The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
Winning Marketing Strategies for Detail-Oriented Germans with Mandy Borchardt
Like the show? Have a burning question? Send a text?
Mandy Borchardt is a German marketing strategist and translator helping small non-German businesses to market their brand in Germany.
In 2015 she went freelance full time as a translator for English and Spanish into German, working for translation agencies and direct clients.
After a few years, she started to notice that most end clients need more than just marketing translations. They also need to understand their new target group and adapt their marketing efforts accordingly.
This was when the idea of helping her non-German clients with their marketing in Germany slowly started to grow.
I invited her on to the show to help those marketing and selling to Germans understand the mindset of the German customer.
We talked about:
- The importance of understanding German customers' preferences and cultural nuances.
- The importance of detailed product descriptions, compliance with local regulations, and personalized content in German.
- Specific marketing tips for German audiences including guidance on machine translation, legal text and culturally appropriate visuals
- The factors that influence many German buying decisions
- Advantages and disadvantages of running a business in Germany
- The importance of networking, collaboration, and continuous learning for all business owners
- How cooperation over competition among freelancers and small business owners has served her well
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. Twenty-plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency agency freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here Now I'm talking to other expat business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. I am here with Mandy Borschhart.
Speaker 1:I hope I pronounced that correctly, I hope I pronounced that correctly and, as you may have guessed from the name, I am not going to ask Mandy about the two minute story of how she got to Germany, because she is German. So, mandy, why don't you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you do?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, first of all, thanks for having me on your show today. And yes, I'm Mandy. I am a German marketing strategist and translator and I help small businesses from English speaking countries to market their products on the German market with marketing strategies and translations. Strategies and translations. Okay, and how did you get into this line of work?
Speaker 2:Well, I actually started out as a translator. I did a very classical university career studying translation and I went freelance translating and after a while I just realized that very often I get texts to translate for my clients who wouldn't make much sense to translate into German for German customers. So I started to realize that translation is just one part of selling your things in Germany, but there's more to it. You need something like a plan around it. So there's one part is the language itself that you want to overcome for your customers, but there's also a strategy around it, a plan that you need. So you have to make sure who are my german customers, for example, what do they like, what do they don't like, and all these things kind of get ignored when you just look at the translation itself, even if it is marketing translation.
Speaker 1:So let me. I have a couple of follow-up questions, but let me just back up really quick. So do you just focus on people that are bringing products to the market? I guess?
Speaker 2:Well, it's the easiest thing, but also, I've been looking a lot, for example, at the UK market for my own customers and I've looked at the business advice that they give people. There's also that you can expand into other countries, not only with products, but also services and, for example, if you have something like some guides or freebies or some kind of PDF materials that you want to give customers access to, this would also be something like a service and not a product per se that you sell in Germany, and this would also work pretty well actually, but mainly it's product-based. That's correct.
Speaker 1:Yes, and do you have a niche like people selling makeup to germans or something?
Speaker 2:not yet, not yet. I'm actually pretty open still to all these things because I'm. My niche probably would be small businesses, I guess, and I'm focusing on really small business because I cannot, I can't cannot provide, you know, services that really big companies would need. Just the amount of things they would need would probably be a bit too much for me. So I'm focusing on small businesses but I'm not limited to what it is they actually sell.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you share a couple of examples of like the types of products you've helped people bring to the German market?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's very well. People bring to the German market oh it's very well. It's really very diverse, I think. So I'm focusing a lot on translating for agencies as well, for example, and it's oh, you caught me a bit off guard. I think now it's fine, because I'm working for translation agencies as well and we often limited to ND non-disclosure agreements, for example and it's right like right, I don't want to make it too explicit, I think, but yeah yeah, it's all kinds of products actually, yeah okay, okay, um, but usually is it fair to say like to the consumer it is like it is yeah mostly yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you mentioned you. You work typically with small businesses, but do you have an ideal type of client?
