The intention

Hans van Breukelen is the most successful goalkeeper in Dutch history. Among other things, he became European champion and won the European Cup. In 1994 started his career in business.
Hans became director of retail chain Breecom, was the initiator of Topsupport and director of technical affairs at FC Utrecht. He currently supports companies and institutions with change processes through his company HvB Management.

HvB:
"About 16 years ago I started Topsupport, together with former cyclist Maarten Ducrot. Our goal was to link talented young top athletes to ex top athletes. We believe that the ex top athletes could mean a lot to upcoming talent with their life experience by supporting them on technical issues, tactical, physically, mental and emotional level. The emphasis was on sports that involved little money.

We asked ourselves the question: what does it take to let young talent get the best out of themselves? And that from a total perspective. So that even if the top sports career would not succeed, socially well prepared. We really wanted to mean something to upcoming top athletes based on our own experience.”

The approach

We soon found out that we had to create a budget. Among other things, we had to train ex-top athletes to be able to properly practice their coaching of upcoming talent. So we started looking for companies that wanted to embrace and sponsor this total concept.

When it comes to sports where little money can be made, then you will soon end up at Olympic sports. And so at the NOC-NSF. Wouter Huijbregts (then chairman of the NOC-NSF ed.) was very enthusiastic at first. But in the end NOC-NSF soon regarded the initiative as a competitor.

The result

The same Wouter Huijbregts later informed us not to fish in their sponsor pond.

Top support has lasted a year and a half. But it turned out to be very difficult to get the initiative off the ground now that the NOC-NSF saw us as a competitor. Finally NOCNSF has received our developed program 1 years implemented.…

The lessons

1. First, I learned that the NOC-NSF actually has the monopolist position when it comes to supporting Olympic athletes in the Netherlands.. A lot of money from the government also goes to this institution. If you, as an entrepreneur, want to make yourself strong for top athletes, you have to deal with that directly. This applies to the phase in which top athletes are upcoming talent, during their top sport period as well as for the period of aftercare.
2. In addition, I have learned not to underestimate the importance of 'networking' and relationship marketing. These are a crucial success factor for every entrepreneur. Your concept and formula are important, but 'Who you know' is almost even more important.
3. And finally: if you want to enter the domain of top sport from an entrepreneurial perspective, you have to go through the right channels, form good alliances and act very quickly. Other parties are only too happy to adopt your ideas.”

Further:
Based on the experience with Topsupport, I started a new initiative called N-EX-T. That stands for 'New career for former top athletes'.

It is an initiative for and by (ex-) top athletes, that also bridges the gap between top sport and business. Top athletes often end up in a vacuum after their career. And don't know what to do with a new situation. That's why I, together with Miel in 't Zand
N-EX-T founded. “Life after a sports career can be great fun, be exciting and challenging. If only you could keep setting goals for yourself. It's about creating awareness among former top athletes, or 'who are you, what do you like and how are you going to realize that?Spy.

We have tested in advance with various parties, including trade unions, whether the concept offers added value. And of course we checked what NOC-NSF is doing about it. I don't want to be in a competitive position compared to. existing initiatives. I want to be complementary. Then we first put the concept on the market in a low profile. Not yet generating income. And we've put more emphasis on building strategic alliances to gain more foothold. That has now, after a year and a half, resulted in the implementation of the training project of the FBO, VVCS and Proprof within professional football organizations. We do this in collaboration with the Cruyff academy.

Author / interviewer: Bas Ruyssenaars

Things are now moving in the right direction with N-EX-T. I act as a figurehead and Miel van 't Zand is now full-time on the payroll.”

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