Creating a supportive environment for like-minded individuals to connect and the power of embracing one's uniqueness with Dirk van Meer.

The best part was nothing was arranged, but the parties. So every month there was a party, and during a party was always, in the beginning it was like huge Networking was a huge community and everyone was talking, oh, I do this, can you help me with this and this? But then it all ended with with dancing and the famous Dutch bears and pit ball.

And with that it became a huge success. And then basically people started organizing things themselves. Then we started helping community. So we invited coaches that were alumni from the university, we invited companies. We started organizing a contest to get more attention within the region as well. And it just grew, grew, grew, grew, grew.

And at some moment I left and other people took over, and it's still grown to this day. That's Dirk Van Muir, co-founder of Core Changemakers. Five years ago, Dirk got together with three friends with the idea of creating a student team that focuses on the sustainable economy. Fast forward to today, and there are 160 students who have joined and they are working on innovative projects like reducing battery fires and recycling solar panels.

But before Dirk started Core Changemakers, he helped run an incubator focused on entrepreneurship at the university that he went to. It went from 30 students to more than 900 and. 50 students, so you can say that Dirk has a special talent for attracting talent and building communities, which is quite amazing since he has autism and autistic people are typically introverts.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. As you listen, you can find me at Eric Milker on LinkedIn. Tag me, say hello. Let me know that you're listening. And now let's chat with Dirk. All right. Dirk Van Meer. That was Show Crow. The song was real gone and it was featured in these, in the movie. Cars.

Cars one of my favorite movies that my son listens to, but there's a story behind this. Why is this your favorite song, Dirk? Tell us why please It. It's one of my key happy memories. When I started babysitting. I think I was 14, 15. This was my first babysitting kid. I. He loved this movie and he loved it so much that I had to watch it over 300 times, but I can still see him and me sitting there and watching that movie on the screen, just having the best time of our lives.

So whenever I feel sad or bumped out in life, I just put this song on and I'm, I'm back on track and I can just go for hours again. Okay. I, I don't even think you're a parent yet. I could be wrong. Are you a parent yet? No, no, no. I'm not a parent. I'm 24. I want to be one one day, but for now, not yet. Yeah. So all parents, we know like the lyrics and we know the verses to many movies like cars, even songs like the Wheels on the Bus, we could sing these songs and are asleep.

And so it's funny that you don't even have kids yet, but you, you have something in common with other parents that you know, the songs and the verses to. Kids movie, so that's pretty cool. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I babysitted over 52 children, so I, I, when I finally become that one day, I'm prepared for this.

Okay, so this is, this is a little bit strange here, and I only say it's strange because. I thought babysitting was sort of an American thing, because here in Romania it's not very common. In fact, there's a 15 year old girl who's our neighbor. She lives right above us, and we pitched the idea to her and her mom.

They were totally not interested. I thought it was easy money. She lives right above us. She wouldn't even have to travel that far. So is babysitting pretty common in the Netherlands? And then second, is it pretty common among genders, whether you're male or female? I must say it's very, it's very commonly the Netherlands, most of the standardized things ever.

They also, for me it was more called Chuck that Hena said that it's not in Romania, so that that's kind of cool. It's more normal that it's girls that do it. But yeah, since I was, I think 12, 13, I know my life goal is going to become a dead one day. So all the practice you can get, you gotta take. Right.

Okay. How did you get clients? Were they just like neighbors and you said, Hey, I can babysit your kid. What happened? It started with indeed like a couple of neighbors, and then later they kept on referring me to their friends and their friends and their friends. So then the empire grew. All right. I guess the kids liked you and nobody was complaining, huh?

No, apparently I, my creativity linked very well with the children. So I was the one who suggested to build the fortresses out of the clo couches and everything. Okay? So when the birds came home, everything was cleaned up, but it's best not to tell them what happened in between. Okay. Were there any experiences that you took from this that you now apply to your startup?

Maybe from a management standpoint or a leadership standpoint? A leadership standpoint I think is that free food works very well if you want to convince someone. So that I took, definitely. Now, I think that the most important thing I could take away from that was that people lost structure. Children just abide by structure.

That doesn't mean that you have to skip the fun part, but even the fun part, as long as you're structured and there's clarity. People have a lot of freedom within that clarity and that also goes for the companies that I started to work with. Yeah, no, so true. Definitely applies to kids if they're home. I, I tried to make an itinerary forum 'em, and they appreciate that because if there's no itinerary, they, they get kind of bored.

