Michel: “Nancy and I have known each other for fifty years. She was my grandmother’s girl next door. Because my father worked for a dredging company, I spent my childhood in South Africa and the United States. But during the holidays I often visited grandma in Rotterdam and saw Nancy.”
Nancy: “Then we would play outside together or go to the skating rink.”
Michel: “When my parents called grandma from South Africa, grandma often said to Nancy: ‘Come on, Michel will call later.’ Then I told her that I had seen a crocodile or that there was a monkey in the garden.”
Nancy: “Later, when I started working as a ground stewardess at Zestienhoven, we hardly saw each other anymore.”
Michel: “My life also continued: from New Orleans we moved to Jacksonville, our family was always traveling. I moved thirty-eight times until I was 42. We always had to integrate somewhere again. I inherited that American mentality: everything is possible, everyone can succeed in life. But I have lived at the same address with Nancy for fifteen years.”
Nancy: “He has now found peace.”
Michel: “We have both had other relationships, but now we have been together for fifteen years.”
Nancy: “We met again in front of his grandmother’s house.”
Continuous new ideas
Nancy: “When I was in my late twenties, I wanted to become an entrepreneur. Then I opened a flower shop. I could express all my creativity in that. It was always inside me, but it couldn’t come out. I had many companies as clients: hotels, restaurants. But physically it was quite difficult and I worked long days, because I had to be at the auction at 5 o’clock. When I was able to get a managerial position at the watch and jewelry company Venson, which has shops in the Bijenkorf, I started doing that. I love retail, helping people find something beautiful.”
Michel: “Back in the Netherlands I started at the Oranjeboom brewery. I then moved into the casino industry and then became a distributor of casino materials in the EU, in Moscow and on the Caribbean Islands. I had that company for fifteen years. Then I started a massage chair company. With a partner I installed chairs throughout the Netherlands: at Schiphol, in hotels and at hairdressers. I did that for almost six years. I like entrepreneurship. Seeing possibilities, developing something, I can commit myself more than 100 percent to that.”
Nancy: “I work in the Bijenkorf in Rotterdam, about forty hours a week. It is a varied job: I am responsible for the schedules and for applicants, and as a regional manager I regularly visit the other branches. The seasonal collections and events such as Black Friday also provide variety.”
Michel: “I work at least sixty hours a week, but I do it with passion, so it takes little effort. I can let go of my work, but I am always ‘on’. When I’m on holiday, for example, I’m constantly gaining new ideas.”
Nancy: “Not just on holiday, but also when we have coffee somewhere.”
Michel: “Then I think, for example: why isn’t there a magnet under a coffee cup so that it sits more firmly on the saucer? I just see everything, I can’t do anything about that.”
Nancy: “That is why it is good that we walk a lot with our dog, so that we can clear our heads. We have a very good balance between work and free time, we do a lot together.”
Michel: “I have now sold the massage chairs, after which I started the Fuel Addicts platform. This is a think tank for people who need information about energy. But I sold that too and am now working on a platform for entrepreneurs, Put It On. It is an alternative to LinkedIn, which is becoming less and less businesslike. The new platform is purely business-related and intended for the top echelons of business, healthcare, etc. I am now talking to investors, because it has to become international – that is the common thread in my life.”
Last big job
Michel: “We are not big spenders. We go on holiday once a year, because when you’re building a business you can’t go away six times a year. We went to Thailand last spring.”
Nancy: “And we go out to eat once a week. Eating together is sacred to us. We always have breakfast and dinner together.”
Michel: “The platform will be my last big job. After that I will continue to do business, but on a smaller scale. We think quite a lot about our lives after work. Because one day it will be ready, even though I am still in the middle of building a new company.”
Nancy: “We prefer to go to the sun for a large part of the year. We think life is quieter elsewhere. And when we are together, things quickly get better.”
Michel: “It could be Portugal, Curaçao or Cyprus, as long as there is peace and sun. But we won’t sit on the beach with a parasol, we will be active again there too. And we are not going to start a B&B, because we will have worked long enough.”
Nancy: “We just want to have more time for each other. But first a few more years of work.”
Michel: “But if a good acquisition partner comes along tomorrow, I will of course talk.”