So if you read much about entrepreneurship or international
business you probably at some point have heard it said that Europe is anti
business or anti entrepreneur and what I want to do in this video is just share
my own experience there's someone who was an entrepreneur in Vancouver, Canada
and has been in Europe for about four years now and officially does business
here now in one way or the other and lots of entrepreneurial friends around
the world I wanted to just share my own experiences about the differences of
doing business and entrepreneurship in Europe versus North America now I am NOT
a economist and I'm not an academic thank god I wouldn't wish that on my
worst enemy these are just my own experiences so I
thought of doing this video when I was talking to an entrepreneur here in
Prague and she mentioned something about her parents not really supporting her
like her friends and family were doubting her and how this is a very
Czech thing and I told her nope that's how it works everywhere in the world in
North America when you say I want to start my own business most of the time
in most social groups friends and family kind of look at you like you're crazy
and say you should get a job so that is not a European thing but there are a lot
of differences and how hard it is to get started the first one that really bugs
me to be honest is the minimum cost so I'll use Spain as an example but there's
the supplies in other countries in Spain if you want to be a freelancer you have
to register and once you register you have to pay something like 200 euros
every month to just be a freelancer doesn't sound like much but let's think
about that 200 euros is equivalent for me when I was getting started would have
been about 300 Canadian dollars also the incomes are much lower in Spain so 200
euros in Spain is the equivalent of maybe four or five hundred dollars in
the US or Canada in terms of what that money's worth to someone now when I
started freelance writing I earn $300 or so on some of my first
job my first invoice is I think where I was charged used 16 dollars an hour like
140 dollars if I had to paid for five hundred dollars to the government every
month I would never have been able to get started freelancing and I would have
had to get a job and I wouldn't be here on YouTube right now making these videos
about entrepreneurship I wouldn't have started a company none of this would
have because I couldn't have afforded that
minimum cost to me that's crazy especially when you have a country like
Spain which has over 25 percent unemployment among its youth that's a
no-brainer to make free lunch and easy let them start a business for themselves
but that kind of your AA Christian red tape is very common in Europe I've
noticed the same thing happening here in the Czech Republic as my girlfriend is
registering her business properly and all that there's minimum costs that come
up that to me when I moved here it wasn't a big deal right got registered
had to pay the equivalent of a couple hundred euro a month not a huge deal at
that point but when you're getting started especially when the average
income in the Czech Republic is five six hundred euro maybe a thousand euro for a
good entry-level job a month so if you have to pay a one or two hundred euro
right off the bat when you're starting for yourself that's a big difference
along those same lines there is a lot more workers rights here good or bad we
can argue about that another day but some examples and again this is just off
the top of my head I'm not an academic or a lawmaker here but I believe in
Germany once you give someone a permanent contract you basically can't
fire them unless they show up to the office naked and in parts of Germany
that's okay too this self they do whatever they want but northern Germany
they show up naked you can fire them right but really it can be really hard
to fire employees and you also have a lot of cost so usually whatever you pay
the employee you pay about the same amount to the government in terms of
paying for their social and responsible responsibilities social taxes pension
all this kind of stuff you pay on behalf as the employer that adds up as well so
when you're just getting started let's say you're trying to do a business not
freelancing but a business where you need a few employees suddenly your costs
are a lot higher you can't just grab a couple people say hey can I pay you like
8 bucks an hour we get this ice cream stand started or
whatever and then once you get going then you start hiring them properly the
kind of red tape makes it a lot harder to grow and expand this theme with all
this is that getting started is definitely harder in Canada and I so
when I compared North American Canada I'm actually from Canada but I'm kind of
comparing them together in Canada when you start as a free
answer you pretty much unless I was breaking the rules the whole time so
don't tell Canada you pretty much just say hey I'm Dan Amy like I'm a
freelancer and then you're a freelancer if you want to register your business
name it's like 40 dollars but if you want to do business in your own name you
just do business if you're just doing something that doesn't require a license
like not a restaurant or a therapist but if you're just doing like freelance
design work or whatever you just do the freelance design work and you get paid
and at the end of the year you pay your taxes which means let's say you're
starting in January and you have no money you have a whole year to get going
to earn money and all that and then you pay your taxes at the end of the year
you have no upfront cost at all and no ongoing cost to be an employee or sorry
to be a freelancer where you have to like pay fees and all that that's a big
difference also if you want to do something part-time it makes a big
difference if you don't have to pay money into a system and you don't have
to register into all this so getting started is much harder in Europe which
plays in with the amount of bureaucracy in Europe in general I also think that
growing beyond a certain level is a lot harder so because of really high taxes
and regulation and a lot of the other costs that factor into business such as
paid maternity leave some countries it's a year or longer for paid maternity
