How To Successfully Expand Your Business Into The US: Avoid The Pitfalls And Take Full Advantage Of This Enormous Market | Ask An Expert with Allan Rooney

Building a law career and finding wealth as a UK expat can feel like an impossible task. We’re speaking to an expert in the New York legal scene to uncover the secrets to breaking into American law as a British, Scottish, or Irish expat. 

This week, host Richard Taylor – dual UK/US citizen and Chartered Financial Planner – has a raw and honest conversation with Allan Rooney – Founding Partner at Rooney Law – about his journey moving to the U.S., from Edinburgh to Texas and finally to New York. They discuss the evolving American landscape and the old ideals of the American Dream, and it’s not all doom and gloom. Allan shares how he built wealth in New York off the back of his successful legal career, and how other expats can too. Richard and Allan also offer insights into the challenges of obtaining a US visa and share their personal experiences with securing a Green Card.  

In this episode of Ask An Expert on We’re The Brits In America, Richard Taylor and Alan Rooney give you a detailed look at: 

• Legal Risks for Foreign Businesses: The importance of establishing an entity for U.S. tax liability protection and legitimacy.
• Trademark and Employment Challenges: Why securing trademarks and understanding employment laws are critical to avoiding costly legal battles.
• Cultural and Financial Disparities: The differences in business culture and expenses between America and other countries.
• Visas and Immigration Issues: Stories of businesses mishandling immigration laws and the repercussions they face.
• Economic Climate and Business Opportunities: How global trade policies and U.S. regulations affect international companies.
• Networking and Success: The role of community, relationships, and networking in achieving business success in the U.S. 

More about We’re The Brits In America:  With the right financial advice, landmines that threaten expat wealth can be avoided. Often encountered by US-connected expats, these financial landmines are more numerous, more hazardous, and less understood than almost anywhere else in the world. As a result, non-cross border professionals, wealth advisors, and even international advisors are often unaware of them. But don’t worry, We’re The Brits In America has you covered.  

We’re The Brits In America is dedicated to helping ambitious U.S.-connected expats and immigrants navigate those challenges — and thrive. Whether you’ve moved to the U.S. for opportunity, or are an American seeking adventure and growth abroad, our job is to equip you with the tools and insights you need to succeed.

If you’re enjoying the show, please consider leaving a 5 star rating and review to help the mission, which is to help expats and immigrants thrive in America. Visit planfirstwealth.com to learn more about our services and connect with Richard Taylor on LinkedIn.

We’re the Brits in America is affiliated with Plan First Wealth LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth.

Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Plan First Wealth does not provide any tax and/or legal advice and strongly recommends that listeners seek their own advice in these areas.

About Richard

Richard Taylor is a British expat, dual citizen (UK & US). Originally from Bolton, he now lives in Greenwich, CT, where Plan First Wealth has its head office.

As the firm’s leader, Richard launched Taylor & Taylor, now Plan First Wealth, and continues to fuel the firm’s growth. Richard is a Chartered Financial Planner (UK – CII) in addition to holding the IMC (CFA UK) and Series 65 (US – FINRA).

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPT:

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:00:18 – 00:01:35]
Welcome to we’re the Brits in America, a Plan First World podcast dedicated to helping ambitious expatriates and first generation immigrants thrive in America. I’m your host Richard Taylor and Plan first wealth is the business I founded and run today. And we work with successful expatriates, immigrants and internationally minded Americans living across the US to make the most of their opportunity and avoid the expat landmines. But first, a quick disclaimer. While Plan First Wealth LLC is an SEC registered Investment Advisor, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth. Information presented is for educational purposes only. Now, if you aren’t already receiving our regular emails, please go to our website, planfirstwealth.com and sign up there. It’s free and you’ll then be notified every time we drop a new episode and so much more. Okay, let’s get back to this week’s show. Welcome to our Ask, an expert show where I invite a fellow professional in the cross border space to come in and talk to me about the issues we think expats and immigrants in America need to be aware of if they’re going to thrive here. My guest today is Mr. Allen Rooney. For the uninitiated, Alan is an expat Scott lawyer turned New York legend. Too much?

Allan Rooney:
[00:01:35 – 00:01:36]
I love it.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:01:36 – 00:02:35]
Jokes aside, Alan is a longtime New York resident who set up his eponymous law firm, Rooney Law on the eve of the global financial crisis and 18 years later is thriving in this crazy city. So not to blow too much smoke up his place, he is the living embodiment of the American dream and should be an inspiration to anyone thinking of making such a move. But while that certainly helps burnish his credentials, that’s not why he’s here today. Alan is here with me today because Rooney Law has a clear focus on cross border matters, especially helping non US companies expand into America successfully, which, as per all things America, is never quite as easy, straightforward and inexpensive as it appears at first glance. And of course this dovetails beautifully with what we’re all about, which is helping expatriates, I. E. The people behind such companies, thrive in America. So without further ado, let’s get into this. Hi, Alan. Welcome to we’re the Brits in America.

Allan Rooney:
[00:02:35 – 00:02:40]
Thanks very much. I’m excited to be here and very flattered by your intro. I don’t know if I can live up to that, but they’ll to try. Try. Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:02:40 – 00:02:44]
Well, let’s go. So let’s start with. Tell us who you are.

Allan Rooney:
[00:02:44 – 00:03:25]
Yeah, well, I, you know, grew up in Glasgow area. I was born in the late 70s, so 80s and 90s were kind of coming of age. Then went to Edinburgh University, studied law. I was quite bright in high school, had good grades, became decidedly average when I entered law school and was a kind of B and C student guy. And I didn’t really like it, to be honest. But I got this opportunity to come to America to study. If you recall going to University of Texas Law School. And that kind of changed the course of my life because it gave me that taste of the US And I just loved it from the beginning. I just thought it was just most amazing. Obviously I loved the movies and the shows when we were kids. And then just getting here and just the energy and the positivity and the sky’s the limit mindset of the Americans was just infectious.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:03:25 – 00:03:25]
And you were in Houston?

Allan Rooney:
[00:03:26 – 00:03:27]
I was in Austin, actually.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:03:27 – 00:03:28]
Oh, Austin. Oh, great.

Allan Rooney:
[00:03:28 – 00:03:55]
That’s like, technically, I did arrive in Houston, funnily enough, and was such a bozo. I didn’t book my flight all the way to Austin. For some reason I thought, oh, it can’t be that far. So naive, right? And I remember August, right? Cause school starts late August. I go outside in Houston. It’s like 110 in humid, and I’ve got my trolley, my backpack, student backpack or whatever. I go outside and I just turn around and go straight back in the terminal. I’m like, there’s no way I can survive here. How can any human exist in these conditions? It’s so hot.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:03:55 – 00:04:05]
It’s like winter up here. Your reptilian brain kicks in when it’s that cold. You just think like, how did the first settlers not think? Nope, nope, I’m going down South.

Allan Rooney:
[00:04:05 – 00:04:40]
It’s staggering, actually. We were just in Tennessee at the weekend and that’s really mountainous and beautiful. The Smoky Mountains. We took the kids Dollywood. But that reminds you of home a little bit. It’s quite green and everything, but man, it’s hot in the summer down in the south. Anyway, got that experience, got back to Edinburgh for a year. New go and tell my whole life story. You asked me who I am, right? Yeah, yeah. So last year in Edinburgh, finish Off four year degree, really want to get a job. Managed to land a position in New York trading commodities of all things. In 1999, right before the other big recession is when I got here and it was boomtown when I got to New York and it was the moment I stepped onto Fifth Avenue, I was like, this place is amazing.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:04:40 – 00:04:42]
Trading commodities. Are you like open outcry?

Allan Rooney:
[00:04:43 – 00:06:14]
It was secondary market in a way. So there’s the NYMEX Exchange, which you’re talking about is the Trading Places, the movie. We all know that. Well, of a certain age, you know that. But this guy, actually he was a guy that went to Oxford. He’s a London guy and he’d been here for a long time already, since the early 80s. And he had his own thing trading metals and chemicals. And I was basically a Mountbatten intern for him. Are you familiar with the Mountbatten program? Mountbatten program is a New York exchange program that allows overseas people to come in and do jobs in New York for year, get experience, to do like a mini MBA thing and then you’re supposed to go home. But of course I wasn’t deciding on going home and managed to, you know, I won’t bore you with all the gory details, but didn’t really think I’d be a lawyer, thought I could do something else. But the visas kind of channel you into that, right? Because it’s vocational visas. And I wasn’t married, didn’t have a green card, of course, being me. I was watching a Celtic game in the boozer and the bartender was like, what’s your story? Like, well, I’m out of work now and I’m trying to find a job in New York and I’ve got a law degree, but I’ve been doing the, this trading stuff. And he’s like, well, there’s all these people from Deloitte come in here and drink. You should definitely email this lady. They’ve got lawyers in their group. I’m like, okay, what have I got to lose at that point, I’m living in a basement in Jersey City and I’m hanging my clothes on the pipes. I don’t even have a wardrobe and I’m running out of money. My dad’s saying, come home. This is ridiculous. It’s folly. You’ll get a job in London no problem. And he was right. I could have done that, but I just couldn’t let go of it. And I got lucky. This Deloitte thing happened. They gave me an offer, really good salary, we’ll pay for Your bar exam. We’ll pay for your visa.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:06:14 – 00:06:15]
This is from a barman.

