Member Spotlight: Rob Lacroix
Each month we’ll feature a different AABC member in our new Member Spotlight, this month Rob Lacroix. Would you like to be featured in a future edition of our Member Spotlight? Get in touch with Veronica at marketing@aabc.nl
1. Who are you? (introduce yourself)
I am Rob, born and raised in Amsterdam. And after living for a about a decade in Amstelveen, now living in and working from Almere, which is about a 21 minute commute by train from Amsterdam.
Worked in marketing and sales for about 20 years, to come to the conclusion that although I was good at it, it wasn’t my calling. After some long and deep soul searching I came to the conclusion that my calling had to do with helping people become a better functioning and happier version of themselves. The fact that for as long as I can remember friends and family would turn to me with their challenges looking for guidance and me enjoying helping them find the answers, for sure had a big influence on that decision.
So I went back to school and finished a PostHBO education to become a coach. And after coaching for a while, last September I started my own coaching practice.
2. When and why did you join the AABC?
As most starting entrepreneurs will recognize, I felt the need to talk to other professionals and do some sparring about the subjects one can run into. Since I am also offering my services to expats, I was looking for a place to meet them and learn from their experiences, as well as promote my services. My dear friend Veronica told me about the AABC and how much she enjoyed being a member, so I joined her for a meeting last year at Waxx in Amsterdam. Directly after I joined. What made me decide was the open and welcoming atmosphere, where networking happened in a relaxed way.
Until now my membership has brought me several occasions to have pleasant social interactions while combining that with talks about serious business issues. Both learning from others while sharing my own knowledge and experiences. This made these meeting both useful as enjoyable.
3. Tell us about your business and how we can work with you.
My coaching practice offers both Life coaching and Business coaching.
Being married to an “ex-expat” and with most of my friends having an expat background, it is no surprise that part of my business is aimed at expats and their specific needs in addition to the “regular” life coaching issues. The part of my practice serving expats is expatcoachingcompany.nl.
Life coaching
Why Life coaching for expats? Life, and work in particular, can be complicated. When you are an expat even so much more. Not only are you confronted with the “regular” issues of life, like life’s anxieties and the possible feeling of shortcomings in your private life and/or at work, but there are also the issues related to being an expat. Such as being homesick or the feeling of not belonging neither here nor at home for example.
As Life coach, besides the regular issues, I specialize in helping people who work in stressful environments. I help them to deal with stress and function and feel better.
Business coaching
As a Business coach I offer two services. Mentoring and being a sparring partner for managers in/business owners of SMB organizations is the first, the second is idea coaching.
Idea coaching is aimed at helping people with new business ideas or existing SMB companies with new ideas for products or services. While using both my 20 years of experience in sales and marketing and my coaching experience, I will help you to take the necessary distance to your idea and ask yourself the difficult questions, essential to getting to the core of your idea and how to make it happen. By facilitating this process, I will help you to shape your idea into a feasible one and for you to be ready to execute it.
4. What are your tips and/or advice about doing business in the Netherlands?
As Adam Kiolle explained so well in his blog article, the legal emphasis in Dutch labor relations is on the employee. This means that you as a business owner or manager, are obligated to take as good care of your employees as it can be expected from you.
When one of them gets sick for a prolonged period of time, this could make you run into serious costs. Not only do you have to pay for the employee’s salary, but also the cost of temporary replacement and the necessary re-integration guidance and these will weigh down on your operational costs.
According to the research done by the Centraal Bureau Statistiek, about 17% of the Dutch workforce (this includes expats working here) is suffering of burnout related issues. One can imagine that the risk of one of your employees getting sick at home is a relevant one. On average, a burnout will last anything from three months to a year. This burnout will have a severe impact on the employee in both an emotional and physical way, as will it on your business operation.
My advice? Make sure that you and other managers in your company are trained to recognize the symptoms of a pending burnout within an employee. In this case prevention is by far the most cost effective way of keeping both your employees happy and your business running.
If you need any help with dealing with Life coaching or Business Coaching related issues or want to share thoughts about them, do not hesitate to contact me at one of the AABC meetings or at rob.lacroix@expatcoachingcompany.nl.
Photo credit: Magpeye Photography www.magpeyephotography.com
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