How an Expat Summit Generated a Code of Ethics

Last week Marty and I went to Lisbon for a couple of nights to attend the Global Expat Summit. We’d been invited by Fresh Portugal, the firm that is handling a lot of our legal and financial transition work for the past year.

It was … odd. It was a good event, but I think it was poorly marketed. To begin, there was nothing global about it, because the vast majority of attendees lived and worked in Portugal. Not just that, most were in and around Lisbon. We went because we were curious, and since I’m now writing about moving here, I wanted to see what other parts of “the expat industry” were about.

There were a couple of sponsor tables open when we arrived, so we spent our early-morning coffee time chatting them up. The first table was for a service that brings IVs to your home in a mobile unit, in case you need … vitamins? You’re dehydrated after a night of drinking? (Seriously, that was one of their use cases.) If this is what the day was going to be about, I was already regretting it. I have zero interest in that kind of expat lifestyle, where you move somewhere cheaper to lead a pre-French Revolution indulgent lifestyle. Blech.

Luckily that was the most tone-deaf thing we saw, everything was better and more like what you might expect. Most of the people there were service providers: Fresh Portugal (taxes, immigration), Green Ocean (investing), Serenity (concierge health care), SpartanFX (foreign exchange). We are clients of three of these and consulted the fourth. There were about three providers for every person like me, a possible client, so the firms were really networking amongst themselves. Was that the point? If they were trying to reach clients, then it was REALLY badly marketed. Having said that, they were all lovely people and we highly recommend these firms, they’ve helped us greatly. But we’re still not sure what the point of the Summit was.

I got some good stuff out of it. I really liked Ziv Fisher’s presentation (founder of Fresh Portugal), where he outlined an expat hierarchy of needs. We’ve moved from Step 1, Survival, mostly into Step 2, Stability, and are starting to reach Step 3, Growth.

1. Survival: Getting your visa, establishing a home, dealing with taxes and all the paperwork.
2. Stability: No more fires to put out! Things settle down but note that stability does not equal success. Expats who stop here have a higher percentage of giving up.
3. Growth: Creating something new. Ziv grew by building an accounting and legal practice to help American expats deal with double taxation. He grew by helping people like me with their survival tasks.
4. Impact: Have an impact by helping others grow.
5. Connection: Get involved with a community of builders. At this level, success = building something meaningful, with others.

I went to the Summit because I wanted to understand my position relative to the relocation industry. Now that I’m writing about my move, and blogging about my life here, I have to be clear-eyed about this industry and my relationship to it. I do NOT want to be one of those influencers who post dreamy shots of lattes in cafes at sunset, claiming to have up and moved three months ago on a whim and I’m now living the life of my dreams. I’ve learned about the expat connection services, where you join their networking events (for a fee) to make friends, but they sell you the dream of connection only. If they succeeded, you wouldn’t need to pay them any more money, would you? So yes, there’s a predatory aspect to the relocation industry, and I want no part of it.

If my book sells and my blog gets any traction, then I am joining that industry. My big takeaway after the Summit is that I need a code of ethics for my public writing, and I think if I connect it to the way I write about the theme of “home” then I have the core of it.

First, I want to protect Portugal. That doesn’t mean discouraging people to come here, it means strongly encouraging people to come here in the right way and with realistic expectations. If you come here, you should prepare to be a good guest: learn the language, don’t try to change things into America Lite, don’t flash your relative wealth. This country doesn’t need more ugly expats, it needs immigrants, people who will integrate and improve the fiber of life here. So, first rule, do no harm to my new home, because it IS my new home and not a resource to be extracted.

Second, if anyone is going to make the difficult, life-changing decision to come here, I want them to be as informed as possible. It is HARD to make a move like this. Marty and I are moving into the stability phase because frankly, we had the resources. Not just money, we have prior international moving experience, and we’ve travelled the world. I must paint a realistic picture of my life and our struggles. So, the second rule is be honest and make no promises, help people to have their eyes wide open about what it takes.

Third, I need to be clear as to what this possible writing career is about and where, specifically, I’m profiting from it. This is the fuzziest piece of the code I’m developing because I imagine it will evolve and there will be temptations, so it might be aspirational in nature rather than a hard line. I will start with this: 1) Because I will make no promises, I will not profit from rosy speculation. I will resist the temptation to write “I did this and you can too” posts. 2) Connected to being honest about my experiences here, the only thing I will attempt to monetize is my hard-won wisdom. Obviously, I will try to sell the book, if people want to read it. I will eventually try to find a tier of the newsletter that people want to pay for, but it must be about my experience and my writing. Beyond that, I don’t know. Quite honestly, I will be happy if I make juuuuuust enough money to encourage me to keep writing.

I think I need a fourth pillar here, one about holding a mirror up to the relocation industry. This could be the hardest, so I need to think about it more. I’d like to attempt to evaluate what services I think are hokum, and what are truly helpful. This might end up being part of rule #2, don’t harm people looking to me for advice.