Lizanne Jakobs – business coach, adviser and public speaker

Lizanne (1973) is Brilliant Work’s founder. She has a broad view on business gained by 20+ years experience in a whole array of sectors. Lizanne has a Master’s degree in International Business Communications, a certified Ology coach and DISC trainer. She speaks 5 languages, which came in very handy in her international career. From 1996 to 2010 she fulfilled several hands on and managerial positions in customer service, marketing and sales.

Since then she has worked as a business coach, adviser and public speaker, both in the Netherlands and the UK. She lived in the UK for 13 years and was named one the top 50 consultants of the country by Enterprise Nation.

Lizanne is a subject matter expert at the Dutch Institute of Knowledge Transfer (INVK). She leads workshops there on topics such as strategy, marketing, change management and leadership.

She is a SIB/export coach on behalf of the Rijksinstituut voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO). This allows her to provide fully subsidised export plans with her clients. Lizanne can also provide subsidised coaching through the Startversneller and Groeiversneller programmes for companies based in Gelderland and Overijssel. She is a subsidised Brexit adviser and the first one to get accreditation for this in the Netherlands.

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Marco Gorselink – strategy expert for SME’s, business coach

Marco (1970) has over 20 years experience in various functions in a range of SME organisation, such as property management, financial services, recruitment of technical roles. He has wealth of experience in acquisition and account management for both B2C and B2B organisations. After his Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics, Marco completed a post grad course in Commercial Property Management, a course in Integral Psychology and training courses in Family and Organsational constellations. Of course he regularly updates his (commercial) knowledge with numerous workshops and trainings.

Marco is very adapt at simply and clearly explaining the concept of strategy,  making it easy to understand and put into practice. Implementation is an indispensable part of this process. Marco facilitates strategy sessions and support management teams in transitions. He also provides executive coaching, team coaching and individual coaching.

Fokko Bonsma – Business coach, trainer, personal effectiveness developer

Fokko (1964) has a Bachelor’s degree in commercial management (for the automotive sector) and has over 30 years experience in SME’s in Holland and abroad. He has first hand experience in import, export, horticulture and the automotive sectors as both a founder, owner, manager and sales and marketing expert. As an exporter he has provided markets such as the US, Canada and Kazachstan with freshly cut flowers and bulbs.

He has a wealth of experience in sales, acquisition, communication and account management as well as the development of personal effectiveness, all within both B2B and B2C environments.

In 2006 (with the help of a burn-out) his focus shifted from the outside to the inside, which resulted in him taking up courses on coaching, counselling and co-dependence as a logical consequence. His qualification as a Strategic Intervention Coach helps Fokko to combine hard business targets with what people call “soft skills”. He enjoys confronting people in a non threatening manner.

The current projects he works on are in the area of personal effectiveness, such as one to one coaching of employees, directors, management teams as well as larger teams. He has been advising new entrepreneurs for over 10 years through subsidised programmes like IkStartSmart and the Startversneller.

Renate Termaat – Business coach, online marketing specialist

Renate Termaat (1977) is the on-line marketing coach for entrepreneurs who want to improve their lead generation and/or grow their revenue from channels such as websites, newsletters and social media. She has been coaching entrepreneurs for over ten years on how to increase their on-line presence and success. This goes both for large and small webshops as well as companies that offer on-line services.

With a background in financial services as well as recruitment, marketing & sales has always been in her blood. She has found that sparring with entrepreneurs always leads to the most successful marketing strategies! Besides her training for the Federation of Financial Planning she has followed multiple courses in the last decade such as in house training with Google in the field of on-line marketing. In her ten years experience as an on-line marketing specialist she has acquired a very broad knowledge of many industries such as; automotive, beauty, telecom, leisure, food, e-commerce, fashion, international and more.

The on-line world changes almost daily. Google and other on-line channels often evolve and change, it is a challenge to continuously get her clients the best results. A challenge she is very much eager to undertake. Renate sees time and time again that you don’t need huge budgets to set up on-line channels, such as Google Ads, Bing, Facebook, Affiliate Marketing and others to get a good return on investment. Focussing on the service, product or local area is very important when you are trying to make a profit out of your on-line marketing activities.

Ivar van Asten – Business coach, team developer and trainer

After a successful career in sales and marketing in the logistics sector, Ivar (1967) started as a coach and adviser in 2005. He helps starting entrepreneurs, managers, directors and board members. He mostly does this through subsidised programmes like the Startversneller, Leren van Elkaar circles and  Starters International Business (SIB). Apart from that he also leads some of the groups within VNO-NCW Achterhoek, an organisation supporting medium sized and larger employers. He has been able to help over 200 entrepreneurs realise their dream, nearly 90% of them still actively run a company.