Allan Rooney:
[00:06:16 – 00:07:38]
I did a barman. Hook me. The poor guy passed away. But he was a Lovely guy. Alan McLafferty, his name was. And Alan was Glaswegian. And, you know, it was a Monday night and we’d beaten Ranger six two. And it was. I missed the game. I’m like, you got the game on. And he’s like, yeah, yeah, come on up. And it’s like vhs, you know. And he’s sticking the game on and he’s celebrating the goals. He’s watched it like six times. Anyway, I was telling that story to Chris Sutton, who scored two goals that day this year, quite funnily enough, the striker. Anyway, we got this job at Deloitte. Wasn’t a huge fan of being a tax lawyer, if I’m honest. My personality didn’t really lend itself to reading the tax code in a cubicle, which is kind of. Kind of what the job was. It’s a big place to. You know, I’m kind of, like, immature. You don’t get any client contact at those places with good reason. That was clueless, right? So they wouldn’t put you in front of anybody. But then 911 happened, and I was right downtown that day, which was a pretty horrible, horrible day that we’re all still processing that were there and saw some awful, awful things. And just there was a recession in New York at that point because. Because the city had been hit so hard. And at that point, I was kind of looking to get out. I remember doing the GMAT to try and maybe go to business school. Got 100% on the English. The math was not so good because I was so out of practice, actually. But long story short, managed to get a position at a small firm. They were throwing me into court all the time. I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And the guy was like, you’ll figure it out. And you were getting so much exposure. I was quite like, this being a lawyer thing, it’s quite fun.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:07:39 – 00:07:39]
Litigation.

Allan Rooney:
[00:07:39 – 00:09:31]
Yeah. I was doing. I did commercial litigation for this guy. He was at a fancy law firm for a long time called Sullivan and Cromwell. And he started his own. Started his own firm. And I got really lucky because the training he gave me was amazing. It was like really high qual, white shoe law firm. Standard training, which you don’t get everywhere. And I didn’t go to a traditional big firm, right. So I was lucky to have. He was very exacting boss. But the Training was amazing and did that. And then those guys were kind of like, I’m getting to the question. I think basically they weren’t paying me that much, but I was enjoying it. Then I said, guys, how do I make more money? And they said, look, if you bring in business, we will give you a percentage. So I start in my mid to late 20s, which is not an easy age to bring in work when you’re a lawyer. Less of the gray hair, etc. You basically, you know, someone’s co op, condo closing, someone’s will. Then I get a business client and I’m getting. I’ve got this little book of business that’s growing. And the gentleman at that point were like, oh, that’s good. And then they were going to sponsor my green card. And they basically decided they didn’t want to do that for reasons I won’t really go into. Meanwhile, I’d started. I’d bought a brownstone, my friend in 05, and we were renovating into condos and flats, and we sold those at the beginning of 07, before the crash. So I had a bit of money for the first time ever, a bit of liquidity in the bank. And I was like, oh, that’s good. But I’m getting thrown out the country again, which is a recurring theme with me. Right. And I’m like, you know, visas and stuff, because that is a real challenge. And we’ll talk about it more, particularly if you don’t transfer in with a big company or something. You know, if you come from the start when you’re 22 out of uni, it can be challenging. So, you know, did that. And basically a friend of mine who was an Irish lady immigration lawyer goes, well, why don’t you take money from the condos and set up your own law firm and do an E visa, which is an investment visa in the us And I’m like, well, yeah, why don’t we do that then? And we did that, and I launched the firm effectively to stay in the country in June of 2007. Talk about lighting a fire under your no salary. Right.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:09:31 – 00:09:34]
It’s your livelihood, it’s your link to staying in the country.

Allan Rooney:
[00:09:34 – 00:09:35]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:09:35 – 00:09:37]
And it’s the eve of a global financial crisis.

Allan Rooney:
[00:09:37 – 00:09:57]
Yeah. And I’m enjoying it. Like, I’m playing football, got my pals, I’ve got a little bit of business. You know, you’re. You know, the single scene in New York city in your 20s is pretty fun. You know, it was. It was a great time. And I just really didn’t want to leave and I sort of begin to build a life, you know. That first year, the idea was, you know, maybe do 100 grand, 200 grand, tread water. They broke a million dollars the first year, you know what I mean?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:09:57 – 00:09:59]
So it was like, wait, were you solo law firm?

Allan Rooney:
[00:09:59 – 00:10:00]
Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:10:00 – 00:10:00]
Wow.

Allan Rooney:
[00:10:00 – 00:10:30]
Yeah, it was, I mean, bit of luck, bit of talent, bit of right place at the right time. There was definitely a retraction from the big law firms. Some larger companies were like, how do we save cost on legal? How do we save cost on everything? Because the crash had happened. So we got a little bit of cross current in our favor there. The law firm that kind of threw me out, they were actually quite cool. After I started the firm, they were like, why don’t you stay here in your office? We won’t charge you rent for a while and when you’re ready, you pay some rent and we’ll help you out on stuff. So I always had this kind of team.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:10:30 – 00:10:31]
That’s amazing.

Allan Rooney:
[00:10:31 – 00:11:34]
Yeah. Like 20 lawyer firm behind me that I used to work for. So I knew everybody, I knew what they were good at, not good at. And I went out and I was able to sell a fairly broad law firm offering instead of I’m just Alan the solo. So that’s one of the reasons we were able to do a bit more broader work, more sophisticated work. And really I’ve just replaced those guys with my own people over the years. And it’s grown and you know, we are where we are. But going back to the. One of the things we do a lot of when I started to try and get business was helping predominantly British companies come in. And that’s expanded quite a lot of Irish, Australian, Western Europe and stuff. But 80 plus percent, I think has been British. And we’ve now supported 300 businesses or so coming in over 20 years. Because I was doing it before I had the firm. Right. So that’s a bit about that. Who am I, you know, Father of four boys, married to Puerto Rican. We’re Scotta Ricans. We live in the suburbs now. The boys are a handful, but they’re great. They’re 7 to 15 in age. My wife’s a lawyer too, but she stays home at the moment. And you know what it’s like living in the suburbs of New York City. It’s pretty great. Like we enjoy the lifestyle and we travel.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:11:34 – 00:11:35]
It’s a good way. Kind of Scotta Ricans.

Allan Rooney:
[00:11:35 – 00:11:57]
I know Scotta Ricans. I know a few other Scotta Rican families. Yeah, we’re not the Only ones. Okay. But yeah, that’s sort of the. I guess the formation or the origin story really. And it’s sort of grown and it’s been a blast. You know, it’s been really fun. And as you know, it. It takes a lot of networking and hustle and everything else, but, you know. Well, I’ve talked too much.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:11:57 – 00:12:14]
No, I was joking at the beginning. I wasn’t joking. It was kind of meant to be a fun, fun intro, but you are kind of like the most connected New York guy I know. I’d say connected and beloved. Honestly, everyone, every time you drop your name, it get an enormously positive reaction.

Allan Rooney:
[00:12:14 – 00:13:22]
That’s really nice to hear. That’s very sweet of you. Thank you. You know, I try and do the right thing, try and be a good guy, try and do people a favor, try and help them out if they’re in a jam. You always need a hand up in life. You know, someone gave me an opportunity if I can. I always try. And I get a lot of young. I always say kids and I shouldn’t. You know, young adults who have recent graduates. It might be Irish J1s. There’s a wave of them. There’s like other UK people, Scots. Get in touch. How do you do it? How do you practice law in America? How do you build a career there? And I always try and talk to them. One week I had like a dozen of those and don’t laugh, but I actually organized a zoom and I said, I’m sorry, guys, I can’t do one on ones with everybody, but if you want to dial into this, if you want to ask me something in confidence on the side later, please do. But I’m going to just do a celebrity squares and just talk about my experience and give you some advice. And they were like, that’s great. You know, it was quite fun because there was like interplay between everybody. But I try and do that and I try and introduce people and I just, I believe in karma and goodwill. And I think in New York there’s so much positivity. You get bad people and you get people that wish you ill and don’t celebrate success, but I think generally people do and they’re willing to do a favor, do an intro, and they’ll give you an opportunity if you don’t deliver, you know.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:13:22 – 00:13:36]
You know, it’s. You know, it’s almost a bit cliche this, this whole thing about America and New York and the attitude and the can do, but I tell you, it’s real. Yeah, it’s a Thing, and I think it contributes to this country’s success and the city’s success hugely.

Allan Rooney:
[00:13:36 – 00:13:47]
It’s infectious. A friend of mine’s, lifelong New Yorker, came here as a child from Jordan, actually. Very successful real estate guy. He’s. He’s actually doing the Wynynn Casino in UAE right now in an emirate called Ras Al Khaimah, which I know, I’ve been there.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:13:47 – 00:13:49]
Spent the 30th birthday there.

Allan Rooney:
[00:13:49 – 00:14:21]
Oh, no way. I didn’t know much about RAK until I became friends with this guy. He’s a local Westchester dad as well. He comes back from meetings and he’s like, alan, I forget what New York’s like. It’s like a river of commerce. Another client of mine who was very successful building a business here, and we talk about some of the things he did well and some of the things he maybe didn’t. But, mate, a man called Jules, and he was just like, it’s a Dutch trading post. It always was. Still is, you know, and everyone’s up for. What are we doing for each other? Can you do a job? Yep. You, you, you. And it’s all intro. We’ll take a meeting. That meeting might not last an hour. Might last eight minutes if it’s not going right, you know?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:14:21 – 00:14:26]
You know, I was listening to a podcast recently that was talking about the transition from New Amsterdam to New York.

