Plan Ahead…with Patience!

You know the old joke about “Plan Ahead,” where the artist didn’t calculate the space correctly, so the “D” of “Ahead” falls off or is on the second line? I’ll bet that every time you hear this phrase, you think of that image. I know I do.

Well, planning ahead is some of the best advice I can give you. Very often, we get a potential client who tells us that they aren’t ready yet to meet with us because their move to France will be sometime in the future.

When in the future? Three months from now or three years from now?

Either way, setting up a consultation for either a three-month plan or a three-year plan should be done as soon as possible. You’d be surprised how often we can offer advice that turns three years into three months! There is no substitute for planning ahead. We can help you carve the path and bring the light at the end of the tunnel into view much sooner…as long as you let us.

We’re so inundated with requests from Americans wanting a better life in France right now that both Patty Sadauskas and I are booked daily for consultations all the way through June and now into July. People who didn’t plan ahead thinking they could get on the roster sooner are now either waiting patiently for their appointment with us, or are going ahead of us and meeting with some of our resources to move their project along faster…that is if they can get the appointments with them, too—as they are just as inundated as we are!

We understand that it’s frustrating. You want out of the U.S. or you want to get the show on the road and you can’t really do it without good professional advice…or at least you SHOULDN’T do it without that professional advice. (Our advice is to always get professional help!) So, you might get desperate, but trust me—it pays to wait.

This topic came to my attention because recently I received a complaint from a reader about one of our resources. He started out by writing, “We have not registered for a consultation with you yet, but have attended (and recommended to friends) your webinars for a couple of years as we firm up our plans to retire there.”

(Thanks for the compliment. So glad the free information we provide is appreciated.)

“We are very happy with your webinars, and with Brian Dunhill and Fab’s services. We are looking for the right time to request a consultation with you, possibly meeting with you in Nice the next time we come to France.”

(So, they didn’t think they should schedule the consultation with us quite yet, and preferred to do it in person rather than on Zoom.)

“We needed to get a consultation with a tax professional to discuss how to manage investments and reviewed a list of folks in one of your presentations.”

(Here it comes…the misplaced expectations.)

“We sent him a list of questions so he would understand what we were looking for so we could focus on answers in the consultation to best use the fee. During the meeting the main thing we found out was that he couldn’t help us currently and would charge us XXX euros to do our taxes annually once we were in France.”

“I hope this is helpful,” he wrote me. “I know that everyone else we have dealt with through your webinars and recommendations have all been helpful and we appreciate what you are doing. We have recommended your webinars to several people who later thanked us for the referral.”

(Again, thanks for the compliment. So glad the free information we provide is appreciated.)

He wasn’t happy because he felt he had wasted his time and money. What was his big mistake?

Not coming to us first. If he had just done that, we would have directed him to the professionals that made the most sense for his personal situation. And we would have likely been able to answer most of his questions, plus provide him with the services he was looking for, that this particular professional couldn’t provide him. In his quest to save himself a bit of money, by taking advantage of our free advice and making use of our valuable resources that we openly provide, he wasn’t happy and then complained to us, making it our fault for that disappointment.

You see my dilemma? My response to him was straightforward: “But your mistake was not speaking with us first,” I wrote him. “Glad you like them, but in all honesty, the point is to realize that we’re your top level advisors and the rest come later, once we know what works for you best.”

On a recent YouTube video, “Realize Your Dream of Living in France” with Brian Dunhill and Adrian Leeds, one viewer commented, “I have tuned in to a lot of Adrian Leeds webinars and I have to say this one was the least helpful. A lot of the advice given was not placed in context and seemed haphazard. I guess the point is that they want you to contact them for further guidance but the basic information that they provided was not very clear.”

I rewatched the webinar. It was a casual Q&A, from both Brian Dunhill and the participants. It wasn’t designed to provide a 101 on How to Move to France, but again this has to do with the viewer’s expectations. Here is a viewer of our webinars, webinars provided free of charge live and on YouTube, that are filled with free information to help people realize their dream of living in France, only to be told it just wasn’t good enough!

You see my dilemma?

Here’s the best advice I can give you:

• Plan ahead and get an appointment with us as soon as you can, before reaching out to our recommended resources, regardless of how much in the future you think your move to France will come to pass. With years of experience and having helped thousands of people, we will know who and what will suit your needs best saving you time and money.

• Take in as much free advice is out there from REPUTABLE sources, but understand that it’s FREE and you should have no expectation of it being right for you. Be happy with whatever you can get that is useful, and be careful that it fits your specific needs.

• Exchange the word “expectations” for “hopes” and you will never be disappointed. I find this to be the biggest challenge and the toughest thing for us as consultants to manage. Take the word out of your vocabulary and it will change your perspective and your life.

• Take professional advice. People who are educated in a particular realm and experienced are certain to provide better insight than someone who has simply experienced something for the first time. Whatever it costs is usually quite worth it.

• Learn as much as you can about French cultural differences. You’re about to enter a different world and if you come with your U.S. default mode filled with “expectations” you will surely be disappointed. You can’t expect France to work in the same way the U.S. does and patience is what you need most. Read Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, And Make Them Love You, by Janet Hulstrand to give you a good start!

In order to serve more clients, we’ve now set our consultations to 1.5 hours and now we’re doubling up two days a week so that we can do 50% more consultations and move people along faster. If you want to get on the schedule, do it as soon as you can and avoid the frustration! Visit this page on our website to make that happen.

A la prochaine…