Speaker 2:yes, so my ideal type of client would be small businesses or even solopreneurs who are based in the UK market, because I feel, like you know, with all these things that happened with Brexit and I think it's because of those countries are very close to each other it's easy or easier for UK based businesses to sell to Germany than it would be, for example, for an Australian brand, so just because the distance is so much longer and it takes longer to ship. So this is my focus is UK businesses, but it doesn't mean that I do not have customers from other countries. I recently got contacted from someone from Poland, for example, and I even have clients who are already in Germany and just want some support for their marketing in Germany, which are also service-based. So just recently, I had a service that I call Power Hour, where you just sit together for an hour and talk about how to optimize your marketing, and I sat with an English copywriter, for example, who is living in Germany and just wanted to make sure she's doing her marketing right for her German customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's a good segue, because that brings us to why I invited you onto this podcast, because the audience is really non-Germans running businesses in Germany, and so I've noticed there's like a couple types. There's types like me that I'm not even trying to pretend I do everything in English and it's not that I don't have German clients, but I'm not actively.
Speaker 1:I'm marketing more towards an international market but I do notice there are people here that are not native Germans and they are doing business in German, which is their second language, so they're actively looking to work with the German market or their freelancers or whatever. So I would be curious. You have a post on your blog called nine mistakes when launching your website for the German market, and I'm also a website designer, so I would be curious if you could share some of the big ones, like the main ones.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. So I think the biggest one that I see, especially when you want to sell to Germans, is that people don't translate their website at all. Opinion seems to be that Germans speak English so well. Anyway, why invest time and money into providing a website in German to German customers? So maybe I even would be curious to know what your feeling is of Germans. Do they really speak that well, or do, would you say, when it gets to the really deep and serious things, then they're kind of like, oh, maybe German would be better. You mean for me, what's your perception living in Germany?
Speaker 1:Well, there's kind of two types, like I, so just my actual. I prefer working with international clients, so that's why I don't. But I have some clients that are, they are so fluent, it's just a non-issue. And so I feel like if they, you know, and sometimes people will fill out my discovery forms and they'll do it all in German, even though there's not a lick of German on my website, and then that's always for me like it's not going to work with this person. And there's another reason for this. And I see this with some of my clients that are sometimes they're native German speakers and sometimes they're native English speakers but also very fluent in German and they work in both and they are really deliberating whether they should make their website bilingual. And there are problems with this because you do have to decide which is going to be the primary language on your site and then if you're willing to translate everything, and then you know that gets in the question. It's like, just because you're bilingual doesn't mean you're a good translator.
Speaker 1:And then I was talking to a client today and she is a coach and she's got all these materials and she's a native English speaker but very fluent in German and works with both, and so not only does she have to think about a website, she has to think about all of the materials that she uses in her coaching practice. So you just have to be ready to have everything in German and English. And for me, going back to your question, it was like I use tools to capture content. I have like I don't want to have everything double. It's just too much work. So that's why I just made the hard call, like if you're working with me, you're going to work in English, and when I get those inquiries, I just will sometimes say like I work 100% in English, I understand German. How do you feel?
Speaker 2:okay. So yeah, it's probably so. I think the most important thing is always to look at your customer. So if you sell products for a consumer market, I would always recommend to welcome those people on your website by providing your content in their mother tongue. And that's not only because you want to pay respect or something. It's also because you want them to pull out their wallets and pay stuff. Right. You want to pay respect or something. It's also because you want them to pull out their wallets and pay stuff right. You want them to buy your products and especially, you know the closer they come to the checkout, the more important it is for them to understand 100% what they are doing here.
Speaker 2:Especially Germans, for example, they want to understand terms and conditions, return policies. I mean, these things are boring in some way, but they're also important. And also we love to see really good product descriptions and want to know these things in our mother tongue because it's easier for us. And why ask our German customers to put in the effort to understand what you're trying to sell to them? So this is a really important perspective to look at.
