Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Business RadioX. If you’re a coach or a consultant who is tired of selling and ready to lead by serving, set up a call with Stone Payton at broostonephone.com to learn how to give local leaders a voice and become the premier connector in your market. Today on the show we have coach and concierge with Italian Inpat, Debbie Levitt. Welcome.

Debbie Levitt: Hey thank you Lee. Hi, everybody.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Italian Inpat. How you serving folks?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, sure. So I am also an ICF accredited coach and I’ve been expanding into what I’m calling Italian Inpat, uh, in part being a semi made up word opposite of expat. I’ve been living in Italy for about nine years and, uh, there’s a lot of things that I didn’t know and couldn’t get help with and couldn’t get, couldn’t find online. And so I think there’s a real opportunity to coach not just the emotional or values driven side of a big international move, like perhaps someone from America who’s thinking of moving to Italy, but also to coach around the logistics, the day to day life, the understanding of what things are really like here, because it’s not like your Italian vacation.

Lee Kantor: Well, I would imagine any type of move abroad has their challenges and kind of unintended consequences from the move. Is there any, uh, can you share a little bit about what brought you to Italy and how you chose Italy? Because once you decide to leave, then the world literally is your oyster and you could have picked anywhere.

Debbie Levitt: That’s totally true. And so when I was thinking about moving, my first thought was Canada, because I had started to do some consulting business there, and I thought maybe that would be a good place to go and try to grow that consulting business. But there was always something kind of pulling at me to say, hey, do I think I can grow my non-coaching consulting work into Europe? And so I ended up in 2017, I think it was I ended up on a vacation here with a girlfriend, and we did a Mediterranean cruise. And I tacked on some days on the Italian island of Sardinia and just fell in love. It just felt like home. And so I started visiting here. I looked at moving here. I looked at different visa options. I looked at other countries as well, but because of my ancestry, I didn’t have a lot of options. My ancestors were from Eastern Europe and they had come to America mostly around 1913, and it was just too distant for me to get one of those. Uh, grandpa was Italian kinds of visas. And so I ended up with a self-employment type of visa. And I was able to move here in early 2018. And so you and I are talking in October 2026. So yeah, I’ve been here years. It’s great.

Lee Kantor: Now when a person’s thinking of moving is that I had never even considered that, like, is that a move you could make is like, if I have a grandparent that was from that country, that gives me a little bit of an edge or, um, an ability to move there a little easier.

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, it really depends on different countries and their laws and the laws are always changing. For example, last year Italy changed their law so that you could no longer get citizenship through ancestry if it was a great grandparent. It had to now be a grandparent. They can’t have renounced their Italian citizenship. And then, of course, there’s also the question of what about your parents? Did your parents also claim there? Let’s say it’s Italy. Claim their Italian citizenship. So, um, if they did not, they would have had the right to it. There’s some more hoops to jump through. But for those people who are trying to come to a country, especially in Europe through their ancestry, it’s very often grandparent, but not great grandparent. And then there are other rules as well. So it’s definitely worth digging into before you make any assumptions.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you chose Italy, um, I would imagine, like you said, you found it just kind of on a vacation. Like that was your first experience. Yeah.

Debbie Levitt: Was it was it was my first time here. I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I grew up in, uh, the New York City suburbs. Um, and so English and Spanish were important to, to speak there. Uh, I did not have experience with Italian other than singing operas in college. I have a degree in music and, um, so I, I came here, uh, not knowing the language and had to start learning the language and, um, holy cats. There are moments where it’s similar to Spanish and there are moments where it’s nothing like Spanish. So there was a lot for me to adjust to. And that’s part of what I’m bringing into my coaching because I think a lot of people, even when they feel excited about moving to Italy, they don’t understand day to day life. They don’t understand the importance of really learning the language. Uh, there’s just so much here that I’ve had to learn the hard way, and I want to save people from falling into some of those holes.

