Jacob Willemsen is the Founder and President of TABS Inc., a consultancy dedicated to assisting and guiding companies in starting and expanding their businesses into the US market. With a background in the Netherlands, Jacob brings over 25 years of experience to his role, helping a diverse range of European clients navigate the complexities of the American business landscape. His expertise spans various industries, including technology, manufacturing, and food and agri-tech.
Entering the US market is a significant step for European companies. What does it take to make this transition smooth and successful?
Jacob Willemsen, a seasoned expert in transatlantic business operations, sheds light on this process, emphasizing the importance of thorough preparation and local adaptation. He notes that while many European business strategies are effective locally, they often need to be adjusted to align with US regulations and cultural expectations. Understanding and adapting to these differences is crucial for any business aiming to succeed in the American marketplace.
In this episode of America Open for Business, host Cameron Heffernan talks with Jacob Willemsen, Founder and President of TABS Inc., about mastering US market expansion. Their discussion highlights the challenges of understanding US regulations, the necessity of cultural adaptation, and effective strategies for establishing a robust business presence in the US.
Related Episode(s):
Quotable Moments:
Action Steps:
This episode is brought to you by Your B2B Marketing.
Are you a mid-market B2B company facing challenges articulating your value proposition to customers? Without a well-defined strategy, allocating marketing funds may not yield optimal results.
Your B2B Marketing, a team of experts specializing in devising and implementing plans, helps entrepreneurs and leaders understand what makes them invaluable to customers and puts that front and center in their messaging for scalable growth.
Discover how strategic marketing and communication approaches can drive your expansion by visiting www.yourb2bmarketing.co or contacting us at info@yourb2bmarketing.co.
Narrator: 0:03
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets.
Cameron: 0:14
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of America Open for Business. I am your host, Cameron Heffernan, from your B2B Marketing, and we are the sponsor of this program. We’re a truly global marketing agency and we help companies become more visible as they look to enter into and grow in the US market. Some past guests we’ve had on the show have included Brian Smith of the multi-billion dollar, the founder of the multi-billion dollar UGG brand from Australia. Ben Tija, the owner and CEO of Earthly Wellness, a $20 million plus direct-to-consumer natural healthcare and wellness company. And Jean-Arthur Regerbeau, who is the ambassador of Belgium to the United States of America. And today I’m very excited to welcome to the program Jacob Willemsen, who is the founder and president of Tabs is a firm that provides assistance and guidance to companies that need that when they start and expand business into the US. Jacob, welcome to America Open for Business.
Jacob: 1:10
Thanks for having me
Cameron: 1:20
All right, fantastic. I’m going to jump in with a question I usually start the show with Tell us about Tabs and how do you help companies?
Jacob: 1:29
Well, we try to make sure that companies can focus on growing their business in the US, setting up their business in the US by alleviating them from the back office, whether that is setting up the entity to begin with and getting tax numbers and opening bank accounts, merchant accounts, or helping them with HR, payroll matters, healthcare, bookkeeping and tax filing. And then, last but not least, explaining these companies that we have a system with a federal government but also 50 state governments, and in every state you may need to register if you want to do business there. So it’s assisting but also advising them.
Cameron: 2:22
Okay, so you’re dealing with a lot of overseas headquartered companies, I’m going to guess primarily in Europe, is that right?
Jacob: 2:29
Yeah, I would say my background is Dutch. Still, I would say, 50% of our client base we have about 600 active clients is still Dutch, but we are growing in countries like UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, so it’s now pretty much all over Europe. And yes, we have a couple of Asian companies. We don’t actively pursue them, but we can definitely assist them if need be.
Cameron: 3:06
And your team is based both here in the US as well as in Europe.
Jacob: 3:10
Yeah, we have about 45 staff split over a New York office, a Houston office and in the Netherlands in Eindhoven.
Cameron: 3:21
Okay, so you’re probably dealing with a lot of companies that have some unknowns they’re looking at growing in the US or entering for the first time and your help with both the assistance, the advisory Are they coming to you with? Hey, we don’t even know where to start. Is that a common thing that you hear when you guys work with clients?
Jacob: 3:40
Oh, absolutely.