Speaker 2:This is just imagine who your end customer is and imagine how, how easy it can be to convince them to buy from you just because you provide your content in their mother tongue and you actually actually don't. I mean you don't. You can maybe say more to this from the technical side, but from a content side, you don't have to translate probably everything. You can start with important things, like you know terms and conditions would be very useful and your product itself, but you just you don't have to worry too much and say okay, but you don't have to worry too much and say okay, my English website has 10 topics that I talk about and on my German version of it it's only five. I mean, you don't have to do this all at once. You can go gradually and say okay, let's start with important ones and keep adding stuff as they come in or as you can manage to handle them. So I think it would be a mistake to not provide your website in German to your German customers, especially when you sell consumer products.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that seems like kind of a non-starter and also.
Speaker 2:I mean, even if many Germans speak English, I think that's probably not true for every one of us, For example, the generation of my parents from East Germany. They never learned English in school and none of them speaks English. So you would limit your customer base pretty much to people who are younger, for example, and from West Germany. So is that something that you're willing to do, or would you say no, I want to have a bigger audience and provide content in German. So it's really important to know exactly who you want to sell to.
Speaker 1:So website in German, if you're selling to. Germans.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that yeah another one would be so because now you could say you could think okay, I will just provide my content on my website in German and I will use machine translation because it's cheap and that's also something I would not recommend to do for us for several reasons.
Speaker 2:I think the website text that you have is probably one of the most important marketing texts that you have, and you put a lot of time and money and effort into this and a machine translation will probably do it word for word, which is the grammar is great, the vocabulary is great, but it sounds off. It often does not sound right, because the way english-speaking people talk about marketing and you know selling things and the way germans do it is, it's there's some overlap, but it's not the same. We just don't speak like that. Our marketing lingo is different from the marketing lingo in english. So even though the grammar is great and the vocab is great, it sounds a little bit off and sometimes even a bit cringe, and it just doesn't sound right. So I would always suggest to invest the time and money to hire a German translator who is specialized in marketing as well, so they know what. You know what a call to action means and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is a. I have a post on like nine key conversion factors and one of the factors there's a line I have in there called images attract but words sell and it's really true. And if you were selling something, your copywriting does all the heavy lifting. And another way around I was working with a client she's German, but she had her site in English and then but had it also in German and there were just words, like she was, she worked a lot with the word purpose and German was using seal like it didn't work and it just the the machine translation. I was like you're gonna have to go into all of this and you can't leave it this way. And I tell people this if they're like, oh, I want it in German too. I'm like you got to set aside time to fix the. You cannot just like hit the translation button and leave it. It's going to be weird and bad.
Speaker 2:So that's good that you say that, because often people, yeah, the message that we receive from AI and people who are selling AI is different. And also another thing is I don't know if you've heard this, but the translation community, of course, talks a lot about this is that Google changes its algorithm all the time, and now it seems that they are trying to rank websites lower who use machine translated or machine generated content, and that's also, I mean, that's good to know, because Google doesn't do that because they want to be mean, but because they think it will lower the quality of the text. Right, they think it will lower the quality of the text.
Speaker 1:Right. I know, I knew that they were maybe downranking AI-generated content, but I didn't know for machine-translated content. That is good. Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2:That's another selling point for me. To tell people yeah, they even offer machine translations themselves, right, I mean, there's Google Translate, but if you use the plugin that they created themselves for your own website, you're going to be ranked lower, yeah okay, Okay, so website in German.
Speaker 1:don't use machine translation. What's another one you can share?
Speaker 2:Another one I could share would probably be to take a look at the visuals you are using. I don't know if you come across these things a lot, but sometimes I had this during a conversation with a client actually, where it was about clothing for you know, like doctors, police officers and firefighters, and they were selling this on their website and we and we used the you know, the typical uniforms from the British market and I suggested to replace those. And she came back to me a couple of weeks later and said they, they went to a fair in Munich actually, and they got approached by a lot of German people on that fair who pointed out oh, these images that you're using for on your website, and they also had like a banner and things like that for the spot on the fair. They said this doesn't look like a German uniform for a police officer. So these small things make your website still look a little bit foreign to your German customers. So I think it's an easy fix Maybe you can say this better, if you have two bilingual websites to have one set of image for the English version and a slightly different set of images for the German version, just to you know, make your German customers see the real world that they are used to Like.
