Nick Bouwhuis started Bouwhuis IT as a teenager in the Netherlands. Bouwhuis IT is an information technology company specializing in cyber security for local businesses. He shares his story about growing up in the Netherlands, and how he found his first customers.
Topics Covered
- Netherlands school system vs US school system
- Starting a business as a teenager
- Running a business part time
- Cyber Security Best Practices
- Life in the Netherlands
Learn more about Nick & his business:
Nick’s Website: https://nick.bouwhuis.io/
Raw Episode Transcript
This transcript got processed weirdly. For some reason it chunked everything I said into one block and everything Nick said into a separate block. So it doesn’t look conversational, but all the words are there.
paris_vega:
welcome to the first customers podcast today we’ve got nick bow house streaming in live from the netherlands he is the owner of bow house i t and he also works for speak up a voice over p company nick welcome to the show let’s start off by talking about your background and uh where you’re based out of some of your early experiences so were you born in the netherlands okay oh ah yeah it will be good all right so growing up in the netherlands way across the world um did you sell anything or have little kid businesses like in america it’s a common thing for kids to sell lemonade in their neighborhood or something like that or maybe part of school you have to do fun raisers or go door to door trying to sell things okay yeah okay yeah yeah what kind of things would you sell yeah okay m yeah so is this like a neighborhood level thing or a city level or m yeah yeah an old time merchant and your wares nice okay yeah yeah i think we have similar things like that right m what was your first actual paying job working for another company oh awesome m m yeah so is this part of high school you have to do an intern ship part of college okay hm you are fifteen or sixteen years old wow so for yeah in the u s that would be really early to be in college okay hm yeah yeah just a younger high school basically uh uh yeah m okay is it like more advanced one of them is harder or leads to certain jobs and one path leads to different jobs okay okay so in america we might call that blue color jobs versus white color jobs or trade skills versus yeah information based jobs okay interesting and so that’s an that’s in what we would call high school level is when that separation happens right after middle school well i’m saying it sounds like in the netherlands you’re saying after middle school or your version of middle school that’s when the separation happens after that or is it okay interesting awesome right hm oh right sure right uh yeah and how old were you at this point you can just go down and start a company really you have to pay any fees or anything can you do it all can you do it all in that moment like one visit you have to wait hm huh yeah ah right so you can just do that with a little online work and a visit down to the old chamber of commerce that’s great m okay that’s cool that the netherlands is that business friendly so there’s no yearly yearly fees not even locally like for the city the city doesn’t charge any yearly fees or okay like your income taxes okay makes sense all right so and that’s when you started the bow house it wow okay so and that was your first customer the guy that you were working for became your first customers that how that worked okay yeah right wow m yeah so he hasn’t been eaten up by the online stores and market places yet yeah okay yeah sure okay to kind of supplement the local income i see okay and so now you’ve got one customer in the history here of your business so how did you grow from there to get multiple customers oh hm you had like a strategic partnership in a way yeah right right yeah yeah well i think it’s it’s interesting talking to all kinds of different business owners and people at different phases so it’s it’s interesting to hear where you’re at and where you got started and really need the differences between the netherlands and the u s in that high school age because that’s i think so different from the expectations in the us the majority of people i know there’s little segments of people who really get ambitious and try to start a business in their teenagers or something like that but for the most part i think it’s still the general culture to be hey you’re in high school you’re still a kid and then you go to college to kind of become a young adult and maybe even still or really relaxed about life and you don’t have to really get serious till it’s time to get a job or something like that that’s sadly i think the general culture but i think that’s starting to change maybe because of all the startups success with these younger founders that inspires people so it’s it’s interesting to how hear how different it is they set you guys up to transition right into the work force it seems like such a cleaner transition from school life to work life m would you say that it’s common for people to start their own businesses in their teenage years in the netherlands or is it mostly just people are trying to get connected to a company and get a paying job and a salary oh beautifully said that’s right and eventually if you grow it big enough you can hire in people or delegate work so you’re not the one who has to be you know one hundred percent in charge of every task and scale up ah hm oh yea got you so it’s still kind of rare okay lightly encouraged yeah all right tell me about maybe when you’re