Lee Kantor: Now when you your first experience is through a vacation. Does that does that kind of unlock some opportunities where you’re like, okay, Italy isn’t just vacation spots, even though a lot of people go on vacation there. It’s a country that’s large enough to have lots of choices. Like, how did you start narrowing down like, oh, I want, you know, I’m a city mouse. You grew up as a city mouse, but do you want to live on the beach or on a, in the country? Like, how did you kind of narrow down where you were going to kind of at least think about initially putting in on routes?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah. Fantastic question. And even though I grew up outside of New York City, I always saw myself as the country mouse. Um, I lived for many years in Tucson, Arizona, because I thought it was peaceful and friendly and nice weather and low cost of living. And so I do tend to think of myself as the country mouse. And that was something that really appealed appealed to me about Sardinia when I came here to, to visit, um a lot of it is quite rural. Um my local city in air quotes has 60,000 people. The next largest city has around 230,000. And the capital of the region of Sardinia has about a half a million. And so the rest of Sardinia lives in 377 small villages. And I’m living in the small village, uh, with my now husband. Uh, I did, uh, connect with a Sardinian who spoke fluent English, and we had a lot in common. And so there’s also a love story in here. Um, but, um, to me, I knew I didn’t want to be in or around a city. I wanted more of that quiet, rural, simple life. I’d lived in New York City, I’d lived in San Francisco, I’d done a lot of conference speaking in cities, and I just knew I wanted that more quiet, simple, inexpensive life.

Lee Kantor: Now, how is kind of the rural experience in Europe may be different than the rural experience in America?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, I never really lived that rurally in America, so I can’t totally speak to that. But one thing that I notice about being here is the sense of community. Um, I think that that’s part of what really ties people together. Uh, I like to joke that everyone in our village is my husband’s cousin, but I’m not sure I’m joking. They might actually all be cousins of some distance. And people really pull together to take care of each other. They take care of the the elderly. They take care of people who are unwell. They take care of the the newborns and the children. Everybody really looks out for each other. And the village I live in has about 1500 people. You don’t have a secret here for long. Um, and so you have to kind of get used to to that sort of community. But to me, again, I think the idea of a community that really pulls together is something that I hadn’t really seen in America. I think in the places where I lived, there was a lot of sense of everybody for themselves, and I’m just going to take care of what I need for me. And there it didn’t always feel super neighborly. And I would say it’s really the opposite here.

Lee Kantor: Now, did that take a little bit of adjustment on your end? Because, you know, like, especially in New York, you know, everybody’s heads down, I’m in a hurry, I’m going somewhere. And now this seems very neighborly and hey, how are you doing? And waving and smiling. And those kind of interactions are just part of your normal life where if you walk through Manhattan, you know, no one’s giving you the time of day unless you’re not moving fast enough for sure.

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, you’re totally right there. Um, it took me about two years of living here to start to adjust to how things work. Because, you know, you especially since I’ve been working in technology as my usual consulting stuff. And so, um, for example, when I moved here, I was still eating lunch at my desk. Why, why, you know, that’s something that a lot of people do in tech jobs and corporate jobs. We don’t take that lunch break. And here the culture is more about go out, buy some fresh food, go to the grocery store the big supermarket and buy something fresh, cook it up. You know, they have kind of a siesta here. There are a lot of stores that are, uh, run by sole proprietors or entrepreneurs or families. They close between 12, 12, 31 and maybe four, 435 people cook a nice fresh lunch. They talk to each other, they take a nap. And it really took me a very long time to decide that, hey, at lunch, I don’t have to eat at my desk, I can stop, I can cook something really nice and fresh for myself. And so it did take a lot of time. And one thing I tell people in my coaching around moving to Europe and Italy, especially some parts of Italy, is, um, they’re not going to change for you. They’re not going to adapt to some of the American ness that you’re used to. Um, and you can bring that with you, but you’re probably going to want to train yourself out of it because it really doesn’t match the pace and the vibe here. Like my husband will go into the village and he’ll say, oh, I’m just going to get a coffee and he’ll be gone for two hours because he’s run into cousin so and so and friend so and so and mom of so and so, and everyone just wants to chat with each other and they will make that time for that. And, and I think that’s something beautiful that I didn’t experience in America, especially working in the that more, you know, we say fast paced, um, tech and corporate jobs.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you decided to, um, kind of move there permanently, was this something that you could do yourself to figure this out? Or do you have to hire kind of an expert? Uh, in order to help you make a move like this?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah. I think a lot of people do end up hiring immigration lawyers. And, um, I did also, though I ended up firing mine after I got here because I found that they had actually botched a lot of stuff that they should have done. And they acted like that was my fault. And I was like, Holy cats. I come from a family of lawyers. Like, I know this is not what you were supposed to do. You’re fired. So I think it can be helpful to start with what I like to call your team. Your team is going to probably be an immigration lawyer. It might be a real estate agent unless you want to start with renting, even though you might want to talk to one. Also, if you are buying property, you want to talk to a what we call in Italy, a geometra, which is kind. It’s spelled like geometry. It’s kind of like a surveyor, but they are the people whose job it is to pull permits and pull records of the property to make sure that what you’re buying, uh, matches that it’s all legal, that there isn’t anything funky going on with the property. Um, so I, and then of course, I love to recommend myself in there as well, someone who can coach you just more on what real life actually looks like.