Speaker 2:For example, if you have an image from a breakfast table, for example whatever you're selling, just as an example and you see a typical American breakfast table, this is not something that we have for breakfast, it's not something that we have never seen before, but it makes us realize that this is a little bit foreign and this is not something we're used to and these, these small things, can make a little, can make a huge difference. Difference, actually, when it comes to deciding to buy from you. You want to, you know, you want to trust that brand. You want to, you know, see the things that you're used to and not be so much confronted with the fact that this is all very foreign and I don't know, I'm not used to seeing these things. What is this?
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to get one more tip, but I want to dig into this a little bit. That's actually a very tricky. I don't know what platforms like in the commerce platforms I work for. Swapping languages is one thing. Swapping images is an entire different thing, because then the I mean usually there's a language dropdown and it switches languages, but then there has to be some kind of browser tool that does a geolocation thing and then if you can swap the images. I'm not going to get all like bore. Everybody tears about it, but I just in this conversation. It just reconfirms that I think in this age of press the button and have the translation press, people don't really understand with some things that translation and doing something for a different market is actually there's a lot of things you have to think about and a lot of moving parts, and it can be, like you know, in that case maybe you would have a subdomain or a different site if you really had to show totally different images. This can be a lot of work.
Speaker 2:I mean there's different ways, right, you can have different domains. This is one option. Or I mean you could decide to make it easier if you say okay, I have English and German and that's, that's what it's going to be for now. Maybe an option would be to use more neutral visuals that, just you know, don't show UK school uniforms. We don't know what that is at all.
Speaker 1:I mean it sounds weird, or us, or more images, but you have to think about it. It's like okay, you know, maybe you have six images instead of the three that are the UK ones whatever, and it doesn't mean that someone wouldn't buy at all from you, it just accumulates.
Speaker 2:You know you have lots of touch points and lots of things you could think about to make your website and how you present your offers very easily accessible for your customers. I don't know if you understand what I mean, so it's like you know you can make it all look more close to the culture of your German customer if you take a look at these small details.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure. Sorry, just one aside again, and then one more tip, and then I want to get on to the next question. It reminds me of, I think, one of the last projects I worked on when I was still contracting in agencies. It was a user interface project for a dish. It was a coffee machine, I can't some appliance, big appliance manufacturer here in munich and there was always like this was going to be sold in lots of markets, lots of languages, and we would have to go and find the. It was a touch screen, so you always have to find what is the longest word in the with the biggest character count in which language. Often not always, but often it was German you'd have to find that long word and that would dictate like how big you know a certain field was and stuff. So, just again, lots of again. I just want to emphasize not that people shouldn't do it, just know that you're, you're going to run into things.
Speaker 2:Yes, you do, I think. Yeah, I think. Another tip that would fit into this is actually what I actually learned myself recently that is, the sooner you decide in your business journey that you want to be bilingual, the better, because for programming and all of this, it's easier to know beforehand. Okay, we need to keep in mind other languages, other characters, for example, and yeah, if you have this in mind at the earliest stage in your business, it's easier for everything that comes afterwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I once got contacted by an app developer from America and they didn't have the option to provide umlaut. So they asked me can you translate this into German without using umlaut? So they asked me can you translate this into German without using umlaut? And I said I can't, I can't. And they were like this is a big problem because we cannot use umlaut in this app. It's not programmed that way. This should have been done earlier, but now this is the system we have. I don't know if it's some programming language they used. I don't know the technicalities, but they were a little bit. You know. They were hoping that this would be possible and I said I mean, it's just not working without.
Speaker 2:You can't use like A-E and U-E, I mean you can, but if you want to provide a good service to your customers, making them read like this it's very annoying, it's really very.
Speaker 1:I think people wouldn't use the app if they had to read it that way. So this brings up my next question. I have my and I will not say I have my observations.