Alright, so before we jump into a core changemakers here, is there any other entrepreneurial, like, you know, gigs that you did before you created the startup here? I know babysitting is one. Is there That's before I started Core, I was in a student team focused on iron powder. I joined, it was three students and we wanted to use iron powder as a way to store energy, and then I helped grew that team to 30 people, after which I started Core as like of a next step in between starting Gore and finishing that off.

I started helping with this kind of incubator for Innovations, connects to the university. Then I became part of that community management, and I did that for almost five, six years, and it started with like 30 students and when I left it was 950 and a lot of companies together. So I learned a lot there as well because there was a lot of startups and student teams in that community.

Holy crap. For the audience, which university is this? Dirk, the Eino University of Technology. Okay. Okay. So how did you get this off the ground? Were you code calling companies for, to get them involved or did you out to get buy-in from the university first, like professors and things like that? What, let's go deep into this.

It started a bit with professors like that wanted to do something like this, so like, let's just start, let's just do something. And they got like a small space. And the student team that I was in the IRA about one saw it, it was one of those first student teams really connected to it. And it was like a room not bigger than where I'm sitting right now.

And that it just seemed to work because no one was paying attention to it. So basically, you're at a universe. It's so big that at some moment if you don't use too much money, no one gives a fuck what you're doing, and everyone's like, just you do your thing. That apparently attracted a lot of entrepreneurial students.

So more came in and then you organized parties and then you organize sessions in which you share knowledge. And then that came connected, challenge-based learning. So it started to be like an experiment to change the way we do education on the university. And that grew and the grew and the grew. Then we went to a new building and the nice thing was, it was, it was a way bigger building, but it was not connected to any of the other buildings.

So you had to really get in with the past. So for the university, still it was a bit. Off limits. So it was still a bit of the free range for like an entrepreneurial heaven. And then the moment that it outgrew that and we went connected to the university, one of the main buildings, that's the moment it was so mature that all the other university teachers also came by to learn how to use this in their curriculum and now it's leaving curriculum.

Alright. What was the typical experience like for students, for when they first come in and then after they've been a, a part of the, the community for like a couple of years? What does that look like? Most came in at the beginning, especially via student teams. So like Core, like solid. So they had their own ID or they joined with others that had an id and they were like, let's solve this challenge.

And then it was just, the best part was nothing was arranged, but the parties. So every month there was a party, and during a party was always, in the beginning it was like huge. Networking was a huge community and everyone was talking, oh, I do this, or You can't help me with this or this. Then it all ended with, with dancing and the famous Dutch bears and Bolla.

And with that it became a huge success. And then basically people started organizing things themselves, and then we started helping community. So we invited coaches that were alumni from the university, we invited companies. We started organizing a contest to get more attention within the region as well.

And it just grew, grew, grew, grew, grew. And at some moment I left and other people took over, and it's still growing to this day. Okay, so what were some of the contests? Were these like pitches, like, you know, students getting together, pitching in a, an idea for a startup or a company or business? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was, it was called the two week contest because why be original and what we did, basically, everyone brought a business case and pitching rounds, and then we would select based on the business cases, then it would be like a layer of companies involved. Like the companies were actually the judges. And then the companies would have like one-on-one talks with a couple of the student teams, so the ones that fit it the best with each other.

Okay. So even if you lost, you had good connections from there. Then based on that we had a final and there was two pitching runs. First one to go from four per get to two, and then of course from the two, it was like a standoff and one would win and they would win 5,000 euros, and it was actually also very decent money for starting companies initiatives.

I. After a quick break, Dirk and I talk about some of the interesting challenges in projects. The team tackles, Hey, in case you didn't know, the Innovators Can Laugh, newsletter comes out every Thursday. You find out which startup founders are coming on the show, along with links to posts I found interesting on the web.

My Best Dad jokes. Quotes from Napoleon to Chris Rock and my thoughts and strategies on what I am doing to live a rich life filled with happiness as a Texas expat living in Europe. Sign up for the newsletter@innovatorscanlaugh.com. Welcome back to my conversation with Dirk. I feel like he's beyond his years wanting to be a dad and all, which is cool, and also being able to inspire and get others enthusiastic about joining a community.

Now let's hear about some of the interesting projects core change makers are working on. Okay, so I'm assuming it's close to graduation time and, and now you, you're trying to figure out like, what do I do with this? Obviously it's a huge success, but maybe you wanna hand it off to some other students or some other colleagues.