Allan Rooney:
[00:14:26 – 00:14:28]
Oh, yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t know much about that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:14:28 – 00:14:38]
Well, the historian was basically saying, it’s exactly that. It was a Dutch trading post, and the Dutch settlers at the time were kind of like, we don’t care. Just don’t mess with this. Yeah, we’ve got a good thing going on here.

Allan Rooney:
[00:14:38 – 00:14:39]
Yeah, don’t.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:14:39 – 00:14:41]
Don’t stuff it up for us. And we’ll go along with what we’re going.

Allan Rooney:
[00:14:41 – 00:14:53]
Well, that’s kind of the American attitude to this day, in a way. You know, I think generally, I think Europeans look at, oh, Trump and all this and all that, and it’s like, there’s a really good Don Draper meme. You know, the Mad Men guy?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:14:53 – 00:14:53]
Love it.

Allan Rooney:
[00:14:53 – 00:16:19]
Where he’s like in the. You know that one in the elevator, his face is like that. And like, the guys, like, Europe were really worried about what’s going on in America. Right. France or whatever. And Draper’s line is, I don’t think about you at all. Right. You know, it might be told as myopic, but they don’t really need to look outside that much for the size of economy and what you’ve got. Like, we Were just the skiing, the beaches. They’ve got everything right. It’s not as culturally diverse. I mean, I love going to Europe, of course I do, but it’s, you know, and Americans do too, but there’s a lot to do here and the sky’s the limit and you don’t really need to trade internationally that much. Obviously some big players do. I don’t know, it just seems like there’s always that. The other thing I was going to say was I think there’s an element of just leave me alone government. You know what I mean? It’s like, I’ll get European startups like, oh, you know, invest Ireland gave us money and we got money from the Scottish government. Whatever. An American entrepreneur would be like, I don’t want government anywhere near my business. You know, it is the American attitude, you know, but to your earlier point, and to lay up, there’s so many foreign founders come in who smash it here. And that’s why America needs. And Reagan has a really good Reagan piece on this. And I’m not a Republican, but he talks about bringing the best and brightest to this country. That beacon on the Hill, that place where you can be successful, get rich, be free, they won’t take it away from you. Laws work. Until recently with my friend Donald, but laws work. There’s rule of law, all of that, that attracts the world’s best and brightest, which is a massive engine for us.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:16:19 – 00:16:21]
As Americans and I just hope they’re not damaging it.

Allan Rooney:
[00:16:21 – 00:16:24]
We can’t balls that up. I heard that is the single most important thing.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:16:24 – 00:16:45]
I heard another stat recently, startups, funding. For every 5 million of funding in America, the equivalent is 1 million in Europe. Yeah, It’s a wash of capital, opportunity, infrastructure, regular. Have you heard the saying, America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates. Yes, and obviously these are like, these are the throwaway.

Allan Rooney:
[00:16:45 – 00:16:47]
Well, they’re generalisms, but they’re somewhat.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:16:47 – 00:16:48]
And true.

Allan Rooney:
[00:16:48 – 00:17:06]
And look, and the fact that Fang is all here, okay, they probably sell all your data to everybody and it’s not as regulated privacy. That would be in Europe. But like, okay, but it’s created gazillions in wealth and opportunity and innovation and they just go for it. And it’s like, worry about the law.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:17:06 – 00:17:45]
Later, you know, I think so. Europeans are older. You know, it’s an older society and I think it’s. And it’s a more mature society and I think it’s. As a society gets older and more mature, it’s a natural impulse of leaders to want to protect and and regulate. And I think all the arguably over regulation in Europe has come from a good place, but I think it’s undoubtedly cycled the economy. And then when you come here and you see slightly more lay safe their attitude when you realize what it’s unleashed and yes, there’s some downsides to that, but look at what it’s unleashed and you realize I do think that has to be protected now. And I do think there is, there is an instinct of governments to come in and over regulate.

Allan Rooney:
[00:17:45 – 00:17:52]
I mean not in the current administration probably, although that pendulum has swung. There are weird, but there’s weird cross currents.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:17:52 – 00:17:52]
Right.

Allan Rooney:
[00:17:52 – 00:18:17]
Like so, you know, immigration’s a tricky one, but something had to happen there, you know what I mean? And nobody wants to see some of the awful things that ICE is doing, but something has to happen on it. You know, you can’t just have an open border. You know, like it’s a very, it’s a very tough issue. But there’s a lot of really hard working immigrants out there that don’t have their papers that just want to hustle and provide for their kids. And you know, I’ve got a lot of time for those people. I don’t know, it’s a tough one. Anyway, I think we’re flipped here.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:18:17 – 00:18:18]
We have like delves.

Allan Rooney:
[00:18:18 – 00:18:20]
Yeah. We’ve got off track.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:18:20 – 00:18:23]
Perhaps let’s back away from the politics.

Allan Rooney:
[00:18:23 – 00:18:23]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:18:24 – 00:19:02]
So let’s get back to. Right. Let’s talk about businesses coming to America. The reason I want to talk about this is I’m sure, I know that it’s. It’s like people look at America especially as English speakers and think, oh, how hard can it be? We go over. But it’s not, it’s different. It’s culturally different, the financial system’s different and we see expats getting themselves into pickles all the time. That could be avoided and they can be expensive. And I am absolutely sure the same thing is true with businesses. Right. They look at the. It’s a natural thing for a British or an Australian or an Irish business to think, oh, that’s four times, five times the size of my market here. One opportunity, they already speak my language. I’ll just set up there and go and do business. And I can only imagine it’s not that simple.

Allan Rooney:
[00:19:02 – 00:19:38]
Well, I think one thing you said is definitely true in the legal space and probably the financial tax space as well is if you mess it up, it’s much more expensive to fix it than it would have been if you’d just done it properly in the first place. And that goes for kind of all the areas of law we touch, we help companies, and we’ve expanded our offering over the years. But it’s basically okay. Let’s say they’re looking at the market. Usually the first conversation is like, I think I’m ready to set up. And then the question is, should I set up? And you’re like, well, look, that’s a confluence of factors. I generally think you should. If you’re doing anything here, because you get limited liability, you look a bit more legitimate to the American market, as.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:19:38 – 00:19:40]
Opposed to sending stuff over.

Allan Rooney:
[00:19:40 – 00:20:04]
Yeah. And people do trade from overseas and there’s ways to do that that can. You can be more protected than others. But people just don’t know what they don’t know. Right. So, for example, they’ve got like an employee here because they’re using an eor. You know, there’s employment of records that become quite popular. And they’re like, we’ve got a guy in Massachusetts. We need him on Tuesday, fine. But like, that guy can get served with a lawsuit. That guy’s signing contracts here. Good chance you’ve got a permanent establishment for tax here. Now you’re paying US tax if you get caught.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:20:04 – 00:20:06]
So you think you’ve got around it with how they say, appointment.

Allan Rooney:
[00:20:06 – 00:21:04]
Well, they’re just like, they just want to do the business. And I get the entrepreneur’s instinct. Like, I just want somebody there and get the revenue in. But also, if something goes awry in that contract and there’s a dispute, the UK parent gets sued, not the US subsidiary, right. Which might have. And suddenly the UK parents, they’ve got 10 million of venture capital dollars they just raised, right? And that’s now exposed to a US suit, which if you just have that sub, that’s half or if not more, the battle of never having a UK liability, because the US is the trading entity, right? And then that sponsors visas that files for trademarks, or the UK does, it doesn’t matter. Or the foreign top co. Let’s call it that. So we do the trademark side. People don’t know that you need to get your trademark, otherwise you can get hit with infringement suits from anywhere. Like you can get T boned with a suit under what’s called the Lanham Act. That’s like double damages, attorney’s fees, disgorgement of profits. These are all remedies under the Lanham act that they can go after if you’re infringing someone’s mark. And most. Most folk I speak to who are sophisticated Successful business people don’t know that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:21:04 – 00:21:17]
So that would be a problem. If you’re used to. You’ve got a brand or some sort of phrase or whatever you’re using in strap mine using in the UK or Europe and you think you can just roll that out in America. But if you’re infringing on someone’s trademark.

Allan Rooney:
[00:21:17 – 00:21:36]
And they get wind of it, they can hit you. They’ve got a very advantageous position under the law to squash you. Basically, you usually roll over, settle, change your name. But that was a lot more expensive than just doing a trademark search and having us file for a trademark that’s available. So that’s one pitfall people don’t think about getting set up, doing the trademark. Those are the first two things we do.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:21:36 – 00:21:40]
For most clients you can set up as an LLC or a C corp.

Allan Rooney:
[00:21:40 – 00:22:02]
Usually a corp, just because it’s opaque for tax. You can check the box on an LLC and have it opaque for tax. We kind of like corpse 9 out of 10 times. Because if you’re raising any money, Delaware is the only place to be on the VC side. A lot of clients don’t quite know where they’re going to be yet. So you might as well park in Delaware or something. You could legitimately set up a New York entity and not pay Delaware every year and not pay two states.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:22:02 – 00:22:03]
It’s not much though, is it?

