Frank van Santen and Floris Oskam, Soundboard: Without Our Advice, Some Dutch Entrepreneurs Would Become Social Cases

Frank van Santen and Floris Oskam have been mentors for entrepreneurs in need for years. Van Santen is the director of Soundboard, a Dutch association that brings together entrepreneurial mentors, and Oskam is the chairman of the Soundboard board. The association was founded in 1980, when the Netherlands was shaken by a severe recession that threatened to collapse the economy, especially small businesses, to save as many as possible.

In the first twenty years of Soundboard’s operation, retired employees of large companies provided pro bono mentoring support to small business owners in solving business challenges, and in the next twenty years, the association professionalized, so mentoring support is increasingly provided by retired entrepreneurs, whose experience and knowledge are better suited to the needs of other entrepreneurs.

The association operates nationwide, has three hundred members, mostly retired entrepreneurs with an average age of 67, divided into seventeen teams. Mentoring support is provided in four areas of business: prevention of business bankruptcy, which accounts for 50 percent of total cases; starting a business (15 percent of cases), challenges of business growth (25 percent of cases), and business transfer (10 percent of cases).

For six months of mentoring, the entrepreneur pays two hundred euros as a one-time participation fee, and Soundboard provides support for more than two thousand entrepreneurs annually. Now, a similar club for senior entrepreneurs, called Sentor, is being launched in Croatia. On this occasion, we spoke with Soundboard experts about their experiences in mentoring entrepreneurs, the outcomes of that mentoring, and the possibility of transferring their experience to the Croatian Sentor.

How did you actually become a mentor?

Van Santen: – After studying business economics, I worked as a financial director for several large international companies, including Walt Disney, where I stayed for five years. After that, twenty years ago, I started my own business as a temporary manager and helped dozens of companies that had financial problems, as well as those that wanted to grow. At the same time, I became an entrepreneur myself, and with several partners, we started and bought many companies. Sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. The theory from my business economics studies and my entrepreneurial experience nicely combine at Soundboard, where I have been the director for nine years.

Oskam: – I am a lawyer by profession, and after experience in the international financial sector, I worked for fifteen years at Unilever, where I was the procurement director for the European agro-industrial portfolio. When I decided to retire early, a friend convinced me to join the Soundboard team in Rotterdam, and now I am the chairman of the Soundboard Foundation Board. In addition, I currently mentor five entrepreneurs, and in my mentoring career, I have helped as many as two hundred entrepreneurs, and I still enjoy it!

Did you have mentors at the beginning of your careers?

Van Santen: – No, unfortunately.

Oskam: – Of course, I had a mentor at Unilever; I remember some of his advice. The first was how to focus on the essential things, and the second was more a mix of advice and examples of what true leadership is, how to motivate people, how to build a team.

If you could turn back time today, what mentoring advice would you give yourself at the beginning?

Van Santen: – The best advice for me should have been: focus. Many years ago, as an investor/founder, I gradually became involved in many companies. I paid too little attention to some of them, so things did not go well. Therefore, the best advice for me at that time would have been to focus on fewer companies and devote all my attention to only a few of those with the best chances of success.

Oskam: – I would advise myself this: ‘Have a plan, but let it be flexible.’ That is the most important lesson I have learned in life.

What kind of advice do entrepreneurs in your country seek today? Where are they ‘thinnest’?

Van Santen: – Many entrepreneurs are currently struggling in the Netherlands. Due to the geopolitical situation, they are facing rising procurement prices for raw materials and energy costs, which creates cash flow problems and pushes many entrepreneurs into bankruptcy. And so far, there are no government supports like during the corona period. This troubles them, and they are struggling, so they come to us for help and advice.

Oskam: – I would say that Dutch entrepreneurs today lack basic knowledge of economics and finance and have no idea what liquidity is and how to maintain proper cash flow in a company, which is crucial. It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs to come to us with piles of paperwork and administration in which they are completely lost; that’s where we step in. But this also indicates that the educational system does not prepare people for entrepreneurship, which is, as I hear, a problem your country is facing as well. We are all ‘thinnest’ in the skills of business administration and monitoring the financial flow of business.

Some of these skills should be taught in school. Is entrepreneurship taught in schools in the Netherlands?

Oskam: – No, unfortunately. Students only hear those lessons at business-oriented colleges, which is why we are here to fill the gaps in knowledge with our knowledge and advice.

Van Santen: – In the past, you could only become an entrepreneur in the Netherlands if you obtained a high school diploma and passed the necessary exams. There, you learned to make a business plan and learned the most important entrepreneurial skills in sales, marketing, cost calculation, etc. That is no longer the case. You see that many entrepreneurs get into trouble because they do not even know how to put together a simple business plan; often, they do not even know how to attract clients. By engaging Soundboard mentors, entrepreneurs can more easily respond to those challenges.

What does a mentor actually do when an entrepreneur calls him? What does it look like in practice?

Van Santen: – First, he listens; that is the most important thing. A mentor needs to know how to listen, hear, and understand the entrepreneur. There is no judgment; that is strictly forbidden, and there is no meddling in the business. This way, he can map out the problems and find ways to help. Moreover, by listening, the mentor can relieve the entrepreneur’s stress. The mentor then has to rely on his knowledge and experience from the time he was still an entrepreneur. He must also be able to call on his fellow mentors if the problems he has are too complex.

