Learning to Live Abroad | Keith Van Sickle

 

About Keith Van Sickle

Keith grew up in Alameda, California, the son of public school teachers. He got his first taste of overseas life while spending a college term in England and later backpacked around the world for six months.

Grateful for the scholarships that helped him pay for college, in 1987 he started a foundation that helps students from Alameda pursue a college education. Keith and his wife Val fell in love with Europe during a five-year expat assignment in Switzerland, where they lived in a village with more cows than people. After returning to the US, Keith helped start a company whose product was so geeky that he still doesn’t quite understand it.

Keith and Val dreamed of living abroad again but were unable to find another expat gig. So they decided to invent their own. Now they and their trusty dog split time between Silicon Valley and Provence, delving ever deeper into what makes France so endlessly fascinating.

 

Episode Transcript of: Learning to Live Abroad | Keith Van Sickle

Alan
Welcome back and being here today with Keith Van Sickle. Keith, welcome to today’s show.

Keith
Thanks for having me.

Alan
So Keith you’ve had a remarkable journey through life so far. Yeah. Former CFO, book author, entrepreneur. For the listeners here, can you give your background of some of the let’s start from your schooling and and bring it up?

Keith
Sure. So I’m a local boy grew up in Alameda, did my engineering degree locally, also went to Stanford, and have spent all of my career in high tech all my career in Silicon Valley companies. I’ve been in manufacturing, marketing, customer service, most of my careers in finance, I was a startup CFO, which was fun. But probably the most interesting thing I did was when I had the opportunity 20 years ago, to move to Switzerland. So I had a five year expat assignment, my wife and I moved to Switzerland. And it changed our lives. It was, it was exciting professionally. But more than that, we lived in the center of Europe, we were able to travel all the time, we’ve always liked to travel, I spent a term in England, as a student at Stanford, I, before I went back to graduate school, I backpacked around the world for six months, we’ve always liked to travel. But But even more than that, it was the opportunity to live in another country and learn how it’s different from here.

Alan
A few people get the opportunity to step out of the boundaries of this country and and see what it’s like. So what drove you to say, you know, finally say, Yeah, we’re going to do this, because obviously, you had choices of, you know, Stanford grad and your experience, you could just stay locally, but what, what really was inspiring you to go to the other country?

Keith
It was a chance to really live somewhere else and see how people live differently. We knew it would be hard, because we didn’t speak the language. It’s we were in the French speaking part of the country, we didn’t speak French. And I have to say, the first year was hard, because you’re stupid every day, you don’t know how to go to the store. It took me a week to figure out how to buy auto insurance, because it’s different. You know, we’d been there about six months, and my wife turned to me with a forlorn look on her face and said, You know, I used to be competent. And you it’s very humbling. But at the same time, you see the people live differently in a way that sounds funny until you go through it. So the Swiss, even though they are a remarkably hardworking society, with an extremely successful economy, they take their lunch breaks. You know, my wife was eating a sandwich sherpadesk once and a colleague admonished her, he said, That’s not healthy. You have to take a proper lunch, they take all of their four weeks of vacation, and everything shuts down on the weekend. You know, all the stores closed at midday on Saturday. And Saturday afternoon and Sunday are really a day of rest, you have to stop working. So you read a book, or you hike, or you have a long family lunch or dinner. And it was hard to get used to that at first. But we realize they’ve got something good going on, maybe we can learn some of this. And, and it’s nice to live that way and, and experience in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve actually been in it.

Alan
So five years and you’re in Switzerland, you come back. And I guess you start in the Bay Area, you relocate back to the Bay Area?

Keith
Came back to Bay Area joined a startup kept me busy for a while my wife took a job that had a lot of travel kept her busy for a while. But we always had a dream of wanting to do this again to live in another country. We kind of looked around for another expat assignment. But they’re they’re very rare. They’re hard to find, we were very fortunate to have had one. So that that didn’t work. So eventually, we decided to invent our own xspec gig.

Alan
Now that’s very creative.

Keith
So we, we thought, well, if we do consulting, we can moderate our work so that we could work a lot part of the year and be abroad part of the year. So we each quit our jobs, which I have to say it was pretty scary. And we built our consulting practice. And we decided we will, we’ll go to France. We liked France, we’d begun to learn a little bit of French. We liked the country. We like the food, we like the environment. And we go for three months, which is how long you can stay without a special visa. And we’ll see. First time we did it 10 years ago was can this work? Can we actually live in another country? Can we learn the language can we make friends can we find enough to do because we’re doing some work from a distance but not much. And happily, the first experiment went well. We’ve gone to Every year since we made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, and I gotta I gotta say it’s pretty hard to learn a foreign language in your 50s. But we did.

Alan
So I’m just curious, you know, your startup CFO out here locally, you’re going to France, different country, different culture. What was your? What was the foundation of your consulting or your advisory services when you did this quote, expat company.

