I love my job.

I'm one of the few lawyers who will tell you that he loves his job.

We're the engineers of human relations.

We build them and then when there is a problem, we manage the problem.

What's the best thing about doing business in France?

I think the best thing of doing business in France is that you can live there.

What are the sort of the big cultural identities of doing business in France?

One, logic.

And two, fairness.

They love the style, they love appearance, they love the sexiness.

If someone coming to Britain, I would just say, look, understand that humor is really important and it's going to be used in places that would seem inappropriate to many.

The wall in the communication between the English and the French, I think has to do with this humor.

You're making fun of yourself or the other.

And the French pride, where if you're making fun of me, then you're disrespecting me.

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Welcome to this week's very special episode with a very special title, Business Without Baggage, a special series where we dive into the often challenging world of global business and culture.

Most importantly and.

And if you ever wondered what it's really like to do business in another country, I'm sure you have.

I'm sure you've discussed it.

From navigating cultural quirks to avoiding awkward missteps, we'll be talking to our friends from around the world about what it's really like to do business with the countries that they live in.

Today we are joined by someone who is somewhat of an expert in this subject, Olivia Lopez, a legal expert, corporate attorney and managing partner of Square Law, who also teaches negotiation, which is, of course a very good prism from which you have to consider these cultural aspects.

Uh, he has over 20 years of experience, Olivia, specializing in guiding French and international companies as well as investment funds through the complexities of corporate law.

Olivia ensures every base is covered.

Olivia, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

A very nice cv.

Olivia, you're obviously a lawyer at heart, are you?

And trained as a lawyer, but you also seem to have a sort of quite a strong interest in negotiation and things like that as well.

How's that happened?

Or why?

Why?

Why do those two things Go together so well.

Well, a lawyer.

Because that was actually my dream when I was a kid, not to be a lawyer, but to be at mergers inquisitions.

I saw it on tv.

I saw Richard Gere in Pretty Woman when I was a kid in the 80s.

I also saw a French, A famous French businessman called Bernard Tapi.

I don't know if you know him, he was the owner of Adidas at some point and he was the owner of the only soccer team that ever won the Champions League.

The, the.

The French.

The only French team that ever won the Champions League.

And I saw him when I was a kid in the 80s on TV doing mergers and acquisitions.

That was what he did.

And I thought, this is what I want to do.

This looks fun.

And then I decided that that's what I would do.

The only path that I figured in mergers and acquisitions was being a lawyer.

That's the most, at least for me at the time, it was the most evident path.

So I went and studied law and became a business lawyer.

And all I ever did was mergers and acquisitions.

I started Arthur Anderson, EY, Norton Rose Wallky Farr as an associate and then I became a partner in French and American firm.

And those first firms, those were accounting or British firms as well that you were.

They're law firms.

Oh, oh.

They were law firms.

They had it's accounting firm that has a legal branch.

Yeah, yeah.

And they still, they're still structured that way.

So there's a law firm.

There was a law firm.

It's always revered Arthur Andersen as a really good place before it all went bananas.

You know, a great place to train and stuff.

It had a very good reputation.

Actually.

It was the best out of the big five when the big four were five.

Yeah, yeah.

It's.

Imagine how great chance falls so quickly.

And today, I mean, obviously doing business in another country.

We're not here to discuss every technical detail of that.

What we want to, what we want to get a sense of and share are the big picture stuff.

You know, what is sort of really important in terms of business culture, do's and don'ts.

I mean, let's get into it.

I think a little bit.

If you were to just sort of start someone off, they're coming to do business in France, they're from wherever country.

What is maybe the first thing you would say to someone, you know, is someone coming to Britain?

I would just say, look, understand that humor is really important.

And it's going to be used in places that would seem inappropriate to many.

You know, that is so important.

But for you, what are the sort of the big cultural identities of doing business in France?

I think one of the most important things for French people is to be logic.

France is a country.

French people have a very deeply rooted culture of logic.

You know, it comes from Pascal and Descartes and all these people.

And we still get this training in school that's very highly logical, grounded, based on the reality of things, of life.

You know, France is one of the countries that's to some extent the least religious, but that believes, that doesn't believe too much in spiritual things, but believes in the reality of things.

So logic is very, very important to French people.

One other thing that's very important is fairness.

French people have, you know, they have difficulty with, when they feel like there's something that's unfair.

Obviously fairness is something very subjective, so it's difficult to predict if someone is going to feel unfairly treated or not.

But this is something that you should keep in mind.

Dealing with French people in business is one, logic and two fairness.

I think those are the two main things.

So base your arguments or base whatever you're doing on logical arguments you thought through, not so much on feeling.

It's funny, I would have almost expected the French to be a bit more feeling, but of course, yeah.

When you mentioned the authors and the sort of history of where France comes from psychologically, I mean, there's a sort of cynicism, isn't there?

I remember reading this article about French people a while ago saying how cynical they are about their own country.

I mean, we actually share that.

I would say as British and French people that we, we're rather cynical about our own country.

But it, but, you know, is that fair that the, the, the logicalness and the lack of religion or the secularism of the culture makes it also quite cynical as a culture?

Maybe the term is cynical, I don't know.

I think they're really critical.

Critical.

I think that's the right term.

I mean, that's what I would say about the French people.

They're very critical.

Not so much of themselves.

I think it's one of the cultures that has the most pride.

This is a really important point.

If people don't realize.

A really important point.

I'll give you as advice.

Certainly if you have British sense of humor is self deprecation.

Taking the mickey out of someone, taking the.

Michael can be quite offensive to a French person.

When actually we're trying to do it to endear ourselves.

We're trying to make friends.

And you know, that's sort of how.

It's sort of counterintuitive, but that's how we make friends.

But that's still.

Still the case, I guess, is it?

Yeah.

Between the English and the French, I, And I really enjoy the French.

I mean, the English humor, like you said, the self deprecation, I think it's a lot of fun and I do it with myself maybe a little more than the typical French do.

But.

Yeah, that will break again.

I mean, that will.

The wall in the communication between the English and the French, I think has to do with this humor.

This, you know, you're making fun of yourself or the other.

Yeah.

And.

And the French pride where, you know, if you're making fun of me, then you're disrespecting me.

Right.

And you mentioned earlier when we were chatting, which I thought was interesting, which someone has really taught me about America.

You know, don't generalize about what, what American culture is because there's so many types.

You kind of said that about France, that the culture of France is quite dis.

Not disparate.

Sorry.

There are many versions of it.

Well, I think so.

And I think it's even more so than in the US And I was comparing it to the uk.

I mean, there's the English culture, there's the Welsh, there's the Scottish, there's the Irish, and I think those are very different.

And I think you have the same thing in France.

You have the north of France, which is going to be a lot similar to the UK culture or the Dutch culture than the south of France, which is going to be a lot similar to the Italian or the Spanish culture, the Mediterranean culture.

And then you're going to have the east of France, which is going to be a lot closer to the German culture.

France is quite big country and a very long history of, you know, the east of France.

Yeah.

Border disputes.

The east of France being part of Germany, even 100 years ago was part of Germany.

The southeast of France was part of Italy for a very long time.

The southwest of France, the Basque, you know.

Well, the Basque is very specific.

You even have, you know, those cultures that sometimes they don't even feel French, they feel like they're something else.

In French, you have the Bretons, you have the Basque that have that feeling, the Corsicans.

So it's very, very.

You have so many different cultures.

I'm from the south and I moved to Paris after university and, And I had to adapt to the culture there.

I observed and I had to change some of things.

Even the way I dressed when I arrived in Paris was I dressed like people dress in the south, more relaxed.

I assume.

I always feel underdressed in Paris.

Yeah.

And, but, but even like to give you an example, I had suits.

Right.

I do work in a law firm.

You have suits?

I bought my suits in the South.

It was about a black suit, which is something you wear quite often in the south, or at least you did 20 years ago.

I don't know how things have changed now, but I came to Paris and the only people who were black suits in Paris are the drivers and the waiters.