Debbie Levitt: What’s it like to, to go to the doctor? What, how much language do you need? What’s it like to fill out forms? Uh, I have a neighbor who used an immigration lawyer. They got a retirement visa here. They’re living here now in my community. I love these people. They’re wonderful. Um, they have to renew some of their paperwork, which you’ll have to do every year or two, like your residence permit. And they were telling me that their lawyer was charging over 2000 to fill out that paperwork for them. And I was like, Holy cats, are you kidding me? I filled out that paperwork a zillion times. I will happily, happily do it for you. Do it with you. You know that that’s some of the things that I’m doing in the kind of those coaching and concierge services is I can fill that out with you and for you. I can teach you to fill it out yourself so that in the future you’re more self-sufficient and you can only go to your lawyer or some of these people who are way more expensive than I am when you really need them, when the poop hits the fan. Otherwise you’re really. Once you’re here, you really don’t need that lawyer to to fill out forms that all of us can fill out ourselves.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there any advice you can give the person when it comes to the relocation element of this? Should you buy right away, or is this something that you think that why don’t you kind of live there and get the lay of the land and then find a neighborhood or a village that’s the right fit for you.

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, I think it’s going to be very individual for people. Some people have already been vacationing here, or they have distant cousins that they’ve been visiting. They’re familiar with parts of Italy, and they they think that’s where they want to live. I think if you’ve only been vacationing in certain places, very often people end up in Rome, Milan, Tuscany, sometimes Naples. And I would say before you just say, oh, I’ve been on vacation here. I love it here. I want to live here. I would say, slow down and think about what are you running away from? What are you running towards? What’s important to you in your day to day life? Do you really need to be in or near a city? And if you’re trying to be rural, what do you want to have close by? I mean, there’s rural stuff out here where it’s hard to get cell phone service, where you’re nowhere near a hospital, where it might be hard to to find a nearby doctor. So we have to take maybe schools. And so I would say it’s important for people. And again, this is some of that coaching element, but important for people to start making that list of what of what are those must haves? What are those nice to haves? What are those don’t wants? Because, uh, people will go to Florence or Venice or whatever and go, oh, I could just live here.

Debbie Levitt: You think that now? But it’s probably important for you to just do some test runs. And that’s what I did before I moved here. I started visiting here. I came the second time I came here. I came for three weeks, the third, and I didn’t live, you know, I tried to I stayed in a room with where at a friend’s house and tried to live normally and cook my own food. And I would say to people, try to set up something where you’re not living the vacation life, where you’re not in a hotel, where someone’s doing your laundry or making your bed or cooking your food. Try to experience a more normal life of going food, shopping and doing these things. Come for three weeks, come for five weeks and test out different places to see what’s important to you. Because you might not want to live right next to the sea. It’s beautiful, but it’s expensive. And in the tourism season, it’s going to be packed and it’s going to be a nightmare.