first starting the business or first working at some of those early jobs any big tragedies or extreme moments big high big low anything like that like i know that we’re telling me beforehand that you deal with some sober security issues sometimes maybe you can get into some of the best worst case scenarios you’ve been involved with so that’s want to cry is that want to cry okay i remember hearing about ye an to cry ransom attack okay yeah it’s changing focus every once in a while oh yeah hello you’re coming in and out the audio listeners can still hear you will yeah yeah i’m sharing the sharing a screen about an cry real quick is that what we’re talking about can you see that okay yeah i was a specific hm okay yeah oh wow really so you lose all your data on the device wow and so you said it would it would count down and then it would double like was it in certain intervals it would double what they were holding you at ransom for wow and you had to pay in bit coin course yeah right so they did end up right right they’re getting what they want out of the situation so they did pay in that situation for your client okay right what kind of business was it okay sleep some personal information so they had personal information about employees and that kind of thing okay so in that case you had to totally delete everything or basically reform at device is did you have any back ups from before the virus was on them oh m wow nice yeah and so right right yeah so i guess over time the different anti virus software or basic safety protocols that all thedifferent software updates include they account for these kind of things and it’s less common okay name some bad practices that would get you hit by the old want to cry gotcha och wow update your service everybody oh yeah yeah and they can they can get they can hire you to update their service for them right yes yeah okay m oh sure oh okay you said the server was up for auction is that what you said that what happens after a bankrupt c the everything up for option action but it was still on somehow okay hm oh man wow that just seems like a honey pot for anybody who’s wanting to now you dn’teven have to hack anything you just have it right that’s crazy right o so m right wow and so you were kind of going above and beyond there for the client by being the one that bought the server so that it couldn’t fall into the wrong hand so to speak yeah there’s know there’s a lot of extra laws and things related to health care health related data and those kind of things what would you say that the main problem is that your business solves for client it’s hm right okay okay would you say maybe the most common problem that your clients have okay m yeah yeah so i know that sober security as a discipline but like in practice it can be kind of gray because there’s only so much you can do technically to secure someone’s business or the computer device especially in this world of multiple vices access and things through clouds and you know all these different ways um and there’s also the soft hacking or the ways that people can or social hack in you people can get their data mind from them when they think they’re talking to somebody that they’re not really talking to they’re talking to you now a bad guy when they think it’s just their bank calling or or something like that social engineering so you coach clients on that side because it seems like that’s always going to be a risk the social engineering side of it m m oh m m m i hm right yeah so that’s provided by the government yes oh yeah okay cool oh yeah okay talk about password managers for a minute because i know that was in the news this past month last past had a huge hack i was using last pass i mean no i wasn’t hackers i’ve never used last pass all you hackers listening uh what do you recommend as a good password manager bit warden okay i’ve heard of that oh and bit warden is the open source version a password manager and i think but they have some kind of paying plans well maybe yeah oh m oh oh right yeah oh yeah oh oh oh m yeah so you’re saying the key is just having a different password for every single account you have on the internet that’s a good note okay enable to factor authentication yeah and i know one password for example they’ll kind of audit all of your logan info and let you know like hey you’ve got this many duplicates that you got these that don’t have to factory authentication and so it’ll kind of help you stay healthy in that way oh all right right so that’s that’s super valuable tips there do you see like the market that you’re in and you said you’re more local it at this point is it like crowded or there’s the lot of competition in your area and you can say the city that you’re in i couldn’t pronounce what i couldn’t remember what but exactly where exactly are you in screen my exactly oh hm oh yeah oh okay yeah oh all right so you talked about how you got your first customer through that intern ship and how long did it take from getting to know that person working there until they became a customer of your business how long do that relationship take to develop to that point really okay m m sure yeah yeah all right let’s do it let’s do a little a little rapid fire question round here we’ll just go through different types so it’s basically like a marketing audit in a way sales marketing audit to see if you’re are you doing any kind of self promotion at this point because you mentioned you were basically getting referals okay so let’s start with traditional marketing and i’ll just kind