Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Hej,
I am moving to Sweden in February 2013 with my wife and two kids, she has been offered a position as a Doctor but I as yet have no position. I am a Quality systems ISO series lead auditor 18001 9001 and 14001 and HSE /manager/specialist with oil and gas experience and some project management, procurement etc. I want to work as a self employed consultant mainly advising on implelenting or auditing systems and giving HSE advice. Is there a demand in Sweden for such consultancy and if so does anyone have an idea of the kind of expected daily rate that is achievable. I will be living about an hour travelling time from Stockholm. Also can anyone advise on the type of networking/sites that are available for advice. I do not speak Swedish. Any advice most welcome.
Cheers. Mike

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Sounds like you have specialized skills, i would check to see where they are relevant in Sweden. You might be lucky and depending if your skills are in demand but getting work without speaking Swedish is not easy. Swedes don't want to have to speak English in their workplaces if they don't have to. I guess there may be international companies that you can hook up with if your skills are internationally recognized. I would present yourself to the local naringslivbolaget - business advisors - and see who they can hook you up with. Be prepared for a not insignificant difference in the speed at which things get done. Don't email people - they won't reply. Call and arrange a meeting.

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Hej edp,

Thank you for the reply. I am hoping the language issues are not a barrier to success. I will in any case be working with the SFI course as soon as I can. I smiled regarding the advice about things taking time and calling and meeting with potential clients/business contacts as oppose to relying solely on email. I worked in the middle east for a while and this also was the best way to do things. It taught me how to be patient :). The more I read about Sweden the more it seems I will have to exercise this quality. Thanks again and cheers.

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

No problem mike. People seem to have quite contrasting experiences with moving to Sweden. I think it suits a personality type. Im sure you will be able to find work in your field - Sweden is rule crazy! Although you may have to do some retraining. You would know better though and as you say you have worked abroad before i would guess that what you do is kind of international.
My experience of Sweden is that no decisions get made on a Friday or anywhere around any 'red days', or in July and some of August, parts of the Winter will mean that things are extra slow, you will have meetings to plan a further meeting, people will tell you optimistically that they may be able to help - and thats the last you will hear of them. I wish you all the best, I would get the ball rolling now...

Its not that Sweden is dysfunctional - quite the opposite, its just that noone functions one iota more than they personally need to. That would be showing off i feel!

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

My only advice that I would add, is see an accountant before you set anything up. Just so you understand how much the state is going to stick the knife in!

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Hej,

Thanks for the advice, my initial challenge is getting the guidebook on setting up your own business translated, I then of course have to apply using the Swedish form and then see how this goes. ( Maybe Blackie's services would be required here! :)I am unsure if I can do this remotely/when not in the country.
As my proposed business is international I am considering setting it up in the UK or another EU country to minimise the tax burden. My wife has a 3 year contract and if we were staying in the country beyond that time then I would consider making the business Swedish based. I was hoping that self employed/small business or sole traders would be treated slightly more favourably than the PAYE equivalent but I am not holding my breath and therefore using the international option may be the only way to be competitive and have a viable business. Thanks again & Cheers

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Hi,
Referring to what Catchafire wrote above, in my impression the best way to run a small business in Sweden is to start with a big one.
Blackie

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Hej Blackie I am just a working class boy from Edinburgh who has managed to educate himself a little; and your cryptic clue has me stumped. It though appears that people ( unless I have this wrong) seem to have a love/hate relationship with Sweden. Taxes are resented everywhere but it seems this resentment runs pretty deep in Sweden. What do you think there is for me in Sweden? I mean will it be a trial of endurance or a pleasant stay? What for example is municipal housing like as I have heard a rumour the HH who recruited my wife have this in mind for us for our first accommodation. Do people really share laundry facilities? Is it an egalitarian society or a watered down Orwellian existence. I am beginning to think Blackie you may have been summoned to room 101! All answers on a postcard please, or alternately you can use this thread! :)

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Oh yeah, there is usually a pin board in the basement where different apartments can sign up for different time slots, usually three hours long. No more than two slots at a time can be signed up for.

Don't even think of not cleaning up after yourself or slip into some other persons slot if they don't show up. They rather have the facility sitting empty.

No commercial laundry facilities available. If you have a laundry emergency, you're in deep s**t! Get used to planning your life around doing laundry :(

I used to bring all my laundry to my dad and step mom.. :thumbsup:

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Here is my take on it Mike. For a starters I would lean towards watered down Orwellian...but I would say a weak 'orange squash' rather than a 'whiskey and soda'...if that makes sense!

