Guest Blog: Frederieke Schmidt Crans, Director of Het Flexhuis, Netherlands - Choices in life
The first day of July 2022 was a big moment in my life. On that day, Het Flexhuis, the company and the team, became part of Nash Squared.
I started as an entrepreneur over ten years ago. 28 years old and fully convinced of my career choice.
I began my career working in the recruitment of business leaders, with a particular focus on women with higher qualifications.
Even back then, there was a lot of attention for the share of women on the labour market. It was a subject that appealed to me enormously and to which I wanted to make a contribution.
But it was also at that time that I found out that if you want to get ahead in your career, you have to make choices in life. And this goes beyond the choices you make in work; it applies to everything in life. Some choices you create yourself, but you also need to be open to what comes along and accept the help you need to take the next step. And in this everyone is different, what fits one person, might not fit another.
I don't look back very often in life, mostly forward. But I am aware that everything you experience, big and small, contributes to where you are now and how that helps you on your way in the future. When I look at big moments in life, it starts with the first time I went to school on my own. I had to take the bus and change to another bus.
My mother was a bus driver at the time and had arranged her shifts so that she was "my" second bus.
In retrospect, I understood why she insisted on me taking the bus when I did. The feeling of being a big girl and independent, but also the confidence that I was not alone, made that first trip perfect.
It gave confidence for all those other moments, like going on holiday without parents, leaving home, driving a car without a driving instructor for the first time, applying for my first job, having my first child and the step into entrepreneurship.
All these moments gave the same feeling, the complete conviction that this was the right moment, the excitement of new doors having been opened into a world I did not know, and the speed with which it then became my own. And this combination makes me a strong believer in making choices.
Even when, or perhaps especially when, they are not always obvious, others think differently and there is a degree of uncertainty about what is to come.
I never make the choices in my life without thinking them through. By living in the here and now, being aware of where you are and what you are doing, thinking and looking ahead, but not staring blindly, I always work towards the next choices. Even if I don't know what they should be yet.
And that is how this process went with Flexhuis and Nash Squared. It was not decided overnight. It has been a journey of more than 10 years in which you make choices every day, one bigger than the other, but which has always led to the opening of new doors.
And today I get up again with the full conviction that this is the right moment, feeling excitement for what is to come and having faith in the speed with which this will become my own.
I look forward to the continuation of my journey together with you and to all the doors that may open again!
Frederieke