of go down list of different tactics and you can say kind of yes or no or talk more about each one as we go all right uh direct marketing tactics like face to face meetings cold calling or sending mail to people yeah yeah okay oh okay and sending any mail out to people physical mal advertisements okay is that even legal in the netherlands can you send out kind of span mail okay wow wow yeah yeah right so you just got to put a sticker on the mail box and you don’t get any advertisement emails it’s amazing i’m going a get one and put it on my mail box even i’m gonna order order one yeah i’m gonna put a netherlands netherland is no advertisement sticker on my mail box okay what about what about newspaper adds magazine ads anything like that hm okay okay i got you so are you doing any kind of advertising at all like paid advertising okay a ah yeah what about let’s move over into digital marketing you said you have your own website do you blog put out content regular basis okay yeah hm right so you just do a little bit of content on facebook and instagram no twittered youtube tik tok anything else okay oh about linked in makes sense yeah okay so right now it sounds like you’re basically at the size you want to be for now roughly how many clients are you serving with your bow house it fifty hm wow fifty clients you’re able to so you’re able to manage fifty by yourself oh okay like a specialized task or something m awesome what man i think we’ve covered most of the questions i had for you i’ve got a good picture of of what you’re doing how you’re getting customers sounds like you got the most stable approach ever your full time on your main job and your you’ve got a steady side business going um so this is really interesting to hear about the amazing sweet life of the netherlands where everybody is wise and low risk and building steady steady lives and steady businesses m right right right so you didn’t have much of a start up cost it was just maybe your computer and office materials at right yeah ye how close are you to amsterdam okay and the name of your city again ada i see it okay i do let’m gonna share my screen e gone over the most of the normal first customers related questions but i’m just curious about the netherlands now yeah it’s got a all right i’m going to go in here look at this beautiful little dutch town dutch city right and that the ight refer to yourself as a dutch city look at that architecture you got some art that’s a beautiful little place okay yeah lost us on the map here but okay nice little town and that’s about two hours from amsterdam i’m goin to drop our guy in here and let’s go travel around the city a little bit nd the right spot here sky the area the region you’re in is over it spelled over gistlors over rations okay it’s getting over racial look at this place and you got me wanting to visit the netherlands now yeah sure right yeah it’s too much of a big city see okay you got to come to in skadi and check out these random storage area here oh yeah yeah this is good content right here scrolling around google fat okay gotcha get this place cruising around inskady ah oh right here okay going to hack it huh right i guess they okay but they’ve got some security here with the gates and what not see if this was the video game watch dogs we just be able to click on something and start start hacking it ah oh that’s m okay yeah sure sure all right nick take a minute to close us out and think about the local customer your ideal customer and just give them a pitch about your service and why they should use your business oh maybe you could do it one in english and one in dutch oh okay yeah well done and you have your own website house it okay and the brows are well translated for us and where can they find you on social media okay cool well nick thank you very much for your time everybody
nick:
yeah thank you for having me yes yes yes i’m born and race you’ll probably hear from my from accent as well and just keep in mind that english isn’t my my native language or sometimes see me searching for words i should be all right perfect correct oh ye h m yeah yeah right yes yes i ave i have experience with that so tradition in the netherlands is to host like a little flea market on it used to be queens dan ous kings day coining in a duck and owning stuff as it’s called it’s a tradition to to go to your local mall shopping mall uh basically sell whatever you whatever you want to sell mostly is little things and you deal with customers that start looking around try draw them in saying i got a special price for you basically and i remember having having tons of fun with that um and later on basically all toys that that have laying around like books and anything that i could sell basically i remember going searching around the house just for anything that i could could sell because i just like the interaction and making money of course that that’s always good uh m uh yeah most mostly in neighborhood level so i go to the shopping all in the neighborhood and lay down something and try to make it look nice like a little stand and you people walk around doing their normal shopping and then seeing well your offer is basically right right and that was great fun another thing i did as as a kid we’d have to use these promotions by raising money for charity and you do that by selling basically a lot of tickets so go out door to door and sell these tickets and then one or two lucky winners could win like a pro is or something little it was for charity i remember you get a thick book