Guess what?
I'm moving country again.
I don't know,
maybe a year,
maybe more.
Where's the phone?
The phone's everywhere.
I'm an expat.
Hi,
it's Pauline from Meet the Expats and today I am with Joshua Kennedy who is from the Netherlands but moved to France.
the French Riviera in 2018 with his wife,
started life and network from scratch there,
which apparently was quite challenging.
And indeed struggling with that,
the existing channels there,
they created Next Locals to bring communities together and make moving abroad more accessible.
So we'll dive into that piece around building your network and making the right friends.
I'll let you introduce yourself before we move to your big move.
Yeah,
well thank you so much for having me Polly,
pleasure speaking with you.
Likewise.
So tell us a bit about you,
yourself and how that big move to the French Riviera came up.
Yes,
so I'm originally from the Netherlands as you said and to be honest and completely frank,
I did like it in many ways but I was always thinking about moving abroad so I
just dreaming you know when you see a movie you see the different type of lifestyle that we were living uh back then and for us the the main reason was essentially a better quality of life and i didn't like how everything was sort of i don't know you you get used to certain things and then you see something different and that looks very interesting but especially the lifestyle that people seem to have uh
what was sunshine involved that was really appealing to me
and okay yeah that was the main motivator back to the main motivator okay lifestyle and so what exactly you talk about all right the sunshine but was there anything else in the current lifestyle that you felt okay this is enough i'm frustrated with this or this
looks appealing i think it was many things but the lifestyle itself was again the main motivator back then definitely changed
made is then your suddenly your horizon widens and your entire life changes and your uh your view on the world as well okay and it was more superficial and um but it's just i mean you pay taxes anyway so you yeah you do have to choice where you do that you can't choose where you grow up but
you do have a choice always in life uh yeah something i believe um
you can always choose how you respond to things and what you do and the decisions that you take.
And that will always have consequences,
of course,
but that will lead to something.
So for us,
it was important that
I mean,
the sunshine does a lot.
I mean,
yeah,
I agree.
For sure.
And so how was this specific destination chosen?
Like why France?
Why the south of France?
I sort of guess for the sunshine.
But why specifically France and not maybe Spain or Italy or whatever?
Yeah,
I've been thinking about many countries.
And initially,
I thought about moving to the US.
Okay.
Yeah,
I have...
Well,
I've been in business for almost 15 years right now,
and I'm only in my
30s. So I've been doing that since
I was able to work,
essentially.
And the U.S.
seemed like a sort of more obvious choice as it's very much career focused and I was very ambitious.
I'm still very ambitious.
So that sort of felt natural.
But the move was also very big,
as in you need visas,
you need to sort out a lot of things.
And so that's
I also thought about Spain,
Italy,
all those
Mediterranean countries,
which all seem very lovely.
Spain specifically.
I love that.
because the food is incredible and people seem to be very friendly and it's always yes and you know that they try to please in a way but they yeah it's very good uh but my girlfriend back then she's now my wife but she wasn't very keen on uh
on taking that step and it's quite an emotional emotional story for her actually but the her father passed away when she was very young so
And so that was the main reason for her not wanting to move anywhere without a month,
essentially.
So if she's not close to her mom,
then it's a no go.
Yeah,
it's harder.
Fortunately for me,
her mom met someone else after years after her husband passed away.
And he has been living in the south of France for over 30 years.
Oh,
right.
And he said there is one non-negotiable and that is that I am going to be moving to the Netherlands.
So I will stay in France.
You are very happy to join me and welcome to move.
move in with me but I'm not going to the Netherlands so that is when her mum decided all right I am going to move in with him.
To the South of France.
There was a perfect situation for me and I said well
I understand that you want to follow her,
want to stay close with her and and
I absolutely love moving abroad so yeah let's do it,
let's follow you.
All right.
So it was mom's choice in the end.
But I'm very happy with that.
Okay,
it's worked out well.
Well,
tell us about the arrival,
settling in and all the culture shocks,
I guess,
that go with such a move.
Yeah.
Well,
for us,
it was even though we did have that connection with her mom and father-in-law,
of course,
as in I didn't speak any French at all.
So the,
yeah,
it was quite a culture shock in terms of the language,
but also in how they do things.
I mean,
you mentioned that you live in Paris and from what I know and having been to Paris a few times and having worked with some people from Paris,
their work mentality is completely different in other parts of France than in the
South. Absolutely,
yeah.