Oh, wow.

And I went to a law firm with black suit.

And you know, I felt at odd.

And it took me maybe a few days or maybe a few weeks to figure out what was different.

And I realized that I had a black suit, which is the, you know, in Paris, the color of the suits, of the drivers and the waiters.

Same thing with the shirts.

I had very colorful shirts.

You do that in the South.

Well, I came to Paris and the only shirts you wear are white or light.

At the time back then, light blue.

Yeah.

But I think now is only white.

I think that's evolved.

London is so dominant in our culture.

I mean, everything is in London.

In the UK in terms of.

It's the, you know, I don't want to offend regional listeners, but the odd thing about London is it is the sort of economic, political, it's a sort of.

All of the major things are headquartered in London.

I mean, how is Paris viewed, I guess, by the rest of France?

And does this culture have a sort of way that it, it dominates some aspects of French life?

Well, in France, what you, what you will find is you're either from Paris or not from Paris.

Okay.

So whoever is not from Paris will feel like there's, you know, a rivalry with Paris because it's.

The country is actually very centralized.

There's been an effort to decentralize it for the past 40, 50 years.

I think this is countercultural for French people.

So it's not been working so well.

And there will be a sense of we're not treated the same.

Parisians are maybe a little more snobbish.

They will look down on non Parisians and there will be a sense of rejection from Parisians when they're not in Paris.

And you will find it in every little aspect of life.

If you go to Marseille and you're with your car and your Car has a Parisian license plate.

People are going to honk at you, people are going to really short with you, they're going to call you the Parisian, get out of the way and all this.

There is a strong rivalry, particularly between Marseille and Paris, but you will find some degree of it with any non Parisian cities.

In Paris there's a wonderful document I've got in front of me that we'll have to try and share, which is coming from your background is teaching people about negotiation, which of course negotiation in a global world is incredibly embedded in how to cope with different cultures, as it were.

I mean, maybe just initially focusing on, on the sort of how to go and do business in France.

I guess if you're sitting down to do business, then it has, it has on here for the U.S.

it says this is opening a meeting.

So you know, what is, what is the aspects of opening a meeting?

Informal intro, cup of coffee, someone makes a wise crack and the meeting begins.

And there's a very short sort know, comparing to France, to the uk where we have a formal intro, cup of tea and biscuits, 10 minutes small talk, weather, comfort, sport and a casual beginning.

And then we've got France, which is a formal intro, 15 minutes, so longer small talk with politics or scandal, you wrote, and then you begin.

I mean, this is, this is a fascinating insight.

So you should, you should sit down in a meeting and expect there to be a formal intro and you should be happy with some small talk for a while.

And then once that, once that aspect's over, I mean we, you know, what are the other important things?

So you know, having a meeting is this, there's a sort of science almost to this that you sort of explain in this document.

I don't know if you could, you could try and enunciate some of it and how you should think about the French.

So yeah, like you said, I teach negotiation.

I teach this in Soburn in the law school of Sorbonne.

And my background that allows me to teach this is I've been involved in negotiations for 22 years, for my entire professional life in very high end, very high issues, very sensitive issues, negotiations, M and A, a lot of money at stake, a lot of people at stake, very important things at stake in M and A.

And I've studied law, which doesn't have a lot to do with negotiations.

Tell you the truth, law is more about the rules that apply to the relations between people.

But I also studied economics and particularly behavioral economics.

I studied this at the University of Chicago where there's actually a Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler, who dedicated his entire career to studying negotiations and behavior of people in the context of economics, behavioral economics.

So I studied this at University of Chicago.

And then when I came back from Chicago, I thought it was a good idea to teach law students these economic concepts and the theory of negotiation.

Part of negotiation is being culturally intelligent.

You have to know how to speak, how to manage, how to discuss with people who have different culture than you.

And that's one very good example of, like you said, in the US or in Germany, once you get into a meeting, then there's going to be some expectation of how the meeting is going to go.

The Germans and the Americans, you sit down, there's a little intro, very formal or informal, depending.

If you're in Germany or in the US and then you start right away in the uk, it will be a little longer.

In France, it will be even longer, the 15 minutes that you mentioned.

But then there's plenty of other things.

How does the meeting go?

Usually when you have a business meeting, especially an M and a meeting, there's an agenda.

What are we going to talk about?

The Americans, the Germans, even the English, they will typically follow the agenda.

The French, the Italians, the Spanish.

You will start at the beginning of the agenda, item one on the agenda.

Then maybe you'll make it to two.

Then if you're lucky, you'll make it to three.

But at some point in three, you will go back to one, and then you'll do five, because that was important.

And then so at the beginning, as the French people, you will be able to follow the agenda.

But at some point you're going to lose it and you're going to go back to an item that everybody thought had been dealt with.

But because of what you talked about in item 3, then item 1 maybe should be changed and modified.

So this is a little bit less linear than the way the Germans and the Americans and the English do things.

And you were talking about this diagram, this drawing that I have in my teaching notes.

I took this from a book called When Cultures Collide.

It's one of the books that is influential in the study of different cultures.

And.

And it basically categorizes all of the human cultures in three main categories that it calls the linear active, which will be typically the German, American, English cultures, the multi active, which will be typically the Italian, the Spanish culture, that will be by extension also in South America.

And then you will have the reactive culture, which typically will be Asia with different variations.

And this diagram is basically a triangle.

And you have some cultures that are almost 100%.

One of those three, for example linear active, you're going to have Germans.

So this is sort of cool, factual, decisive planners, sort of, you know, quite practical, quite logical, you know.

Yeah.

And high trust.

That's one thing that.

Oh, interesting.

That's what you need in that, do you?

Well, that's what it derives from.

Cultures are derived from how humans interacted a long time ago.

So for example, this linear active culture is derived from the way long thousands of years ago, the way we satisfied the basic human needs and the main one is how we eat.

That's the number one need.

If we don't eat, we die.

In Germany, in northern France, northern Europe, in the uk, the organization of feeding the people is a little bit easier than in other places.

For one reason is that there's a lot of flat land so you can grow crop.

How interesting.

And that's how you feed people.

It's with crop.

Right.

It is quite difficult to steal crop.

To steal, you know, corn, corn, wheat.

It is not easy to steal corn.

So these have become countries with quite high trust because it's not easy to steal the food of your neighbor.

I mean it would be easy to walk in a field and steal something out of the ground.

But you mean a bit of it?

A bit.

You mean you can steal the whole thing?

Yeah, sure.

You can steal the land and you can't.

And it's very difficult to steal the entire harvest of crop.

Of course it takes a long time.

Yeah.

And a lot of effort.

Yeah.

So these, these cultures typically have a very high trust.

The multi active cultures, they're Italian, Spain, South American, also the Arab, the Middle east are very.

Are these type of cultures, those, you know, producing food there because there was a lot of mountains, it's not crop, it's cattle.

Right.

It is a lot easier to steal cattle.

It is a lot easier to steal goats and sheep and maybe cows is not quite as easy, but when the mountains are pretty steep that it will be goats and sheep.

So the way those cultures have organized the protection of the most precious things they had, which is their food, is by organizing very strong family ties.

Those are low trust because it's easy to steal their cattle.

So the family stays together.

So the family, the tribe stays together.

There's very strong deterrence to stealing.

For example, the religion that has developed in the Middle east, which Islam is extremely hard on stealers.

They cut their hand.

So if you're going to have your hand cut, if you get caught stealing, it's going to be a strong deterrent to stealing or.

A lot of these are Catholic, aren't they?

I don't know enough about that, whether that's similar, but yeah, such interesting points.

And the title of this is a sort of summary of Multi Active is war Emotional.

Loquacious.

Impulsive, so talkative.

You know, impulsive.

They're quite quick decision maker.

Very emotional decision makers.

So they're emotional because they tend to express their emotions more.

So what's been observed in the study of different cultures is that you will feel your emotions stronger if you express them.

For example.