Allan Rooney:
[00:22:03 – 00:22:44]
It’s not much. It’s an admin burden and a few hundred dollars. It’s not the end of the world. But apparently Delaware is losing some of its prominence and people are looking at Nevada and Texas more now. But anyway, I think that you got to have advice. You got to talk to people that know what they’re doing to avoid these expensive calamities. There’s just so many things you can do wrong like, oh, make them a contract, right? Oh great. You’re not paying Social Security tax, which is our national insurance, right? And then of course he. You have a bust up with a contractor because they’re crap or whatever and they go file for unemployment. And you’re like, well, you weren’t an employee. That’s not what the Department of Labor thinks. They were doing a 9 to 5, particularly in California like that. They’re very difficult employment laws.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:22:44 – 00:22:49]
If you’re a business, are you then at risk of getting prosecuted?

Allan Rooney:
[00:22:49 – 00:23:21]
Well, let’s say the Department of Labor says that was really an employee. You didn’t pay the Social Security tax, you didn’t pay the California XYZ tax, you didn’t pay this you didn’t pay that because as we know, if you’ve got someone on like 100 grand, actually you’re going to pay 115. Right. If they’re on payroll on the rest. Right. Or whatever. I’m making up numbers, maybe 10, 15% more. Right. And if you don’t do that, they can say, well, you owe us penalties and interest for what you didn’t pay and you need to pay us. So you’ve got, and you’re dealing with a lawyer like me to help you walk you through it and defend the matter and settle it. It had you just paid the payroll.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:23:21 – 00:23:28]
And if you don’t. Am I right in thinking this could cause you problems later on if you’re trying to get back into America as a company and maybe even as an individual?

Allan Rooney:
[00:23:28 – 00:23:51]
Well, I mean, I think the biggest one that can kind of ban you or hamper you is the visa side, you know, if you do. And we had a client that had a very bad incident in an airport in Europe. I won’t go into any more details where the lady got flustered and had initially said, I think she was coming on holiday and then our vacation. And then she just panicked and said, my boss told me to lie.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:23:51 – 00:23:51]
Oh no.

Allan Rooney:
[00:23:52 – 00:24:04]
Yeah. So they got hit with something called alien smuggling, which I’d never even heard of. And it’d be very, very difficult for them to get visas and things and really scale their business in the US now, which is a shame.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:24:04 – 00:24:08]
And they were trying. Were they, were they, were they tentatively cutting corners?

Allan Rooney:
[00:24:08 – 00:24:13]
Well, the guy had looked in the cases and the suitcases had. Or bags had that samples.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:24:13 – 00:24:13]
Oh no.

Allan Rooney:
[00:24:13 – 00:24:17]
And things like that. So. And they’re very. Oh, so she’s coming over on a.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:24:17 – 00:24:20]
Tourist visa, which was really, you know.

Allan Rooney:
[00:24:21 – 00:24:41]
People do it all the time. Like I always tell people, look, you know, you can come back and forth for 20 years and never have a problem or you can get a really bad incident year one and people don’t even know that they’re here enough. They’ll pick up personal tax liability under the 183 day rule, which is even less if you’re here a lot for several years because of the formula. There’s just all these things you don’t know. And I don’t blame them. It’s not their job.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:24:41 – 00:25:02]
There’s a. Something went on LinkedIn recently, you may have seen it. A founder who recently is in a business that’s been funded, retracted millions in. In funding, had posted about he’d got American citizenship, but in his post he Or a green card. He basically admitted to working while he was on a moonlighting or what working when he shouldn’t mean working well, and.

Allan Rooney:
[00:25:02 – 00:25:28]
They’Ll look at like I was going to go there, that the CBP officers Look at LinkedIn and stuff. Yeah. And you’ll have people doing daft stuff like putting New York manager for their title or whatever. And they’re, they’re not authorized to work, you know, so you did some really silly stuff. But they’ll often Google you or whatever and then they’ll try and trip you up with questions based on what they’ve seen or what’s in your luggage and patterns. I mean the guy that shows up for 87 days with four bags, what do you think they’re gonna think? You know, so it’s just a game.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:25:28 – 00:25:29]
You do not want to play.

Allan Rooney:
[00:25:29 – 00:25:34]
Because any serious business, I’m like, you just need to get an L visa or an E visa. Yeah, those are the two basic to.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:25:34 – 00:25:46]
Your point, like that guy probably. I thought nothing of it. You know, you’ve been through customs a million times. Just tell them you’re here for holiday and it’s. And it’s fine. And now you’re saying that they all struggle to get back into the us.

Allan Rooney:
[00:25:46 – 00:25:47]
Well, I don’t know what happened to him, you know.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:25:48 – 00:25:49]
No one you’re telling me the one.

Allan Rooney:
[00:25:49 – 00:25:52]
Yeah, well I didn’t think the business will have a black mark on it, you know.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:25:52 – 00:25:52]
Wow.

Allan Rooney:
[00:25:53 – 00:25:55]
So. And it’s so avoidable.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:25:55 – 00:25:56]
Yeah.

Allan Rooney:
[00:25:56 – 00:26:10]
So if you take, if you take, you know those. The US can quite draconian in those ways. The tax authorities too. I mean the IRS has definitely been cut and it suffered resources depletion. So I don’t know if there is active but like if you know those audits are real, I mean there’s criminal penalties. People.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:26:10 – 00:26:28]
This is what people seem to be falling back on now. Like ah, yeah, they’re under resourced. They’re not going to find out. The problem you have with that is though, oftentimes they have an unlimited period to come at you. And a lot of that information is now through FATCA and AI. That information is there and if they ever get round to catching it, if they ever get around to picking it up, they can come at you.

Allan Rooney:
[00:26:28 – 00:26:29]
Yeah, that’s actually a good point.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:26:29 – 00:26:30]
Living over you.

Allan Rooney:
[00:26:30 – 00:26:33]
There’s a statute of limitations, but I think if there’s fraud, there’s no statute of limitations.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:26:33 – 00:26:45]
Or if you’re missing, missing certain file, if you’re missing certain. If the tax return is incomplete. So if you’re missing, you know, we have to do annual forms for bank accounts and yeah, F bars if them and another one if they’re missing. They can stay open forever.

Allan Rooney:
[00:26:45 – 00:26:45]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:26:45 – 00:26:54]
And so people just have this thing living over them forever. So yeah, they might be under resource now. What if they’re not in 20 years time and they’ve got data, AI robots to come to all the data.

Allan Rooney:
[00:26:54 – 00:26:56]
That’s a really good point. I never thought of that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:26:56 – 00:26:59]
I don’t know how people. Yeah, that would terrify me. I don’t. I couldn’t live like that.

Allan Rooney:
[00:27:00 – 00:27:40]
Yeah, totally. So, yeah, so there’s just these other crazy things that happen and you know, in terms of, you know, what’s the recipe for success? The ones I’ve seen done very well or don’t do very well are kind of. Often a founder comes over and maybe hires Americans around them and someone that knows the story, knows the culture, often a good salesperson. And if you hire that locally, it’s very expensive, obviously. And people, I think a lot of companies are staggered by the salary demands here. But life’s also expensive living in the New York area. You know, I don’t know what a Vodafone bill is, But Verizon’s over 200amonth. Right. And 30 quid Vodafone, I don’t know, a lot less. Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s just a silly example, but it’s.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:27:40 – 00:27:41]
I think it’s perfect.

Allan Rooney:
[00:27:41 – 00:27:48]
Your cable TV bill, I mean, or if you even do that, or your streaming bill these days. You know, I think it’s, you know, you don’t really. The money comes in, but it goes.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:27:48 – 00:27:50]
Yeah, really expensive place.

Allan Rooney:
[00:27:50 – 00:27:50]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:27:50 – 00:27:58]
People. I think people look at America and think opportunity. Yes. And low tax. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s particularly low tax.

Allan Rooney:
[00:27:58 – 00:28:30]
Well, it depends on the area. Yeah. I mean, this is why Florida has been popular and Texas, to a degree, because they don’t have state income tax as you know, New York does. Most states do. But you think about the indirect tax burden. People don’t look at like property taxes. Right. So we’re all paying significant real estate taxes in the New York. The way the suburbs work, as you know, is you pay the high taxes on your house because you get good schools. That’s how it works. So you don’t pay for private school. It’s actually a lot cheaper than private school. But it’s another indirect tax, as is sales tax. Look at the phone bill. I never look at them anymore, but you know, little charges at the end, you’re like, what are those taxes?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:28:30 – 00:28:36]
You know, is when you check out the hotel and there’s. There’s 18 different taxes and a resort fee.

Allan Rooney:
[00:28:36 – 00:28:39]
I saw Airbnb is charging those now too.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:28:40 – 00:28:50]
It’s called gotcha capitalism. Yeah, but it’s not just capitalism. It’s also the. It’s also the town and the municipality and the, and the state and the federal, you know, they’re all. Everyone’s taking a little cut.