What advice do you then give them?

Van Santen: – How to improve the business plan, how to reduce costs, and often how to attract new clients. Our role is, of course, advisory; we do not do the job for them; we only guide them. For example, if they are on the way to new users through social media, and the entrepreneur neglects them, we advise him to try advertising through those channels. Or we advise him to improve his website or to start an online store. But it is not up to us to do that for him; the entrepreneur is the one who has to manage that.

Give us an example; what does it look like in practice?

Van Santen: – I was tasked with mentoring a restaurant owner who got into trouble and had no business. The restaurant was run by him and his wife, sometimes the children, and they had one part-time employee. And it was not working. When he was on the verge of bankruptcy, we sat down with him, listened to him, and began what is called problem scanning. The first problem was the offer: the menu was too large for such a small restaurant with a small kitchen. Then we walked around the area where the restaurant was located, looked at who was busy, who was not, who offered what, and so on. We advised the owner to shorten the menu to just a few dishes that had previously sold best, to invest in the space. Then we helped him with a business plan to make it easier for him to find money for renovations, and the last piece of advice was to invest in marketing on social media, which was completely new and unknown to him. The restaurant started doing really well and is still doing good business today. It seems that our advice bore fruit.

Oskam: – I mentored a hairdresser who, after several years of working for others, decided to open her own salon. She asked for our help on how to even start the whole story and how to raise money because the banks did not want to support her. She started with our help and mentorship, and it went quite well. However, after a while, she contacted us again, believing she could do more, and asked us how she could grow. We advised her to open another salon, and that where there is not too much competition. Location, location, location. We helped her see where new residential complexes were being built in Rotterdam and found one nearing completion with about five hundred apartments. Nearby, we found a good location that she had to renovate a bit, and since the neighborhood was teeming with young professionals, we went with the story that the salon is eco-friendly, using only eco-cosmetics, as that is extremely important for such people in that part of the city. And the young lady is indeed a successful and well-known hairdresser today with a good business and good clients who supported her during the corona crisis, which makes this story special; we helped financially even though she was not working, just to survive the crisis.

You mentioned that some entrepreneurs would end up as social cases without your advice.

Oskam: – Yes, that is a real danger. These are people who guarantee their business with their own property, everything they have. That is why it is important for us to help these people get through tough times, precisely so they do not end up on social welfare.

Van Santen: – The goal is not to have more people on social welfare but to have more people creating added value; that is why our state and local authorities, as well as our association, believe it is more efficient to help entrepreneurs in trouble than just to distribute money as part of social welfare.

Oskam: – I had an entrepreneur who literally had to sell his house to survive. The man was on the brink of poverty, became a tenant, but still had a strong entrepreneurial spirit. His store failed, so we looked for ideas with him on what he could do to get back on the market and helped him start a small private camp. I happened to read that morning how the city lacked a place for campers from all over Europe who come to visit and suggested it to him. A pure coincidence, but that’s how it sometimes turns out. He would never have thought of that because he was blocked by fear and failure, which is not uncommon when problems accumulate. Today, his camp is a well-structured business, not only because we helped him direct him in the right direction but also because we helped him secure financial tools when the banks did not want to support him.

How has the mentoring role changed over the past decades?

Van Santen: – Soundboard was founded 42 years ago. At that time, there was no automation, and today much work is done by computers and ICT systems. Moreover, there are now social media, which offer new opportunities for entrepreneurs to, for example, recruit new clients by conducting campaigns on Facebook. For mentors, this means they must have an understanding of automation and social media. Soundboard regularly organizes workshops to keep mentors updated on these new areas. All of this was not necessary before.

And what do mentors get in return? What is your motivation?

Oskam: – My motivation is to stay active in retirement, to have somewhat structured time, to remain in contact with business people, to follow trends in business, and there is also the indispensable feeling of satisfaction from helping others because I help pro bono.

Do you have tools to track the success of the entrepreneurs you mentor?

Van Santen: – Yes. First and foremost, entrepreneurs are always helped for six months. During that period, it can be checked in our ICT system whether the mentoring process is successful and has a positive impact. Secondly, about twenty percent of the entrepreneurs we have helped extend the mentoring process for a new six-month period, and during that period, we can monitor how the entrepreneur is doing and adjust as needed. Finally, an independent study by the University of Groningen showed that thanks to Soundboard’s help, half of the entrepreneurs who are in financial trouble and seek its help do not go bankrupt. This contributes to the happiness of entrepreneurs and their families and saves society a lot of money, and it is also proof of our success.

Can and how can your association’s concept thrive in other countries, specifically in Croatia?

Van Santen: – There is quite a significant interest from other countries in applying the Soundboard concept. In principle, it can be established in any country, including Croatia; that is why we supported the Croatian Sentor. Based on our experience, we know what you need to pay attention to in order to successfully help entrepreneurs and find the right mentors, but also how you need to work to be of service to those who need you the most, namely entrepreneurs in trouble or those at the very beginning of their business. Therefore, it would be very useful for your entrepreneurs with a lot of experience to contact Sentor in Croatia and to embark on the adventure of mentoring the young with less experience.