For example, in the Asian cultures where people express a little less their emotions, they tend to feel their emotions with less intensity than they do in cultures where they express their emotions more.

When you let your emotions be expressed, you feel them with more intensity than when you don't express them.

So they will be more talkative, they will listen a little bit less.

If you talk more, you listen less.

And they will express their emotions.

They will also.

The multi active, so the Middle east, but typically the Mediterranean cultures, they will also.

They will defend their honor because it's a culture that gravitates around honor.

So if you disrespect them, they will take it a lot worse than if you disrespect, for example, the interactive.

And that's the example you've been giving with taking the humor with the humor and making fun of people.

Try making fun of an Italian or Middle Eastern, you'll see that it will be even worse than that for this reason.

Yeah, I don't think I'll come back alive.

But yeah, not.

It's.

Yeah, honor's incredibly important.

I mean, I've always found that an interesting one because you go down to reactive, which is the Asian culture, and they have the concept of loss of face.

And I realize British people do have a concept of loss of face, actually.

That's.

But that's about humiliation.

That's a slightly different thing.

That's embarrassing me, you know, as opposed to taking the Michael out of me.

You know, in Eastern cultures, the concept of loss of face has to do more of.

With the place of the person in the society.

Oh, in the hierarchy.

Exactly.

So these cultures, the reactive cultures or the saving face cultures, there's actually another categorization of human cultures that calls those reactive cultures face.

Right.

Which is why they're listening.

Because you take risks by talking, don't you, of embarrassing yourself.

You may disrespect by talking.

You may disrespect the elders or the boss, which is something that's really not well accepted in this culture.

So these cultures tend to have developed where there was actually land.

So, you know, it was more like crop, rice typically, but other types of crops.

But the population was growing a lot faster than in linear active north European cultures.

So they had to get organized really quickly.

So there's a strong sense of hierarchy, taking the instructions, government a little bit and respect for the elders, respect for the boss.

So you talk less and there's a lot of respect.

And if someone is going to make fun of you or say something that you did badly, it may take away your position in the hierarchy, whether it's company or an organization or a family.

It's like this is such an interesting premise to think, to think about it, but it's like everybody needs to eat.

Old people will be pushed to the back unless you create a sense of hierarchy that, you know, you must make sure the old people eat first.

Like a strange thing in British culture is the great thing is when you're 18 in this culture, you're absolutely in charge.

We kind of sort of revere you really, you know, right.

You know, you're the boss now, but we're terrible at looking after our old people.

We're kind of where you're old now, tough luck, stick you in a cupboard sort of thing, you know, I mean, that's so interesting to look at it through this prism of food, you know.

So I mean just, just if you're listening and, and you know, so linear, active, these sort of cool, factual, decision maker planners connected to a sort of idea of farming and that there's land so they can have higher trust between them in areas that are sort of, you know, less, more about maybe cattle and things like this.

And it's more emotional, aquacious, more impulsive, more emotion that people are getting stuff stolen off each other, I guess.

And then the reactive being.

Yeah, terribly hierarchical.

So you've got to be really careful about information going on.

I mean, some of, of these things I find fascinating because you can obviously be between two ends, you know, so the US is quite close to the Germans, is quite close to the British, which kind of makes sense historically anyway in terms of some of the primary nations that set the culture up of the US But Canada, interestingly is way over.

You know, Canada is much more towards Japan.

You know, it's sort of.

I, I've always found Canada an interesting example because I expect it to be quite like Britain.

But actually it's not so much, you know, it's harder to judge I mean there's some.

This is a really interesting diagram to look at, but yeah, so the pillars, the, the food thing is so.

Yeah, such an interesting bit.

Yeah, you're gonna find, you're gonna find that some cultures, although geographically they're really close or historically Canada is part of the Commonwealth, so you would expect it to be a lot closer to the British, the English culture than other, other countries.

But you're gonna find that.

And I agree with you that Canada is surprisingly different from the US or from, from England, despite its proximity to it.

Plus you'd expect it closer to France.

You know, who's actually up here on this.

Sort of going towards an emotional response, isn't it?

You know, Canada is a French British culture.

I mean, you know, you'd expect it, but it's.

I mean, I guess this is.

They haven't mixed much.

I mean you're gonna have Quebec, which is much influenced by France, but also their own pride and they will be resisting to being assimilated to France.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

I know and I know what French people hate more than anything is the Canadian French accent.

That's like, that's like.

The Canadian French accent is rather irritating, I hear.

Well, sometimes it's even difficult to understand.

I actually love.

My son lives in Montreal in Quebec, studies in McGill, which is a very, very good university in Canada and he loves it there.

And I go there and I really, really enjoy being there.

The Canadians are, you know, they're a great mix between the French, the English, the Americans.

I find they're very entrepreneurial, they're very direct, much more direct than the French.

I think they're proud to some extent, but much less than the French.

You will be able to do your self deprecating humor with them and they will laugh with you where the French will take offense.

This suggests that France is.

Sorry if I'm interrupting but just as out of interest.

Interest when you.

And we'll, we'll share this.

Share this document maybe.

But it suggested that the most countries most similar to France in Europe or, or around the place, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, it.

Does that ring true to you as well?

You know, you find the Polish have got quite similar sentimentalities.

You know, there's so many Polish people in Britain and there's a huge relationship obviously with Poland.

So I find that quite an interesting list.

In general.

I think it's right.

I think Poland particularly has to do with a history with Napoleon and the Civil Code and the culture and the strong Catholic background in Poland.

So I think that's True, I know Lithuania and Hungary a lot less.

So I can tell you from my experience how close it is.

I think, well, I've met some Hungarians and I think there's a proximity in culture.

But again, you have to remember France I think is very difficult to place on this diagram because you're going to take southern France and it's going to be southeast of France, is going to be really close to Italy.

It's almost going to be the same.

You're going to take southwest of France, it's going to be really close to Spain.

It's going to be much closer to Spain than to the French people who live in the southeast of France.

The culture in Toulouse, for example.

The culture in Toulouse.

I lived in Toulouse.

The culture in Toulouse.

I did not find a lot of connection with this culture because my culture is a bit different.

I grew up in Le Midi, which is right in the middle between southeast and southwest, but also in the north of France.

So I'm a mix of very different cultures.

And then in north of France you're gonna have, like I said earlier, a proximity with the Belgian and the Dutch culture, but also the English.

In Brittany you're going to have in the eastern France proximity with Germans.

So I think France is very difficult to place on this diagram.

I would tend to say that it's really in general at equal distance between Germany and English culture and the Italian, Mexican, Brazilian culture.

It's going to be equal.

At equal distance.

A bit of both.

It's very interesting, this word pride.

I'm trying to think about it a little bit.

I always make this joke because British people can be so sad, self deprecating and you know, we're always like, oh, you know, we're rubbish at everything and da da da da da.

But you ask a British person to name a country that is better than Britain and you get a very different answer.

They will usually we, we looked at the French, obviously we underneath it know that the France is a country not to be joked about or you know, to be taken seriously.

But obviously our long history and the fact we're like, like opposite siblings, we just don't understand the French at all.

So but we would probably say, well Germany, you know, they make good cars and Italy, they make nice actually quite arrogant.

You know, there's an arrogance there and pride and arrogance, all these things are quite sort of got overlaps.

But to be proud as a British person is, is incorrect.

You, you mustn't, you mustn't be proud.

That, that seems very sort of like yeah, it feels like an arrogance.

So it's so interesting to me that a French culture is.

People are proud and.

And I almost struggle in my mind to sort of define that.

That is.

But that's pride is.

Is it confidence?

It's a sort of.

Just a sense of importance or something.

I don't know it strange.

Even though, as I'm saying, underneath it, I think British people are quite proud underneath it, you know, but it's very.

It's okay in French culture to be.

What is proud?

What does pride mean to you?

Maybe that's my question.

I think the way you will find French people express this pride is they often think that they have the best way of life.

Right.

They often think that they're the best at certain things.