The South is really laid back and yeah.
there is basically no speed in the process so everything is very relaxed and a bit too much every now and then yeah it can be a bit of a shocker i but i guess in many countries it can be a bit of that difference of the big city versus you know the smaller cities and the more you get towards the beach and a sunny place i feel the more you have sort of that siesta vibe
in a way but it takes a bit of getting used to an organization in your day-to-day
also they have yeah and i think i i mean ultimately we love it because it's it is very forgiving in a way so you cannot expect that from other people but on the other hand they don't expect it from you as well let's
take the tax office as an example uh you know in the netherlands in the uk all places that we've been it's very strict and it's very uh you know it needs to be
Of course,
it needs to be submitted by a certain date.
But then very often the online software doesn't work.
So it's postponed for a few days and all that.
And when the tax office asked some questions about certain things,
I just bounced the ball back and said,
well,
I think I have done everything.
So you tell me what I did wrong and then correct it for me.
And they actually do it.
You just have to get used to,
you need to find your way in,
yeah,
basically working that out and making that work for yourself.
Yeah,
I guess there's a bit of this piece of if you show you're of good face,
there will be a little bit more leeway and there might be a bit more helpful around that.
No,
absolutely.
Especially true for these type of processes,
indeed.
But also when it comes to language.
I mean,
that's something I very often hear from people.
You know,
the French people don't speak English.
Well,
that's not really true.
I mean,
try to look at it from the other way around,
right?
If you are in the Netherlands and we've mentioned this example a few times,
we're not going to do it again.
from abroad in the netherlands too if someone walks up to you on the street and they start speaking moroccan to you yeah that's gonna be you are in the netherlands or whatever language uh they i mean what is your first response right so you you think well forget
about it you know i just stick to my own language and again as you say if you show your good faith go show your good
start in French and try to yeah make your way around it yeah make it on a basic dialogue then people suddenly open up and they start speaking English and they start helping you and they're super friendly
Yeah.
What about,
I mean,
let's dive into it,
building your network because the south of France,
so as you said,
it's smaller towns.
The vibe is very different to Paris.
It's not as international.
So
I can imagine it's extremely different when you arrive as a foreigner and trying to meet new people versus big cities that automatically are a little bit more international.
The French Riviera is a very unique mix of backgrounds and personalities and all that.
It is very international,
but in a different way.
So if you would compare it to Paris,
for example,
I think that is a great example because it's much more career driven,
lots of opportunities,
lots of bigger companies and all that.
That's our base in Paris.
that naturally comes from here.
So there is no big industry,
for example.
So it heavily relies on tourism.
There's very much seasonal work.
So you have lots of people coming in from May,
basically,
until
I'd say end of September,
beginning of October.
And then the region completely transforms and it absolutely changes here.
back and they live,
as we say in Dutch,
with one leg in the other countries.
They still have roots alive in a different country.
So they're very often traveling and up in between countries and trying to see how this region feels and what it does to them.
So that also means that some people find it,
and we personally found it very difficult
it makes sense yeah because if you are not in uh if you're not moving here with the intention okay i'm going to build my life here i'm going to build this my new home um then you're sort of always comparing it to something else right so you're not invested
in in the outcome of making it work here so you always sort of take the easy way out as an all right it's easier in the us for me or it's
in Italy for me or Germany or wherever you're from so then you at least that is my opinion and you're not willing to put in the effort to make the effort absolutely and that makes very often the relationships a bit shallow or distant
yeah and you don't see people as much also I think for the other person if you're here to stay you don't necessarily want to invest that much time
Maybe not even come back the following year.
It's also your time,
your energy in the same way.
Absolutely true,
yeah.
No,
that's right.
So how did you actually start meeting people?
Yeah,
for us,
it is a sort of sales pitch,
but it's simply the truth.
So we were here about a year.
So we arrived in 2018.
December it was.
We did all the tourism things like,
you know,
we did the sightseeing.
We went to the beautiful restaurants,
the sea,
the mountains,
all the things in between.
But then even though you are together as in me and my wife and her mom and my father-in-law,
you feel very quickly isolated.
So I don't want to say lonely.
You do hear that every now and then,
but I don't think lonely is the right term and description for that.
It's more isolation because you do have friends,
but they're not here.