Allan Rooney:
[00:28:50 – 00:28:55]
Yeah. You know, it’s. And there is. The upside is still there and that’s what keeps people going, I think.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:28:55 – 00:29:12]
But you find. Do you find firms under budget? They, they might apply a European or a British or an Australian, whatever style budget to. Okay, it’s going to cost this much to launch in America. And the reality is once you factor in legal fees, because you need to have a budget for legal fees, once you factor in cost of hiring people, it’s way more.

Allan Rooney:
[00:29:12 – 00:29:57]
Yeah, I mean, we try and do actually pretty inexpensive flat fees for the setup, the trademark, your first employment agreement. Some things are hourly rate, but we’ve commoditized those a bit and occasionally we lose on those. But we do it partly because the client gets certainty. Right. So they then onboard with you and then your lawyer, unless you do something silly or you fall out or something, generally they’ll come back to you with issues and you’ve got. The client will hopefully stick with you for the journey. And so the lost leaders a little bit. And it’s not expensive to keep a company going either. Like, people are like, well, I’ll be in America, American tax. And da, da, da. You’re like, like, look, what are we charging you five grand or something to set you up. Your accountant will be probably get that for a few grand a year. I mean, that’s your cost, whatever Delaware charges just to have the entity until.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:29:57 – 00:29:58]
You start hiring people.

Allan Rooney:
[00:29:58 – 00:30:02]
Yeah, of course. But then hopefully that’s driving revenue. Right?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:30:02 – 00:30:06]
Well, eventually, presumably. Right. But I bet there’s a lag period.

Allan Rooney:
[00:30:07 – 00:30:49]
Look, I think it’s like anywhere. I don’t know how it is. I’ve never really worked in the UK in my whole life, apart from when I was like a student and like in high school and stuff. But I always go back to this quote by a guy called Bill Paulsonelli. He built huge law firm in the Midwest and he was retiring and then Paul Cinelli was at that point was like half a billion in revenue or something. Which to build your own law firm and get to half A billion is impressive. Hats off, Bill. And they were like, what’s your secret, Bill? How did you do this? And he’s just like, the good people I hired. Good people around you is everything, I think. And it’s just sort of. And we’ve had bad people in our businesses too. I don’t mean bad as in wicked. I mean not very effective or lazy or somewhat incompetent or bad.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:30:49 – 00:30:49]
Fit.

Allan Rooney:
[00:30:49 – 00:31:08]
Yeah. And about our culture fit. And it just, it just, it screws up everything in the business. Right. And so there’s a bit of luck in hiring, I think, timing, obviously we do equity compensation plans for companies want to do restricted stock or stock options. That’s a way to incentivise and maybe dial down salary a bit, but give them upside in equity.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:31:08 – 00:31:14]
Is that a big thing for. Non. That’s huge here, obviously. Is that a huge thing outside of the us?

Allan Rooney:
[00:31:14 – 00:31:25]
I mean the uk. I mean, again, I’m not a UK lawyer, but they always talk about EMI schemes and stuff or whatever they’re called, or uscis. I think that’s for investors. But basically there are incentive schemes in the uk. I know that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:31:25 – 00:31:28]
No, but you’re finding that the firms coming to America are very open to this.

Allan Rooney:
[00:31:29 – 00:33:00]
Well, what they try and do is replicate what they’ve got at home sometimes and they’ll be like, how do we do that in America? And it’s like, well, you can’t put a round peg in a square hole. Right? You could have that plan and you can put them in it, probably, but they might not get the optimized tax treatment that the person in London’s getting. Right. But you can build a plan. The ones that get big, they build a plan here, they do something that you can do different things. You know, it depends on the business. If you’re a privately held, closely held business, you might find a key person and give them 10% of the American business, invest it over four years or something like that. Right. And you have a structure and the documents we do are like, if they don’t work out, you can basically get that equity back. So you don’t have floating debt equity out there because you don’t want that, because you want to re incentivize who’s working in the business now. But so that can work. And the other thing is they get really good tax treatment. The person who’s the recipient gets what does what’s called a Section 83B election. And when they do that, they get that equity into income year one, even though it’s not vested. So their basis in the stock is really cheap. So let’s say I’ve just started this American arm of a French business. That American entity is worth nothing basically when it starts. So that person’s paying tuppence hapeny, to use a phrase, from home in tax. But it gets to the upside if there’s growth. So there are tools like that. And the sooner you do that, the better the tax outcome for the individual. Again, people don’t know that the earlier you’re speaking to people. So in our first chat with a client, we usually go through all of this in like an hour and point out all these things and they often come off going. Even if they don’t hire us, they’re always like, that was really helpful.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:33:00 – 00:33:01]
How are these businesses finding you?

Allan Rooney:
[00:33:01 – 00:34:24]
I wish if I knew that I could do more of it. Right. No, it’s a joke. But it’s, you know, it’s just referrals, introductions, the odd Google thing. But I mean really it’s relationships and former clients recommending current clients recommending people in the ecosystem, the cross border ecosystem, as you mentioned may refer in, because they know we do a lot of this. Funnily enough, big law firms, you might think they’re a competitor, but they’re not. We don’t compete. They’re in a different stratosphere and God bless them for getting 2,500 an hour or whatever they get. But we’re less than half of that and we think, think we can do a lot of the things they can do. And we’re often across the table in M and A transactions from, call it, I don’t know, Clery Latham, big name law firms, which is great, we enjoy that. It’s like a kind of good run out. But these guys send us stuff when it’s not a fit or the cost don’t work right. So partners at large firms, some of them I played football with 25 years ago, it’s a long time ago. And they’re like, I’ll go to Rooney because they do it, they can do M and A, but It’s only a $10 million deal and our fees will probably be 3 million bucks. So you don’t want to do that. You want to go to a boutique that can do it more cost effectively. So actually we pair really well with some of the big law firms who are looking to get a safe pair of hands for people that come to them, but they can’t necessarily tolerate that cost or they sometimes have a conflict as well.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:34:24 – 00:34:37]
Do you see much Difference between if you have a British firm looking to expand or an Irish firm or an Australian firm, are they are a European, Is it very different? Is it different working with these companies, their approaches, or is it all much more muchness?

Allan Rooney:
[00:34:39 – 00:36:00]
Everyone has their own sort of culture, of course. I think. I don’t think Ireland would be pleased if I said they were in the Commonwealth, because I’m not. But like, you know, but like the Commonwealth culture of your Canadians, your Aussies, your Brits, there’s a certain commonality we all have. We all kind of. I think our culture in those countries is closer than to each other than it is to America’s culture. Right. Even though we do have the common language and we have stuff in common with America, I’d say we’re. America’s been independent longer. Right. It’s gone its own way. Longer, Longer. It’s bigger. It was massively successful. Our manufacturing capability basically won the Second World War and from that point over the world was devastated and America could just fly in the 50s and 60s and the last century. And I think, yeah, you’ve got a lot in common. I don’t see a big difference. Maybe like, they’re talking about Aussie rules and the other guys are talking about the Arsenal or whatever, but I tend to. You’re getting to know people, you’re building a rapport. So, yeah, we’re talking about rugby and football and, you know, kind of what’s going on. I keep my insta feed at the moment is all. Like Spider man is being shot in Glasgow, you know, so you sort of stay connected a little bit through. I try and minimize the social, but we all do. But, you know, staying on top of things, being able to chat topically and it’s. I find it, if they’re coming here, they tend to be my kind of people, usually 100%, you know, I mean.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:36:00 – 00:36:05]
Like, there is that sort of mentality of people who look. Look far and go for it.

Allan Rooney:
[00:36:05 – 00:36:25]
Yeah, yeah, I’d say that because, you know, I think of the UK and Ireland and these places as pretty entrepreneurial, but I have a very distinct looking glass on that because I get contacted by all these people that want to go places and to a degree, a place like Ireland, place like Scotland, they’re small and a lot of people with dry leave for that reason. Right. To go out and kind of make it or do their thing or whatever. But. Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:36:25 – 00:36:34]
Are you seeing any particular demand from any one location right now? Is anywhere, you know, like right now? Portugal. Americans are fleeing to Portugal. Is there Anything on the other.

Allan Rooney:
[00:36:34 – 00:36:35]
That’s what they say.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:36:36 – 00:36:38]
I think in Portugal, they definitely.

Allan Rooney:
[00:36:38 – 00:36:43]
Oh, really? I don’t know what the numbers are, to be honest. Like, you hear like, you know, Ellen’s moved to the Cotswolds or whatever.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:36:43 – 00:36:46]
Yeah, she definitely has. She’s selling a 30 million pound farmhouse.

Allan Rooney:
[00:36:47 – 00:36:47]
It’s.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:36:47 – 00:36:49]
I don’t know why, but I’m sure.

Allan Rooney:
[00:36:49 – 00:36:51]
She’Ll enjoy the rain versus California.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:36:51 – 00:36:59]
Yeah, I’m sure. But Americans are flocking to the UK right now as well. I think Americans have just become the highest, highest. The biggest purchase of property in London.

Allan Rooney:
[00:36:59 – 00:37:02]
Oh, really? Because for a while there was a lot of Middle Eastern money and stuff.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:37:02 – 00:37:06]
Now it’s London and they’re definitely flocking to Portugal. And Portugal’s having a bit of a reckoning with all these expats.

Allan Rooney:
[00:37:06 – 00:37:08]
Not just America, those golden visas or whatever.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:37:08 – 00:37:18]
Yeah, but. But do you see, like, is a. Is. Is there any one jurisdiction that’s like, really just minting entrepreneurial businesses that are coming to America right now and then being successful?