Best at soccer, I wouldn't know.

Wouldn't dare comment.

I think France has won.

Yeah, yeah.

Couple world championships.

Yeah, Yeah.

I know nothing about sport, but you do very well at soccer.

Yeah.

Rugby, different sports.

It's.

It's quite.

You know, the Olympics showed again that, you know, French people are quite good sports.

They're good in the industry in general.

You know, the Concorde was amazing plane.

Airbus, the Airbus Success, which is something that was built between the English and the French, that's something to be proud of.

There's a lot of things to be proud of.

If you ask him about the best food in the world, a lot of French people will tell you that the French food is probably one of the best food in the world, maybe the best.

I agree with what you say about Italian food.

It's also one of the best in the world.

So there is this sense of pride will be expressed through those things we have.

And the way of life is actually quite pleasant.

In France, there's a fight to have a balance between working and enjoying life, which you won't find, let's say, in the US for example.

I think that's a good comparison.

Where people work a lot and they think about working and making money a lot, and I think a lot more than the French people.

That's also why it's a nation that's a lot more entrepreneurial than the French nation.

But France is also very entrepreneurial.

I think, think after.

After the uk, it's the heart of innovation and the country that has the highest venture capital investment in Europe.

There's so many things going through my head.

I mean, when you say it like that.

So there's a concept of British exceptionalism.

Brexit was partly about people saying, we're Britain, you know, we own the world.

This sort of historical kind of like.

So there is an arrogance.

So there is a sort of, oh, we're really good.

We just wouldn't pick the same things.

We wouldn't say we have the best food in the world, although, you know, it's got better.

Is there something there?

And what you're sort of saying about the way that the French people.

Yeah.

Balance.

That they don't believe in doing crazy long hours, that they're not like the US Focused on money, money, money.

There's something in that that's quite interesting.

It's.

I don't know, I think you.

You almost have a.

It's.

It's not.

It probably is about enjoying life, but is it also some sort of.

I don't know, it's the philosophy, isn't it?

It's some sort of understanding of you're here to live, you're here to be a human, you know, not just like, churn out money.

Is something deeper going on in a French mentality that they're not sort of focused on business all the time?

You know, I think it's right on point.

I don't know why.

And, you know, I.

I can give you a specific reason why, but I think it has to do with probably, and I mentioned this earlier, I think it has to do with being probably less spiritual.

So to expect the rewards of what you're doing during your life.

Life, you want the rewards during your life, you don't expect the rewards to be once you die.

Great answer.

Yeah.

And that's something that you will find more in the.

Probably in the us Which I think is a more religious nation than Europe, where you will, you know, people will make sacrifices during this life, hoping to have a reward after this life.

Friends, France, they, you know, a lot of them don't believe in God and they live for this life.

And you've got a country where you can enjoy it.

Britain is sort of, you know, we're always kind of like in our sheds fixing something.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like we don't quite.

You've got the weather, you can go down to the south of France.

You know, we don't have these sorts of things, so we have a slightly more internal.

Internal concept of that.

I think that's really interesting.

I'm.

I actually, because I'm a Huguenot originally, I'm a French Huguenot, and we were driven out by living Louis the seventh or 17th, I forget which, but.

So I always think of France as a religious country, but now you've.

You've reminded me, you know, because we're so secular here.

France is similar because of course, you had the revolution, so that's probably when you boshed the whole, you know, you had the French Revolution and that was the start of the republic, you know, religion taking second place.

And let's be sort of, you know, because the principles of that revolution are so influential globally, you know.

Yeah.

And I think people don't realize the impact of the revolution in France and all over Europe, all the world.

America to Napoleon and through the world.

Although the American Revolution was right before the French one.

But the French one, I think, was much more drastic.

And, well, it's obvious they cut people's heads and they killed the aristocrats because they were so frustrated with having this cast of people having advantages that they felt they didn't deserve.

So, you know, you know the motto of France, Liberte, galite, fraternite, Freedom, equality, fraternity.

Those are the three.

I always have to google what fraternity means.

It means brotherhood.

So the sense of belonging in the same team, in the same family, however you want to express this.

But the number one is freedom.

Right.

People wanted freedom above everything else.

They wanted freedom from the aristocrats that to some extent they felt like they belonged to.

They wanted freedom from also the church, which had a lot of weight, a lot of power in France.

And at the revolution, what happened is they actually also killed the priests and all this as well as the aristocrats.

They changed the churches.

They built the equivalent of churches for the Republic.

They sculpted statues of the new God, which was the Republic justice, that lady.

They changed the calendar so that they would not be tied to the Catholic calendar of 7 days and 12 months.

So they changed the name of the months.

They changed.

The week was 10 days.

I don't know if you know about this.

You know what?

I remember reading this.

You've reminded me.

And they had to change it back, obviously, at some point they had to.

Change it back because I think seven is obviously some kind of special number for humans where you can project yourself to seven days.

And basically, if you try to project yourself in the future, it's very hard to see to imagine where you could be in seven years.

So this didn't work.

But they tried.

They tried to change all of this to cut the ties with God with the weight of the Church, with the weight of the aristocracy, and to just completely reinvent everything, which is an example of this logic that's so important for French people.

They try to create this whole System that's based on logic, the civil code, the law system, the legal system is completely based on logic.

You analyze a situation and you try to figure out which box it fits in.

And once you've managed to figure out which box, which category it fits in, then you have a whole sets of, set of laws and regulations that apply to this situation.

That's how it works.

Well, it makes sense because religion is a belief and a belief is a sort of emotional thing, isn't it?

It's a sort of, it's a, it's like I'm just going to believe in it.

Whereas, you know, logic is, is, is, you know, let's base it in science.

Let's base it rooted in these things.

So that's really, that's really interesting.

And as you're touching on the bureaucracy now, Britain loves to compare.

Britain loves to tell people, oh, well, we're not that bureaucratic.

We're not like France, you know, that's our, we feel that we're, we're, we're, we're more practical and less bureaucratic because of some of the legal systems and things in France.

Is that fair comment?

Completely.

And again, I think it derives from this way of thinking, of logic.

Right.

You need to, you need to have a specific organization to manage each situation.

You need to have a specific set of regulation to manage each situation.

So, yes, I think it's fair to say that France is very bureaucratic.

Okay.

And that's changing a bit, I understand.

Is it?

I feel like every time we try to change it, there is a new bureaucracy that anytime we simplify something, we create a new complexity.

I think French people like logic, but that makes them create those complex systems that they, that they feel comfortable with.

We typically say, in France, we call it, which is like a gas creating plant.

You don't see what it creates.

You build a plant, but you have no idea what it's for because it creates something that you can see.

Right, Right, right.

If you're doing business, therefore, in France, I guess that illustrates you need a lawyer.

I guess.

Is that what that sort of says?

You need someone to help you, guide you through it?

Should just be aware there's going to be quite a lot of time doing paperwork or what does it mean in practice if I'm doing business there?

This is a loaded question.

I, I love my job.

I'm one of the few lawyers who will tell you that he loves his job, but I think it's because I understand what it, what it is about being a lawyer is helping Engineer Human Relations.

All you do as a lawyer is you help.

Help your clients manage their relationship with someone.

If you're a tax lawyer, you're going to manage the relationship of your client with the government.

If you're m and a lawyer, you're going to manage the relationship with your client with someone who wants to sell his company to him or who wants to buy a company from him.

If you're a venture capital lawyer, you're going to manage a relationship with your client, who is an entrepreneur, with his investors, the investors that he's looking for, the investors that he has, and so on.

And I think you cannot name an example of a lawyer who does something other than manage the relationship of his client with someone else.

Yes, we're the engineers of human relations.

We build them, and then when there's a problem, we manage the problem.

I think this job, and that is amazing, and that's why chose it, because you help build the most important thing in this world, which is the relationship between people.

That's how you can create the most amazing projects, by helping people do things together.

I mentioned the Concorde, which is an amazing plane.