Speaker 2:But in what way is a typical German customer different from customers in other markets? Yeah, I'm curious to hear yours later as well. So I would say from my from being German myself, that we can be. We like attention to detail, for example. We yeah, okay, you're nodding. I'm observing this especially when I read customer reviews, for example. This is also something that I often hear people say you can machine translate customer reviews. I wouldn't recommend that, because a German customer writes reviews very differently from, maybe, the American customer. If you read German customer reviews, they are very detailed. They provide all the features, the measurements. They don't just say, oh, I like the product, I can recommend this. They write an essay about this product. That's the German customer review. So we like attention to detail, for example. Or we like rules as well.
Speaker 2:I'm guilty of that, know, even if a lot of people make fun of you know the typical rule. You know separating the trash and things like that. That's always funny, but it gives us some a certain kind of security when everybody knows what to do. So, yeah, rules, for example. So if you can somehow, if you comply to some standards, for example, that they are for your product, whatever it is, I would promote this on your website as well. Talk about this, talk about how you comply with some kind of regulations or standards, because germans like that, because they're so rule oriented. Or tell them how to you know if you have used up the product, how to recycle it, for example. These things. We are very open to this and want to do things correctly, and that's a great way to do. To do that, you know, to feed that need really.
Speaker 1:And you find this is across generations, like doesn't really matter. I think it's a stereotype, but it's.
Speaker 2:I really think I mean a stereotype is a stereotype because it applies to most people. I mean there's certainly people who are not that rule oriented, but I would say in general, for Germans it's yeah, across generations, would you do?
Speaker 1:you have different experiences no, I can completely corroborate everything you just said. So, like some examples like I, I, it is it's market and again, it's it is. There are exceptions, so not everybody, but I know that when I have German clients, they are, I think, at the core of it. It's like a risk aversion absolutely so for example they're very rightly so like privacy policy yeah, they love that.
Speaker 2:This is a thing for everybody and I'm not.
Speaker 1:It's hard for web designers because we're not privacy lawyers. We can recommend like products, but it's like if you really want it to be bulletproof you have to hire a privacy lawyer. But they're very concerned about those things, like all of the gvpr, which again they should be, but to the point where sometimes I think like they will restrain their business activities out of concern for that, whereas other clients I'm like well, you kind of. They're like well, I'll just take my best guess and I'm sure it'll be fine, like that's somebody that like I don't hear that come out of german clients. I'm out there like wonder, like what do you know, what happens if this and who do I you know contact?
Speaker 1:yeah thing with, yeah, all the like compliance things, gdpr also, what did you say? Rules-based compliance? I was just thinking of another example but I lost it, but that, oh yeah. Another example is like it's very popular to have logo walls on your.
Speaker 1:I like I think those are a great credibility, exactly, yeah like the logos of companies and I have some and I I had, I have some work I did. It's a design, it's not web design, but it's design work I did in the New York Times and I had, of course. Then I put the big old New York Times logo on my site and they actually got in touch with me and said you know, you're not allowed to use that logo. And I said, oh no, no, no, look, my, it's true, my look logo. And I said, oh no, look, my it's true, my look. And I sent them like they said, no, no, that's fine, your work is in here, but you have to pay us twelve hundred dollars a year if you want to use the logo.
Speaker 1:And I was like I don't want it that bad, okay, I'll take it off. So I tell this story to my clients because they want to put and I said, look, it's a little murky what the laws are. My approach is ask forgiveness and not permission. So I kind of tell them what the risks are and they usually say, yeah, right, I'll take the chance. Germans, they ain't taking the chance. They're like, oh no, we're not putting them on there.
Speaker 1:So it's like that kind of thing difference that I would agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very risk averse, yeah, so this is also, I mean, what I also tried to communicate a lot. I mean, these. These things seem very annoying and frustrating and they mean more work when working with German customers, but they're also a really big opportunity to convince them to buy from you. If you consider these things, I mean, if you know your German customers risk averse, then you should go deep here and show them, by providing your content in german, for example, that there's nothing to worry about. Be open, be transparent, talk about something like money back policies, for example. Do everything you can to show them there's no risk you're running when buying from me.