Lee Kantor: Now, what about the seasons? How do you kind of recommend navigating the seasons? Because if you’ve never been there in a certain season, it might not be anything that you’ve experienced before.

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, Italy definitely has seasons. We’re not tropical. Where I live on Sardinia, we get wildly hot summers that feel like Disney World on the. On a bad day, and we get winters that are fairly mild. We usually don’t go below freezing. But if you’re on mainland Italy and especially in northern Italy, and I think a lot of people don’t realize that northern Italy borders Austria in the mountains. And so you absolutely get skiing and snow and and feet of snow in some cases. And so that’s going to be another consideration for people is what type of weather do you prefer? And I think in some cases, people might end up deciding that maybe Italy is a part time thing for them. Maybe there’s too many things they would miss from America, people or things or something else. Maybe they want to live in Italy part of the time or certain seasons. Like the only wrong answer, in my opinion, is the answer that gets rushed into. As long as you can be thinking through these things yourself, with your family, with a coach, with somebody, then there’s a better chance that you’re going to make a better decision. But you don’t have to rush into anything, and you don’t have to rush into buying property, especially when buying property is complicated. And I keep seeing people making mistakes with not understanding the zoning. We’ve got zoning here where you’re not allowed to build anything on the land, and people see these big, beautiful pieces of rural land and they go, oh, wow, I’m going to build a guest house and a pool and whatever. And they don’t ask the right questions and they find out later they can’t build anything.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there certain things that maybe people take for granted in America that maybe aren’t? It’s not as simple in, in the environment you’re describing, like, how’s the Wi-Fi?

Debbie Levitt: It’s great. Yeah. So in general, Italy is not a super high tech country. Um, they’re not totally known for tech, but we still have all the normal things here. We’ve got, uh, Wi-Fi, internet. You can also get Starlink internet if you’re or some sort of satellite internet. So not sponsored, you know, anybody satellite internet if you’re out in the middle of nowhere. But there are places that sometimes I might ride my bicycle through or drive through and there’s literally no cell service. So again, these are things to, to check out and investigate before you rush into any sort of purchase or rental because you could be surprised that some of the infrastructure is not as strong as you expected. Sure, your hotel is going to have Wi-Fi, but when you go and rent that house or buy that house, especially if it’s out on some land, you might be surprised that there isn’t a local tower. And so there’s there’s funky stuff here. And again, it just requires a little bit of patience and research and testing things out.

Lee Kantor: Now what about things like Amazon? If you want something in an hour, is that doable? Doordash, things like that.

Debbie Levitt: It really depends on where you live. So if you are living inside of Rome, inside of Milan, you know some of our most major cities on the mainland of Italy, um, a lot of that infrastructure is in place, but it is relatively new. When I first moved to Italy in 2018, Amazon was relatively new and they were trying to promote it heavily and get people to try it out. And a lot of times it would take 2 or 3 weeks for a package to come to us. Now, I would say right now, it can still take about a week for a package to come to us, but again, we’re not on the mainland. So a package that comes to us has to take an airplane or a ferry because we’re on an island, so we’re going to have a slower delivery time than other, uh, people, other parts of Italy. So that’s another thing to look into. Um, and again, I remember during the pandemic, when we were locked down, people would say to me, well, why don’t you just get some food delivered? And I’d be like, I live 30 minutes down multiple country winding one lane roads from anything that looks like food delivery. Like I’m nowhere near that. And so I think that people have to understand that if you’re inside of a city, you’ll have some of those typical things. Like I visited Bologna. It was full of, of people on bicycles doing that type of food delivery. But if you’re outside of that, whether it’s suburbs or rural, it’s going to be hit and miss. And if that’s important to you, you’re going to have to check it out here. I’ve learned to be very patient. I ordered something on Amazon today and the notification said it did already ship, but I can expect it in ten days.

Lee Kantor: Now what about air conditioning? That’s something that people in America take for granted. And in Europe, that’s it’s not as common.