The British and the French need to do more stuff together because that is still one of the greatest achievements of humanity.

I mean.

I mean, it's insane, the Concorde, you know, and I think.

I feel we need to challenge.

I think that was part of the sort of British and French trying to outdo each other or something, because the engineering was just incredible.

You know, it was the result of.

Of.

Yeah, of.

Of great.

Two great nations.

I mean, you were talking about, you know, the English, they can be equally proud of themselves, of their history.

It has an amazing history.

It invented democracy with John Locke.

It conquered the world.

You know, Napoleon conquered Europe.

The British conquered the world.

They.

They brought things, a lot of good things.

We have a very mixed relationship with it, I think.

You know, even as you talk about it, I feel these sort of, you know, shivers going down my spine.

But underneath it, as I say, we are actually very proud.

You know, we just don't like to admit it, I think, you know, so.

So, yes, I believe there's a lot of things that we could do together, and we do all the time together.

And we lawyers, we help create these relationships and manage these relationships.

We write the contracts by which these relationships are regul.

So, yes, if you're going to do business somewhere, whether it's in France or anywhere else, you should have a lawyer.

You should have a lawyer who understands that his job is to help you Build a strong relationship with your partner, with whoever you know you're trying to do business with.

And of course you know, that's the basic of a lawyer who knows the regulations of the country you're going to.

And now a quick word from our sponsor son.

Business without is brought to you by Ori Clark.

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I think it was given us a really good foundation for the, what is sort of going on underneath it.

This sort of, you know, we had the French Revolution, we have secularism, we have how, how food has been shared in a culture, you know, and where sort of France sits.

And I think France is a very unusual nation actually.

Don't think much as we could put it on a graph that it's similar to others actually.

I find the French quite unique globally actually.

You know, may maybe there's the British spend a bit too much time playing, creating places like Australia that become very similar, you know, culturally.

I wonder whether there's, there's a load of very practical questions I could ask and I wonder we do we ask some of them as sort of almost quick answers I.

E.

We don't, we don't need to dive into them but you know, some basic sort of questions about doing business there if that would be okay.

So like for instance, a very simple, simple one.

How long does it usually take to get paid for an invoice?

You know, typically 30 to 60 days.

In France but people quite honorable and quite on it about paying or they.

Have to be hassled, a bit of both.

But I think that's, that's true everywhere.

There are some regulations actually where you know, companies have to pay between 30 and 60 days there the invoice that they receive actually the regulation is 30 days after the end of the month that they have received.

Received.

The invoice is.

There's a lot about this, there's a lot about a lot of things in France.

Right, right.

Does that mean people sue each other a lot or not?

There's, there's pre trial ways to collect your invoice.

That's, that's actually a big business in France.

Okay, okay.

How interesting.

I, I think it's like one of the huge issues of our time when big companies pay people late and change their Payment terms, I think it should be illegal.

It's not illegal here.

They can, you know, the big, the Tesco's of the world just decide their cash flows a bit low and say, oh, well, we' pay everyone after 90 days.

You know, it's just outrageous, I think.

And in terms of, you know, talking about hierarchy and flat structures and things like that, you know, in France, it's, it's okay.

Therefore, I mean, looking at where you are on the graph, it's okay for me to, you know, talk back to my boss or, you know, does it take.

Because fairness, fairness, you know, it tends to sort of push towards a flatter structure in a way.

So for in Britain, I would always say to someone, the way we talk to our cleaner versus the way we talk to the Queen seen is basically the same, you know, we don't see that we should treat some people better than other people.

It's a nice thing in our culture.

But then within business, yeah, we're, we're more high, you know, we're more.

In America, if the, if the youngest person's got the best ideas, they can get promoted to the top.

We're a bit more hierarchical than that.

You know, we're sort of wait your turn sort of thing.

You know, we'd listen to you, we won't throw you out the door.

But how's it, how would it exhibit in France, do you think?

Well, just to go back to what you were saying about England, compared to America, you have a much longer history and tradition plays a big role in how solid the culture and how solid the nation is.

So I think that has to do with the fact that the progression, the promotion is less dynamic in the uk and I think it's much similar in France to the UK than to the us.

Now, there is this sense that you mentioned that you should talk to the Queen and to your cleaning lady the same way.

And that is what I mentioned was in France is the equality culture.

And this is a very, very strong value in France.

So in a company, you'll have people that will talk to everyone the same way.

Maybe they will talk to the boss worse than they will talk to their other colleagues, either either as a defiance.

As you know, French people like to be rebellious also.

You know, they did a revolution, but they really love to be rebellious.

There's always something to.

They like to challenge.

I mean, I mean, that's based on.

I have one very, very close friend, Pierre Duplan.

Big him up.

Who's lived in London most of his life, but he Is absolutely brilliant at challenging me.

There's something about.

I mean, and it's maybe him a bit, but I sense that is sort of French culture.

They kind of see through you.

They're going to tell you when you're an ass.

We're fightful.

Even.

Even Julius Scissor wrote, you know, about how fightful.

The.

The fightful.

Full of fight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, you will.

Yeah.

He did a.

Pierre did a.

For my first.

Before I got married the first time, he was the one who tried to do an intervention.

But, you know, it's this questioning.

He's like, oh, that why.

You know, he'll push towards the why.

You know, it's part of being rebellious.

And very logical.

Yes.

If you're logical, you're going to challenge things.

You know, Pascal, explain.

Going back to the foundation is you have to challenge what's going on to understand it and to make sure that there's a logic behind it.

He's going to challenge it until he finds a logic.

And once he sees the logic, he will.

He will.

He will be, you know, he will be with.

That's so useful already to do business with someone in France, isn't it?

Understand.

They're not going to accept to sort of.

You guys aren't going to just accept.

Oh, well, just accept it.

It's like, no, you need a reason.

I have to understand.

Yeah.

So I've got this list of things that I gave you.

You know, the difference between the expectation of.

Oh, I love this, I love this.

Number three, sexiness and the French audience.

So the French audience is going to expect some level of formality.

They love innovation.

They love inventing new things.

You know, we're.

We're on our Fifth Republic and people want.

Already want a sixth.

They love the sexiness.

The thing that, you know, it's attractive, it's a bit racy.

The French people love this.

They love imagination.

They love when you can project them to another place or a better future.

They need something very logical.

Fairness is very important.

But when you present things to an audience, I don't think it's so important to be fair.

I think that's important when you do a contract or when you do negotiations with them, when you just present things.

I think logical is very important.

They love.

When you make any type of reference to France.

You know, if you go and in a food business, you shouldn't talk about Italian food to French people.

Yeah.

They love the style, they love appearance, you know, they love charisma.

They really enjoy personal touch.

You know, you were talking earlier about feelings.

I mean, they're, you know, because of the pride and the fact that they express their feelings more, personal touch is very important.

Important.

They listen a bit less than the UK people.

So they may interrupt.

They talk more, they listen less.

So they may interrupt a little more than UK audience would do.

And they have a bit of a shorter attention span, I would say, you know, if you want to captivate the attention of a French audience, try not to do longer than 30 minutes.

Whereas with the UK, you can go up to 45 minutes.

The Germans, which probably have the longest attention span in any culture, you can go up to an hour.

Wow.

Because the French are looking to be excited, as you say, I want you to excite me.

Exactly.

You know, so.

And you.

It's so true with the Germans.

When I deal with them, I.

I sort of have these meetings when I'm like, we could end it here.

Oh, no, they don't want to end it.

And then there's another 10 minutes of going through the detail of something.

The details not that important to us.

You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, whatever, we'll work out the details.

You know, let someone do that.

You know, do we really need to.

No, I would like to go through the steps.

And we go through the steps one by one, and you're like, you know, in my British case, I was just wasting time.

You know, what's the point?

Especially if they do that once your attention span has expired and they still have it.

And to compare this with the expectations of UK audience you mentioned several times during this discussion.

Humor.

Humor is probably the most important thing in any type of presentation that you're going to make to a UK audience.