Jacob: 3:41
They may do some Google searches and they’ll find information that was written for US entities and before you know you may have started an LLC, a disregarded LLC for tax purposes, which can be very dangerous for a European company because that pulls the US entity or, even worse, the US individualS individual into the US for tax purposes.
Jacob: 4:04
So there’s a lot of work to be done prior to actually starting the entity. It’s at least as important to prepare well and also to find out what’s the purpose of the entity. Are we going to produce in the US or perhaps assemble? Going to produce in the US or perhaps assemble, or is it solely a sales and marketing office, and will production still take place by the European entity? Or even we see it quite a bit in the machine and machine building industry that the European entity will still be the contracting partner, that it’s only a sales and marketing office in the US with payroll that sends an invoice to Europe, but that the European entity is actually still doing the transaction, which comes with also a couple of tax matters that you need to take into account then.
Cameron: 5:02
Yeah, so you also advise them on things like by virtue of a US production base, they may qualify for certain US tax incentives. That would be something that you would help them with.
Jacob: 5:15
Yes, european companies are quick to find out that the tax incentives do exist, but are typically available to companies that also want to do payroll in the US and have their IP developed in the US. So, unfortunately, in many cases I need to tell them that they may not qualify, but also get this value right To make sure that they realize what is available, what is not available and what’s the optimal way of entering the US for them.
Cameron: 5:56
Right, okay. So when you first engage with the ownership or the executive team of a company, what big picture advice do you share with them, or best practices from working with clients as you’re initially engaging and looking at how they want to structure things?
Jacob: 6:15
Well, first thing for for many companies is to assess whether they they may actually be ready for the US. It’s a country where, typically, the legal fees and the ongoing fees are pretty high. So what we want to make sure is that the company has enough funding to last for at least two years, because if you don’t want to give it that amount of time, you might as well try to do it remotely, which is also okay, yeah, but you need to have the funds available. We always say go big or stay home. You need to have the funds available to. Um, yeah, run also into a couple of mismatches in terms of hiring. Uh, it’s, it’s quite often that, uh, the first couple of hires may not be the the, the match that you were looking for yeah, I think when, because we work with companies.
Cameron: 7:24
We provide the marketing services, the content, but we’ll. We work with companies. We provide the marketing services, the content, but we’ll often work with companies that have, maybe, a sales and distribution office here. The bulk of the work is done back in Europe, whether it’s manufacturing, r&d, whatever the facilities are. I think in those cases it’s an American team that we’re working with or as part of. Maybe they just don’t have the marketing piece. They’ve done a good job of already localizing some of the leadership and some of the sales and distribution, but we provide that marketing piece. What advice might you have for companies that are coming over here and looking at? We want to have a leadership, maybe a sales team, but there’s certain elements that we’re just not going to bring over.
Jacob: 8:07
Yep, we’ve done a research under about 200 plus European companies.
Jacob: 8:16
You need to have boots on the ground.
Jacob: 8:18
You cannot do this from Europe, so you need to build a team, and then the consistency of the team is quite important.
Jacob: 8:25
You need to have people who hopefully founders or expats who want to go to the us and basically be the eyes and ears, but also the the assistance for the us team, because I think the US sales and marketing team cannot be replaced by Europeans.
Jacob: 8:47
It is definitely a talent for US personnel that cannot just be replaced by European, but it needs to be managed well by perhaps having an MD, a European MD, and what we typically advise is let the Americans go to Europe and get in touch with the DNA of the company for a couple of weeks, not just to feel what the company is about and get to know the people, feel what the company is about and get to know the people but also for those people to get to know the Americans, because in general, the sales and marketing people make quite a bit more in the US than what the sales and marketing team makes in Europe, and that can actually lead to a little bit of frustration and you need to get a good feeling, a comfortable feeling between those two teams that they’re on the same page.
Cameron: 9:55
Interesting. I mean because in this country, I should say in Europe, it’s possible for someone to go from, say, France to Belgium or Netherlands to Germany. It’s all part of the common market, part of the EU. Maybe they have those language skills or worked in that country. Here, a European coming over there is the thought of well, I speak the language, it’s my second or third language, I’ll be able to get by. But a lot of the experience, the background, the network, the know-how, that isn’t there. And you know, for my clients I’ve seen that as a misstep that can come at the beginning, where we’ll just kind of take what we did, you know, do a translation, kind of copy-paste it. We’ll take the case studies we have from Europe, adapt them for here, and it usually doesn’t work.