I think that you will be ok. If you are coming here with a doctor wife - without wishing to start a conversation on class/gender - you are not i would suggest going to be living on the breadline. You are also likely to have some sort of ready-made social life and a certain standing. If you are happy in your family unit and somewhere nice to live then really there won't be too much to complain about. You might find the people a little cold but vaguely friendly, certainly not very often particularly unpleasant. Don't make the mistake of speaking your mind I would say. The swedes will go running and they won't come back. I made the mistake of responding to someone's xenphobic post on facebook and i have felt a cold wind blowing off the urals ever since!

Back to the Orwellian thing: it really is a socialist society that functions as well as i think socialism can. If you are used to the UK and think that proper socialism might be nice for a change then Sweden is the place. However, as they say, be careful what you wish for. I don't really like 'the state' in any particular configuration. Its a functional framework that binds a geographic entity, shaped through hundreds of years of violent, bloody and greedy history. So Sweden is 'we are Sweden, look at how well we work, look at how great us Swedes are, fair and democratic, equal, open-minded...' If something is too good to be true, 99.99% of the time it is. There is no culture of individuality - at all. None. Your a free to express yourself how you choose. But noone does. I suspect no-one dares. If you see someone in a punk style or a metal style they will have the look just right - like punks on postcards in Leicester square.

One thing I like about the UK is that the vaste majority of level thinking people think that the concept of Britain, England is a slightly ridiculous one. Not so in Sweden. They love their Sweden.

I know an accountant from Scotland, he seems to love it here. I suspect it suits his personality. I know an ex-pub landlord here from South East, he seems to be tearing his hair out constantly.

I've never seen a black person in a good job. I have rarely seen a white person have a black friend. Young kids maybe.

90% of the time I think I am living in some sort of hell. 40% of that might just be me. 10% of the time I am running or have been running or some Swedish person dangles a carrot of optimism in front of me re: some opportunity. That invariably doesn't come to fruition. I die a little more inside.

Swedes don't do change. Their lives progress in a slow and steady fashion and new people with fancy foreign ideas don't really come into that equation.

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Thanks for the replies chaps, I have to say sharing laundry facilities sounds like a bad joke. Why not share the freezers and fridges while we are at it? Perhaps its cultural. Now I think of it isn't there an old tradition of being welcomed into an igloo up north, now that sounds like a nice cultural tradition! oops that's too far north. Just my luck!
Seriously I am hoping given my situation that I will indeed not have much to complain about; in any case I have travelled a bit and have had to endure many different cultures and circumstances and I am ever hopeful that Sweden will be a good fit for me and my family. I generally live life not as a survivor, but as a traveller. If I dont like a job I leave, if I dont like a country I leave and so on. However it took me many many years to have the confidence and where-with-all to be able to take this approach and even if the inclination is there to move on it is not always possible for everyone, so I dont judge. I also dont buy the "its a challenge" nonsense. I will up sticks if I am not happy. Thanks for all the other advice and information Edp for which I am very grateful. Are there any towns or cities you would avoid or recommend. We are moving to Nykoping and it seems very pleasant any thoughts regarding the place. Cheers Mike

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

I lived in Eskilstuna, Sweden back in 2002-2004. Nice place, but has a very noticeable and rather nasty underbelly. My girlfriend is Finnish and half Gypsy (Finnish Gypsy, you will notice them immediately when you see them), so elements of the people she knew were already on the fringes of Swedish society.

So a half Asian lad from Sheffield, went from being an account manager for IBM to washing dishes in a restaurant run by the Yugoslav mafia. Interesting times and one that I look back on rather fondly these days.

Some observations! Cash is king, there was a massive and thriving black economy. Many pople I met and later worked with, travelled to Stockholm every morning, often at 5am, to work at various construction sites around the city. Some were earning serious money. I got some casual work helping install ventilation and was paid 150kr/hour cash.

It was almost a national sport to be able to sponge off the government. A lot of people could have a reasonable standard of living by doing sweet FA. If you were Finnish, you work for cash on top of this. If you were Swedish, you stayed at home, dressed in black and played Playstation all day.

Crime, drugs....yup lots of it, much more that what I had been previously exposed to. And something that made us not want to live there, I would hate the idea of my kids growing up in this place.