Telling a story.

The storytelling part of it is so important in the UK and in the us it's something that's a lot less important in France.

I thought, storytelling, that's such an interesting concept.

And I read this thing ages ago saying, you know, what's Britain actually good at?

And then we're quite good at storytelling.

You know, Harry Potter or there's these very Shakespeare, whatever examples.

And I was thinking, I always thought storytelling is like the fundamental part of humanity, isn't it, that everybody engages with the story?

Not necessarily, no.

It's very cultural.

Wow, okay, that's fascinating.

I had never, never thought of that because basically.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Here we.

We do training sessions and one of the girls who was watching a load of them catching up, she was like, I like that one.

And I like that One because they told funny stories and I can remember what they said.

Everything else can't remember a word.

So what?

The sort of storytelling is not so important in France to sort of tell not as much.

I mean it is, it is because like, like you know, we saw in the diagram it's a mix of the interactive and, and the multi active cultures, but less the, the storytelling is the most important in the linear active cultures.

Okay.

And once you get to the Italians, it's about how I feel and it's just sort of, you know, I'm just going to express myself.

It's going to pour out of you.

And the sexiness and the sexy and the innovative aspects and all this.

Whereas in the UK it's a storytelling giving the context, explaining also there will be a lot more interested in tradition than modernity.

I think your point about how, you know, sometimes I'm looking at stuff and I'm like, you look at, you only need to look at global conflicts and stuff.

Age of nation.

You know, a lot of these countries, you know, they're in their first hundred years.

Do you know what I mean?

Of course they're going to be going to war.

It's going to be chaos.

You know, I mean we, we've been knocking around thousands of years now.

You know, I mean it's sort of one of the oldest nation states, as they call it.

Okay, so I mean this is almost a stupid question because I imagine it depends, but collaborative or individualistic, I can't even say the word.

So I.

E Is about the working as a team or is it sort of about star players?

I mean, is there any, any generalization?

So there is this being collaborative or, or competitive or you can be avoiding al.

Also you don't want to engage with other people.

There's different types of people in the way they engage with other people.

There's actually five categories.

I don't know if you're familiar with this.

Collaborative is one of them.

It's.

It tends to be the most effective way to engage with other people.

People when you're in a high trust context.

So in the UK culture and you're in a French culture, engaging in a collaborative way is the most effective.

But there's also four other ways to engage with other people.

You can be competing, you can be compromising, you can be avoiding and you can be trying to.

I'm forgetting the word in English, but you place the other person before yourself.

It's not sacrificing, but the word will come back to me.

Selfless or.

Yeah, and those are the different ways to engage with other people.

These are very individual differences.

Yes.

And I think you will find in any culture people from the five categories with almost equal proportions.

Okay.

So it's really, that's that negotiation bit of your brain again.

You've got a cultural background of what British or French people may act like.

Then you've got to over layer these sort of personality things which are rough but the sort of miles they're sort of like, is this person obviously very expressive?

Is this person very, very, you know, fact based?

Your culture is only part of your personality.

Yeah, yeah.

There's, there's a lot of factors that come in the way you're going to act your age.

One of them, you're not the same than you were 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

You don't behave the same, you don't react the same gender has a strong role in, in the way you behave that studies have found.

Then there's the individual differences in cognitive capacities, cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence.

There's the way, are you extrovert or introvert?

So that's your openness to the world, you know, your level of neuroticism.

Are you, you know, are you depressed?

Are you, are you, are you not?

That's going to affect how you behave, how you change.

But anyway, back to the collaborative approach.

Approach.

The higher the trust environment, the more collaborative you will be.

So in the uk, in the us I would tend to say that it's an environment where people are going to be a little bit more collaborative because it's a higher trust environment.

Right, right, right, right.

Very good.

I can't believe how much time's gone.

So we're going to move a bit.

So basic.

Let's do some other basic ones.

When people have a baby in France, do they take a year off to.

They take three months off.

What's the expectations there?

There's a variety.

It depends on a lot of things.

You can go in, I think in the regulations you can go up to three years after having the baby where the government will give you some money to, you know, up to, up to three years after having the baby.

Because France has tremendous financial support for people and sort of if when you go out of a job and things like this huge sort of financial.

That goes with the equality concept of our, or you know, equality part of our values.

Yeah, there's a lot of what I would call shock absorbers.

Right.

It, it limits the upside, but it limits the downside.

So I think France has a lower volatility on people's finances.

When there's, when there's a problem, people don't go as low as, let's say in the US when everything goes well, people don't go as high financially.

Okay?

There's, there's this less disparity in everything.

And when there are disparities, it creates a lot of dissatisfaction in quite a high part of the population, quite a high fraction of the population.

And it actually, if you look at the elections for this year, you'll see that there's basically three parts, almost equal parts of people that want equality.

They want people who make a lot of money to make less money and to give it to them.

Them basically, if I have to exaggerate, perhaps not envy.

It's related to anger.

Actually.

There's only a limited number of emotions.

The quality seeking equality is related to anger.

You're angry that other people are getting more things than you are, which can be assimilated to greed, but it's related to the emotion that's called anger.

And then you have, let's say, the extreme right that will be more fearful of foreigners, of people taking things away from them.

Typically, those are the people that are really attached to freedom and to protecting what they have.

So they are afraid that they're going to lose what they have.

They're afraid that foreigners are going to take away their jobs, that people are going to take away their belongings, things, et cetera.

And then you have something in the middle, very strong middle in France where, you know, basically it's going to be a little bit of a mix of both.

And you have almost three equal parts in France of those, of those three.

It's funny, they're almost based around your freedom, equality, fraternity thing, isn't it?

It's almost.

You could do it under those headings of sort of, which of those do you lean, which those do you skew more?

Let's do a fun question and maybe we'll eat a bit of bread and wine in a sec.

But what's the best thing about doing business in France?

I think the best thing of doing business in France is that you can live there.

Yes, you can live in France, which is a nice place to live.

It's a nice place to live.

Yeah, it's.

It's one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

I've visited quite a few.

It is, There's a lot of variety.

It's.

It's pleasant to live.

Like I said earlier, it's.

It's a good life.

If, if your main Priority is making a lot of money.

You'll probably feel a bit frustrated because of this.

Right, right.

Okay.

Because of this almost bandwidth.

And in terms of the, the best thing about doing business with French people, what's the, what's the nicest thing do you think about working with French people?

I think they're driven, imaginative.

You know, one of the things that is really appreciate, very logical.

I think engineer, French engineers are quite, quite renowned, quite sought after in many, many companies in the us, in the uk.

They, they're reliable, I think, I think that's, that, that's the good mix between the, the linear active and the multi active.

They are reliable.

They're, let's say more punctual than you will have.

You will find people, let's say in Spain or in Italy.

So I think it's, I think it's crazy great mix between the, the British, the English culture and the, the Mediterranean culture.

Yeah, you're the buffer.

You're the buffer.

No, you've got the influences of both sides.

No, I agree.

I think it is a nice, a nice mix like that.

I think, I think it's curious our history really that there's been so many conflicts.

But anyway, what, let's do some other basic ones.

So if I'm coming to set up a business in France, how long do I need to set up a company and how long to get a bank account?

Just roughly, you know, what are those sort of processes?

So to set up a company you need to have a bank account.

So the bank account.

Well, the company needs to have a bank account because you need to put in the bank the, the share capital.

Yeah, yeah.

You can only have a company if there's a share capital.

The minimum is €1, but you still need to put it somewhere.

So you, to start a company, the what is going to take the longest is actually getting a bank account.

The regulations are quite strict.

Anti money laundering, anti corruption, all of this, particularly anti money laundering, where they check, you know, the, the beneficial owner of, of, of its company.

If, if you're setting up a company that is a subsidiary of another company, you're going to have to justify all the way up to the beneficial owner.

But I think that's pretty much true in most of the countries, the us, the uk, et cetera.

Once you have the bank account, it can take anywhere between 24, 48 hours to two weeks.

