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The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Plato

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been talking a lot about my plans to start a business for my own, with friends, family and people from my professional network. The amount of positive reactions, all the tips, the help and sharing of new business ideas have given me tons of new energy and I’m grateful for all the kind words, recommendations and honesty people have given me in this critical startup phase. So I thought: why not start my first blog post with a big thank you? Well, here it comes:

A BIG THANK YOU.

So, let’s get down to business, shall we? As I started trying to figure out what things to arrange, who to call, where to go, and so on, I soon found out I didn’t have any clou about what to expect in this new adventure. I knew what I wanted to do, to build great software! But how do I find those awesome assignments? How do I get the people to know me? And even more, how do I convince them I’m actually good at what I do? These questions are keeping me busy day and night at the moment, as I still have a fulltime job and I need to attract some clients as I need to start earning money when I start at september 1st.

Now please don’t expect I’ll be answering those questions here immediately. Answering them is part of this Great Quest I’m entering.

"So Robbert, what was it that you do again?"

You know that scene from “Friends”, where nobody can tell what Chandler is doing in his day to day job? That’s kind of how it felt for me the last couple of weeks. Most people know I do “something with computers”, which is quite correct, but as we’re living in a digital age, you might as well say “I work with an office chair and a desk”. So to clear things up, a short summary of “what I do”, a.k.a. “my linkedin summary”:

"I. build. stuff."

I build, renovate and improve application software, mostly using web-based technologies. I give advice about online strategies, how to improve development processes and help teams bring their software to the next level. Rule of thumb is that I like challenges and new ideas. The more complex the problem, the more exciting is the hunt for a solution.

For those of you who want to know more about what I do, what services I offer and how to get in touch, have a look at my (Dutch) corporate website, bliq.net, which is of course, still under construction.

So, to conclude this introduction, I’m setting up something new here. Any help of some kind is much appreciated, so please come to me with suggestions, tips and brilliant ideas!

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