Jacob: 10:41
I couldn’t agree more. It’s really something that you cannot underestimate. The nuances are super important. I remember in my that’s over 25 years ago, but in my first years in the US, I still remember that I went to the West Coast and the corporate gifts that I took were cufflinks and a tie. Yeah well, it’s very, very simple stuff. But, it shows the recipient that you have no clue what you’re doing, no idea that the West Coast is different than the East Coast.
Cameron: 11:24
That’s funny. When your customers come to you, what’s usually driving them and what is their sense of urgency? Is it we need to get something up and running in the US quickly? Is a customer driving them to have a presence there, or is there a pattern to it?
Jacob: 11:40
Yeah, we have a diverse group of clients. So one group is the manufacturers, the builders that are getting orders from the US. That is a little bit different, because that group thinks that by just starting a US entity they can already take a lot of hurdles away. They had some success already doing it remotely, what we call remotely from Europe. They especially need to be well made aware of the fact that just by starting a US entity, yes, you take a couple of hurdles away, but that’s not the total answer. And then we have a group SaaS companies in many cases, or funded by private equity, can be other tech business and the investor basically tells them that if they want to raise those funds, if the investor comes in, comes on board, the idea is that this money will be used to scale in the US.
Cameron: 13:08
So it’s contingent, often contingent funding on that.
Jacob: 13:10
Yeah, yeah, and of course that means that the product may still need to get customized for the US. You have no idea whether there would actually be traction for the US, that you have no idea whether there would actually be traction for the US. We’ve seen, especially in the fintech, that in some cases and I may generalize a little bit, but fintech in general is further ahead in Europe than in the US. I agree, the banking industry and these technologies were way too early for the US, but by the time that the money ran out the technology was way, way far ahead for US consumers to adapt, yeah, to adopt.
Cameron: 14:01
Yeah, yeah. When I think of sectors where Europe is just unquestionably, you know, head and shoulders ahead of where we are, I think of banking and FinTech. Think of sustainable you know sustainable solutions in general packaging, renewables but when I my first time in Europe I was I couldn’t believe how far ahead just the consumer banking system was and, like you know, there are people in this country that still write checks back and forth and send them to each other. Cut you a check and um, that doesn’t really exist in europe no, I had.
Jacob: 14:36
A funny story was a client who did business with home depot and home dep in its portal it showed that the bills had been paid and the client said, well, it’s not in our bank account, I haven’t seen. It Turned out that they had received an envelope in the Netherlands with a check and the admin over there thought that it was a proof of payment and filed it. So it had a proof of payment, um, and filed it. So it had a couple of nice little punch holes, uh, and I said no, this is your million dollar check. You wow, and they were. They were absolutely surprised. But, um, yeah, that’s the way that that it still works, whether you um work with Walmart, uh, or with, uh, a local, a local, uh, retailer.
Cameron: 15:29
And they’re just, they’re little, subtle differences that are enough to disrupt the normal flow of what you do, cause it’s, it’s out of the ordinary, um, it’s, it’s not expected.
Jacob: 15:39
But some you know, with some calibration, that those, those can be overcome quite, quite readily oh, absolutely, and and uh, I’m jealous of the company that can really afford to, um, say, well, that’s not the way we do business, uh, we’re not going to accept checks, and I hear that quite often and I’m like, well, that’s, that’s quite a luxury that you think you can permit yeah so.
Cameron: 16:05
So on this show I’ll often quote from books and business books that I read and inject them into the conversation. And there’s a book not new anymore. It’s a woman who is big on positioning. April Dunford is her name and the main expertise was on SaaS products technology, but it really applies to any kind of business, and there’s a whole section in her book about we work a lot of companies in the mid-market space let’s say, six to 60 million in revenue, something like that and for companies of that size, the option that’s often overlooked is just do nothing, just keep doing what we’re already doing, and so I want to ask you if, if to finish this statement without tabs, our clients would blank.
