Hi friends,

Hope you had a nice weekend! I just got back from a short trip with my family to celebrate my dad’s birthday. 

Fun fact: his name is Christ and he turned 62 on April Fool’s Day (not a joke). As a gift, we went on a short trip to take family pictures at the beach together with my dear friend and talented photographer Tatiana Shalunova.

It was freezing cold at the beach, but I’m sure the pictures will turn out great. My dad was very happy, so: mission accomplished. 

This weekend with family was a nice way to wrap up a pretty crazy week. 

🏠 I moved into a new place on Wednesday
✍️ I signed a contract for a part-time job on Friday

Yes, for the first time in 5 years I will not be a full-time entrepreneur anymore. I’m still getting used to the idea myself. But… I feel like it’s the right decision. 

Here’s why.

Getting ready for the next big step 💪

5 Years ago, I moved to Bali with a dream to become location independent by teaching myself online skills. I didn’t know how to shoot or edit videos, or create any type of e-learning. I just started. 

Soon enough, I started getting my first assignments and over time my e-learning assignments grew bigger and bigger. You can read the full story here. 

That may sound great and all, but at some point I didn’t feel like I was learning a lot more with every new assignment. I am known for a specific type of e-learning, which is why I tend to create that type of e-learning over and over. But I didn’t want that. I wanted to create e-learnings on different platforms, for different types of clients and even with different technologies – such as augmented and virtual reality.

I wanted to do all that to be able to come up with new learning solutions myself. Learning solutions that might one day become the future of how we learn. 

I knew that I wasn’t going to achieve such a big goal by continuing to work as a freelancer. Even if I’d grow my company, I would likely still do a lot of the same things. It would take time to differentiate myself and branch out into creating other types of e-learning. 

To accelerate my growth, I believed the best solution would be to work for someone else. 

So that’s what I did.

While continuing to work for my own clients. And while continuing to grow KREW.

I already know that this will be extremely challenging in terms of planning (not my strongest skill in the first place). I’m sure it will also be challenging to work for a boss again. I may even hate it. 

But no matter what will happen, I’m sure that I will earn a ton in a very short time. About myself. And about e-learning. I believe that doing this will give me the inspiration, knowledge and network to take my next big step as an entrepreneur. 

Who will I be working for? 👋

The company that I will be working for is called RMMBR. They create high-quality, custom learning experiences for major Dutch and international companies. 

I agreed with them to start working there for 4 days per week – 3 days content creation and 1 day of generating new business. That one day is important to me, to be able to not just learn more about e-learning but also about entrepreneurship.

I mean, I managed just fine on my own for 5 years, but I’ve already seen projects at RMMBR that are triple the size of the largest project I ever did. I want to learn from their processes and how they get these big projects. I want to learn what their clients are looking for. And I want to speak with them directly. 

Yes, 4 days is a lot and it scares the heck out of me. But I’m willing to invest to get ahead.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what RMMBR would think of all this, well… they support it. They are fully aware that it is not my ambition to work for someone else. They are even willing to help me set up new businesses by sharing their network and experience. 

They know that this can create win-win scenarios for both of us 🤝

The whole process of applying for a job made me realise that when you express that you want to be an entrepreneur and not an employee, there are a TON of opportunities. Opportunities that even I wasn’t aware of.

A lot of employers like entrepreneurial spirit and they want to support it.

So if you’re still working part-time or full-time for someone else and have the dream of starting your own business someday: share it with your employer! See if there’s a way to make it happen together. 

Like me, you might be surprised by what’s possible. 

The time ahead 📅

On Monday, I’ll have my official onboarding day. 

I can start working on two awesome projects for big clients right away. I’m super curious to learn about how these projects are managed. And to be honest, I’m quite excited to be using my knowledge and experience in a new environment.

All while continuing to make progress with my long-term goals. The ones I re-wrote yesterday 👇

I’ll use every day to improve my skills, just as recommended in the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. This book has been a major influence in the decision to work for an employer again.

I’ll engage in deliberate practice to learn. To get better. To become the ultimate learning-experience creator. 

If you can help, or if you know people I should speak with, do let me know. And if not, thanks for following my journey. Let’s see where it will lead. 

Have a great week ahead.

Cheers,

Marc

What I Loved this Week ❤️

📘 Book – As I was finishing up my Ultimate Reading List for Creative Entrepreneurs this week, I re-read parts of Mastery by Robert Greene. It’s cool, because it’s so relevant to me at this point in my life. It made me feel like I’m actually making the right decision by signing the contract this week. In fact, the whole part about ‘apprenticeship’ made me question why I didn’t do it sooner. I highly recommend this one if you haven’t read it yet. 

⚙️ Tool – For two weeks, I was torn between working for RMMBR and Tinqwise. Both are great companies. Tinqwise created a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution for companies who want to deliver learning experience to their employees quickly. I tried it out extensively and I’m pretty sure I will be using this learning system called Qollab LXP for some of my clients in the future. Great people too!

🌈 Creator – I’ve been following Shubhangi Raheja and her ‘jar world’ NFTs for some time now and I don’t know why, but seeing them always makes me happy. Especially the one with the UFO of course. They even inspire me to start creating NFTs in a similar style. Who knows, maybe one of my future projects… enjoy discovering these little gems!

Article of the Week 🏆

My article of the week this week is the one about my former teacher Etienne Augé. It’s the first article I write about someone else and it feels good. It still feels weird to talk about myself so much on this website, but there are so many other people out there that inspire me and got me to where I am today. Etienne is certainly one of those people. Anyone who is teaching in some capacity could learn a lot from him. 

You can read the full article about Etienne and what he taught me here.