Ruud ten Have
Ruud ten Have is the founder of Searchlab — an online marketing agency offering creative and effective digital experiences for its clients. He was also my teacher when I took a digital marketing course at College of MultiMedia in Amsterdam.
Ruud’s belief in balance and not working “just to work” is like a breath of fresh air when compared to the work-life balance culture that I’m used to in New York City. Let’s call his style, “Hustle with a purpose.”
Read on to learn more about Ruud, his business, and how he finds and keeps great talent.
Hustle Amsterdam (HA): Where are you from? And what brings you to Amsterdam?
Ruud ten Have (RH): I was born in Barendrecht, close to Rotterdam, but mainly grew up in Eemnes, half an hour from Amsterdam by car. During my studies, I ended up in Amsterdam and never left.
HA: Tell me about your business? What is your mission?
RH: We as Searchlab help our clients with online visibility, and do cool things for them in terms of creating effective digital experiences. I deliberately call it cool, because there are so many cool (and effective!) things that can be done in the online marketing landscape. And despite the fact that the digital shift was started by many companies already years ago — still, a lot of them are struggling with this and have no clue what to do. Companies have heard of marketing automation or personalization, but the hows and whys are in a lot of cases still unknown. We like to help our clients with effective digital experiences and create a smart plan that is more effective and more creative than that of competitors.
HA: How are you handling our new "normal" due to the coronavirus outbreak? What impact has it had on your business? How has the transition to working remotely been for you? Are you being strict with a routine or taking it day-by-day?
RH: Unfortunately, these bizarre times also have a lot of impact on us. We've lost almost half of our clients, but we try to look at the bright side. We're all healthy, we didn't go bankrupt, and one day the world will be normal again.
When that happens, we will hopefully restart most of our previous activities, and in the meantime, we're working from home and trying to use our time to innovate. I personally have a lot of new ideas: both for Searchlab and our clients. Taking time to rest and think longer about things has helped me gain a new perspective.
I imagine that when the world is normal again, we will try to work from home more often (until I have kids, I guess haha) and take more time to brainstorm and come up with new strategies without getting distracted.
We are Zooming almost every day with our team, to keep everyone sharp and involved and to discuss the most critical activities for that day or week. But, at the same time, we don't close our eyes to reality — there's simply half as much work to do right now (when compared to before coronavirus). Besides thinking and working on new ideas, we try to use this time for personal development, which means I take more time to coach and help my colleagues grow professionally.
When the work is done, the work is actually done. We don't "work to work," which is only inefficient and demotivating. I prefer my team members to take some extra rest or days off, time for themselves.
Personally, I try to keep my daily routine — get up early, do the regular work, and I try to workout once in a while after work. I recently rediscovered my running passion. I'm really into Strava right now, so follow me there!
HA: Why Searchlab? What brought you to online marketing?
RH: During my studies, I found out that I really liked marketing — the combination of strategy and creativity. Finding a job, however, was hard. There was a lot of competition, and I didn't have relevant work experience, so I got turned down several times. Then I decided to take a step back and thought about a job I would choose if I could pick anything and started an internship (even though I had already gone to university and finished both my Bachelor's and Master's degrees).
Financially that was not the best choice. The rent for a room in Amsterdam was higher than the income from an internship, but for me, it was a long term investment. That turned out to be a good choice — I loved the work, and not long after the internship, I decided to start my own business.
HA: What is the current state of Searchlab? Do you have six and 12-month goals for your business?
RH: Before the corona crisis started, we did quite well, we experienced significant growth in clients and also within our team. We have different goals we want to achieve every month, and also for 6 to 12 months from now, although corona changed everything.
I believe that when the world returns to normal again, we will continue to grow. That's why we hired a new employee, which might be strange because if you look very practically, we don't have work for him at the moment. But, the idea is that we take this time to grow as a team, prepare everyone the best we can so that when times get better, we're ready to grow faster than before.
HA: What kind of obstacles do you face in your company? How do you handle them?
RH: For me, there are a few obstacles:
The management of our team. Since I started as a freelancer, I developed my own way of working and communicating with clients, and have ideas about the "ideal" way of working. When you start hiring people, you need to give them the freedom to find their way of working, that is something you need to get used to. And that can be hard when you want to 100% guarantee that employees deliver the best work. To handle that, we structured almost all work — from campaign setup to data analysis to client communication. Our employees know what's expected and how to meet the standards we strive to achieve as a company.
Finding new talent is another obstacle. In this job market, it's not easy to find qualified people with relevant experience since a lot of companies are looking for them. Right now, we're focussing on graduates with the highest possible and relevant education and train them to become competent professionals as soon as possible.
