Who the Hell is this Guy? Well, this is my Story…
I was born on December 12, 1976 in Rotterdam – the Netherlands and grew up in a loving family. I have a tough but loving father who worked hard for a small pay check until his hard work broke him. He’s now enjoying life with my sweet and caring mom, who was a stay at home mom for me and my two brothers Wilko and Rob. The most important lessons they have taught me are to work hard; not to act like an ass (at least not too often) and to respect other people. It wasn’t always easy financially, but I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
My first part-time job was in Rotterdam harbour, where I learned to keep quiet and work hard. School wasn’t my thing, I much preferred to be a rebel and hang out with friends and girlfriends. I finished school eventually and learned to be a ship builder. Although I was pretty good with my hands and enjoyed working in the harbour and shipping industry, (I still think it’s a fantastic profession) but I wanted more. I was given the opportunity to lead several ship construction projects and found that I loved project management, organising and business management. Once I had found my 'calling' I went to night school and got a degree in business, management and economics.
Around the age of 13 or 14 I started dancing. I ended up dancing in competitions for more than 7 years. We trained 6 days a week and on the seventh we had a match. At the end it just became too much and I wanted a change so I started fighting. Fighting and dancing… yes I know that's quite a strange combination. I’m a razor shaved, bald headed, pierced, tattooed, dancing and fighting geek; try to find a label for that! I practised Wing Chun Kung Fu, Muay Thai and kick boxing. Training for a big kick boxing match finally 'stopped' me. At practice, shortly before my 24th birthday, I tore and shattered almost every part of my knee. I ended up not working for 6 months.
When I was ready to return to work, I decided on a complete change and moved into the commercial sector. I ended up by working full time in the office instead of in the harbour. I started off as an account manager and progressed into sales and project management. I moved from Rotterdam to a small village in the east of the Netherlands to work for a large German multinational. This was my last day job and they fired me at the end of 2007.
This was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. He firing me was the only good decision I’ve seen him make in those 3 years. Kudos to him 
. I was fired for two reasons. After working for him for 3 years my motivation was completely gone and I was working online too much. I was working on my blogs and doing research and learning more about SEO and Internet marketing.
I was fired in October; I was deeply in debt and living in a place where I wasn’t really happy and had hardly any money to live off. After sitting at home for a couple of months I decided it was time for a change. At the beginning of 2008 I started my second company, Promedia Blogging. I had started my first one, part-time when I was around 25 but it wasn’t successful simply because I didn’t put in the hours. I imported goods from the US that I tried to sell here. So I decided to make a change and go for it.
2008 was a hopeless year; I worked at least 80 hours a week and almost had a breakdown because of all the failures I had. You name the problems that it is possible to have with an online business and I had them. With the little money I had I bought all the books and courses I could, but I couldn’t get them to work for me. I even lost my Internet connection for 10 weeks because my ISP was taken over by another company. I still don’t know what went wrong with the switchover, but not having an Internet connection isn’t an advantage to a start-up Internet company. At the end of 2008 I still had no money and things weren’t looking good, but I continued working hard for my dreams and I finally got the ball rolling in 2009.
It’s now September 2009 and things are looking good. What changed? In what might have been my final attempt, I bought several courses from John Reese, Traffic Secrets and the Reese Report collection with a Business Accelerator Web class. It might sound like a cliché but it hit me that I wasn’t treating my sites as my business. I continued working 80 hours a week, I started tweaking and testing and continued with the things that worked for me. Now in September 2009 I’m debt free, I work at night because I’m a night person and sleep till at least noon every day and lay back and do fun stuff in the afternoon. I don’t even have a watch or an alarm clock any more. Do you have any idea what a relief that is? I’ve gathered very knowledgeable people around me who all do a great job and my company is now growing at a fast and steady past. This month alone I hired 3 full time employees. I’m still a long way from where I want to be but I’m getting there. What if I had given up at the beginning of the year?? What would I be doing now? Maybe working for a boss and starting at 8am. If you get only one thing from reading my bio to this point, it must be: don’t give up! Making money online isn’t easy, but if you continue with what works for you and you handle your sites as your business and you don’t give up you will make it!
So what more do you need to know about me? Well my Twitter profile says it all:
'Great Kisser (or so I've been told 
), Slightly Workaholic (still), Jazz Fanatic (actually I love all sorts of music), Dreamer (and Goal Setter), Online Entrepreneur (that’s what I just wrote about), Geek (not Nerd, this is important), Lives at night, Sleeps during the day and banned his alarm clock (and this sounds familiar too). Some additional stuff about me; I hate cold weather and I think Rotterdam is the greatest city in the world. I love all sorts of sports, in particular football (soccer as my US friends call it), Feyenoord Rotterdam is my club and something I can't stand is Feyenoord’s rival A**X from Amst***am. I love a good meal, especially with a cold glass of Heineken or perhaps a good wine or cognac.'
And that’s pretty much it.
I have many milestones planned but my biggest goals for 2010 are these:
My business is growing fast and I want to use the growth momentum to improve and grow in several fields. I want to grow not only in numbers but also with overseas staff, hiring at least one new full time employee per month. I’m also quite busy with setting up a second business. I want to invest in small businesses and start ups and we’ll also broker businesses, business opportunities and joint ventures. This business is coming along quite nicely and we expect to partially launch this company in March.
I want to turn over more tasks to the people around me and I also want to employ one of my dearest friends to manage my team leaders and handle the daily operations of my business. He likes his current job a lot and now geographical it’s still a bit daunting but this would be final step to my 6 day weekend.
Another big goal is to move back home to Rotterdam. My biggest dream and desire is to travel the world as a digital nomad/backpack manager but this is not going to happen as long as my dog is still with me. He determines when this happens but that I’m moving back home is for sure.
I’m active in some pretty amazing niches but I never worked in the internet marketing or blogging niche. I’m started on quality book about twitter and a high ticket coaching club for bloggers (both launch dates are still unknown – other priorities) and I’m currently finalizing a system for online entrepreneurs about outsourcing. We have been working on this for months and I’m super proud of this. The package contains books, audios, videos, interviews and a whole bunch of extras. This launch is going to be huge, we already have some great partners onboard and I’m very excited about this.
So that’s it; thank you for reading this, I know it was quite a read. I hope you’ll enjoy my blog and feel free to contact me and ask me about my goals. I will be asking you about your goals and achievements.
Greetings from the Netherlands
Vincent