Oh, to actually then do get the registration.

So it's not difficult.

It's actually quite easy.

It doesn't require, require I know a hundred of documents.

It requires bylaws for the company and that's about it.

Do you think that people, when they set up their.

Obviously there will be some areas of France that are known for some sectors, aerospace, whatever.

But if, you know, let's take a sort of typical software company expanding into France.

Do they need to be in Paris?

How do they choose where to go in France?

Well, there's several places in France where you're going to have.

Have what they would call center of excellence.

You have one in the southeast of France in the Cote d'azur.

It's called Sophie Antipolis.

It's a modern town close to between Nice and Cannes basically.

And they've had a lot of incentive to locate software companies there.

It's a very nice place to live.

Interesting.

I've never.

Very attractive.

Yeah, there's.

You mentioned the aerospace industry is going to be in Toulouse because that's where Airbus is based and it's going to attract a lot of people in the Airbus in aerospace industry, finance in Paris.

I Finance is going to be in Paris, nowhere else really.

And you have a lot of software companies in France.

Paris, you know, you have, you have 10 million people that live in Paris and the surroundings and you have some of the best schools in France that are located there.

So it's going to be really easy to hire talent.

Talent in Paris.

Yeah.

Right.

And do you find.

Is government incentives?

Is that important if I'm coming in from overseas to do business or you know, are there a lot of government incentives to help pay for things?

Yeah, for R and D there is.

France is very attractive as wanted to be very attractive for that.

So there's a tax credit that, that you get for doing R and D activities and you also get quite a bit big break on the Social Security contributions on salaries when you're.

When you're tech basically because they're quite.

They'Re quite high for our.

I mean anyone who's more international than in Europe.

I mean your European countries, including the uk you tend to pay Social Security on top of salaries.

You have this sort of tax, don't you, on top.

I mean here it's 15, Germany's 30.

I think France is somewhere quite high.

Yeah, quite high.

But that sort of.

That money is.

Supposedly runs the health system and things like that.

Is it.

Is that the case?

And France's health system I hear is very good.

Unlike ours.

Ours is falling apart.

I think it, it used to be.

I think it's.

It's not keeping up.

So they, they are issues there's there.

There have been a few issues with the health system and I don't know if I don't think they've been addressed as much as they should have been in the past, let's say five, ten years.

I hear regulation across Europe is a problem we had and, and in the UK they keep making it add.

Making it harder for medical devices, harder for new technology to get out there.

And that's what we need.

You know, that's, that's sort of how are you going to solve some of these huge problems.

You need the innovation.

So I think it's that difficult balance.

Well, it is a balance.

It's, you know, innovation in any kind of health product is a balance between innovation and protecting the people.

I mean, you.

Well, you see what's going on.

Let's say with.

In the us you see with vaccines, vaccination, you see that there are issues that they're finding issues with the COVID vaccines that maybe didn't do what they should have done.

I don't know if you saw.

I think it's the state of Kansas that decided to file a civil lawsuit against Pfizer for the way they marketed the vaccines.

It's not a criminal lawsuit for something that it would have done badly.

It's a civil lawsuit for the way they market marketed the vaccine, basically saying that the vaccine was doing things that it wasn't really doing or whatever.

So this, you know, what you're saying that medical devices or medicine is restricted because of some regulations.

I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing.

I think when you.

Whatever we put in our, our body has quite a strong effect on our health and people should know the consequences of the things they put in their body.

I am partly French in my history, so maybe this is my genes carrying through.

But the one bit I just also adore about France is your privacy.

And because I'm a libertarian, you know, so I.

The fact that politicians can have affairs and you're not interested or that you revolted, you know, in Covid, you revolted against being forced to wear masks in you or something.

You know, there's this sort of tremendous sense of the private individual gets to make their own decisions.

Isn't that number one value is freedom?

Freedom says back to freedom, isn't it?

Back to freedom, equality and fraternity.

Always.

I can't stand it when people are so judgmental about, especially when it's people's private life.

I'm like, I think it's such an issue because you end up using someone's private life to judge, judge their professional life.

And I'm like, well, you know, we're complex characters.

You know, a lot of people have had affairs.

It didn't make them all bad people, do you know what I mean?

They're might be brilliant, brilliant at their job.

I, I, I'm.

So with France on this, you also got nuclear power, right?

Of course.

But, you know, I, I find it really, it's, it's great to see because it feels like France is one of the only nations with the guts to stand up to this stuff sometimes, you know, and I'm, I'm, I don't want to get too controversial in it, but that you demand this, this, this freedom, this liberty, you know, as the individual and hate sort of forced, forced attitudes, isn't it?

It's, it's very tricky balance, though, in the modern world.

I think, I think so too.

And I, you know, like I've said before, I think France has quite a, quite a good balance between, you know, transparency and freedom to privacy or right to privacy.

It has, it has a balance in general.

I think the, the balance in the way of life is quite good when you compare it to different, you know, all the different cultures.

You must see people as more nuanced, though, less black and white.

I find this culture that exhibits now is there are, you know, Elon Musk is an easy examp example.

They're a bad person because they said this thing and now everything they do is bad.

And I will never buy a Tesla car.

And it's like, I just find it really weird.

I'm like, you know, everyone's good and bad.

You know, everyone.

No, no one's, no one's an angel.

No one's, no, no one's, well, a demon.

Well, there might be some, but they're very, very rare, you know.

So maybe you guys are hanging on to a slightly more nuanced approach or not.

Is it, is it become very, very black and white in France as well?

No, I don't think so.

I think we've been quite protected from the extreme turn that, you know, wokism and all these things have generated.

We have issues.

There is parts of the society that are quite extreme in the way they judge other people.

And there's many examples of this, particularly in the political life.

But yeah, I think France in general, general is much more nuanced, less extreme in the way we judge people.

I think, I think it's more forgiving environment.

2, 2 more quick questions and let's, let's have A relax, a couple of fun questions I think while we eat a little bit of French cuisine.

So people in France don't tend to own their homes.

You tend to, you tend to rent your home.

Don't use that a truth or not?

No, I don't think so.

Okay.

The statistics, I think home ownership is very high.

Okay.

Okay.

Maybe that's a sort of continental thing.

It's less common because we're obsessed with ownership here.

You know, my home is my French people also are.

I mean it's a basic need, you know, putting, putting a roof above yourself maybe you said earlier in southern France, you know, it's maybe easier to sleep outside than it is here in the uk.

So maybe it's not quite as important.

But no, it's very.

God, that's very true about.

Maybe it's northern European when it's cold.

Your home is important.

I'm so with you though.

It comes from these sort of basic things.

Are you familiar with the pyramid of Maslow, the pyramid of needs?

Yeah, yeah.

You have the basic needs.

Eating, drinking, putting a roof about, you know, above your head.

And then as those are the basic human needs.

And so, so you're going to look for food, you're going to look for water that you can drink.

You're going to look for a place to protect yourself from the external conditions, whether it's other people or animals attacking you or the rain and the cold being a threat to your survival.

And then once you satisfy those needs, then you're going to go try to satisfy less important needs.

The, the, the top needs being, you know, the, the self actualization, you know, do I find my place in society and all this, you know, if, if you need to look for food, you're not going to care about self actualization.

No.

100%.

Let's.

And finally, I mean, is it hard to get a visa if I want to come and live in France or do business there?

You know, I mean that's not necessarily your top topic, but you aware at all of how difficult it is to get business visas there?

Well, it depends.

It depends you what you bring.

Do you bring brain?

Do you, you know, it depends where you're coming from, what your background.

But one thing that I didn't mention earlier about starting company is you can start a company in France with no visa.

You can be the CEO of a company in France with no visa.

You don't, you don't need, you know, a visa.

You don't need to be living in France to be named the managing director.

Or the CEO.

You need a local director.

Do you need one who's based in France?

No.

No.

Okay, so you can live in the US Create a.

Or in the uk, Create a company in France, appoint yourself as the managing director, the CEO of the company.