Speaker 2:So, instead of ignoring these things that seem annoying, my take on this is always to look at these things closely and use them as leverage to sell to your German customer, instead of being frustrated about them and you will, I'm sure you'll see great results, because most businesses don't do that because they are so annoying sometimes. So, and that's also what I'm trying to help my customers with because I'm German, I see these things that come natural to me and for people from you know, other countries, they don't. Maybe they're confusing, they don't understand them. And for people from other countries. Maybe they're confusing, they don't understand them and I try to explain them and look at them closely and see how we can tweak their marketing and use these values that Germans also have to sell to them more easily.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good advice. So I want to ask you a little bit about your business. If you'd like, sort of um, go into the last section of our talk, so your marketing is all in English. We're in Germany and this is part of my just own curiosity, because I'm always wrestling with this issue do you try and optimize for SEO?
Speaker 2:I have to admit that SEO has been a little bit on the back burner, but I did do like a general SEO keyword research for my products and offerings on my website, and what I did do was switch from de to com one or two years ago, just, you know, to as a signal to my customers that this is not only Germany based, but also maybe to as a signal to Google that I'm not only trying to attract people from Germany. You know, right, right yeah, I've.
Speaker 1:I've heard that I have another podcast to link to the show notes by Access, pat SEO and one of the things I amcom, but I did buy my URL as a.
Speaker 2:TV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have both too, I have it as a secondary domain also going Okay, and it's interesting because in your case you probably are looking for clients outside of Germany.
Speaker 2:It's tough sometimes because you kind of have to come out of your bubble and really actively try to target businesses from abroad how do you do that?
Speaker 1:like, yeah, what would be your marketing? What are some marketing strategies? It's very different.
Speaker 2:So I had a blog, for example, and at some point I stopped writing on this blog because it was just too much time and it I didn't upload new content on this blog. Because it was just too much time and it I didn't upload new content on the blog, but it's still, the articles are still there and I just like the. At the end of last year, I got content contacted by a marketing agency who found me over my blog and I thought, okay, I'm not even promoting this, but somehow it seems to rank relatively high for certain keywords that you're typing in. But other than that, I'm also using, yeah, lots of social media and also I have a kind of a big network as well, because, you know, the translation community is really really big. I'm also a board member of the German Association for Interters and translators, actually, and I have a really big network yeah yeah, I discovered you on LinkedIn, so is that a channel that that works for you?
Speaker 1:it does, in terms of social media.
Speaker 2:LinkedIn is one of the best channels. That were the channels that work best for me, because it's relatively easy to gain traction and get visible. I also have an Instagram channel and I love Instagram, but from my perspective, it's more difficult to become visible on Instagram. I don't know what your experience is, but I had a lot more interaction on LinkedIn and a lot more inquiries over LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love LinkedIn. I use it for business. I have an Instagram account. It's basically phoned in, I scheduled everything in there and then pop in a few stories here and there, just because I have a visual business. So people need to go and see. You know, it's just an extension of my visual brand, but I think LinkedIn is great because it's also. I just think the networking possibilities are great and it's just a totally different kind of.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's getting more and more. I feel like it's getting more and more used as people migrate off of Twitter and I also just like that. It's business.
Speaker 2:We all know why we're here, that's true.
Speaker 1:Pretending it's like some other thing. Okay, so I have the LinkedIn question and then, okay, so you are German, you are running your own business, so presumably things are easier for you in some ways than most of it is for most of my listeners. But are there things that you find are difficult about running a business in Germany and, conversely, are there things that you enjoy or find to be opportunities about being an independent business owner in Germany?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what I'm going to say now is what everybody else is also going to say. So it's not, it doesn't make it easier for me which is taxes. I hate doing taxes. I remember when I went freelance, I did my taxes on my own taxes. I remember when I went freelance, I did my taxes on my own. It took me like three full days and I promised myself to never do this again on my own. And I have a tax consultant since then, which is great because, especially for my case, I have lots of international clients and taxes for international clients is even more complicated because the taxes are very different in every country. So that's something I hate doing.