So what, how did this transition over to Core Changemakers? Well, I started Core Changemakers in 2018, basically when I was working for this community for three months. And it was like, I wanna be in this community as well with my own startup and experience from, from both sides. I started it with two friends, and back then it was a very good idea to have a testy iron.

So during breaks we could eat testis and always said, everything we do on the side is a bonus that on the side thing became bigger or bigger and bigger, mostly because a lot of people love their testis. But we started talking about circularity and what we could do to actually already during our study, implementing knowledge into the market.

Then very quickly we got a co request from industry very randomly whether we could help restart an old factory to turn fly ish material into basalt. And we're like, sure, why not? We see the chemistry, we might be able to do this. And that boosted everything because then we had a challenge. More students came in, we got different questions that had nothing to do with that one.

We started sorting battery streams. We started recycling battery wastes. We started living at the P F A S building, autonomous robots. And the more it grew, the more students joined in, but also the more it became a community on its own with its own regulations, very internationally focused, very culture focused, and it just got outta hand very quickly.

Okay. So the way I, the way I see this is so. I've seen companies issue challenges before. I think Netflix did this years ago. They wanted to figure out how to make really good recommendations for viewers so they, they could recommend the viewers that the movies that the viewers, they knew that they would like, or at least there was a good chance.

And so they, they, they put this in, they, they opened this challenge for anybody and everybody, you know, I think whoever solved it got like a million dollars or something like that. This to me, what you're, what you're saying is this is how I, I, I, I perceive this. Is that correct? More or less. More or less this.

It wasn't like an open call from the company, but it just came directly to us by the network. But it was a bit like this. And then I remember in the beginning we didn't even get paid. It was just like, can you help with this? And you know, I was back then, 18 years old and when you get the opportunity to build a factory that that's legacy.

So I was like, yes, we wanna work on this. This is cool. And then that exploded from there. So how does it work now? Are companies primarily just in the Netherlands reaching out to you or other companies outside of the country? Primarily in the Netherlands for sure, but also for instance, from Greek or the Balkan area, even from Africa or America.

Every now and then they have questions that we can help them with it. We changed the community in such a way that it's now very focused on educating the students. So everyone in here is still student apart from me. I graduated two years ago, but I states to grow the community. It's really focused on connecting with right coaches, providing them the right courses, linking them to the right partners, and an industry comes in and they just provide challenges, and we only pick the ones that we know the students would love the most to work on.

And they're real learning opportunities. We always have good results, but the most important thing is of course, that the student has a chance to develop themselves. Okay. Do the companies now make any sort of donation or do they give you any sort of compensation now or, or how does it work? Yeah, yeah. No, no, they, we have normal prices basically in the way that we say we have track record now.

We exist for almost five years. We have proven ourselves in the market, so now we just ask money for the things that we do, and companies still come back because they be like, it's fine. We give you money, but we also got a solution. So that's a fair deal. Okay. This is so cool. What's, what are you excited about for the next 12 months here, Dirk?

I, I'm mostly excited about the fact that all I wanted to do was create a safe space, and now we also have an online safe space in which we automated everything from the coaches to the courses, to the projects. So everyone now has its own portal. They can go there and everything is available for them.

Over 500 coaches are gonna be available to them within six months. You can just directly write to them like, you don't have to ask me for permission or manager or anything. You just type, I need help with acquisition. You go there, you can just type a message and it immediately goes to one of the coaches and I'm talking big time Goss.

For instance, we had Hans Fisher, the former c e O of Tata Steel, the biggest steel producer in the Netherlands, and he's one of the people you could just send a message to for help that that's kind of cool if you can do that at 18 years old. Alright. Alright. This is, this is very exciting. I, now I know why Buster recommended you.

Yeah. It's not yet as cool as Fruit Punch. I, I have to admit that guy is, that guy's going places. That's crazy. Well, he's got the cool name like Fruit puncher, you know, like Go Fruit punchers y you know, that's, that's easy to say and easy to remember. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so before we get into the rapid fire questions, anything else that you want the audience to know about Core Changemakers?

What I want the audience to know about Core Changemakers is maybe what I struggled with the most in life was my autism. I'm a certified autistic, and that always meant I never had a place where I felt at home, okay, to the level where even at university, I didn't really feel at home. So I started creating core, basically as a safe space as well for myself, what I love the most, which is my key achievement in core, which is not my achievement, but that of the community and the people that lead it.

Is that everyone can really be themselves, which is something that we all strive for, but are hardly ever found in any company, any place in society. The way it's here, when someone breaks their heart, because of a relationship going out, there's a three week period in which you have a vacation. There's people from the team that come and have walk with you to talk about it.

