The decision came first

Anyone who thinks about a life in the USA quickly thinks of the visa. At DARIA, Ria Dewi von Garnier accompanies families on their journey to Florida. She herself emigrated to Florida with her daughter in 2025. The sentence that triggered her decision wasn't even a question.

Anyone who goes with Florida with us deals with her: visa category, documents, consulate appointment. This summer, in the first episode of her show „Neustart USA“ on DariaTV, she shared how she arrived there herself. The story is about a phone call, a week in Florida, and a single sentence.

All the way to Florida

Dewi von Garnier works as a personal assistant to Frank Rahlf, the co-founder of DARIA in Cape Coral, Florida, which builds homes and helps German-speaking entrepreneurs and families take the step to the United States, among other things. Dewi's specific field is visas. She works with families to determine the order, clarifies categories and documents, and remains available until everyone has arrived in Florida. Over the past year and a half, that has been 34 people, twelve of them children, now together with her colleague Anja. When she recorded her first show, several future colleagues had just had their appointment at the US Consulate in Frankfurt the week before.

For her, the number is not a statistic. Behind every single one, she says, is a family and a completely new beginning. The first two sentences she gives to those seeking advice are: „We cannot decide everything that happens to us in life. But we can always decide how we respond to it.“

The way she works has to do with her own history.

A call in the summer of 2023

In the summer of 2023, Frank Rahlf asks her for a brief phone call. The two do not know each other personally at this point, and the conversation lasts less than ten minutes. „We didn't get to know each other through facts,“ she says of this call. „We got to know each other through our values.“ After the ten minutes, it was clear to her that she trusted this person.

A few days later, Rahlf calls again: the family should visit him in Florida, the flights are already booked. A few weeks later, Dewi von Garnier is sitting on a plane with her family. Frank Rahlf and his wife Viktoria pick up the guests at the airport, where the two meet in person for the first time, and host the family at their home for a week.

An idea, without an address yet

There was almost nothing to visit this week. There was neither an office nor a finished house to look at, and the local team did not exist yet either. In the summer of 2023, DARIA was primarily an idea. Back then, you had to believe in all of it before you could see it. Today, that idea includes its own bakery, an on-site property management, and over twenty companies under one roof. Its own restaurant is scheduled to be added in November 2026.

Explaining why she trusted the idea even back then with a single sentence, she says: „I believe people rarely follow an idea. They follow people who live that idea every day.“

After the week, the family flew back to Germany. If Dewi von Garnier had been asked back then whether she wanted to move to Florida, she would have clearly said no. Her life, her responsibilities, her tasks were in Germany.

A statement instead of a question

Months later, Frank Rahlf and Dewi von Garnier met again in northern Germany. They talked about how they were doing and what had become of their contact. Rahlf did not ask her a single question that day. He said a single sentence: „Now is the right time.“

She didn't hesitate for a second, didn't write a list of pros and cons, and didn't poll her circle of friends. She said yes without knowing where she would live, what she would earn, or what job she would do.

On March 29, 2025, she landed in Florida with her daughter. For her, it was her fourth stay, for her daughter the third. The first one to stay.

First the decision, then the visa

The questions she didn't ask back then now reach her almost daily from people who are thinking about emigrating. Where will I live, what will I earn, which job, which school? All valid questions, she says. Only the order is usually wrong.

In her conversations, she therefore asks a different question first: Do you really want to walk this path, and what for? For a foothold, for a company, for a new home? For anyone who has an answer to that, an apartment, an income, and a school become tasks that can be solved one after the other. Anyone who does not have one searches through visa categories without knowing what for.

She has answers to all of that: what types of visas exist, which one fits which situation, how the process works, what documents are needed, and what it costs. When someone is ready, we walk the path together, step by step, from the category to the documents to the appointment at the consulate.

She passes on her yardstick for this as a sentence that her children also constantly get to hear: „If you know what you really want, you don't have to worry about the how.“ And she sums up her own path like this: „For me, the visa didn't come first. The decision came first. The visa was only the consequence.“

Ten minutes, one sheet of paper

At the end of her first broadcast, Dewi von Garnier gave the viewers an exercise, and it fits anyone reading this text. Take ten minutes tonight, without a phone, just with a sheet of paper. And write a single question on it:

What decision have I been putting off for months?

It doesn't have to have anything to do with America. Maybe it's about your career, a relationship, health, or a dream you've been carrying with you for a long time. There's still time to make the decision itself tonight. Writing it down is enough.

If the thought of a second foothold or a life in the USA won't leave you alone, you don't have to figure out the path on your own. Ria Dewi von Garnier and her team accompany those who are setting out, from the first question to arrival in Florida. Become a member and thus part of the DARIA community.