leave these make it hard for a small business owner yes workers rights all
for that I think a lot of the social benefits in Europe are a good thing
but if you're a small business owner where you're struggling yourself right
you have a little shop you have two or three employees it's hard if you have an
employee like hey I'm pregnant now you got to pay me for the next year and hire
someone else and pay them like good luck making a profit this year right and I
think a lot of this comes around I don't think it's some big conspiracy but I do
think the structure in Europe makes it harder to change class or to change
social economic position right so if you want to go from being kind of lower
class poor and then you want to reach you know the wealthy side of society
it's a lot harder getting started is harder moving up is harder your tax a
lot more there's a lot more regulation there is more of
is ingrained class system in a way that is helped in a way to really keep people
there and make it harder and harder to break through another example of this is
a friend of mine in Denmark who does coaching around ADHD work said that in
Scandinavia and this is for I think Europe in general people are really
heavy on the official credentials so unless you have a PhD you're not going
to be hired by a lot of companies a lot of organizations this is different than
in North America where if you're you know you write a really good book about
a topic or you just gain knowledge you become a really good coach on a certain
area people aren't really asking like well what was your university what was
your background because they're looking at what you actually do and your result
rather than kind of your credentials and whether that's a good or bad thing we
can you know argue about I do think that letting like anyone suddenly be a coach
without credentials or things like that especially in medical areas or sort of
messed up but on the same note requiring people to do six years of school to get
a PhD in something before you'll hire them is kind of weird as well and again
it adds to this barrier of entry of if you have to support your family you
can't necessarily go back to school for six years and get a PhD but you can't
get the good kind of coaching jobs you want without those credentials and it
creates a cycle and then it can be a lot harder so if you look at the business
landscape in general you'll find Europe innovates a lot less if you look at the
big startups in Berlin most of them not all but they're kind of knockoffs of
American ones or they're the German version of an American startup that came
out a few years ago you don't get as much of the originality and I think some
of that is because of the difference in people people are not as big of
risk-takers and there's reasons for that if you look at the rules the way society
is set up is doesn't necessarily benefit the risk-taker as much and it creates a
lot more red tape to make it harder for people to get started if you look at
most startups like that are now billion-dollar companies but usually
started with some broke people in a garage or someone like just starting
something and seeing what will happen which if you need to like register and
get a business license before you can start
doing stuff in your garage we might not have an Apple or Google or Microsoft at
this point so that's the big difference in the environment as well the kind of
innovation risk-taking and that I think comes from the bureaucracy but then it
also creates people with personalities people think a lot differently for it
and you could look at that and then you combine it with the fact that University
is usually free here so it's very common that people will stay in school until
they're 28 or 30 and do like a masters and a PhD because it's free and and they
think they need all these credentials to succeed so you get a lot less of the
kind of young entrepreneurs I would say so all that said if you have the spirit
for it if you're coming over here is a North American or you're someone in
Europe who has more of a North American capitalist attitude there are still a
ton of opportunities in Europe there's a lot like Prague is insane there's a new
restaurant and cafe opening within blocks of my apartment every week so you
do have booming markets you have a lot of opportunities to do well a lot of
opportunities for entrepreneurship because as I mentioned that the
attitudes about risk-taking means that for those who will take risks who though
for those who will go for it there's a lot more opportunities and I would say
less competition as well especially if you innovate and you don't just knock
off you know whatever people are doing in North America and then do a localized
language version here which is what a lot of people do similarly if you are
like a digital nomad or a location independent entrepreneur and you're
already established setting up in Europe can be a great thing you get a really
nice lifestyle the time zone is really beneficial compared to North America you
can wake up a bit later get your core work done before your clients in North
America wake up there's a lot of opportunities as well so I really
enjoyed coming as a Canadian with a capitalist or entrepreneurial
risk-taking mindset coming to Europe and getting to enjoy a bit of the slower
pace of life a bit of the European Way well in my case my business is based
there internationally and I have kind of minimal paperwork and bureaucracy and
when I do I just pay someone here to do it also I've had a really good
experience just in my own case coming over here the Canadian to do business
locally or to start up like if you our European you definitely have more
costs more read paid and that probably explains a lot in terms of what we see
with companies so those are my opinions and my observations live in here I would
love to hear your own experiences if you've lived in Europe or you're just a
loudmouth YouTube troll who wants to share their unjustified uneducated
opinions please do so in the comments I'd love to hear from you and if you
want to know more about living in Europe or entrepreneurship working for yourself
or just me subscribe to the channel and catch me in one of the new videos
published every Monday Wednesday and Friday thanks for watching