So far, this is working quite well for us. You have to ask my colleagues, but they seem to be happy with the learning opportunity. Besides that, we try to create a pleasant and informal working environment. Richard Branson once said, "Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough, so they don't want to." I really believe in that. I love working with highly educated people, their sharp minds, and their clever way of dealing with things. But, I know that the highest qualified persons will probably spread their wings faster, the risk is that we lose them quickly. Therefore a nice company culture is very important.
HA: What has been your most successful moment so far? And how do you celebrate your wins?
RH: I have a lot of conversations with my girlfriend about this, about what success is, and what really makes you happy (she's into mindfulness). For me, (small) milestones make me very happy, I see those as the most successful moments — signing a first client, moving to a nicer office, hiring good people I love working with, but also winning tenders from big agencies.
As modest and down to earth people we celebrate it with some extra beers on Friday, maybe we should do something about that, haha. I will watch the Wolf of Wall Street again for some inspiration.
HA: How have you accomplished what you have? Did you go to business school? Did you wing it? Fake it till you make it? Get really lucky?
RH: I think our, and my strength, to be honest, is always to give everything you've got, regardless if a project is big or small. This mentality is also part of our core values. We try to provide honest advice, even though it can cost us work, and we always try to get the maximum results out of every project. I'd like to think that clients appreciate that.
HA: How big is your team? And where are your team members located?
RH: Currently, we have four team members working from our office at the Herengracht in Amsterdam. Our colleagues are living not far from the office, which is great for our Friday night drinks.
"Losers have excuses, winners have a plan."
HA: Do you have a favorite motivational quote?
RH: Michel Perridon said, "Losers have excuses, winners have a plan." I liked that one; it doesn't always matter if your projects end up good or bad, but make sure you still have a plan and anticipate every possible outcome. If you don't do that, things might get complicated.
HA: What 3 tips would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? What do you wish you had known before you started?
RH: Believe in yourself and make sure you are doing cool or great things. If you don't believe that, how should someone else? Next one would be, be honest and sincere. Don't pretend you are better than you are; people will see through it soon enough. And finally, think for yourself, don't follow the beaten tracks. If someone asks for a different approach, be flexible, and don't be stubborn by holding on to your fixed hourly rate or fixed package of services.
HA: How would you describe your working style?
RH: I tend to say that I'm structured. If you looked at my agenda, it would be full of reminders. Did I receive input from (potential) clients or colleagues, or how is the work in progress going? Are we on schedule with specific projects, or should I send updates in a particular time period?
Besides that, I think I'm quite a positive guy. I'm curious about the personal lives of my colleagues and try to have a good time with the team. We only live once; it's healthy to laugh together regularly.
HA: When you're not working on Searchlab — where can we find you?
RH: In the gym, in the bar, on the couch watching Netflix or at the kitchen table behind my laptop, working on other projects or ideas. I don't need more than that. Ok, maybe a holiday too once in a while.
HA: How do you find work-life balance while being an entrepreneur?
RH: At the moment, work or life is practically the same for me, which is not always appreciated by my girlfriend. When I'm in the bar or gym, I'm thinking a lot about the business, whether it's ideas, responsibilities or deadlines. But I don't mind, I simply love thinking about these things, it costs me energy but also gives me a lot of energy. However, I can imagine that this will change in the future. I think that there will be a moment in time that I want to focus more on life, less on business. But, I feel too young for that right now.
HA: What is your passion?
RH: It's getting a little monotonous. But, my passion is Searchlab, sports (Feyenoord, which makes life in Amsterdam sometimes complicated), family and friends (I hope that we can catch up on all the festivals we missed because of corona), and new business ideas.
HA: What inspires you most about Amsterdam? Do you have any favorite spots to work or hangout?
RH: I love the vibrancy. We have deliberately chosen an office at the Herengracht, while we had cheaper options at less prominent locations. But I want our company to be in the heart of the city — close to bars and restaurants. If we want we can jump on a boat in front of our office, we see hordes of tourists walking by every day. When Ajax plays for the Champions League in the Arena, we see and hear the supporters singing and drinking in anticipation of the match. How cool is that? For me, that's the ideal situation, to have a spot where you can work really hard, but also play hard.
HA: Anything else you'd like to add?
RH: Feel free to reach out if you need help with online marketing. Right now, we're giving away free SEO content advice. We're also offering a free one-month trial for advertising services to introduce companies to online advertising. We hope it will be a way for companies to see if advertising is an effective strategy for them. No strings attached.