where you could sell these tickets to two people going to it to do and that was a lot of a lot of fun as well so so i’ve always been i’ve always liked the entrepreneur ship like yeah getting people to to buy a product basically it was great fun trying to convince them and then having it work always got a kick off out of that yeah m hm so for school in the netherland works is that at some point you do an interne ship my first enter ship was at a company in old on which is very close to me and that wasn’t a good business basically they’re out of business now so i might know why but yeah what happened there was some day they they started they fired me basically for not particularly clear reasons i later found out that too the other students i was with also got fired the same same day for the same weird reasons so it was annoying that led me however to another intenship at local comp the shop they sold computers and repair them so my role was to sell sell pics and repair them ah yah um this was part of college basically yes the education system works a little bit differently in the netherlands but i think i was around fifteen sixteen give you oh yes yeh yeah right right so here it is you go to prime memory school basically our elementary school when you go to what we call middle box hole which i guess is middle school awesome when i see american t v shows or movies that mostly looks like high school to me right right and then you go to an bo bo or bo college which is let me think how to bring this in a good way depending on your your skill level you either go to middle or higher right right right one is more practical practically focused so you go there learn how to be a car mechanic or like to be out of work and there’s a long the other one is you get studies more like business studies and more theoretical kind of studies right right right yeah exactly yeah thank you for helping out with that right yes that’s here to absolutely yeah all right a ome mills okay oh right yes yes yes m so i worked at that nternship and after my entenship was done the owner was because that was like a small neighborhood shop the owner asked me if i wanted to work that so i agreed once i was done i was about eighteen um m so so that was my first paying job basically had a lot of fun with that helped a lot of customers dealt with my fair share of annoying and friendly customers and he had a small website but that just basically contained his address and his opening hours so what he wanted to do is get a the owner of the shop by men then is gain a wider audience so what he wants to do is set up an ecomershwebshop website so webshopbasically where he could sell his his supply of computers problem is he’s not very very technical so it doesn’t have a lot of knowledge into the webposting world and if you want to set up a payment integration or make sure the website stays online make sure back ups are handled um that’s where he needed someone to step in and there’s a lot of businesses that say they can help you with that were varying degrees of reliability um m so then i was like maybe i can help you with that i know about these things interested them enough um i’ve done in the past um m so maybe that’s something that we can do something for each other yeah so we agreed on a plan a price and i started thinking about him maybe i should register a company that would be easier to to get this money from you and we make the tax office happy basically um so i went on my bicycle and dutch after all to the to the chamber of commerce and register company quickly thought of of a name yeah oh um i think it was eighteen or nineteen yes not a problem yes there is a small fee yes it was about fifty years and then they charge you twenty years to get a piece of paper saying that you registered the company which i later learned you can decline what i did is i announced my visit online basically told them what my company name is going to be and what what kind of activities is the company is going to do um but yeah after ter i made an appointment and went down there then everything was was handled and i got i got signed it i didn’t set up an l c or what we call in the netherlands a bay which those business forms look a lot like each other i set up a i guess that’s a sole proprietorship in us where i’m responsible for any damages that at my i might incur yeah oh yes it was very easy yeah i was surprised on how easy it was uh h yes very yeah and know what recurring fees or anything like that to just go down there sign something nope no it’s just no it’s all world into to texas umrightyeah m correct yeah yeah yeah yes so so i met him because the first inter ship failed i got fired for some weird reason that i think they just made up on the spot and just by chance because i didn’t tell you this early but this school required me to get a new internship within a certain amount of days otherwise i’d fail that entire semester so i started looking around and well i found i found this little computer shop and always when i went by at that shop myself i wonder who runs that and i wonder what they’re like never went in there never had any interest anything i needed just i just ordered online but yeah i wish i went in earlier because it’s great that places like that still still exist and still can exist um m whenever you need something like a small part you can just hop in there and hop out and not have to wait for shipping or or anything else yeah yeah correct yet i certainly hope that that never happens well he basically became became on