Debbie Levitt: You’re so right. And certainly here in rural Sardinia, there are a lot of people who don’t have what Americans would think of as air conditioning or heat in their houses. A lot of people grew up open in the window, um, in the summer and closing it in the winter. Um, people have wood burning stoves out here in rural universes. Um, I have put air conditioning and heat into my house, but not into every room. So I’ve got a little bit of the old way and the new way. Um, the building that I, uh, live in, which was, uh, um, used to be the family business for my husband’s family. But that business closed some time ago, and we’ve turned that building into our home. It’s got no insulation. So even though I have some heat and some air conditioning, it is constantly battling the outside temperature. So, um, I think that, um, what’s popular here are lots of blankets. Electric blankets are certainly popular. Um, you know, people have lots of ways to, to get this done even where they don’t have heat and air conditioning. But yes, sometimes you go into a restaurant or a hotel or I remember going to someone’s wedding in the summer and the party room had no air conditioning. And so, uh, these are just things that we all learn to live with.

Lee Kantor: Now, when it comes to serving your clients, do you have kind of an ideal client profile? Like who is the perfect fit client for you?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah. I think that my ideal coaching client for Italian Inpat would be anybody thinking about a part time or full time move to Europe, possibly to Italy, especially if grandpa came to Italy, and you might have a chance at getting your citizenship through ancestry, or you have a visa some other way, retirement work, investment or something else. So my ideal client is either still making that decision, might need some help with it, might want to understand day to day life more like some of the things we’ve been talking about might want to understand different regions. It could be someone who’s in the process of moving, and it could also be someone who’s already moved and is now trying to navigate day to day life, going to the doctor, renewing the residence permit, filling out paperwork, understanding taxes and payments. Like my beloved new neighbor. I said to her the other day, hey, you’ve lived here about a year. It’s probably time for you to pay your property taxes again. Have you done that? And she said, well, I’m waiting for the bill. And I said, they don’t send you a bill. And she was like, what? And I said, yeah, you have to hire a geometra to look at your land and the plot and how it’s been zoned and how big it is and how it’s being used. And they calculate it and they tell you what to pay. You have to proactively go do that. You will not get a property tax bill. So even people who have moved here and are successfully living day to day are still being surprised by things that they kind of assumed would just work like America. So I think my ideal client is anybody who is curious or making a decision or maybe feeling a little bit stuck, whether it’s the bureaucracy or the translations or other things, and they just want to reach out to someone who’s gone through it and get the kind of help. Because I couldn’t find any blogs, I couldn’t find videos. I felt like there was nobody to help me. So I want to turn around and dedicate myself to to helping others.

Lee Kantor: Now, would you be able to help kind of that digital nomad, maybe the person from America that wants to, you know, move around a bit and kind of explore the world is that could you have the ability to help that person? Or do you only want people that want to move permanently?

Debbie Levitt: Oh, no. Any sort of part time or full time person coming to Italy is someone I’d absolutely love to talk to or help. So if someone is coming as a digital nomad, we must say the appropriate thing here and remind people that if you come on a tourist visa, technically you are not supposed to work. I’m not going to turn you in. But you know, if you are to do things by the book person, you would want to pursue Italy’s digital nomad visa, which does require an application, a visit to your Italian consulate back in America. So obviously, there are ways to be a digital nomad here and try to fly under the radar, which is your choice. And there are ways to be a digital nomad here and have the appropriate visa for it. But I will say that in general, if you are coming from America as an American, um, you can come to Italy for up to, I believe it’s up to 90 days every 180 days as a tourist. How you spend that time is up to you. And like I said, I’m not here to report anybody. I’m just here to to help you make the best of that.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share that maybe illustrates what it’s like to work with you? Um, don’t name their name, but maybe share how you were able to help somebody kind of solve a problem, maybe share what the problem was and how you were able to help them navigate it.

