call. Places like London, Geneva, Aix-en-Provence and Barcelona are popular among North American entrepreneurs because they have international schools that follow the Baccalaureate program, which offers a curriculum close to what North American kids are used to. Putting your kids in an international school also creates an instant network of (mostly) English-speaking parents eager to make friends.
My wife and I opted for a different route and put our kids in a local French school so we could integrate into life here a little faster. We’re happy with our choice because it has allowed our kids to be immersed in French and enabled us to meet local French parents.
In your case, I would make the call based on how long you expect to live abroad: if your horizon is one year or less, an international school will be less disruptive for your kids (although more expensive). If your time horizon is longer, I think the local school route will allow you to integrate faster.
Robert Barnard, who is in the UK at least in part to set up an international office for his company, has another good suggestion: “Pick the school first, then the house. Commuting with kids to school is tougher than commuting on your own to work.”
3.
Wheels
When we first arrived, I had a big Citroen Berlingo (think French Magic Wagon) and regretted every minute of our ten-day rental. Trying to park that tank in a country where a Mini is a midsized car was an exercise in frustration. French roads and parking lots are designed for small cars, so my advice – especially if you’re planning to live virtually anywhere outside of North America – is to buy a car a lot smaller than what you’re used to. I opted for a Diesel Audi A3. It goes 1,100 kilometers on one tank of fuel (in Europe fuel costs about fifty percent more than it does in North America) and fits down the cobblestone lanes of even the oldest French villages.
I also bought a 50 cc scooter and that has been a godsend. If you live in a European city, circulation can be atrocious. A scooter allows you to maneuver around most traffic jams and park on any street corner or sidewalk. Hands down, my scooter has been the best 900 Euros I’ve spent so far.
The other option is to pick a city where you can live car-free. “The advantage of living in a city like Barcelona is that we didn’t need a car,” says Gazelle’s Verne Harnish. “In fact, it was part of our strategy to jettison our ‘addiction to the automobile’ that we have in North America.” (For the record, Verne also bought a scooter, much to his wife’s chagrin!)
4. Unplug
Whether you plan to work on your sabbatical or completely unwind, be prepared to be without a reliable connection to the Internet for the first month or so of your time abroad. When we first arrived, it took about a month to get an Internet connection installed in our house. What made Internet matters worse was that there are very few Wi-Fi zones in the south of France. One of the only reliable Internet connections was at a local McDonald’s franchise, so instead of sipping Rosé in a café, I ended up loitering at the golden arches daily just to download email.
5. To ship or not to ship
Our cost of living here is about what we would be paying in Toronto, but there were a couple of one-time expenses that we’ll never get back. One was the $15,000 we spent to have the contents of our house in Toronto shipped here.
We struggled with the decision to ship our things or not. Personally, I could care less about furniture except for one precious item: our Tempur-Pedic mattress. But there were also things like the kids’ bicycles and a few toys that we knew we would miss if we didn’t ship our stuff.
As with a lot of things, my advice would be to let the length of your stay drive your decision making. If you plan to stay for more than two years, I think shipping your stuff will make you feel more at home and will probably be less expensive when compared to buying everything – or paying the premium for a furnished house. If you’re staying for less than two years, it probably makes financial sense to rent a furnished home or make friends with the local IKEA.
One other important nuance about renting a house: in France – and I’m not sure what it is like in other parts of Europe – you can rent a house furnished or unfurnished and there is a big difference from a legal perspective. In a furnished house lease, most of the rights go to the landlord, so they can cut short your stay if they want their house back. In an unfurnished house lease, the rights go to the tenant and the landlord cannot cancel the lease prematurely, yet you have the opportunity to cancel it within 60 days of the anniversary of each year of your lease.
6. Play time zone arbitrage
“I love being in the European time zone,” says Gazelle’s Verne Harnish, “First, I’m not receiving emails from North America until mid-afternoon, so I have all this uninterrupted time during the morning and early afternoon – great for relaxing, working on interesting projects, or playing tennis. In turn, it’s so much easier communicating with India, the Middle East, China, and even Australia, being six time zones closer. So I can be on with the East in the morning if I like, enjoy a long afternoon lunch with my Spanish friends and then hop on with the West in the afternoon and be finished by the time the children get home from school. In essence, the epicenter of the global economy has shifted east and being in Europe puts me six time zones closer to the action – one of the main reasons I’m excited we’re staying in Europe.”
Recently I got a note from an Italian-American entrepreneur who, at age 44, is considering taking his family to live in Italy for a year. I told him that it was a “game changer,” which is the best way I can describe the decision. I think I now come at business problems with a broader perspective; but the real dividends have been on the home front, where our sabbatical has brought us closer as a family and given us some amazing memories and a larger world view than we had before we left. Bon Courage!
PS. I’m coming over to the U.S. for a couple of days in January and have decided to host a reader workshop. Details here.