Allan Rooney:
[00:37:18 – 00:37:33]
Oh, you’re talking about the origin state. You know, I’d say it’s the normal clip, but the tariffs definitely gave us an uptick. You know, we’re getting a lot more calls with that. People were thinking, oh, maybe I need to kind of onshore in a way that perhaps they were like, well, maybe I’ll wait. And then they started to get worse. So that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:37:33 – 00:37:39]
Have you seen that? Actually, then there’s one thing getting an uptick in interest. Have you actually seen that translate into.

Allan Rooney:
[00:37:39 – 00:38:08]
Yeah, a little bit. I’d say it kind of tailed off. When he tailed off, you know, and kind of said, oh, we’re pausing it. I mean, the tariffs are all going in now. I was speaking to a guy in the apparel business and he was like, I was hoping he’d do a podcast with us. I thought it was very interesting. He was just like, I’ve got a whole line of materials and textiles from India and I’ve got a whole line from China. I was at the trade show. They don’t even look at my Chinese stuff and I’ve already bought it. You know what I mean? And then. And the Indian stuff comes in, bang. Your account is just ached out. Your tariff money just goes to the government. It’s tax, right?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:38:08 – 00:38:09]
Yeah, no, totally.

Allan Rooney:
[00:38:09 – 00:39:07]
You know what I mean? And speaking of tax, it’s another one now. Maybe some of this is valid and you know, anyway, we don’t want to get into politics, but it’s. It’s definitely interesting time. But in Terms of jurisdictions, the tariffs had an uptick. And then because some of our clients don’t make anything, their services, their tech, their digital stacks, their software, they don’t. Obviously tariffs don’t really apply. I guess Trump will try and figure that out at some point. But it’s kind of, you know, the people that actually make stuff. We have a trade and import lawyer for that reason. He couldn’t get up from his seat for like three weeks. It was 1212 calls a day. You know, he had. So, you know, that’s tailed off a bit but we’re still seeing a decent clip of businesses coming in and you know, we’ll get M and A as well. Like British. The deal died. But we have a branding company that was going to buy a business in Ohio and it will help. You know, that’s a US law deal usually when your target’s here. So the cross border M and A is a part of what we do. And that’s, and that’s a good way to come in some if you’ve got the money. It’s a really good way to come in.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:39:07 – 00:39:11]
Right. So I’m a British business, business. Buy a business in the U.S. yeah.

Allan Rooney:
[00:39:11 – 00:39:38]
Advantages are speed to market and revenue. People structure all of that. Maybe real estate. Well, depending on what you’re buying. Obviously costs you money is the downside. But you know, there’s sometimes a seller financing components, there’s earn out components, but usually you’ll need several million upfront wherever the structure is. But you know, increasingly UK companies are PE backed and they’ve got a bit of money to throw around. The Europeans tend to shy away from the American price tags is the problem.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:39:39 – 00:39:40]
Which are the American price tags.

Allan Rooney:
[00:39:40 – 00:39:42]
The valuations here they think are toppy.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:39:42 – 00:39:43]
Oh yeah, okay, right.

Allan Rooney:
[00:39:43 – 00:40:27]
They think they’re toppy compared to Europe and maybe they are, but you’re getting on a faster ladder. 100%, you know what I mean? It costs more to get in. But there’s metrics and look, there’s a science of it. The I bankers we work with, investment bankers send us these transactions, right. And they’ve got EBITDA multiples, you know, off the top of their head of what this business goes for. There’s a market, right. So it’s interesting to see that stuff and I think that, you know, love to do more of that because that’s, that’s more chunkier piece of work for us than just setting someone up. But you know, the land and expand model of, you know, they set up the company but then they need an employment thing. Then they come back to us for visa. Visas take ages. You’ve got to plan those. It’s three to six months at least to get a visa. Trademarks take a year, year and a half. Nobody can believe that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:40:28 – 00:40:36]
So if I’m a business, I mean, I’m in the UK now or I’m in Ireland or Australia, wherever I am, and I’ve got my eye on America, what would your advice be to someone?

Allan Rooney:
[00:40:36 – 00:42:16]
Well, you have to have this, you have to be ready. You have to have the executive bandwidth, I think, to put towards it, right? You can’t. If Dublin’s going to fall over because you moved to America, then that’s probably not a good idea. So you’ve got to be ready. And that’s a gut feel thing, it’s a business thing. I talk about this confluence of factors, you know, fact patterns we see all the time. I mean, we’ve really done everything. We’ve had clients in every sector. Pretty much the common theme is they’re coming from somewhere else, but their law needs are very similar. Like, they don’t really want to hear that, right? They don’t want to hear how many companies like this, Marcom’s agency from London, have you. And it turns out we’ve represented loads and we do understand advertising is probably one of our busiest sectors that we work in. But their employment law is exactly the same as yours, right? It doesn’t matter. You know, the client is in X sector, right? You know, a tech company might be more equity heavy, stock options, whatever, but there are variances. Regulated industry is different, healthcare, whatever. But the advice would. Here’s what I’ve seen and I think it’s opportunism. Like, actually, we do a lot of work for Barclays and they’ve asked if we can help in New York and that was one client of mine that very well got up to over 100 people in New York. I think one of their initial kind of linchpin clients was a can you help us in America thing. And if you’ve got that, you need a business case, right? I think your investors would be like, what are you doing? If you just sort of like move over and start chapping on doors, that might be successful. But I think they’re going to. Most businesses want to see, like, okay, where’s revenue going to be? Do we have any revenue already? How are we going to staff this? A lot of companies quite successfully do an arbitrage, right? We’ve got a client who does a lot of all the work Happens in Leeds pretty much. And there’s two sales guys in New York going around who are expensive, but they’re getting the labor, the execution’s done for next.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:42:16 – 00:42:21]
It’s like they’ve set up an entity here directly employed to Americans.

Allan Rooney:
[00:42:21 – 00:42:22]
Not sure, to be honest.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:42:22 – 00:42:27]
All right, so they’re not doing that employment record thing. They have an entity here. Limits liability, but everything.

Allan Rooney:
[00:42:27 – 00:42:30]
The sales guys are here, but the team’s all in the UK and charge.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:42:30 – 00:42:35]
Is a big thing. My marketing company is in the UK for. For a number of reasons. One of them is the web guy’s in Belfast.

Allan Rooney:
[00:42:35 – 00:42:46]
He’s great, and he’s very reasonable, you know, and we have a couple of people in the Philippines. You know, there’s. There’s definitely after Covid particularly. Right. We all realize we can do Talk to another law firm. They’re all over the place. They’ve got people everywhere.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:42:46 – 00:42:47]
Yeah, yeah.

Allan Rooney:
[00:42:47 – 00:42:55]
We’re. We’re generally New York area, a couple of Chicago, California, but, you know, paying New York lawyer salaries. So you got to keep people busy.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:42:55 – 00:43:05]
You know, you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. A couple of times. And I’ve heard it before, this idea that you want to be sending over someone senior, ideally a founder, I think.

Allan Rooney:
[00:43:05 – 00:44:36]
So I think telling that story or culture is important. Right. And I think that knowing the product, knowing the people often talk about product market fit, which is a bit jargony, but that’s what a lot of these guys that are in the space will talk about. People don’t really ask their lawyers about that. You know what I mean? Like, if we’re on the clock, we’re expensive. So you only really want to use your counsel judiciously. Right. Which is a shame with the billable hour model, which is going to be challenging with AI and is always under discussion and review because you call your lawyer, like, I need that help, but he charges me every time. And it’s true. American law firms, they bill for everything. You know, taking the file off, bringing the file down, thinking about the file. You know what I mean? Like, it’s just the meters on. And I think some overseas clients find that a little jarring at first. And I’ve had a few awkward conversations with like, do you guys just bill for everything? I was like, sorry, it’s just the way it is in America. And you can. I’m not unusual. You think of me as British because of how I sound, probably. But I’m an American lawyer, and this is an American business and American law firm. I’m running everyone American costs. American costs. Most of the people that work for me are American. Sorry, it’s just how it is. And if you get fed up and leave, it will be exactly the same across the street. But that’s your call. But I think a lot of clients end up sticking with us just because we’re certainly not the cheap, cheapest law firm in New York, but we can do pretty much everything they need. And it’s hard. You can’t really get a solo that does that. You need a little bit of bread. You need 8, 10, 12 lawyers that do different. You’ve got employment, you’ve got Visa, you’ve got this, you’ve got that. Not one lawyer can do all that.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:44:36 – 00:44:44]
I think the cross border thing helps as well. The fact you’re an expat, the fact you’ve made it here, the fact you can say, you can say to someone, look, you should be thinking about sending so and so or even you.