And you know, you, you.

If you need to come occasionally, you come occasionally without a visa.

And if this is.

If you have a professional activity at some point that requ.

Requires you to have a presence in France, then you'll seek for a visa.

But you'll have a good reason.

You have a company.

I think one of the things that you allude to in there is to not underestimate the depth of the American French relationship, because Britain is more.

It shares the language and it sort of feels more our home turf.

And obviously there's some spicy history underneath the.

Underneath the bonnet there with the revolution and everything in America.

But I've learned over the years, years, how much France has adapted itself to that startup culture, to that sort of how America does business.

And you talked about it earlier, not on this podcast, but about how Parisian lawyers understand how to do Western and I think really American law and how to do business in America as such a sort of global power.

That's sort of important, I think.

Yeah.

I mean, I've seen we're very adaptable.

And I've seen in the 22 years that I've worked, I've seen the evolution of the contracts that we draft, and I've seen how influenced they have been by the UK and the US Particularly a way of doing things in venture capital.

I mean, the Americans are so innovative in the way they structure the investments.

Whether it's.

Yeah.

Private equity in general was invented in the US Whether it's leveraged buyouts or venture capital, and with documents that are structured, that are actually open source.

I don't know.

There's the new Venture Capital initiative in the U.S.

where you can go on the website, NVCA, it's called, and you can go on their website and download templates of any type of investment agreements, convertible notes, shareholders agreements that are typically used in the Silicon Valley.

And then because it's open source, you can use it, you can use it as a template anywhere in the world.

And that's what we've done this in France, you've got lawyers who, for example, convertible note is something that's not possible to do in France.

You cannot loan, you cannot lend.

I'm sorry, you cannot make a loan to a company and have it contractually converted into equity.

It's more complex than this.

So there's lawyers who created an equivalent way of doing this.

It's economically equivalent, but the legal structure is completely different.

Yeah, okay.

It's a bit like ghost shares and stuff.

Olivier, you've been absolutely brilliant.

I think you should explain what's in your bag.

You bought this bag of French delight.

There's many more things we could discuss.

But yeah, we said, let's have a little show and tell of what represents France.

Beautiful French delight.

The baguette is really typical call from France.

Look at that.

You can't get better bread than France.

And it's beautifully crispy.

There's of course some cheese.

Conte is the most.

I think it's the number one cheese in France in terms of weight production.

Oh, wow, you've got some saucisson.

You know, I've never look at my Conte.

Conte is, is.

I think it's the number one.

I don't, I don't know the number numbers exactly, but if I had to guess, I would say that in terms of consumption, it's probably the, you know, the most weight consumed of cheese is Conte in France.

And you have something else that's really typical from France is pate.

And this one is boar.

I don't know if you're a hunter, but this is boar pate.

A splash of red too, I think.

I think Dee and I brought a Bordeaux.

A Bordeaux that goes well with this Saint Estef.

And I mean, I feel we could ask a fun question.

We could consider the answer to what's the biggest cultural cock up, mess up have you ever seen?

Or what is the most common mistake people make coming to France?

You could think about an answer to that while I try and open some cheese.

I could give one example.

I think that's interesting actually.

And I had initiated the process of opening the French office of probably one of the best American firms that did not have an office in Paris, the Chicago based law firm or today.

I think it's the number of one firm in the world in terms of revenue.

And I had initiated the process of opening the office with me and another partner, much more senior than me.

And he's very typical French with the pride being very prominent in him and the way he speaks.

I don't know if you can hear that.

I don't have a very strong French accent compared to.

To many people.

And this guy has a very, very strong French accent when he speaks.

And I think he makes it on purpose like this.

I Think he really tries to not have, you know, an English or an American accent.

And so he went to the U.S.

he went to New York or to Chicago, I can remember, to meet with.

With the main partners from this amazing American firm.

And he told me afterwards, I prepped him, I briefed him before.

I had already met them.

I had met them before in New York.

And he went there and he expected them to seduce him.

This is the biggest law firm in the world.

His wife, one guy.

And he's expecting them to tell him that he's absolutely.

He's amazing.

And they really.

They, you know, it would be amazing for them to have him open the office in Paris.

And they were expecting him to.

To seduce them, to convince them that he was the right guy.

And.

And he came back from there and he realized this and he told me I messed it up.

And, um.

And that was.

That was a bit sad for me because that was a really exciting project.

That's a very interesting thing.

Why would.

Why would.

For my British mentality, I'm with the Americans.

Why would I.

Surely he's applying for the job almost, isn't he?

Why would I wish.

Because they wanted his help in France, you know.

Well, you know, without him, it took him 10 more years before they could open an office.

He was, you know, he.

From his angle, he was the right guy.

It took him many, many years to find the other.

The next right guy to.

Or the next right guy is to.

To open.

To open the office.

So from his angle, I'm not saying he's right.

I think he's wrong.

But from the French cultural perspective, goes back to the pride thing.

Is it okay to big yourself up?

You know, how the Americans.

And again, you can't generalize.

No.

French people are really bad at this, okay?

Because the Americans be, oh, we're a number one firm.

I'm the top attorney.

French people are actually really bad at this.

How interesting.

And I think it goes with maybe the sense of logic.

They don't sell themselves as being what they're not.

So there is this pride.

Like, I think I'm worth a lot, but I'm not going to sell myself to you.

Right.

I think.

And maybe it has to do with pride.

I'm thinking as I'm talking about this, maybe they feel like if they have to convince you that they're worth it, it's beneath them.

Why?

Because I had to think about it long and hard.

Why don't British people do it?

And I'm like, well, it's not for me to say if I'm good at something, I can't possibly say that.

I don't know, I might be crap at it.

You know, I can't say I'm amazing at golf.

I would need my peers to say.

And we.

We.

We trigger it.

So we say, oh, I'm.

I'm no good at golf.

And that your peers are supposed to step in around you and say, oh, no, you're really good at it.

And you go, oh, am I?

And you go, yeah, yeah, you're really good at it.

And you'd be like, oh, okay.

I was explaining to someone the other day, I was like, the most you can say as a British person is quite good.

I'm quite good at golf.

You know, that basically means I'm amazing.

I think Americans are not afraid of much, and they're not afraid of being ridiculed by overselling themselves, Meaning telling, you know, telling people that they do things better than they actually do them.

And I can point out many companies, many French companies that.

That opened companies in the US that hired Americans.

They were French people inexperienced with culture in the US they hired people thinking that they could do what they said they could do, and within one year, they had to fire everyone and restart.

And I've seen this at least half a dozen times that they had.

Usually French people go to New York because it's.

To open a subsidiary or of their company to try to tackle the American market because it's closer, because the time difference is easier, and et cetera.

It's probably the same way with English people.

How many times have I seen French companies just after one year, one year and a half after opening their New York office, their New York subsidiary, having to fire everybody and.

And hire starting new people, but knowing that, you know, after.

After a year after this failure, they knew.

Okay, I shouldn't.

I shouldn't believe.

No.

When people tell me they're the best at selling or the best at coding or best at whatever, I shouldn't believe them.

Yeah.

Very good.

I can't thank Olivia enough for making the journey here.

A very good friend of the Furman, who runs an incredible law firm in France.

It's Square Law, which is sq A I Air, as in air squ.

Or they can find you everywhere, I guess, if they need help.

Thank you for this delicious food.

Is there anything you wanted to add?

We missed anything?

I think we're good.

I found it really fascinating.

I was really great.

Was it you?

Good.

Olivia, was there anything else you wanted to tell anyone?

I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for having me and enjoyed the chat.

And I'm looking forward to hearing more about the other cultures you're going to receive here.

Yeah, I look forward to.

I look forward to them all, particularly the Italians.

I think that's going to be hilarious.

Anyway, thank you, Olivia.

And that was our first episode of a new series called Business Without Baggage, a special series where we dive into the challenging world of global business and culture.

Thank you again to Olivia, our guest making the journey.