This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Thomas Phillips, 33, a business owner from Southampton, England, who left the UK in 2024 and now lives in Austin, Texas, while running his SEO agency. Phillips is on a E-2 Investor Visa. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m originally from Southampton in the UK — it’s where the Titanic set off from. I think that’s the only thing Southampton has going for it.
I’ve been doing search engine optimization for the last 20 years or so. I now run DTC SEO Agency, we do search engine optimization for direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands.
I always wanted to live in the States ever since I was a young kid. Growing up, my dad was really into American cars and we used to go to Huntington Beach, California, to see all of his friends and check out the car scene. It was always a big draw for me to see the car culture and the awesome people and how passionate Americans are.
I’d also done so much research, and I know so many people who live in the US, so I just knew moving was the right option for us.
When we actually decided to move, my wife and I were looking in Huntington Beach. One of my best friends in California called me up three months before we were going to move and he said, “My wife and I are moving to Miami now.”
I said, “All right, well, we’re not going to move to California then if you guys aren’t even going to be there.”
One of my mentors said, “Hey, you should look at Austin. There’s a great car scene and tons of entrepreneurs.”
My wife and I came to Texas for our honeymoon for six weeks and we loved it. Southern hospitality is a real thing. It’s great.
It was the right time, and we could get the right business visa, so we moved all our businesses stateside to Austin, Texas.
I prefer the taxes in the US to the UK
We’re on an E-2 Treaty Investor Visa, where essentially you create a company, get a five-year visa, and hire a certain number of US nationals. The company has to be making the owner enough profit, and you need to pay yourself a reasonable salary and hire a certain number of people. Then, after five years, you can renew that visa again.
When we’ve spoken to American clients while in the UK, I’ve always felt like there was a little bit less trust, where they might say, “You’re in a different country. Do you fully understand how this country works?” because there’s a 100% difference in consumer culture.
I feel like moving to the States has definitely helped us get a lot more US-based clients. I also love being able to meet clients in person, which we wouldn’t have been able to do before unless we flew over, which is expensive.
Plus, I’d say with 98% of the brands that we had built internally, our target audience was always America, because the US consumer culture is so much bigger than the UK’s.
The other thing I really like about the US is that state tax is added on after, and you just accept it and you just pay it. In the UK, the company has to show the price that includes the 20% value added tax.
So when you sell a product for $100, the business only gets 80% in the UK and then has all of its costs and everything else after it, versus over here you just pass on that extra to the state, which in my opinion as a business owner is a giant bonus, because at scale, a 20% difference is massive.
I love the tax system here. It’s set up in a much better way than the UK’s, in my opinion.
I knew about the tax system a long time before moving here. All of my calculations before we moved were done based on us moving to California. We would have saved about 1% on tax just by moving to California because the rate of tax in the UK is so high.
The bonus is we’re saving 13% by moving to Texas on top of that, so that’s even more of a bonus.
Austin’s entrepreneurial culture sold me
America does everything so much bigger than the UK; the mindset difference is huge. I’d experienced it so many times after visiting America and now actually living here.
I absolutely love how business is so celebrated here in comparison to the UK. I’m sure that’s why it breeds so many entrepreneurs, as well.
I have so many friends who are entrepreneurs at a high level and they’re always pushing for more and more success, which I really resonate with. It’s nice to know a mix of people who are all business focused.
As a result, it’s so much easier to network here than in the UK. There, trying to find that person who can help you meant they’re probably in London, and I definitely didn’t want to go to London — I cannot stand London.
It’s also quite difficult, in my opinion, because people are a lot more reserved in the UK. Americans are so much more open. There’s more risk that’s taken, too, in a good way. People are really shooting for the stars.
In the UK, work feels slow and sluggish. I speak to people a couple years later and their business will still be in the same position. It feels very stuck in the mud in comparison to the big, free thinking over here.
On the flip side, I feel like I’m aging more quickly living here — though this isn’t necessarily a negative. I can see how in 20 years time, I might think the States is moving at such a speed that I would actually like to move to Portugal and just chill out. But I don’t necessarily see the faster pace as a negative thing right now.
It’s taxing on the brain, and I feel it in comparison, but this is what I want.
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