Allan Rooney:
[00:44:44 – 00:45:57]
Well, there’s no question. And then we do a ton of introductions I’m sure you do as well, like just plugging people into the market. Here’s a few accounting options, here’s some banking introductions. Here’s commercial insurance guys, what else? Payroll and benefit providers. We’re always doing that. And you know, you take the recommendation because we’ve been in market so long and you need, you know, where we play like a. Chris is a good example. He’s not a CPA as much we, you know, Chris does expat tax as you know, shout out to Chris hall and he does the tax equalization, global mobility stuff. We need CPAs that do annual filings and do transfer pricing. So your guy in the back of the deli that does the local guy’s tax return isn’t going to do transfer pricing. So you kind of, you know, you need that mid market sophistication. But you, no disrespect to the big four. Most of our clients can’t afford the US Big four. And sometimes they’ll often be using, there’s all these like traps, right? They’re using BDO in York and they’re like, well, they’re great bdo. And I’m like, I’m sure they are. They’re going to be triple the price in New York though. And they’re like, really? Yes. So there’s market education things. There’s just, you know, finding your feet, trying not to make those mistakes. The biggest thing is just take advice, you know.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:45:57 – 00:46:09]
Yes. Yeah, I echo that because I think people and I think it’s Gonna get worse is the AI. AI is enormously useful, but use it to. To start a conversation and research an area. Don’t use it as like your advisor.

Allan Rooney:
[00:46:09 – 00:46:33]
Like, well, we’re piloting Paxton right now, which is the AI lawyer. The two main ones, Paxton. Another one are kind of, you know how they’re leading and then suddenly perplexity gets better than chat or whatever. But right now, what an interesting time. Right? And we’re all dabbling and using it. We were able to generate a very good stock cancellation document yesterday for a Delaware business with a UK operation. And it was like, that’s a pretty good.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:46:33 – 00:46:35]
You still want a lawyer behind it, though.

Allan Rooney:
[00:46:35 – 00:46:36]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:46:36 – 00:46:43]
One day, though, these consumers are gonna be able to go and ask for this directly. And they’re gonna. And they might ask for the wrong thing, so they might be perfect.

Allan Rooney:
[00:46:43 – 00:46:56]
I often say that I remember having a conversation a few. This happened a few times. One particularly chippy entrepreneur from. Why would I hire you? Why don’t I just go to LegalZoom? And I was like, you could diagnose your own Cancer on WebMD. You know, go ahead.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:46:56 – 00:46:56]
Exactly.

Allan Rooney:
[00:46:56 – 00:47:09]
You know what I mean? He’s like, that’s a bit rude. I’m like, I think you were quite rude just a minute ago when you said, why am I wasting time talking to you if you just Want to pay 19.99 online? If you don’t see the value of someone that knows what they’re doing and a scene where the body.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:47:09 – 00:47:10]
Such a dangerous attitude in America.

Allan Rooney:
[00:47:10 – 00:47:33]
Yeah, we know where the bodies are buried. We know where it can go off the rails. I’ve had clients that they just did their own contract, right? Then they get into a distribution agreement. They want to Cancel the distributor. Ten years later, it’s like a $5 million lawsuit because the clause is terrible. Had they paid a lawyer a few grand to negotiate that contract, that poor company ended up over a million dollars in fees to US Litigation.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:47:34 – 00:47:45]
It’s better to prepare than to repair there. Right. The. The preparation will cost you a few. A few pennies, a few pounds, a few dollars, whatever. But the cost of repairing it in 10 years time is 10, 20, 50 times.

Allan Rooney:
[00:47:45 – 00:47:53]
This was one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen of like a poorly drafted contract costing them a fortune. Yeah. In litigation. We settled it, we got out of it. But it was like, you can apply.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:47:53 – 00:48:03]
This to so many things. Taking advice where you come, where we’re setting up a business, whether it’s pre immigration, personal pre immigration before you leave, like so many of the landmarks complicated.

Allan Rooney:
[00:48:03 – 00:48:25]
System and there’s so much bureaucracy. Like I’m a believer in special talents. Like, you know, we. It sounds really kind of yucky, but like we talked to a school consultant in Brooklyn because we were like, I know nothing about these schools really. Right. I’m a lawyer. And this woman, all she does is advise on the different school options in Brooklyn. So we pay $500 for a session. Best money we ever spent. I mean it was great. You’ve got to respect.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:48:25 – 00:48:26]
Is that why you live in the burbs now?

Allan Rooney:
[00:48:26 – 00:48:29]
Yeah, we stuck it out for a while. No, the problem was we had four kids.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:48:31 – 00:48:31]
I’ll do it.

Allan Rooney:
[00:48:32 – 00:48:35]
Four boys in a two bedroom wasn’t going to go down too well.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:48:35 – 00:48:37]
Okay, that sounds snug.

Allan Rooney:
[00:48:37 – 00:48:56]
Yes, indeed. They’re big now, so they wouldn’t fit. Yeah, I think take advice and look one thing I say, people. Well, you’re going to say that you’re a lawyer, you get this business for you. But I would say about any discipline to your point also I would say, well, why do all the big companies do it? Why are the big companies got 50 lawyer departments in there if it’s not important?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:48:56 – 00:49:03]
Alan, I think there’s a tidal wave of trouble coming. I think as these AI systems become better and better and better and they are legitimately better.

Allan Rooney:
[00:49:03 – 00:49:03]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:49:04 – 00:49:12]
The consumers are going to go and ask for stuff and that stuff might be perfect, but they’ve asked for the wrong thing. So you have this perfect piece of document that’s wrong.

Allan Rooney:
[00:49:12 – 00:49:18]
I know, I was going to go there actually, because you’re right. It needs to be guided still by someone skilled. And it does beg the question like where do the junior lawyers of tomorrow come from?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:49:18 – 00:49:19]
That’s a concern.

Allan Rooney:
[00:49:19 – 00:49:52]
Right. And you’ve got experienced people now, but we all die off in the golf course in Florida or whatever. So that is interesting to me. And also the legal zoom guy, you don’t know what to buy. You can buy it, but is it the right thing for you? Like, oh, I don’t know, it’s an llc. And I was like, well, an American can have an LLC and it’s a flow through for tax. It’s a flow through for you. That means your UK parent is going to pay tax and file taxes in the U.S. do you want that? Oh, I didn’t know that because you wouldn’t pay to talk to me. Right, okay. You didn’t know that. These are the mishaps when you don’t talk.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:49:52 – 00:49:53]
Exactly.

Allan Rooney:
[00:49:53 – 00:50:00]
I mean you get ones that you can’t even Prevent like the ADA ones are crazy. We had a client that sells bikes and was sued by a blind woman.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:50:00 – 00:50:02]
It’s just the American disabilities.

Allan Rooney:
[00:50:02 – 00:50:02]
Correct.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:50:02 – 00:50:05]
So if you don’t have like a thing on your website, you can get sued.

Allan Rooney:
[00:50:05 – 00:50:19]
Yeah, it’s not something for the visually impaired. Right. And it’s not, I mean, there is the kind of old jokes aside about a blind woman on a bike, but it’s not that she has the right to get on that website to buy a bike for her brother or something. Right. So. And you know, and it’s just kind of. You don’t see that coming.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:50:19 – 00:50:22]
Well, apparently, you know, there’s. Now people go looking for these problems.

Allan Rooney:
[00:50:22 – 00:50:40]
Well, there are these lawyer shops that are just basically trolls and they make their money by just banging people for these lawsuits and settling them quick and grabbing five grand and on they go. So unfortunately, a well meaning law which is meant to help people with disabilities, which it should, it just becomes a racket.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:50:40 – 00:50:47]
And this is the kind of downside of America. You know, America’s a lot of opportunity, but sometimes people are chasing questionable opportunities.

Allan Rooney:
[00:50:47 – 00:51:34]
Well, it’s a racket, but. But it is correcting a problem. I suppose if you talk to one of those lawyers, I don’t know any lawyers that do that, but they might tell you, well, now all these websites are complying for blind people. So I can feel quite good about that maybe. But look, they’re just trying to make a buck. And that’s America too. Right. And the entrepreneurialism, the hustle is real here. We’re staying with the law industry though. I think class action lawyers, they get a terrible name, right? Like they’re going after companies for like, you know, you did this or whatever. And everybody gets 50 cents and the lawyers make $10 million. Yes, that is ridiculous. But they’re a watchdog against corporates doing stuff and telling lies. And as you pointed out earlier, our regulators aren’t necessarily doing a hell of a lot sometimes to prevent people poisoning rivers or whatever they’re doing. So the excess of breaking the law and doing things that damage people is brought to redress.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:51:34 – 00:51:37]
It is a form of self regulation in a way, isn’t it?

Allan Rooney:
[00:51:37 – 00:52:38]
And it’s very entrepreneurial because those lawyers make a ton of money if they’re successful. So they invent these cases and I mean, sometimes they sound pretty frivolous, but I think some of them are, they’re stopping or they’re inhibiting or at least punishing corporations for lying and diddling people. Erin Brockovich. Right. Well, you’ve got all these things. I mean, like, my buddy’s got a case now. It’s funny one, but he’s like, you know, when you buy a movie on Amazon, I don’t know if he settled it or what. But buy movie. Right. You don’t actually own it. And if they lose the license, the movie will disappear from your library. Oh, yeah. And. But the concept of buying, we all understand that you. It’s like owning the video cassette back in. When we were kids. Yes. Or the dvd. I can remember all these formats, but, you know, and you don’t own it. So his case was the damages, according to that of, you know, you know, I lost my film or whatever. So I don’t know how that case is going, but it’s kind of funny. But that’s the kind of thing these guys dream up. And Netflix does it too, I think. Netflix. You can buy the film, actually. But anyway, next question. Okay, counselor.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:52:38 – 00:52:50]
Right. So I tell you, I’ll put it on spot. Last question. It. What’s one piece of advice for if I’m a budding entrepreneur? I’m looking at the us. What’s the one single most important piece of advice you’d. You’d give that person?