You want to make this work.
So you want to do things,
but you feel sort of trapped,
closed and isolated,
I think is the right word.
And then obviously COVID came not long after that.
So that wasn't helpful either.
We decided to start organizing some events ourselves.
We noticed that there were lots of communities out there,
literally hundreds of them.
But it wasn't quite what we wanted and also being ambitious myself,
I wanted to use it as an opportunity to find some clients to set up my business here.
So we started organizing very relaxed meetups,
what we called them.
It was at first called a business club.
because I thought it was going to be mainly about business networking.
But then by organizing a few of the meetups,
I realized that it was all about just meeting with like-minded people and just bringing people together.
okay so that's the thing that we've been doing and we created the atmosphere that we personally feel most comfortable with so i'm for example i uh i love dinner i love eating wrong but to me at a first encounter over dinner um
can feel a little bit awkward in my opinion because you know rigid yeah yeah and then i'm start thinking about how i eat and then
a lot of pressure on everyone a lot of pressure on everything so i'd like to have a an easy way out that's why we prefer to meet over drinks and we've just been doing that and and that is the way that we we
basically met anyone that is in our lives right now and we have a very and an active life here as in business wise but also social so how did you first start
promoting these events when it was even before the business and you say okay let's just launch a meetup uh you do have a few platforms where you can list events such as eventbrite which was a platform that we used i looked on meetup um and we
also created a facebook group okay lots of people here in south france use facebook so then we yeah just created it registered the domain name
put up a very simple landing page this is it so it's free to attend you just have to register here and then come and then we'll see um and i think the first one we had about five
five people attending second one about five to ten as well then another time ten and then the fourth meetup was in come and that was the first one that completely sold out so we had about wow
five registrations and more than 50 people showed up so it was a relatively small bar and it was completely back yeah completely full with people that were coming for the uh for the meetup and that is the moment that we knew all right we're onto something yeah
we we really need to continue building this all right so you don't do them only in that in Vals in the town you're in but you also
decided to do uh to alternate between monaco nice calm and antique and then every now and then in the smaller villages now we're expanding um all over the world actually and we are um building the platform so instead of going to meetup.com or to even bright because for
in-person community organizers you need very
specific tools.
You need software to manage the community,
to bring them together,
to have easy communication and all that.
We've built a community over 20,000 people,
so we know how it works.
We have literally organized more than 300 events in the past few years.
So we know the challenges that you have and we know what you need.
And it doesn't exist.
There are partial solutions.
but it's not complete and it's not working well enough.
That's why we decided to start building the platform.
It's going to take a few more months,
lots of investments.
It's an exciting time.
One day what I wish existed.
All right.
And so what is the vibe of the event?
So you're saying don't go for dinners,
but more for drinks.
Eventbrite or whatever,
you do find these type of events.
So what is different and how in the end were you able to attract people that are more like-minded?
Yeah.
For us,
our niche was
English speakers on the French Riviera.
That is how we started.
Started,
yeah.
Nished it down.
So that helped.
And yeah,
I'm not saying that we're unique in that it doesn't exist,
It was sort of unique back then.
And you also want to be part of a group that is very consistent with all kind of meetups and all that.
So not someone does it every now and then,
because the most difficult thing about running these type of events is getting them full every time.
So it's not so difficult to come up with an idea and say,
all right,
well,
we're going to organize this.
But you need to have venues,
you need to...
Consistency.
Yeah,
you need consistency.
You need to reach the right people.
You need to continue doing that over time.
So,
yeah,
I think and it was also an arrogance probably and an ego matter that I wanted for my personal gain.
You know,
it is different if you are attending or if you are the one organizing the event.
Of course.
Obviously,
for me,
it's more appealing to say that I am the organizer of the event.
So I think that was also a thing for me.
And to be honest,
that is also a way where you can mask some of the insecurities that you have because you play a role.
Yeah,
but you're the host.
You know exactly what you have to do and you're less maybe in the,
oh,
I'm here.
point versus an attendee who's going has to sort of work on his pitch a bit more in a way to actually interact with the people he doesn't know versus you come in as the host that you have the picture already true yeah it is true yeah and
so you were saying these people you've have become your friends in the end and that's how you built your network
So do you only see them through those events or are you able also to separate,
in the end,
the friendships and the business side of it?
Or is it completely intertwined?
No,
no,
no.