Jacob: 16:52
Well, in the example that you just referred to, I would say our client would become taxable with their European entity in the US, because this last product is taxable in the US. Whether you’re a foreign entity or a US entity. You’re supposed to collect sales tax on those transactions if you have economic or physical nexus and a lot of companies don’t understand that. So that’s a very specific example, but in general, I think our clients what we try to do for our clients is make sure that they can completely focus their resources on building their business in the US and not learning how it’s different in admin world in the US, because it could be on registrations, on how to file your tax, what kind of taxes there are, and in the US what we’ve noticed is that the tax authorities are low on cash so they want to show by example. They’ll use the stick right and in many European countries the tax authorities are not as bullying because there are much more resources available and they’ll help you do your business.
Jacob: 18:29
If you wouldn’t file your quarterly payroll tax in many states, you would only hear about it a year later. I can tell you our team in the Netherlands if I would file my payroll tax late, I would hear it within four days and I can still correct the matters. That kind of stuff. It’s expensive to learn those kinds of things in the US and I feel that, and that’s not because we provide that service, but I feel that companies would be much better off focusing on building their brand, building their business, sales and marketing, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel on the admin side. Right.
Cameron: 19:16
I think we give a similar message too from the concept of a marketing agency you can hand us the keys to your marketing and your content, car We’ll drive that for you. You focus on customer acquisition, technology, growth and quality. We’ll handle the marketing. You guys would be the same kind of a message. Back office admin, the support the things you really don’t want to focus on, if their focus is on growth for acquisition or whatever it may be.
Jacob: 19:45
Yeah, no, it’s distraction for those companies.
Cameron: 19:50
Not the core function, Yep. Another challenge here in this country is, like you said, I mean I’m an American citizen and business person, I’ve been here almost. This country is like you said. I mean I’m an American citizen and business person, I’ve been here almost my whole life and I still find it frigging, confusing all the layers. And you’ve got local, state, federal level workers’ comp. The statutory representation is just befuddling. How much of your efforts, from your own thought, leadership and content, is based on that kind of educating and informing people who don’t understand where to start?
Jacob: 20:22
Yeah, I agree, let’s call sales tax. I mean, it’s hard for European companies to understand that there are more than 11,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the US, that there are more than 11 000 sales tax jurisdictions in the us. Um, if you uh, yeah, if you work in in many european countries, uh, sales tax or the vat can be credited against the vat that you paid. Um, so it’s a completely different system. And, yeah, companies really shouldn’t try to learn that. They should focus on building their business and not on these kinds of subtleties. So it is. Why is it that in Ohio, you cannot choose your own workers? Company Right, very, very little things that may have big consequences.
Cameron: 21:26
Yeah, I remember when I had moved back from Europe and I was running the US location of a Belgian based marketing agency and I was talking with the cfo when one time during the setup, I wish you work with you guys instead, but I was talking with him and he said to me um, okay, well, workers compensation, uh, workers compensation, is that a charge we can charge back to the employees?
Jacob: 21:53
Yeah, it’s sometimes interesting to see the thought process and, especially since we also have experience in Europe, we can assist those companies with it. We understand why they’re asking it and how to explain. We know how the VAT works, so we also know why companies think a certain way, and that’s already, I think, the first advantage for us.
Cameron: 22:28
Yeah, it’s so much easier, for obviously just the language is one part of it, but just know their background, where they came from, what their expectations are. Somebody from Florida setting up a company in California or Washington State would have challenges here too, and we’ve got obviously 50 different laws and compliance. Alcohol regulations are different. That’s one big challenge I’ve experienced with my clients coming over whether it’s South America or Europe, the federal system and how they all go together. Is there one law or compliance you need to comply with? No, there’s maybe 50. We need to understand how those affect. That’s just on the marketing side. California in particular is moving closer to the European model. The California restrictions are basically like gdpr and I think as the state of california goes, the country is eventually going to follow and we’ll be closer to what’s happening in europe.