mine retailer himself right that’s correct yes correct m so what started happening was he’s got a lot of like the computer shop get a lot of customers that starts asking all kinds of random it related questions and m m he was never able to fully help them with ever everything because these these questions vary from can you can you help my business set up this this server so i can work by twenty employees on collaborate with my employees on files but it also gets i threw my phone down the stairs can you please to screen so whenever you get question stead of a little more involved like not not really a fit for his shop he’d call me and say maybe this is something you resident i didn’t go into that didn’t go into it that way because a company o my own companies always seemed like a huge lie let my parents also talk me out of it tell me things like you shouldn’t do that you’ll always be always be working on that better to just have a salary and then you will have a certainty so so that that threw a little bit off of da to me i guess that’s that’s still there because i still have a job on this is only my side gig but once i work up the courage to to make this my my main focus in the that that will certainly make me happy so you should stop working on it oh yeah yeah m m yeah yeah m right yeah m m m hm oh yah right yeah because i don’t have a view of what the american system is like this just feels very very natural to me and yeah you basically what you do during such an intern ship is indeed you’ll become an employee has to come basically you start doing the stuff that that anyone else does you also work on an assignment that you that you get or you you you make up once prove that you can you can you can do that but yeah i think it’s a great way to to gain some work experience and then start getting ready for the real world absolutely yeah m yeah yeah yeah right so the sentiment is what what my at my parents told me basically so if you start your own business you’ll always be working and you’ll never have time for fun things or social activities i see why they why they said that i don’t necessarily agree you’ll always be a start sounds like sounds like a bad thing but if you’re working on your dream then that’s not a bad thing at all okay yes yeah oh yes exactly exactly and i to come back to your your other question i don’t think it’s very common for fourteen years to start our own business it certainly um i wouldn’t say encouraged by by by the government but it’s it’s somewhere in between encouraged and not not being paid attention to it all its lightly encouraged i’d go with yeah yes so you have colleges you’d have lessons about interpreneurship and how to handle all the burocracy that surrounds interprenership um also the share success stories from other your young entrepreneurs i think that’s that that’s really good to to get other people enthusiastic about the ship in general yeah oh m m ye yeah yes m yeah certainly so i got two stores for you one is where the business owner of the first computer shop called me up and i said i have a customer here that is dealing with some kind of fire attack they don’t know really know what’s going on but they got were messages on the screen they don’t really know what it means and you take a look so i made an appointment with it with that customer and went to the business and i immediately saw that that it was an to cry an cry was a big and some wartecthat was going around yes yeh it’s been in the news it wasn’t a news back then it it has a lot of yes so that was one one big i don’t know why my comrades decided to yeah not sure why it’s doing that let’s hope it corrects itself oh well so with friends from where it’s always always tricky right your data has gone and it might cost you a lot of money to to get your data back or to restart your business again to get it fully up running again so yes yes this is the one yes i remember that screen very vividly yeah so quick background on what one i was so ran somewhere right so what it does is it n crypts your your files anything it can find and then asks for a certain amount of money to get that data back at least that’s what i promise you uh h so maybe you can pull up the screen shot there on on the right so it had a big big countdown that said you’d have to pay before m runs out otherwise with double the price if you want to see your data back then you better pay up quick so there’s no real solution to this other than restart from back up yeah this company didn’t have a correct yes and there was a yah i don’t know if it exactly was double but it increased the ransom price so yeah yes they like to say anonymous so so yeah they did as for a certain amount of bit coin and once i got to fully explain the company what was going on they were certainly happy to to pay this the amount i was asked for m which is a bad thing right if you if you pay then you keep this this business case for the criminals um yeah it creates an incentive sorry correct yes in this situation they didn’t i managed to talk to them out of it but i could certainly understand where where they were coming from right their business it completely stopped so they couldn’t do any any more business all the important files like the clients they were working on we’re starting on their on their computers yeah um this was a like an h r agency so they they fight canadates for sorry oh correct correct um m oh so oh yeah so so they didn’t have any back ups and they weren’t a customer of me until they asked for my help with with his fires attack so