Success stories

New entrepreneur:
Szilard Marton (Romania)
Age: 34
Company name: Connect2change / www.connect2change.eu (Start-up)
Sector of activity: Education and training services

Host entrepreneur:
Floor Vullings (Netherlands)
Age: 33
Company name: Buitendoor / www.buitendoor.nl (8 years of experience)
Sector of activity: Education and training services

Szilard and Floor met each other a couple of years ago during an international training course. Floor back then was already running his own business and inspired Szilard in his way to do it and revealing the immense possibilities of it. Years later, Szilard thought of starting his own company and found out about the EYE and has contacted Floor. They decided it they saw this as an opportunity to reconnect, collaborate, learn, and build a training venture together, benefiting from their diverse backgrounds.

The exchange was different than expected, due to COVID outburst. Lock-down in the Netherlands has disrupted the activities-it was impossible to organise them the way they were planned. Though this situation created space and time to be creative and to work in different ways that normally don’t get prioritised.

The pandemic-context has stimulated a dialogue on the challenges and realities of working in an international market as a team-building company, and the two entrepreneurs started to develop a plan in order to face these challenges. Working intensively together, having online meetings where online webinars were planned and fine tuned, organising events for online facilitation, and making plans for the future, taking in consideration the activities planned for the upcoming months. The time period in that the cooperation was organised was challenging, however this gaveSzilard and Floormany opportunities as well, so they were up to the tasks by rethinking the program activities, and adapting them to the new context.Both entrepreneurs consider the cooperation very useful and valuable with more focus on marketing and development.

They used their evenings to discuss many topics on their work future plans. They combined working on both their businesses because - besides being entrepreneur for many years - Floor started a new business in the beginning of 2021. The entrepreneurs managed to create opportunities to facilitate online training sessions; they ran a session during the Online Training Festival, a course for Outward Bound Romania, and a webinar.

COVID brought some advantages in their exchange too – both entrepreneurs had to think out of the box, find solutions and new ways to sell and share their training offer. These are useful skills for any entrepreneur and even more so during COVID. The two entrepreneurs created a common approach/language/culture around the work they did that will make a lot easier to cooperate and communicate in the future on new possible projects.

At the end of the exchange Szilard’s business became a franchise of the Floor’s new company in Romania. Szilard will represent Floor’s work sell his products and continue to develop the business together. Szilard helped a lot with his marketing skills to develop a better structure for the promotion of Floor’s company. He took great pictures developed posts for online communication and helped to find participants for webinars.

For more information, please contact the local contact points involved in the exchange:

New entrepreneur's contact point:
FUNDATIA DANIS pentru DEZVOLTARE MANAGERIALA (Cluj-napoca, Romania)

Host entrepreneur's contact point:
Quarter Mediation (Utrecht, Netherlands)

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