Jacob: 23:23
from some of those you know protections and privacy uh, constructs yeah well, and it’s on so many different levels and whether it’s uh ada compliance um. Unfortunately, we see a lot of european companies uh e-commerce companies um active in the us that that um have to deal with with uh ambulance chase uh attorneys, that that uh file ADA lawsuits, whether it’s the content in California, there are certain products that if they are in the packaging or in the product, you need to have that on the label, those kinds of things. It’s very frustrating for the company to already be on a budget and then get these, um those kinds of things. I mean, it’s very frustrating for the company to uh already be on a budget and then get these kinds of unexpected uh expenses yep, and it not even applies to your digital outreach.
Cameron: 24:25
There’s certain accessibility elements you have to have included into your, your digital, your website and other other um elements, and you need to know all that stuff. Um, I I’m going to highlight a success that we talked about before the show started, that you guys work with a client called Data Snipper and they had raised $100 million for the growth and expansion that allowed them to be valued at the billion-dollar level. Tell us about how you work with them and what your services enabled them to do work with them and what your services enabled them to do.
Jacob: 24:56
Yeah, we helped them with the incorporation, setting up the payroll and doing the corporate governance for them. They grew their team in the US very fast, which also meant that they phased us out in terms of payroll and HR quite fast. But that’s the advantage of TAPs, right, you don’t necessarily have to take all the services from us, but then at least in terms of governance corporate governance or bookkeeping or assistance with the tax filing we still help them in order to grow with both actions, but also advice, right? Hey, if you are going to set up payroll in so many different states, then maybe it’s easier to go to a PEO and advise about setting up 401k plans or benefits. So we help this company also with those kinds of matters. And then it’s fun to see that they were very successful in raising additional funds. Yes, you may have to give up some of the services that you provided to them because of their growth, but that’s the business that we’re in.
Cameron: 26:25
Right. So if your guy’s doing your job well, eventually you make yourselves obsolete because the company has outgrown you, right?
Jacob: 26:31
Yeah, and unfortunately for us we see that the CFO or the US ops manager will move to a new company and from there they contact us again and say, hey, it was nice working with you, can you help me again? In that way it’s really a flow, I would say, for certain CFOs. We may have helped them already setting up five or six different clients, jed.
Cameron: 26:58
Macosko Enoche Fee 007.6. Yeah, and these particular sectors that you guys are stronger in or have more of a client base in than others.
Jacob: 27:06
Jan Vervaeke 007.6. Yeah, SaaS, SAP, quite a bit of platforms, so FinTech also still quite a bit. And then, because of our client base in Spain, we assist a lot of companies from Spain with FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, and the registrations of facilities and things like that. From, for instance, the Netherlands, we see quite a bit of food and agri technology A company not too long ago that we onboard at Perfotech. They measure the ripeness of fruits and vegetables before they get packaged and, based on the journey that they still have to make to the supermarket, they will add extra perforation so it ripens faster or not. I mean super interesting technology. So quite a bit of packaging technology. But also in the dairy industry, packaging technology, but also in the dairy industry, the sensors that they use on dairy and pigs.
Cameron: 28:26
Wow, that’s fascinating. So they’re saving money by integrating these different packaging changes to keep fruit shelf stable longer.
Jacob: 28:34
Yep, wow, wow it could be all over the place. I mean, we’ve seen it all. We’ve seen dog biscuit manufacturers, but also homeland security supply or vendors, high tech security products.
Cameron: 28:58
Are you guys providing actual employer of record services for clients or no?
Jacob: 29:03
Yeah, we do co-employment. So for those clients who don’t yet have a team that’s big enough to get, for instance, healthcare for their employees, while the first employee is typically a more senior employee, right, they have demands, they demand healthcare, and then we can offer a solution that we take those people on our payroll. Of course it is quite sensitive because you don’t want to do that for just a couple of weeks. That’s not beneficial to us, that’s not beneficial to the employee, because if they sign up for healthcare, they want to do it for a whole year, right. Otherwise you build up your deductions or deductibility, and by the time that you can start charging the insurance company, you may need to change insurance companies. So that’s not very helpful, but we offer it for, I would say, at the moment, a handful of companies is there a head count at which under which it doesn’t make sense?
Cameron: 30:17
I mean, it’s got to be a sweet spot for that service, because if you have too many employees you just set up your own entity, right, but you have a rough guideline for when the employer record services make sense for a company. Or is it just more case by case?