Keith
I had been, I spent a large part of my career in finance. I’ve been a CFO for startup from the very early days. And so I am a consulting CFO for startup companies and about.

Alan
Any difference in doing business in Europe versus the US?

Keith
When I’m working in Europe, I’m working for US companies. I was at your question was regarding.

Alan
That’s good. Yeah. So basically, your adviser to US companies on on site and exhaust fans. Okay. Hey, Keith, I need to take a quick break and visit here today with Keith Vansickle. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’m visiting here today with Keith Van Sickle, and Keith and former CFO or startup companies a lot of good experience. Yeah, we’ve been talking about going abroad, though. And I eat it not once, but twice. And yeah, we talked about lifestyle of Europe. And that asked, who doesn’t seem to be part of the equation? Why? Why do you think that is?

Keith
You know, the will France in particular. You know, they appreciate the small things in life, you can spend a remarkable amount of time with French people talking about food and wine and how you prepared the fish. And where did you get your vegetables and it’s just, it’s not just the food, but a meal is the center of family life, that is the center of life with friends. So it’s not just the food, but it’s spending time at the table. You know, I’ve had six hour lunches, and they just go by in a flash, not because it’s the food, but because it’s how you are part of a community, how you’re part of a family, how you share experiences together, it’s really a it’s a beautiful thing, what they do. They, you know, in in France, in particular work is not the be all and end all. All admit the French maybe could work a little bit harder, their economy might be a little bit better. But But work isn’t the only thing. And food is one of the things that they spend time on because it’s a way to bring people together I think.

Alan
So after the after the second expat assignment, which eventually come back to the US, and what are some of the things that you’ve you’ve entered into after that?

Keith
Well, so I continue to go back to France every year. Okay, so it’s a three month in France, nine month in California life. And it’s nice, because it allows us to enjoy each they’re two very different places, each of which we love a lot. And so in California, I continue to do my consulting work. So I continue to work with startups. You know, every few years, the, the companies, my clients turn over because either they’ve, they’ve grown to the point where they need somebody full time I help them hire a full time CFO, and they continue on with their success or being Silicon Valley, they die. You know, others go away. And so my client base tends to turn over every few years, for one reason or the other.

Alan
I’m just curious, company coming to yours saying, hey, we need a CFO, what size do you typically work with? The company? Are they very early Steve seed stage? Are they series A is there a point where you say, Hey, I don’t want to get that deep into this growth or?

Keith
They’re, they’re usually at the point. So they’re usually in a or later stage. So they’re big enough that they need CFO kind of help, but they’re not so big that they need it full time. Okay, so I’ll work on, you know, business planning, or board prep or fundraising or working with lines of credit with financial institutions, etc. And that might be a quarter time. Eventually, as they get bigger, they need more of that kind of help, to the point where they need somebody full time. So if they’re really small, there’s not much to do. It’s, you know, six engineers and a cap and they’re inventing their little product. When they get bigger. They need somebody to Who can give them enough time that they should go with somebody full time?

Alan
Okay. Okay. So what advice would you have for somebody wanting to live abroad?

Keith
Boy, if they want to live abroad full time, you need a reason to be there to get a visa. So it probably means a job. If it’s somebody who’s retired and wants to move abroad, you can still get visas, it’s different. My own advice is to either go to an English speaking country or learn the language. There are a lot of people where we are in Provence who are, for example, British expats, from American expats who never learned the language and just hang around with each other. And that can be a pleasant life. It’s a nice part of the world, the food is good, the weather is nice. But I think you, you miss a lot if you don’t speak enough of the language to meet people understand where you’re living, appreciate what’s going on, read the newspaper, watch television, when we were in Switzerland, we never really learned the language. And so that was a missed opportunity. We only met people who spoke English, we never really got under the covers of Swiss society. And in France, we feel like we have a much deeper appreciation for the country and how different it is, and how people are different than we would if we only spoke with other English speakers. So the language is hard. But it’s it’s fundamental.

Alan
Thank you. I’m visiting here today with Keith Van Sickle, he is an early startup, CFO consultant and, and also he’s a book author. So I need to take a quick break Keith, and right after these messages, I want to get into the new book that you you recently released. I will be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and I’m visiting here with Keith Van Sickle, keeps the former CFO consultant and also has a book authored recently, Keith, you, you released a book called one snippet one step at a time learning to live in Providence and and I want to I want to spend some time in this segment talking about inspiration behind this book. Yeah, first of all that the title, one sip at a time very catchy.