Allan Rooney:
[00:52:50 – 00:52:51]
Never give up.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:52:51 – 00:52:52]
Never give up. Okay, great.

Allan Rooney:
[00:52:53 – 00:52:54]
Just keep swinging.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:52:54 – 00:52:56]
You will get you will you.

Allan Rooney:
[00:52:56 – 00:52:56]
You.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:52:56 – 00:53:01]
You land, especially in New York. You are gonna get. You’re gonna get battered. It’s a tough town.

Allan Rooney:
[00:53:01 – 00:53:07]
I get the door slammed in my face all the time. Time. Not literally, but figuratively. Right. Like rejection is part of sales.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:53:07 – 00:53:08]
Yeah.

Allan Rooney:
[00:53:08 – 00:53:11]
And if you don’t just own that if you’re on the sales side.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:53:11 – 00:53:17]
But what did your friends say? It’s a river of commerce. Like it is a hustling, bustling city. Everyone that people work hard, they do.

Allan Rooney:
[00:53:17 – 00:53:56]
People hustle. And I actually don’t always come into the city every day anymore because a lot of us in the burbs and stuff, and I have a bit of Catholic guilt about it because I just was on the train in to see you and do this and got other stuff today. But. But I just met this Dutch guy and he does funding and he lives in the town over from me and I’ll probably get a beer with him and he may have opportunities for me. We just struck up a conversation on the Metro North. Cause I chat to everybody and, you know, and you never know. And everyone’s open to. They really are, you know, what can happen. And, you know, I’ll help you. You help me. Or I just want someone I can trust or I Don’t really know a boutique that’s a bit more reasonable on cost, but capable of this. You know, it’s hard to navigate the small firm market. Everybody knows the big firm firms.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:53:56 – 00:54:00]
Do you find expats as well, kind of naturally want to help each other out.

Allan Rooney:
[00:54:00 – 00:55:07]
I think Europeans that have spent time here have a lot in common because they get both sides. Like, this Dutch guy’s been here since the 80s, right? So he, you know, he gets it. I get it. I love this country, like, but I’ve also got enough simpatico with Europeans to get along. And I have a Danish client that was like, they had a lot going on the first time. They weren’t too happy about their bill initially on one thing. And I was like, I’m sorry, guys, it’s just very time consuming. I can try and help you out and maybe adjust something. And they’re like, look, no, no, no, we want to resolve this. You’re European. We don’t want to separate from you as our lawyer. You know, let’s just figure something out. I think they had a genuine belief that they liked talking to me and my. And I’ve got people, Australian and Irish and British on my team as well as the American staff. And that’s not entirely unuseful when they’re liaising with these foreign clients because just the commonality, like, I know a lady that. That does a ton of French inbound. All our staff speak French, right? Like, you know, my lot don’t know what languages we have, but we tend to, you know, there’s definitely a commonality there. And I think it’s. That there’s an amazing opportunity here. There will be rejection. I think anyone in sales knows you think something’s going to come off. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be great.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:55:07 – 00:55:09]
Doesn’t work out and it takes a lot longer.

Allan Rooney:
[00:55:09 – 00:55:12]
And then something falls from the sky, though. That works out really well.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:55:13 – 00:55:18]
We were talking. I played golf this year for the first time in 10 years. I used to play loads before I moved out here.

Allan Rooney:
[00:55:18 – 00:55:20]
Here, my windows then.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:55:21 – 00:55:22]
Part of that is because I’ve.

Allan Rooney:
[00:55:22 – 00:55:23]
I moved.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:55:23 – 00:55:37]
I was in San Francisco, New York, and then I’ve had a family and it’s just been. It’s taken harder and longer to get myself into a place where, you know, I could justify the. The time, the expense and away from family and work and everything associated with it. It’s just taken longer.

Allan Rooney:
[00:55:38 – 00:55:53]
It’s a balance. And young kids is a bunker, right? Like, it’s just. It’s A. You’re just very. I mean, it’s a tunnel of, try and be a good dad, keep the business going. Yes. That was. I had about a decade of that, if you will, like. And then, like, I wasn’t getting into new music, new bands, wasn’t even watching the football, hardly.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:55:53 – 00:55:59]
A friend of mine introduced me to a concept that he was introduced to by someone. The lost decade.

Allan Rooney:
[00:55:59 – 00:55:59]
Yeah.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:55:59 – 00:56:04]
And in that decade, just you. You will. All that will pass you by. And once I understood that, I’m in my lost decade right now.

Allan Rooney:
[00:56:04 – 00:56:06]
Yeah. I have no idea what’s happening. How old are your kids again?

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:56:06 – 00:56:12]
Six and three. It’s complete mayhem. Every day gets a bit better, though, and that’s been really helpful. But trying to juggle all these things is tough.

Allan Rooney:
[00:56:12 – 00:56:22]
It is tough. I think when the youngest goes to school, that’s big. That’s a big turning point. No, it’s great. But the advice is, it’s hustle. It’s worth it. The country is welcoming. I think generally, us Brits go over well here.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:56:22 – 00:56:23]
Really well.

Allan Rooney:
[00:56:24 – 00:56:35]
It’s a differentiator. It’s a, I would say, competitive advantage. Americans impute some kind of, like, intelligence to the way we speak, for better or for worse.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:56:36 – 00:56:40]
It drives my colleague wild. She’s like, it’s unearned privilege. I’m like, it is. I quite enjoy it.

Allan Rooney:
[00:56:40 – 00:57:11]
Well, I had a good friend of mine, he’s now in London. He’s a big firm lawyer, and he was here with me in the early days. 99 to, like, 2001, 2002. And he’s like, I’m going back home, Aldo. He calls me Aldo. A lot of my friends do. He’s like, aldo, going home, man. Like, why are you going home? It’s brilliant here. Why would you leave? He’s like, I know I’ve got to go to law school, get serious about my career. And I’m like. He’s like, I’ve got to leave my cape and boots at jfk, though. Which is so true. Cause people are like. Especially when I’m in Tennessee this weekend. Oh, my God. Really? Where are you from? Like, in New York, people don’t really ask.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:57:11 – 00:57:12]
Yeah, yeah.

Allan Rooney:
[00:57:12 – 00:57:30]
You know, people don’t care anymore. No. Or they. You know, it might be. Unless they’re other expats or three conversations in. They might be like, oh, where are you from? And it’s funny, right, because you’re from. If you’re a Northerner or a Glaswegian, you’re not really particularly seen as that sophisticated at Home. But, you know, apparently people love us here. I’ll stay. I’ll take it, you know.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:57:30 – 00:57:32]
Well, so, Alan, tell us, where can people find you?

Allan Rooney:
[00:57:32 – 00:57:38]
It’s Rooney Laws, the website. People can email on there, they can get in touch, they can hit me up on LinkedIn anyway.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:57:38 – 00:57:39]
Really?

Allan Rooney:
[00:57:39 – 00:57:53]
I tend to use WhatsApp a lot, you know, to chat to people or we do zoom and teams and things like that, obviously. And yeah, you could, I think if you Google Alan Rooney and you spell it right, I come up two Ls. Yeah, two Ls. Two As. It’s the Scottish spelling, according to my mother.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:57:53 – 00:57:57]
Check him out on LinkedIn, folks. He’s. Alan and Rooney Law are Quite active on LinkedIn.

Allan Rooney:
[00:57:57 – 00:58:02]
Correct. We try and do that stuff. It’s, you know, we quite enjoy it and you try and stay top of mind.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:58:03 – 00:58:05]
All right, well, thank you for coming and talking to us, Alan.

Allan Rooney:
[00:58:05 – 00:58:08]
And that went so fast. Yeah, good.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:58:08 – 00:58:09]
I’m glad you enjoyed it. You have to come back.

Allan Rooney:
[00:58:09 – 00:58:10]
Yeah, no, it was fun. Thanks.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:58:10 – 00:58:13]
We’ll get Chris on and we’ll have a. We’ll have a. A round table.

Allan Rooney:
[00:58:13 – 00:58:14]
Thanks so much for having me.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:58:14 – 00:58:15]
You’re very welcome.

Allan Rooney:
[00:58:15 – 00:58:16]
Thank you. Cool.

Richard Taylor, Founder of Plan First Wealth:
[00:58:16 – 00:59:18]
Cheers on. All right, folks, that’s another episode of we’re the Brits in America under Our belts. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it and I appreciate you. If you’re enjoying the show and would like to support the mission, which is to help ambitious expats and immigrants thrive in America, I’d ask you to subscribe to the POD wherever you listen and also consider leaving a rating and review. This stuff really does matter. Please help us get this information to the people who need it. That is your fellow expats. Just a quick reminder that this show is brought to you by Plan First Wealth. We are a US based lifestyle financial planner and wealth manager and we help successful American and international families living across the US to make the most of their opportunity and ultimately to retire happier. If you’d like to know more about how we might be able to help you, you can find us on our website, planfirstwealth.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn. Do get in touch. Would love to hear from you. As always, thank you to the podcast guys for their help producing this episode and the entire show. See you.