that was very bad i helped them reform at their pieces and then set up set up a back up locally and as well as in the clouds um m so so i make sure that that this can never happen again and they remain a happy customer to this day and yeah there was certainly certainly a story that that i want to forget very quick just this i mean a lot of a lot of people in the i t field had to deal with this with with his renswarquick attack and it’s fair unfortunate that it happens m yeah yeah um right it can account for i won’t call it stupidity but that bad practices yah h yeah so so opening ports on your route you can you can certainly do that i wouldn’t say that’s insecure insecure by itself but if you don’t know what you’re opening up not updating the things that are behind your orvirol then then you might be might be in trouble one cry was successful because a lot of pep lladupdated there window surface it was a vulnerability in an old protocol and microsophs had known about this this issue for a while and actually patched this a few months earlier um yeah still a lot of people got hit by this but this attack and it’s just because people weren’t prating their surface absolutely absolutely yeah correct yes yes i can do remote work as well that’s not a problem for me at all um so another story i have is a customer that hired me for base sake server management and i serve on location and they needed someone they can call for for assistance to make back ups make sure that things stays running and this was a like a dentist and the stuff is unfortunately like three years after they they hired me and we had a nice support contract so so they did nice monthly it’s to me i suddenly noticed that the regular payment stopped and i saw the surface go of line try to call them see what’s going on couldn’t get a response until i got the message that day a bankrupt which is always unfortunate for a business owner um what happened afterwards though is that i decided to look up the the action for their belongings and well because the suffers on side the surfer was also part of the action the surf was their ownership so that’s another problem per se so once i saw that i saw that the surf was still on and that means that if the server remains on that also means that the disc is unincrepted because i crept the disk for basically any device i i set up as customers just just for security correct yes yeah orrectyesso yes but that also means that the data i is an incryptid and that was a uge issue for me so just for security i called the trustee that oversaw the the bankruptcy of this of this company and i told him he i managed to suffer at this in this company i know you’re a trustee can you please make sure that the disks that are in the server own location we’ll be wiped or destroys and he responded to me like yeah sure we do this all the time that’s not not a problem at all i didn’t trust them because i’ve had i’ve bought service at auction before actions like these and what happens is the hard rise is ter day do still of them get auctions with them it means that you’ll be in possession of data from a bankrupt company and that might contain some sensitive data and since it oh yeah yeah you buy it you pick it up it’s all legal and nobody thinks about the data that’s that’s on the sever so that’s the reason i ancre disks for laptop it makes sense you take it with you and if it gets if it gets stolen you want a type in a password before you can use it before you can get to the data but people often don’t think about this for a for a test computer or server that sits on a fixed location and doesn’t get moved around a whole lot but what if you get a break in they take away the machine or the disks or something like this happens yourself get tins of action offend your disk stones got salt that’s that’s a huge issue so so what happened is i bought the server at the auction so so the server that i managed i bought from from the action and i actually won that action i picked that safer up and wow it was on the picture was still running i could just take it with me basically and i have all the data again it wasn’t corrupted but if i wouldn’t have uncorrupted the disk then i would have all the data in hand and more savy more eavy individual could because the computer was on and the this was an ecrypted first copy data would do some trickery to make sure the the p c stays on so so that’s huge issue um m kay oh yeah correct correct i think data protection is it’s really important even though the customer paid invoices i mean it’s it’s it’s not my data it’s not it’s day after their clients it was a dentist office or that a really personal information about their patients on there h m yeah certainly oh yeah um that’s basically the high soul of the i t world right so you want your computer to just work you want to make sure that your data is always available you don’t want to deal with ransom were tax you want to make sure your your commerce website stays up so so you can sell more products these are all kinds of problems that hat i hope solve with with my company oh yeah the most common problem is dealing with with security making sure that their business is safe that the personal data they handle doesn’t fall into the wrong hands because i have an interest in security in sort of specialize on that and make sure that well that every everything stays secure and that they can comply to data protection s oh oh hm right ye yeah social engineering oh m yeah correct correct so we have a really nice website here that’s called