I always recommend to anyone coming to the meetups.
It's sometimes a bit difficult with the community.
That's also why we are becoming the platform instead of the organizer ourselves because the value sometimes is a little bit difficult to explain
push people to organize things outside of so i really see it as a starting point okay yeah where you have an intentional place where you you meet people that want to connect they're all living abroad uh they're all because
of they all live abroad they are more open-minded they have things well they've stepped out of their comfort zone you know you have a language thing in common you have a cultural barrier in common so you have lots of similarities and things in common and the timing
It clicks very quickly.
Yeah,
absolutely.
And it's very easy to quickly find people that you connect with.
And you always do.
But the whole purpose of the meetup is just finding that few connections and that click you have with someone.
Okay,
and then they'll be.
You know,
you follow up.
And you have so many flavors and interests and passions.
So yeah,
I really see that as a starting point.
that is a great place to meet and then afterwards you go on a hike together so i like eating very often then we go out for lunch and then you know to give an example um i met
alex uh at one of our first uh lunches that we organized in es and he came by himself he um he was married already
it clicked immediately even though we only shared a few words uh and he said yeah just just come over for a coffee i live in valbonne um and then we'll see so we came over for a coffee it was about 10 10 30 a.m and
we left that day around 8 p.m because we were just eating drinking and it really took off from that moment and later on they became our best man at our wedding and
Now we both have kids.
They're expecting...
I cannot share.
Spoil that something.
Anyways,
they have two kids.
We have two kids.
And now we have kids'
play dates,
celebrate Christmas together.
That's just one of the many examples.
So it's become the family and the real tribe that you have abroad in the end.
Yeah.
It truly makes you feel home.
You know all the best places in town,
but if you don't have people...
Cash or loan,
yeah.
I mean...
It's very different.
You need people.
Yeah,
great.
Okay,
well,
it seems like you've made a tribe.
You've built it definitely from scratch.
Let's move on to your recommendations then.
You were saying you're a foodie.
So what's a bar or cafe and restaurant that you'd recommend in the area?
If you are in the south of France,
one of our favorite places is La Spiaggia,
which is Italian for the beach.
It's on the seafront.
It's in Caen-sur-Mer.
And they just have an incredible menu.
It changes throughout the year multiple times,
but it's always incredibly good.
It's run by a Belgian couple.
We absolutely love it there.
It's relaxed.
It's very good.
If you want a more traditional,
if you are staying in Caen-sur-Mer then we've recently been to Le Bistro de la Marine which is a very...
very good spot it's relatively small but it's more french traditional cuisine which is very good because you do have lots of french dishes here on the on the french riviera but this region was also occupied by italy
for a very long time so you have lots of in italian influencers so most menus are relatively simple with uh with a burger and a pizza and those type of things
But if you want something a bit more authentic,
that is a very good place to go.
Okay.
Well,
we'll put it in the comments.
All right.
And last is what is your expat song?
That changes as well.
But there was one song.
It's from Bob Dylan.
Right.
This specific version is a song that my dad played when we were in France and we were somewhere on the south.
coast we were riding there with he had he owns a um a jeep grand cherokee back then which is one of the cars i have right now and riding that together and it was sort of a cliff type situation so it was not directly on the seafront but you you had a an amazing view and that song was playing and
it's from bob dylan tell all bill tell all bill all right
And then you have a very specific version.
That always plays in my head when I'm just riding here and when I'm seeing it.
So it resonates.
The car and the song at the same time.
Tell old Bill,
alternate version.
Okay.
I'll link it in the comments with the restaurants for sure.
All right.
Well,
thank you so much for sharing,
for telling us about Next Locals.
is there anywhere we can find you and what are the next destinations for Next Locals?
Yes,
so you can go to nextlocals.com.
That's where you can find the current offering and what we currently do.
So now we really operate as an organizer.
So that is how we started it.
So we continue to organize weekly meetups in all the cities that were active.
We are building a platform.
transforming to becoming the platform and basically powering all the in-person communities because the ultimate mission that we're on is to get people off their screens and bring them together in person again so basically stay tuned for that just keep
watching the websites and hope we are able to launch in about six months about july 2026 all right so that's coming up
Well,
guys,
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
As usual,
you can put a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and follow all the updates on Instagram,
YouTube,
and TikTok.
Thank you so much for your time,
Pauline.