Speaker 2:I hate all everything that has to do with admin. And, yeah, germans and their rules. I just recently I didn't even know that I'm I'm in business for 10 years almost. I'm freelance for almost 10 years, yeah, and last year I took professional photos for my website and my text consultant came back to me because she saw the invoice and said have you already registered this invoice with the KSK, which is the it's like? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what it is in English. I don't know what it is in English, but it's amazing. It's like if you're in the visual arts of any sort, the car sort of acts like your employer and you get your benefits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I had to pay the car's car and I didn't even know this and I was like what, what do I have to do with that? I heard this Wait.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh God, can we just go on a little tangent on this, because I'm in the car.
Speaker 2:Wait, but you're not in the car. I'm not, but I read because I Googled it because I was like super confused. It wasn't much. It was like 5% of the invoice amount from the photographer had to be paid to the car's car. But I had to do this on my own I. This wasn't like mentioned on the invoice from the photographer, it was just assumed.
Speaker 1:You know people in business have to know these things to pay with it for your tv, yeah.
Speaker 2:So what I found out is when you go, when the invoice amount has reached a certain amount, like over 500 or 600 a year or something like this you have to pay. As a business who is buying the service have to pay KSK 5% of the invoice amount.
Speaker 1:But how?
Speaker 2:are you supposed to know this With a tax consultant? I think there's no other way to do this.
Speaker 1:I actually a client of mine, a German client. She asked me. She asked me she is not in the KSK, she's a consultant, she works in automotive, and she said, are you in the KSK? And I said yeah, and she was like oh yeah, because my story about her said and I was like what I mean? I guess, yeah, they got to get their money some like more money some other way.
Speaker 1:Oh, and just if I little add note, if you are listening and you are running a business, starting a business or growing a business, I have a free resource guide that has all the links to like how you get into the KSK, the best articles around, blog posts on the KSK, and this is for anybody in the visual and it counts for influencers too, Like PR influencers, visual arts, and this is for anybody in the visual and it counts for influencers too, like pr influencers, visual arts, it's, it's great. It's great. I was able to get into it when I quit my corporate job. So just little internal plug there. And then a last kind of tangential question do you use, do you just like give everything to yourater or do you use software?
Speaker 2:Interesting question. I used to give her everything, but it made me realize after a while that I lose track of my numbers when I let her do everything. So she's doing the tax declaration, as we say once a year, and I'm doing my bookkeeping on my own. Do you use LexOffice? I used to use LexOffice, but I switched because, as I said, for me everything has to be doable in several languages. So I think a big what didn't work with LexOffice was to create invoices in the language of my customers. That was a no-go for me. So I yeah, I kind of yeah. I canceled that after a while because I thought when I have to make an invoice in English and it doesn't let me or I have to do them twice. This was also like offered, like a workaround.
Speaker 2:You know, do them in German for Lex office and then do them in English for your English customers, yeah, so but, there's like there's a software that many translators use which is called LSP Expert, and it's like a project management and bookkeeping and everything in one thing, and that's great. Is it a German tool?
Speaker 1:No, I think it's Belgian, but it's. Oh, this is interesting because this is a total mark looker, which is a like reporting, bookkeeping, crm tool for online businesses in germany, if anybody's like looking for a startup idea. I don't know how big the market is, but it's really. It's been an odyssey and I've just. I almost went on lex office but was like, no, I cannot use. And now I'm just.
Speaker 1:I pay my storyboarder a lot of money to do it, and I had to go through this long experience to see this is kind of the best way. The same reason I needed to see like I have to have a tool to control.
Speaker 2:And it's just a small thing, right. I mean, lexoffice was great, but just the fact that it didn't allow me to create invoices in different languages was like it was a no-go for me so it's just a very small detail actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that little thing okay. And then the question I would like okay so, but so that's like okay, dax is yes. Is there anything that's like a positive? I mean, you're German so you don't have anything to compare it with, but like about being a selbstständig in Germany.