Keith
So at the background of the book, you know, because we go abroad every year, and because friends and family, when we’re gone will say hey, what are you doing? I eventually got tired of writing emails telling everybody what we’re doing and started a travel blog. So every year I do travel blog, and I talked about what we’re doing with an emphasis on funny stories. Here’s something silly we did that. You know, if you have the right attitude, it becomes a funny story. Here’s observations on life in France. So light, fun stories that my friends and family have enjoyed. And from time to time, one would say, you should turn this into a book. And of course, my response was, I’m not going to quit my day job. Thank you for the compliment, but it’s just a blog. But I eventually decided, well, let me check. I’ve got a friend who’s a well known author. And we go back to college days. And I said, Look, George, what do you think of this blog? Is there any material there to create a book? And he surprised me by saying, Yeah, I think there is. You know, it would be a light fun book that will put a smile on your face. And there’s a place in the world for books like that. But two caveats. You’re an unknown author, and you’re not going to find a publishing house that’s going to give you a book contract, you’re going to do this on your own, you’re going to be self published, and to the average self published books, sells 250 copies. So if you go in with that attitude, and you understand that’s the deal, then you should do it. I think it’d be a fun project. And I will advise you from time to time if you need help. So I spent the next year taking these stories and wrapping them into a book and finding a book cover designer and figuring out how to publish on Createspace which is Amazon’s platform and and the book came out six months ago, and I’ve since done a lot of time marketing the book because most authors don’t want to market their book, but guess what, they’re 75,000 new books a year and how are they going to find yours? And so, so far, I’ve sold several 1000 books and I’m an Amazon Best Seller and readers like it excellent. So it’s really the reviews are gratifying.

Alan
Excellent. So the the blessing of Amazon you can find the book one sip at a time online. So so let’s let’s let’s run through what are some of the things that the points you touch on learning to live in province? knots. First of all, that’s a city in France.

Keith
So Provence when people sometimes talk about the South of France, and usually talking about Provence, which is a region. So the biggest city is Marsay, the big port city or Avenue, which was a center of the Catholic Church for 100 years in the 13th century. So it’s that area. It’s famous for hilltop charming hilltop villages, lavender, the pink flamingos of the Camargue, lots of Roman history. You know, this was one of the centers of the Roman Empire in ancient France, so that lots of ruins and Roman style events that take place. So it’s a it’s a very interesting area, we weren’t sure when we got there. Whether we be able to spend, again, three months there and not be bored, but there’s lots to do and see, and particularly with our, our French friends who we’ve made over time.

Alan
So a person reading the book, what should they expect to find is that a deep read a quick read, but you know, how does it as it flow?

Keith
It’s a light fun read, it’s, it’d be great for reading on an airplane or in an airport lounge or waiting for jury duty. It’s not a heavy read at all. It’s 60, short chapters, each a funny story, which in total, tell the story of our first few years air as we were learning to live in another country and some of the mistakes we made and some of the funny things that happened to us.

Alan
Let’s hear it, let’s share a couple of those stories.

Keith
Oh, so I was once rejected as a blood donor in France, due to insufficient command of the French language. It turns out that when you donate blood in France, you have to have a private interview with a doctor to make sure you haven’t been participating in risky behaviors that might make the blood tainted. And so it turns out that after we went back and forth a few minutes, he finally closed my file, wrote a note. I said, Am I not gonna be able to give blood? He said, No, you need to learn better French, we can’t do the interview. But you can have orange juice and cookies if you’d like.

Alan
You remind me of the guy who stayed up all night, studying for his blood test, right? Only in France, I guess you do have a real real requirement.

Keith
We really do. Yeah. So I failed that. That blood test another time I we had just gotten there for one of our trips. We just picked up a rental car. I went to a parking lot. My wife was somewhere else I got in the car, you know, I hit the button, the lights flash, I got in the car. And it turned out, I’d gotten in somebody else’s car. They looked kind of alike. Yeah. All I knew was as soon as I get in, a lady was tapping on the window and yelling at me in French. I didn’t know what she was saying, because My French was kind of rusty. And she yelled a few times, and I’m trying to get out of the car. And I finally realized she’s saying, sir, you are in my car. And I looked around, and she had a pack of cigarettes and baby stuff in the back. And I’m like, Oh, my God, this is not my car. But I couldn’t really explain myself because my French just froze up. And so I got out and she’s thinking, who doesn’t know their own car and who can’t even speak back to me. Humility, humiliating, but you know, you move on.

Alan
It’s a good story.

Keith
That’s a good story. Exactly. Right. You have to have a sense of humor, because you’re going to do lots of dumb stuff and be incompetent. And that’s okay. Yeah.

Alan
So what are some of the you know, in addition to the funny stories coming up, what are some of the deeper memories that you had there, in Provence.