We come and bring ice cream and stuff like that. That's just part of the community rules by now, and that's just all funded by that whole. Community and partners as well. Something like that, that is in my eyes, the most LAR thing about Core. All right. All right. Hey, back to the autism thing real quick. Now autism could be a superpower as well, right?

I know, I know. I've heard autistic people say that sometimes when they're in a room with large people, it's too much. It, it, it's, they call it sensory or, or something like that, where it's just too much for them. But then I've heard other people with autism say, They have this ability to like, remember a lot of things or something like, you know, something like that.

Do you have any superpowers, Derek? That's what I'm getting at superpowers. I think what I, I definitely recognize all the, the, the bad symptoms about it. And I still struggle a lot with those, take a lot of energy. But what I also use as an artist, you're very good at seeing the structure and seeing rules.

So I applied that, seeing structural rules to social environments. So I really studied humans. That's how I went from a social to super social and able to be on a pitch and take crowd with me and, and be able to lead a community of over 50 students while being an artist and, and really hating one-on-one conversations or group conversations or any form of conversations because I applied my autism in a good way to be able to actually become super good at something that I'm super bad at.

Okay. Alright. Alright. And hey, any, any sort of, I, I guess. I guess there was really no, no grow tactics involved in this because obviously you had the students that were already there on the university, but were there any big hurdles in terms of getting companies on board and other professional speakers on board or, or just anybody else?

Like what was the biggest hurdle that you had growing this I. The biggest hurdle, I think, is that you have to choose for your community over choosing for a financially sound plan. So every time when you think like, okay, there's a giant business case there and a huge opportunity to spin off and become a big startup and, and go for the unicorn and everything, you would have to be like, no, calm down back to the community.

We need to build everything at the same speed as the community will cripple. Like the, the product will get there, but the community will get lost. Really positioning that and telling that to your stakeholders and shareholders and telling that to the market parties. That's the difficult part because then you're 21 sitting in a conversation and they're looking at you and be like, okay, but no one does this.

And be like, I know, but you gotta trust me because this work, this wealth, three months ago and three months from now will work again. I've no live experience, but still please trust me. Alright, all. Okay. And Dirk, we trust. Now it's time for rapid fire here. Just gimme the first answer that comes to your mind here.

You ready? Yes. Okay. Before you run for president, you must destroy all evidence of your involvement with blank. With blank. Definitely. My group chats with friends. Your, your which friends? My, my group chats that I have with all my friends. Wait, group chats. Okay. Okay. What is a favorite childhood toy that you played with Dar Legos?

I still do. What are you stubborn about, Dirk? Stubborn, about basically everything. Okay. What's a favorite TV show besides cars that you can watch? That you can watch again and again? Either Star Wars or friends. Okay. Okay. Alright, and let's see here. When you were a kid, you wanted to be blank when you grew up.

Soldier, a soldier. All right. All right. Okay. What is something weird that you obsess about? Something weird, obsess about, I dunno if it's weird, but obsess about my girlfriend for sure. And also I think the fact this company, the fact that I'm, I'm, I'm being here, like 24 7 is needed. Okay. Okay. Is she your wallpaper on your phone?

Yes, definitely. Okay. I, I, because if she wasn't, I'd be like, oh, you're probably not that obsessed. Okay. Okay. Last question for you. Their next startup. Your next startup will be blank. I won't do a next startup. Once I'm done with this. I will hopefully become a dad and then I'm gonna do a normal people job so I have time to be with my children and then all of the starts can do.

But all the other smart people that I, I've hopefully educated by then. But I'm just gonna retire from starting being gonna do a normal people job, and I'm gonna enjoy the fact that I have a beautiful girlfriend and then hopefully also beautiful children. All there. You heard it folks. That is Dirk Van Meir from Core Changemakers.

I'll put the link to the website in the, in the show notes. And Dirk, thanks so much for coming on. Innovators can laugh. You're very welcome. Thank you very much. I will see you next week, and this is Eric signing off. I had a great time chatting with Dirk. He has a tremendous positive attitude and outlook on life that is contagious.

Definitely someone I will stay in touch with and meet the next time I go to the Netherlands. If you wanna learn more about Dirk, go to core-changemakers.com. Links to all of this are on the show notes and on the I C O newsletter. Thank you to Dirk for being on the show, and if you like this episode, tell others about it.

Subscribe to the show on YouTube or Apple on Spotify. Thanks.