Speaker 2:I think actually it's. We are very rare species in Germany being self-employed because we are so risk averse, so risk averse. So I enjoy being self-employed a lot, but I would say 90% of the people in my network friends, family they are all employed and they're always the first reaction that I get I could never be self-employed. So I think this is something that's not that common actually in Germany, because we like things to be safe and we, like you, know the safety of employment and because there are so many great rules and laws for employed people as well, you cannot just get rid of them when you want, I think. But I personally enjoyed a lot to be self-employed because it gives you so much flexibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also, of course, I mean for your clients. This is the language is always a hurdle and it's not for me. So of course you know, when you can interact with your, with German, on people on a business level, it's easier for me just because I have the cultural background. So there's there's not that many what to call it like cultural hurdles to overcome. I would say, yeah, that makes it easier Because you know we can be very direct, for example. So maybe someone from America feels instantly offended and I know how to take this.
Speaker 1:I know that I don't have to be offended.
Speaker 1:I would add another one. I think it's very easy, especially if you're non-German, to get like a bureaucracy in Texas, but I will add this as a positive. So when I one of the factors that kept me in Germany when I was thinking about I had been here maybe seven years, whether I would stay or go back was I knew I wanted to freelance and at that time in America you could not get it would be very tricky to get healthcare, so all of the social safety net things you have here. So when I quit my job I did Gründungssuchusgeld, which was amazing. They just pay you some money while you start your business. I would join the KSK, which is great. They pay all your benefits and your pension and all this and then just health care. So even though there are some bureaucratic hurdles, there is a lot of like life things that are like supporting social safety.
Speaker 1:I think it's good to keep in mind.
Speaker 2:On those frustrating, days of doing your taxes. That's true. Health insurance is no problem for freelancers either, so you can choose whoever you want to be a member of. And also, I remember when COVID happened, I applied at the job center to receive, you know, help, and it was no problem. They even lowered the rules and everything, so it was really easy to get financial help during during the pandemic for freelancers.
Speaker 2:So they even offered me a coaching like, and I was like, oh, I think I want to focus on finding clients, so I kind of rejected that, but it was really helpful, that's true, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it was a little harder in Bavaria okay, but at least I didn't, I didn't even try. I like laverland for a minute, but for some businesses my covid was actually quite good, because everybody went online and suddenly need their website. So for some businesses. It was like the opposite.
Speaker 1:But I know people that were like performers and stuff where it was really tough so, lastly, I would just ask you if you have any lessons learned or advice or things you would do differently if you start your business all over again well, I don't know if I would do things differently.
Speaker 2:What I do, what I have learned and what I want to do or I keep keep doing is, you know, never, never stop learning things and always be open to others.
Speaker 2:This is something I practice a lot, which helps me a lot as well, and not because sometimes, I don't know, maybe in Germany as well people are like you know, they're putting their elbows out and want to get rid of all their competition, and I think it's a nicer way to deal with these with competition it's just maybe not to see them as much as competition. But, you know, work together I can. I think there can come a lot of nice things out of collaborating with other people, even if they are in the same niche as you are, for example. And you know, building a network and be active in that network is, yeah, has helped me a lot at least, and yeah, I would like to promote more, you know, this vibe of helping each other out and being there for each other, especially solopreneurs, instead of looking too much on how can I make my competitor look bad, or something like that a hundred percent and I hear this over and over again in some groups.
Speaker 1:I'm in where people were. I experienced this myself where, like other designers web designers, squarespace designers we pass each other clients that aren't fits and it's really cooperation and not competition. At least that's been my experience and I've heard it from people. A legal translator that's in a networking group of mine said the same thing. That was like an epiphany she had had because she had that experience as well.
Speaker 2:And it's so much nicer, isn't it? It's easier, it gives you peace of mind you have. Yeah, it's a happier place.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent, all right. Well, mandy Borchardt, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Where can people find?
Speaker 2:you? They can find me on my website, mand, on the podcast. Where can people find you? They can find me on my website, mandyborchardtcom, or on LinkedIn and Instagram and, if you want, you can also sign up to my newsletter which just relaunched, actually a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, we'll put all these things in the show notes and thanks again for coming on, mandy.
Speaker 2:Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. You can find this episode and all other episodes of the Germany expat business show at my website at wwwEleanorMeierhofercom slash podcast. That's wwwE-L-E-A-N-O-R-M-A-Y-R-H-O-F-E-Rcom slash podcast. See you next time.