Jacob: 30:32
First, it makes sense, of course, if you offer healthcare, right, if you don’t offer healthcare, in many cases you can just set up a very basic payroll. And, of course, healthcare you can only set up if 50% or more, with a minimum of two people, participate of the eligible staff. So for us, typically, if it’s over five and two people can participate in a health care plan, we advise them to set up their own health care plan Because, yeah, I mean we have a fiduciary role as well and otherwise they’ll pay us a management fee role as well, and otherwise they’ll pay us a management fee. And then we’re going to start looking at, of course, if these are high earners, the management fee relatively is high, so they might as well spend the money on running their own payroll and we can do that for them too.
Jacob: 31:34
The other thing is, of course, it’s difficult for those companies who have a sales and marketing team with regional reps. If you have 10 people all over the US in different states, it may be quite hard to get a health care plan that’s interesting for all 10. So in those cases you can also go to a PEO, professional employer organization or TAPS can help you with it. We, in that way we give the client a fair overview of their options. Um, do it yourself and and? Uh, arrange for a pro healthcare program. Go to a peo professional employer organization, uh, or um, put your people on taps payroll and and we’ll manage it for you, and then the.
Jacob: 32:24
The last option that we see coming in more and more is a global employer that basically take over the payroll for for clients globally. However, with that we are very reluctant, because these kinds of companies often don’t, or they forget to tell the client that even though you may have your employees on their payroll, it still means that you’re tax wise and doing business in those states. They make it appear as if that solves all your problems and you can then do business in the US without having a tax presence in the US, and nothing could be further from the truth. Very dangerous. You actually then may create exposure with your European entity in the US and in that European entity. That’s where you have your assets, that’s where that’s the value of the company. So we always tell them set up a US entity regardless, ring fence those risks, but don’t start doing global payroll with your European entity in the US.
Cameron: 33:37
So this gets very complex very quickly For your team. Do they need to have European and US experience or more tax finance experience? What’s the best fit to be a member of TABS?
Jacob: 33:51
We have five teams the business development team they also do client relations but then a governance team registrations in difference in several states, making sure that the shareholder meetings are being held, those kinds of things, board resolutions to appoint officers. Then we have a finance team. They help with bookkeeping, the sales tax administration and filing. We have a finance team. They help with bookkeeping, the sales tax administration and filing. We have an HR and payroll team helping with these kinds of matters, but also the payroll for companies If you send over an expat, how to make sure that that expat gets payrolled correctly, because they may want to keep paying their Social Security and Medicare in Europe.
Jacob: 34:46
And then, last but not least, an admin team. And the admin team will not only be able to open your mail and scan your mail, so you have 24-7 access, but they pick up the phone and they do check handling right. They they literally, like we said before, they actually go to the bank and deposit your checks, and that’s very handy, especially during times like COVID. We noticed that clients were screaming for cash flow and that helped in a way with the leapfrog, for the US made a couple of steps and made it now possible to remotely deposit your check because you couldn’t go to the bank, right? Yeah, it’s still kind of laughable, uh yeah, from european perspective. Because 100.
Cameron: 35:51
It’s like this, this huge technological advance. I remember when we were we were setting up my entity, the llc, for my company in DC. My business partner came over from Europe. She was in Belgium. Our corporate bank was Wells Fargo. It’s a huge American bank, but it’s very American. They didn’t have branches over there. She had to physically come in and we had to be there together to sign paperwork. We couldn’t do it remotely.
Jacob: 36:26
If I’d done it again, I would have gone Citib or some some bigger you know uh, global bank. But I’m like, what year are we in? It’s crazy, no, it’s uh. It’s very interesting. We have with wells fargo. We had a fiduciary role for a client and we needed to um wire money every month to the same account in Europe, almost the same amount. And you would think that at a certain point you are in a green lane, right, they’ve done the know. Your customer checks, they know where the money came from, where it’s going, but every month we had to show up in person and go through the same dozen questions. But hey, can you blame the banks if they get penalized by billions for not knowing their customer and unknowingly helping with money laundering?
Cameron: 37:15
Money laundering.
