Business success means getting up more than you fall down.

Yesterday, eager to enjoy the snow like everyone else, I took my eleven-year-old son to Griftpark in Utrecht. The park has a hill that most people affectionately refer to as ‘the mountain’. The mountain has two sides: one side has a pond and a fence at the bottom; the other a large lawn. You can guess which side was busier and which was quieter. The busy side was packed with kids whooshing down the mountain on sledges, falling, and getting back up. So, we decided to try out the quieter side.

Applying the theory of falling and getting back up to myself, it’s clearly been a constant in my life – including in my career and my journey with Guide-ID. Without all that falling and picking myself up, I would never have got where I am today: being the proud CEO of a fantastic company that enables millions of people around the world to hear wonderful stories. So how did I fall and pick myself up on that journey? Let me tell you.

At the turn of the millennium, probably in 2003, we started thinking about how we could shake up the audio-tour market. Dedicated to the cause and following a year of hard work, we had written software on a PDA (essentially, a predecessor of the iPhone) and developed the first, ugly-looking version of the IDentifier that automatically played a story when a user stood in front of a work of art. It was the prototype of the system we use today. I took my demo set to the director of a large museum in the Netherlands. He burst out laughing when he saw the IDentifier: did I truly believe he would put that thing in his museum? Ouch, that fall hurt.

Once I’d recovered a bit from the painful fall from that encounter, there were two options: we could do nothing and leave it at that, or we could take the criticism as feedback and go back to the drawing board. After a few days of mulling it over, we chose the latter. Less than six months later, we had completed a beautifully compact design for the IDentifier. Time to go back to that museum director. After two meetings, the deal was done.

I’ve dozens of ‘falling over’ stories like that. One of them is thinking that multimedia is ‘the bomb’ and finding out after five years that audio-only actually offers a much more intense, high-impact experience for museum visitors. The second involves a complete misjudgment of costs, almost going bankrupt twice, and putting my own house down as a collateral at the bank.

The beauty of it is that all that falling over has huge added value. Because falling involves realizing how not to do things. You learn a lot and fast, especially if you keep the period between start and test as short as possible. I fully believe in the value of short stints to try something out and learn. There’s nothing wrong with failing when you do, but you have to remember to get back up. You can’t stay down for too long: you must persevere, and persevere some more. And remember to stay positive!

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a big fall for many people. For Guide-ID it was a challenge as well, but we acted fast and our choices turned out really well. Unfortunately, many of our customers have also taken a small or big fall, adapting to the new circumstances. But the pandemic has also helped us learn more than we did in previous years. I hope with all my heart that all museums will also be able to take valuable lessons, so that they can soon get back on their feet and continue their work.

We’ve gathered all the lessons from falling and are now using them to develop a whole new eco-system of both hardware and software that will be able to do so much more than the current system! How? Because we’ve learnt what not to do.

Returning to the story of the snowy day in Griftpark: there I am, at the bottom of the quiet (and pleasantly spacious) side of the mountain. On my left I see a wheel-less skateboard being used as a sledge; on my right, I see the very sturdy-looking fence. And in front of me, I see my son, with an injured wrist. He was in a lot of pain, the poor thing. But when we left hospital yesterday, wrist fixed, he said: ‘I really want to go to the mountain again, but I’ll slide down on the busy side.’ That’s the essence of falling over, picking yourself up, and learning. I’m immensely proud of him!