Keith
Certainly time with our friends. I mean, we have friends in France that are as good as our friends in the States. And you’re one of the things the French that I admire, that I think we can learn from them, because they’re very good at it. It’s that they’re able to disagree strongly, without taking it personally and without being disagreeable. So they can talk about things which are fundamental and emotional, and they have strong feelings about but be friends. And yet, in the States, too often, if we disagree with someone, we take it personally, or we think they’re a bad person. Gee, you support this political candidate. You’re a bad person. And we’ve seen that especially in the last election where families are torn because we just happen to have different political opinions. But it becomes personal. Whereas in France, I remember once when Edward Snowden was revealing secrets all the time, and one of the secrets was the US was spying on France. And it was a huge story in France. We happen to have friends over that week. That week, front page news every day. In the middle of dinner, my wife says so what does everybody think of Edward Snowden and it was a hot, hot, hot discussion. And we felt we didn’t feel under attack. We felt maybe some of the things that our government had done they disagreed with, okay, that’s fine. Maybe we did too, I don’t know. But everybody staked out their position, it went on for a while. But at the end, it was, okay, let’s talk about something else and who’s ready for dessert. And it wasn’t personal. They’re brilliantly, you know, able to do that in a way we could learn from.

Alan
Keith. This last segment I, there’s something that we talked about off air, about some little projects you’ve done in giving back. And I’d like you to share for your listeners, what those projects are, and what you’ve learned in the process of giving back.

Keith
Sure. So I put myself through college and received a lot of scholarship and financial aid assistance to do that, for which I am very grateful. And so in 1987, my wife and I decided to start our own scholarship foundation, to help students from my hometown of Alameda, go to college. My parents were teachers in the public school system, both of them and so we named it after them in honor of their great accomplishments. And we limit it to folks from the public high schools to again support public education in Alameda. And so every year, we help a young boy or girl go to college, we’ve been doing it. In May, we, we granted our 30th annual scholarship. And in addition to the financial aid, which is important, we also stay in touch with the students. We meet with them throughout the year we call or email, because most of them are the first in their family to go to college. Many of them are first generation Americans and therefore may need help understanding how things work or just encouragement. Sometimes it’s very important to have somebody in your corner cheering you on when you’re in a tough spot. And it’s been enormously gratifying to, to stay in touch with these students or just to see what they’ve done. Because some come from terribly difficult backgrounds, we, one of our current students, spent part of her high school years in Alameda, living in the campground because that’s all her family could afford. And yet, she was a top student, she was student body president and she, she created a little club in her school to collect school supplies for less advantaged kids. And it’s just remarkable. Here’s somebody who has nothing who is trying to help others. And it’s just when you meet students like that. It’s just inspiring.

Alan
Yeah. I imagine part of the difficulty of working with disadvantaged children, which you cited was a great example. But I think it’s a little it’s not typically the case. Some of these kids say they don’t have the support of a good family infrastructure and encouragement from the house. How do you go about ensuring that if you’re, if you’re giving them a scholarship, that you’re not just handing him money? And say, hey, good luck to you? How do you stay involved? Is there a process for accountability? I imagine as the CFO, you’ve probably built in some measures of making sure they succeed.

Keith
So the scholarship is, is not granted all at once it’s granted over four years. So. So if they were to go off the rails, we might, we would stop the scholarship. We don’t have a strict academic test for them. But we do stay in touch. So we see how they’re doing, we have the right to ask for transcripts we’d like but really by staying in touch, you can see what’s going on. We don’t want to be over involved in their lives. You know, if somebody says, Look, I appreciate the money, but I don’t need the help. You know, I’ll talk to you once a year. But I don’t I don’t need any more than that. We respect that as well, because some of the students are more self sufficient than others. I don’t think any of them really need us. But we think in some cases, we have helped. In fact, we had one young lady, one of our early scholarship winners, who was a single mom, who was going to college and working and raising a child and we we really tried to buck her up as best we could when we met with her. But after a couple years, she met a nice young man got married, dropped out of school and moved away. And this was before the internet. So we lost touch with her until about five years ago when she tracked us down. We ended up having dinner together down in San Diego where she lives. It turned out she had gone back to school eventually got her degree has a great job as a nice career. And the thing she wanted to tell us was that we had made a big difference in her life because we had believed in her when not many people believed in her. So it was immensely gratifying.

Alan
Thank you for sharing that. And I think that that’s one of the things in life that we have our choices and find more fun not than when when we step out to do something of a Good Samaritan character, no one’s really requiring it. There’s something that we gain, although we weren’t seeking for it. And I appreciate you sharing that. The impact he made. So, Keith, unfortunately, we’re out of time today. But I, for the listeners out there who would like to tune in and see the complete interview with Keith we do post it on groco.com will have a full transcript plus more information if people are interested in living residing in Alameda on the scholarship program. Keep those they can find it there. So Keith, thanks. Thanks again for being with us today.

Keith
Thanks for having me.

We hope you enjoyed this interview; “Learning to Live Abroad | Keith Van Sickle”.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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