The "Lagom" attitude. Mediocre is best, as has been pointed out individuality is repressed and it is enough to do what is required rather than excel. This I would imagine would be very frustrating when doing business.

Anyway, probably not a lot of the above has any relevance to your situation Mike. My only area of concern would be for schooling for your kids. Remember the "Lagom" rules applies here probably more than anywhere else.

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Hi,
I think ed's simile with Orwell's 1984 doesn't quite fit, it's more like Huxley's Brave New World. In other words, society has not become brutalised, but rather sanitised. All of the unpleasantnesses of life are airbrushed out, no mention of death anywhere, most kids have no idea where a pork/lamb chop comes from, in fact it's further down the road than 'ealth and safety' England will ever get.

On the business front Mike, the reason I wrote 'start with a big one' is that the Swedish tax man is after you for his cut from Day One. You have to file a preliminary tax return where you estimate/guess what your gross turnover will be. Take these figures: you guess that you will earn 300,000 crowns a year. The tax man takes 45% of that or 135,000 then divides his figure into 12 monthly payments = 11,250 and then sends you a list (your F tax certificate included) (F=sole trader) with 12 paying in slips each of 11,250. Now, as you know you may not get a job for the first month, then it takes you a month to do the job, then your invoice gives 1 month credit, hey presto you are already 3 months behind on your tax bills. After 6 months they will hand over the debt to the 'Crown Bailiffs' the national debt collection and enforcement agency and you are already on the list of pending bankrupts. So you have to start here with a healthy bank balance to pay the accruing tax debts BEFORE YOU EARN A CENT.
Go figure, as they say
Blackie

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

This is an amazing revelation Blackie, of course I cannot figure how you can be taxed on Noll income! Quite apart from the fact that it is impossible to gauge an income without any historical data or business/market research all of which costs time and money. I do not have to guess that I cannot work without my F-card so its the old chicken and egg scenario. I suppose you are also fined for grossly underestimating your income. I can see I am going to enjoy Sweden! Cheers Mike

Re: Advice on setting up business/consultation in Sweden
 

Yes thats the way it works Mike, I looked into setting up a business. I suppose you could say that you only intend to earn 5000kr a month. I don't think you would be fined. You would just pay more tax when the bill is due but blackie could probably set you right there.

I spent the afternoon in Nykoping Mike waiting to pick up a Canadian guitarist from the airport in Skavsta who was delayed 6 hours. It seems ok, No Swedish towns from my experience are highly exciting to look at except perhaps Uppsala - which is perhaps Sweden's equivalent to Oxford - and they say that Lund is very nice..im sure there are other nice towns but they tend to be a bit 'identikit'. Its often hard to tell a house that was built in 1850 to one built in 1950 - that may say something in itself about Sweden.
I miss the architecture you find in the UK and France. You don't find the urban hovels here that you find in the UK but you don't find charming small towns and villages or follies. Trees -> wooden houses -> lake-> more trees -> wooden houses -> apartment blocks -> wooden houses -> trees...you get the picture.


People I am working with seem to be up on the tax thing. It seems that owning a property is good for taxes as you can work on your house and write it off against tax. I am sure that Sweden is like the UK in some respects - people work the system to their advantage, the art is understanding it. I'm sure Blackie knows a lot more about it than I do but my current view of the Swedish fiscal system has changed a little from 'thieving vikings' to a more tempered view. I doled out loads for dentistry as you have to pay the first 3000kr yourself then 50% up to a certain amount and then 20% beyond a certain amount. I have surpassed this and I'm now in credit with forsakrisskassen and my dentist phoned me to tell me this as i need some other work doing. So I think that there are things here that function well. But they also seem to waive things. I was at the hospital several times and also at the doctors and haven't received bills for any of this...although i suppose they could be on their way. I always have the assumption that bureaucratic administration is generally quite incompetent which can work both ways.

Yes maybe brave new worlds is more like it. Everything is very 'nice' and noone complains...why would they? This IS heaven on earth after all. Haven't you seen the sociologists reports?

Its a good attitude you have Mike to travel. You don't like, you move on. I am trying to orchestrate that without throwing the baby out of the bathwater. I want to leave Sweden on an even keel with my finances intact and feeling that I got everything out of it that I could. That seems to be the best way to start again somewhere else, otherwise you could feel that you are just running away from yourself. A work in progress but i really don't feel that I could spend the rest of my life here. It really feels a little like a very open prison.