I was born in Delft (the Netherlands) and lived there well into my twenties. I love sports! I used to play basketball on a competitive level while exploring my entrepreneurial mindset. In 2013 I moved to Rotterdam and also stopped playing basketball. I wanted to work on my physique and joined the gym, where I now spend at least 4 mornings per week.

Before I started my entrepreneurial journey, I was working as a sales and marketing professional for large corporations. In 2014 I made my first financial investment into a start-up company in their seed round. Shortly after, mid-2016 I quit my job and started my own agency.

Right now, I’m the co-founder of the Brand Humanizing Institute and the founder of Second Leap. My goal is to work on a future where we unleash human potential through personal development and technology.

Early career

After completing my studies in Marketing in 2009, I started my working career as an Account Manager for a medium-sized company in the Netherlands. I quickly developed my sales skills and started my own department called “Sales Support”, where I would be the point of contact for all large corporate clients. That propelled my career and quickly allowed me to switch jobs and work at one of the world’s largest companies.

Specializing

During my full-time employment, I specialized in a number of topics I was personally interested in. After completing another Marketing course, I started specializing in Business English, Social Psychology, Life Coaching, and Personal Training. I cherrypicked the skills I felt I wanted to use to further develop my career.

Investing

Still during my employment, back in 2014, I made my first financial investment in a start-up. I had been reaching investments and companies for close to a year. One of my ambitions was to become an investor and build up a portfolio. Right now, some of these investments are still ongoing and I’m always looking to upgrade and expand my investment portfolio.

Full-time entrepreneurship

In 2016 I quit my full-time employment to start my own agency called GrowHarbor. I got interested in Growth Hacking and new ways of marketing. After doing my first projects, I was able to scale up and move into my own office. In 2019 I decided to make the transition into Brand Humanizing and go from there. This made me change GrowHarbor into Second Leap and scale up the team and projects.

Brand Humanizing Institute

During a casual lunch at McDonald’s in Rotterdam in late 2017, Jonathan Flores and I were discussing our work and the obstacles we see. Both being into technology as well, we started philosophizing what the future of business would look like with AI and automation emerging. That brought us to think up the term Brand Humanizing and write down how we would help companies work more humane with the use of technology. This ended up being coined on Medium in 2018 in our long read thesis. Mid-2019 we opened the Brand Humanizing Institute and grew the team of Brand Humanizers to spread the term through speaking, podcasts and events.

Second Leap

The agency went from GrowHarbor into Second Leap and focused solely on executing Brand Humanizing projects. Where the Brand Humanizing Institute (where I’m a co-founder) is built around content, Second Leap (where I’m the sole founder) is made for projects.

Public Speaking

One of the things I enjoy most is being on stage and presenting, giving keynotes and joining discussion panels. Besides investing, speaking is one of the things I want to expand on and especially when it comes to Brand Humanizing keynotes and personal development talks. Would you like me to speak at your event? Let’s get in touch!