Many people are asking me how I’m settling in here, and what I’m up to – so I thought I’d put it all together, as its been 3 months since I married my Dutch husband, and relocated with my 12 year old-son to Eindhoven, Netherlands.
My husband has a large extended family, that are all local, and we are part of a church community – so life in that regard has been great, we have instant family and friends around us. The first month was spent settling my son into school and finding my way around. The road rules are different here, for bikes and cars, but I’m comfortable enough now with driving, and biking is always fun. I love that I can get anywhere by bike, bus or train – with the city centre being a short bus ride or 20-minute bike ride away.
For me though a big focus has been my professional life – I set up my business Talentstorm just over 2 years ago in the UK, and while that is early days as a small business and my ‘offer’ is still evolving, I was keen from the outset to continue as an independent out here.
I came over last summer and had a couple of visits at the KVK (Dutch Chamber of Commerce) to help me with the legalities. Things were very straight-forward, and they have a good system of support. I was able to set up as a sole proprietor, not needing a Ltd Co. A sole proprietorship in the NL seems a bit more flexible than the sole trader equivalent in the UK, for example you can have more than one business entity under a sole proprietorship, and you can have employees. One of the clever things they do here is they link up your business with the tax people automatically, so you don’t have to worry about that.
With my business set up I found some early networking opportunities and was instantly struck by how friendly and welcoming everyone was. Eindhoven is home to multinationals like Philips, ASML and DAF, and therefore has a thriving expat community. A short bus ride from my house takes me to the High Tech Campus – this is the smartest square km in Europe hosting 200 companies and 12,000 researchers, developers and entrepreneurs. I’ve had some fantastic evenings meeting other professionals, and some follow on ‘coffee’ meetups. The Dutch are known for being very direct (I know I married a Dutch man!) – and this tendency to be straightforward and no-nonsense is very helpful in a business setting.
It’s still early days for me in fully understanding how things work here and what opportunities there are, but I have a couple of Self-Development workshops in the pipeline to deliver to some professional women’s groups – and I’m using that as an opportunity to create a follow-on one to one session around Managing your Professional Development. It’s the flip-side of the coin for organisations that want to create a learning culture – raising awareness of the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s continuous learning.
Of course, I still have my UK clients, and am more than happy to pop back (it’s only a 45-minute flight) to deliver any training or consultancy projects, and as European Partner for LearningPlanet (microlearning training videos) – I can support clients easily over the phone and via VC.
So all in all – it’s very exciting – and watch this space!!
Rachel's Round-up 