certified secure dodo and what they offer is a training on like how to identify fishing emails they train you on what you can expect from institutes like your bank they will never call you and say that a common scheme here is that someone calls you with face of number and tell you that you have to transfer money to a safe account like like those sort of things they do training whenever i can i will help them with that but certified secures much better with with training people people on that and i can direct their progress how they’re doing helped them a little bit showed them some some examples and i think that that really helps them with keeping the security up yeah no this is a private company that offers these these trainings yeah yeah and what i do is i handled the technical side of things so make sure services up to are up to date that they are using a password manager that that’s a really really big thing m m oh ah yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah so as a technical person i feel like i’m kind of obligated to recommend bitmardan and i’ve heard good story yes i’ve heard good stories about that personally use one password and i’m very happy with that i think i think bit warden is for the more tex heavy person yeah correct yes yeah correct so it’s kind of hybrid right so they do for the real like the self hoste people they want to have everything in control and you can go with something like warden or if you’re really hard cored and you can just keep us i think one password is is somewhat us friendly that sounds wrong i think one password is very usefriendly and i often recommend that to to my clients if they if they aren’t using a passer manager yet i see a lot of customers using re using the same passwords and not handling passwords as a secret but more as i this annoying thing i have to type in when i get one o gettin my computer um h so so getting that the mind sets is seeing the password of something at’s supposed to help you instead of beingannoying i think that’s really important and i think something like one password is very important to to anyone’s security to say that security no basically you kind of need a poser manager if you want to if you want to be secure doesn’t matter what it is it can be it can be a note book on your desk as long as no one looks in it than that that’s better than re using the same passwords everywhere rect that’s very important advice yes and then able to effect our authentication while you can if you can yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah m yeah i’m located in which is in the nethrlands and it’s part of to venta in the offense of of one thing you might know my city from is the university that’s here the university of venta we got a lot of international students so maybe some of your listeners have heard of that but yet there’s there’s a lot of competition in the themspmarkets o the world i mean it’s called the minute surface provider or the m s p um and that’s that’s a very crowded business one thing my company so my customers praised me for and are happy with is the person i approach they can go to anyone but the there are less and less companies where you can just phone up someone and have have a human answer the phone and listen to their listen to their questions and be able to to go on side fast helped them solve the problem they’re having basically is and that means that they can go back to work faster just because of the the first lie approaching and the quicker communication lines m oh h m oh yeah um i think about two or three years um yeah i mean kind of waited until i was eighteen because that makes it easier to register a business um m but yeah i was still developing myself as well as a human being and i was very young so uh yeah but after after i registered and he started calling me up asking me if he could refer his customers to me and then then the ball really started rolling yeah i can now make make some pretty good money on the side it’s a pretty good pretty good side business and it’s fun to that’s very important sure yeah h m i said m certainly m so sometimes there are like business meet ups where interpreners from the from the local area made up i suddenly like to to be there on so people yes that’s a great place of doing business the other types like calls calling and not a real big fan of i like old off well mathbasically so yeah yeah hm not at a moment now i certainly yes and it’s it’s opped out people can put a little sticker on their mail box saying no i don’t want to receive any any advertisements and then that should be that should be like honor sometimes that that doesn’t happen and people go print their fliers and put them in random mail boxes everywhere i always think that’s very bad advertisement for this company but who am i yeah correct correct yes you can get the sticker for free too you can just request it at the municipality and they’ll mell metal to you no oh i can send one over if your if you really want i can send one all the way to the us that’s no problem correct i’ll say nay nay m um no no not currently like i said it’s it’s a side a side business and i have to give keep keep time free for my other business and i don’t want to i don’t want to be too busy basically and i got what i do is a sponsorship sponsor a local theatric group and one day after the performance they handle it’s like a little in infra booklets and i got an advertisement in there i helped up that group with with the websites and anything else they might need on uh for it needs and i do