Ivar actively supports developing teams and uses experience based training for that, as they bring both great learning and enjoyment to the team. Through outdoor actives as a metaphor for collaboration, communication, leadership, strategy, creativity and team work he has helped teams become closer since 2006. He can support this further by coaching team members and managers, leading brainstorm sessions and follow up workshops in the areas of communication & collaboration. If needed he uses aids to help teams understand each other’s behaviours such as DiSC, Belbin, NLP, MBTI, Enneagram and the various colour diagrams. Ivar is a natural networker who believes in your authenticity.

He combines his work in Holland with living in Southern France. Because of Ivar’s current and past experience in international business, he is also a very qualified export coach.

Stef van Boekel – Export coach

Stef (1984) has been active in the field of international business since 2006, the first five years of which mostly in the area of business development and acquisition. He has more than earned his spurs as an entrepreneur, manager and director.

In the last seven years he has focused himself on international e-commerce and the operations that come with that. He has worked in over 20 countries and lived in five. Stef is a consultant and coach in the area of scale-ups and international growth.

Stef has helped countless B2B and B2C organisations to position themselves internationally, from SME’s to Fortune 500-bedrijven. Knowing that a company has a much stronger position when it operates without national borders, he has helped clients with all aspects of strategy and execution since 2016. Stef’s style and methods can best be described as no nonsense, focus on progress and the decisions needed to get achieve this. Stef is an SIB coach on behalf of the RVO, meaning he can make 100% subsidised export plans with his clients.

Willem van Putten – Business coach with expertise in Sales and Marketing

Willem (1961) has held many national and international (interim) posts at director level. In most cases these meant that he had to go and create turnover in new foreign markets for the products or services of mostly Dutch companies. This led him to the realisation that the directness of which most Dutch people are very proud, does not always work so well abroad.

Besides managing companies he has coached a number of start-ups in their “journey” to growth and internationalisation. It is incredibly rewarding to make these businesses successful and it creates so much energy. In many cases the entrepreneur focuses too much on the product or service they want to offer and too little on legislation, licenses, certificates and marketing.

Willem also teaches at Nyenrode University and the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. In Rotterdam he teaches on a variety of subjects such as doing business with different cultures. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in social geography from the RUU, a Master’s in Information Management (KUB) and has partaken in management training at Insead, IMD and Kellogg.

Martine Pauw – HR consultant /change manager voor MKB

Martine (1959) has been working actively as a HR manager/consultant and member of the management team for SME’s in both manufacturing and B2B environments since 1983. She led various HR teams in the Benelux for thirty years. From 2004 to 2018 she gained a great deal of experience in change management, mergers, corporate relocations and reorganisations. Martine holds a bachelor’s degree in Labour market policies and Personnel Management.

She operates on the cross section of organisation, people and work and she constantly strives to find a balance within the often conflicting interests within companies. Martine acts like a sparring partner to directors to translate business strategies into hands-on HR policy. She has the ability to position this clearly and where needed also with trade unions or works councils. She also enjoys consulting across the full width and breath of HR matters and focuses on employee and management development providing made to measure plans. She makes it her business to be very accessible to all employees.

As a business sparring partner she is dynamic, energetic, focused on results and teams, a rock the full organisation can confide in and an excellent communicator both verbally and in writing. Martine has a wealth of pan-European experience and works in Dutch, English, French and German.

Danny den Hartog – Export coach and business consultant for social entrepreneurs

Danny den Hartog (1980) is the go-to coach for entrepreneurs wanting to make a meaningful difference in the world through their businesses. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Asian Trade Management and Master’s degrees in business administration and marketing management. Danny headed Brabantia’s Asia Pacific sales & marketing activities from his office in Hong Kong between 2007-2013. In 2013, Danny moved back to The Netherlands and has since focused exclusively on scaling social enterprises internationally.

Since then he has supported many such companies with their internationalisation, amongst others as the Global Sales Director for the Somnox Sleep Robot, heading the successful global market introduction of this radical sleep innovation. Danny’s expertise is cross-sector around sales & marketing and geographically he has successfully launched business initiatives in Asia, Middle East, Europe, USA and Africa.

Danny’s the founder of Coach Africa, which focuses on scaling coaching access in Africa. Plus he is on a mission to catapulting 5 million womenpreneurs to launch and scale their business in Africa by 2030. Danny enjoys working with impact driven entrepreneurs, wanting to scale their business internationally through his Starters International Business coaching.