Debbie Levitt: Yeah. I think some of these stories about my neighbor are really some of the best stories because they had that expensive lawyer, they had the real estate agent, they had the architect, they thought they had their team. And yet between some of the moving process here and now. The living here, they are still being surprised by stuff like nobody explaining to them the zoning of the land they were buying and that they they didn’t even know to ask that question. And I think one thing I want to make sure I do is proactively give people information so that I’m not waiting for them to ask the question. I know what they should be asking that they don’t even know that they should be asking. So another example for my neighbor is she found that she was paying for garbage to be picked up, but her garbage wasn’t being picked up. And then she got another bill for the garbage, and she didn’t really understand how to pay that bill. And we have a form here called an F 24, and you use that to pay almost everything that goes to the government, whether it’s your municipal garbage or your annual taxes. And and my neighbor was just under the impression that this was a form that was like kind of a single use form, the way we think of like a 1099 as being one thing, or your 1040 as being one thing, and she didn’t understand that the F 24 had to be filled out in a very, very specific and precise way that included certain codes that said what she’s paying for and who it goes to.

Debbie Levitt: And, and so, um, we were able to help her with that so that she and, and to teach her what the f 24 is and how to fill it out better herself and how to take the information she had received and put it in the right boxes. And so some of that is language and some of that is getting to know the bureaucracy and and the forms. But these are easy things to get wrong when you’re new to a country, because guess what? Your lawyer is going to charge you $1 million an hour to answer these questions. Your real estate agent doesn’t want to answer these questions because they don’t have a great way to bill you for that time. Um, there’s a lot of people who don’t want to answer those questions or are going to charge you a lot of money to do it. So I think there’s a great opportunity for me to come in as an affordable coach and concierge and and hand-holder to help people with all that stuff, and to just set them up to be more independent so that they don’t have to ask me twice to fill out an F 20 for the first time they do it, they’re going to know how to do it.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success. It must be so rewarding to be able to help people going through this. Um, you know, they’re excited, but they don’t know what they don’t know. And it’s always useful to have a Sherpa by your side to, you know, kind of protect you from yourself a lot of times.

Debbie Levitt: Absolutely. And again, it’s so easy to fall in love with Vacation Italy and then be surprised by weird stuff here. Like when I first moved here, the power in our house randomly went off and I didn’t understand why. And I had to learn that, um, you are limited to a certain amount of power you can get at any one time. And when I turned on two appliances. I had exceeded that limit. And the way that the electric company lets you know is they shut off the power and you have to go to your circuit box and turn your power back on and, you know, wacky stuff like that where you’re like, why does my power keep going off? And so then I had to go to the electric company and buy a higher limit. But like, there’s so many things that eventually make sense here, but they’re just not like America. And that’s okay. But like I said, it can really help to have that.

Lee Kantor: Sherpa well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you. What’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, the best way to find me is italianinpat.com. So Italian with an N and inpat is the opposite of expat because I have found my home here. So it’s INPAT uh, the first call is always free. So people are absolutely welcome to talk to me and pick my brain and get a little help for, for free before they decide if they want to continue with any paid services. So there’s certainly no obligation. There’s no package, there’s no commitment. I just want to help people as they need it if they need it.

Lee Kantor: And how do you deliver the coaching if they decide they need it? Is this like kind of regular check ins or is there group coaching or is it just specifically one on one to just solve whatever problems they’re having?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, right now I’m not doing group coaching. I think a lot of people have very private problems that they’re sometimes embarrassed about. I do have a free discord community that is just getting started. So it’s a little quiet, but mostly I’m doing that one on one coaching. So it’s either going to be a live video call with me that I can record and send to people later so they have a copy of it, or sometimes it’s an asynchronous thing like, hey, Debbie, I just want to pay you for 15 minutes. Can you record a video for me on how to fill out this f 24 form so I can pay for my garbage and understand how to do this in the future? Sure. Here’s an invoice for 15 minutes and here’s my video. So some of it could be asynchronous and some of it could be live with me. And I also imagine in some scenarios, people might show up to a doctor or, uh, an Italian office where maybe they don’t speak enough of the language yet and they need help with that conversation. I might be able to come in person or be on the phone helping them translate. And that’s getting a little bit more into that concierge type of service.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Debbie Levitt: Thank you, Lee, and thanks to the listeners eye and good luck to everybody wherever you live.

Lee Kantor: All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.