Jacob: 37:17
Yeah, I would become more reluctant as well to help a small European company where I actually don’t know where they made the money.
Cameron: 37:27
Right, yeah, good point.
Jacob: 37:30
So it’s really a bit also the other way around. There’s a bank that we partner with in events and we probably have about 200 clients together. For me to open a bank account with that bank in the Netherlands took me 18 months no kidding, yeah. So I think for Dutch companies it’s very hard to understand why it’s so hard to set up a bank account in the US. But the other way around is no different.
Cameron: 38:21
Right, right. Well, I’m going to ask you one last question, but before that I’m going to say a big thank you to you. Jacob Willemsen from Tabs, Thanks so much for joining us on the show today. America open for business. My last question is you’ve been living working here in the US for many years now. What is the biggest difference in the working environment between Europe and the US to you, I would say the eagerness of US companies to give you a chance.
Jacob: 38:50
I feel that on the one hand, the European companies will always get an opportunity, I think, to get to the table if you have a nice pitch, and I think in that way it’s much more difficult the other way around, but at the same time that also means that if you underperform, that there’s also very little time and room for cleaning up your act. The loyalty in that way I think in the US is not really there, whether it’s on supplier-client or vendor-client relationships, but also for employer-employee relationships. That’s hard for European companies to fathom. Literally on Friday morning I can be informed by an employee that this was his or her last day. Yeah, that happens and that’s. I think in Europe it’s a much more high-trust society in that way than in the US. The US in that way is a low-trust society, but that also means that you’ll always get an opportunity.
Cameron: 40:18
Yeah, those at-bats, those plate appearances to take a baseball reference will be there. You may only get one or two of them, so you want to take advantage of it, but that they’ll be there. I love the concept of Europeans having a chance to show and prove themselves here in this market because it’s still, for its faults, the biggest, the most attractive here in this market. Cause it’s still, for for its faults, the biggest, the most attractive, the most appealing market. They’re not rushing off to set up in China, right? I mean that, that, that that is just where, where the, the, the culture of similarities between Europe and us are strong, and that’s we’ll always have this draw. You know, whether it’s to Silicon Valley or New York for finance, it’s going to be there.
Jacob: 41:00
I agree, and the market is so big, I sometimes laugh a little when companies have the Fortune 500 on their target list and I’m like well, why don’t you get some experience with some more modest companies? And then you live and learn, you can improve your service. You get to know what drives Americans, perhaps also what things to discuss, but what things to avoid. We always say stay away from politics and you better get to know your sports that drives them. I mean there needs to be a bond. I feel in that way it’s more dependent on networks, right, Whether it’s through the, you have a sales that has a network through a church or through local communities. In that way it’s much more on who you know in the US. It’s super important to buy yourself into those networks.
Cameron: 42:18
Yeah, another one. Get the opportunities another one, too, is particularly in a place like where you are in new york, or a big cosmopolitan environment. Tap into your own expatriate network there you know. You walk out in any neighborhood new york, there’s six languages being spoken, all around you. There’s there’s people from your home country or area that can help you get integrated and get started with your growth.
Jacob: 42:41
Or ask your anchor client right, the client that made you actually move to the US. Those are important references if they have a name that is recognizable. Not too long ago I saw a list of references for one of our clients with all local European companies that don’t mean a thing to a US potential buyer. You really need to make sure that you adapt those kinds of marketing materials.
Cameron: 43:15
Yep, I’d rather have one strong local story than six from far away.
Jacob: 43:20
Yep, I’d rather have one strong local story than six from far away. Yep, and one more thing is this was a Swiss client. Oh, we’re family owned. We started in 1776. Yeah, it’s not unimportant, but in that way I think the Americans are a little less interested in the family history in Switzerland and they just want to make sure that you’re going to be around next week in the US.
Cameron: 43:49
Yep, I thank you for your time, Jacob. That was a great overview on tabs and I look forward to catching up with you again soon. Thank you very much.
Jacob: 44:01
It was my pleasure.
Cameron: 44:02
Bye Cameron, Take care.
Narrator: 44:09
Thanks for listening to the America Open for Business podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
Sign up to join our mailing list and be alerted when new episodes are released