that for three and in exchange of that they advertise my company and that’s it’s a great way to get some extra customers m hm yeah no not guerently i do some like like facebook or instagram marketing and i try to keep that very localized because like i said one of the things one of the unique selling points i have is that i have a friendly face that i can show up with a customer site or be there in person and be someone that they can ask difficult questions to so at the moment i’d like to keep my business very localized and i do marketing on that level but but not extremely so like i said i have to keep keep time free for for my other job correct uh yeah there is a twitter account that doesn’t have a lot of activity basically just have to name reserved for any future needs yeah i have linked in page and i sometimes share customer success stories on there once once i solve a problem for a company that’s well known in the area or have a new product launch can advertise on there and that a pretty good reach too oh yeah it’s about fifty at the moments and that that that varies from um managed hosting for like a property management company or an h recruitment company two creative agency that needs someone technical to help them with their with their hosting um so a wide range of clients yeah yes i mean sometimes uh give some work to two people on five once if i’m really yeah yeah exactly or if it’s something that i don’t really have time for then i can kind of collaborate on that voice with someone someone on five um that’s a plus form that has really helped me keep my work loads at a manageable level um a gain yeah cool yeah uh uh ye hm yeah uh yeah yeah that’s one thing about my best business to write is because it’s it’s so much knowledge based i didn’t have to do any big investments or take take huge risks basically i could i can pay for everything with the money i get from my customers that’s how business should operate right you should make a profit not a lot um m yeah i already had a computer i already had a good place to work i was still living at my parents back then i now got a place with my own but but yeah very little cost very little bit very little risk basically sort so my knowledge that i again through just share interest and an be and that i could make that into a business that i would have never thought of that back then and still kind of amazes me now it’s really great that’s about two hour drive um skadi this he had on the map awesome uh oh very good yep that’s it yes uh i tell you yeah you can call it the city yeah yeah certainly oh yeah what you see now is the city center out mark this is where all the older bars are where you’re going on a friday or saturday nights and the bumping of all the students it may or may not be drunk ye perfect i think you’re now in oh yeah there you go this is the city center basically yeah yeah a thing so that’s that’s the province i’m in yeah over guy’s always it’s a nice province as i mean just come over it it’s very fun most people i if they think of the netherlands or an they think of amsterdam right but i think amsterdam is very much tourist focused and i’ve been there a couple of times when i have to and i also i always feel like if you come to the netherlands and you think you’re you’ve seen it when you visit the emsterdem then i’m sorry to tell you you haven’t visited the netherlands is that you faced yeah i don’t know what to call it but it’s not yeah they get so many tourists that it’s everything is an english and you won’t be able to probably experience what i what a dutch city is like uh i mean you’re now on some like business some some commercial side yeah you should do street view on the university that’s that’s much more of an interesting area yeah uh so where are now it’s actually interesting that’s there’s a data center right behind you you would you would say it is it’s in the great building at the end of the street street on the right there yeah that’s the one and once i first found out that that was a data center i was i was i was surprised because that’s not a side that reminds me of of a data censor but it’s it’s owned by another local entrepreneur that has a small day to send us in in and around venta yeah exactly yeah yeah exactly yeah that’s you can see ice hosting there that’s that’s that’s the company that this same guy also also owns yet it’s an interesting concept i wouldn’t go there for my for my customers i do have some service host that in lo which is very close to like a thirty minute rife say into thirty minutes and they handle security a little bit better you also pay for that extra security that’s yeah i mean that’s that’s normal right if you want to you get what you pay for yeah oh h m right i know i’m going to do this pitch in dutch right so that’s that’s a little bit i said they could let’s keep it english and just say that if you need any help with anything it related may that be uh being able to collaborate more effectively or just you need someone that you can ask technical questions to or someone that can look after website and make sure it stays up and stays back up the you can come to a t and you’ll get a personalized approach to it you won’t be a number you’ll be a person and you’ll be able to talk to someone that’s it’s very unique in the intent what oh yes so that’s vat dot n l it’s entirely in dutch but i think google translate can make something of that yeah so it’s it’s bosh it on all the alte platforms thank you for having me
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