Simon de Raadt – Success in Small Business Comes from a Clear Structure

With a background in Business Economics, IT, and Logistics, Simon de Raadt has been living in Asia since 2011. He is now Managing Partner of MAiNS International, Co-Founder of DigiDutch, and investor in Cross-Border solutions. He helps companies understand the whole supply chain, from beginning to end, so that they can add more value in that supply chain. The starting point of his entrepreneurial success in China has been building an outbound mail solution for one of his customers from scratch. This led him into various businesses related to inbound trading.   “Be more flexible and accepting of whatever comes on the way. It might not go as planned. But you know, that’s part of the journey.” Simon de Raadt   Worst investment ever His heart has always been in China Simon had always dreamt of living and working in China. While still working a corporate job, he went to China, and the country completely stole his heart. While on holiday, he decided to look for a job. He was fortunate to get one in no time. Becoming a small business owner in a foreign country In just six months, Simon found himself jobless. The company he was working for closed down. He knew he was meant to stay in China, so he put on a brave face and started job hunting again. Simon tapped into his networks, and soon enough, he got introduced to someone at  MAiNS International, where he went on to become a co-founder. Starting from scratch When Simon joined MAiNS International, the existing business was all gone. It was now just him and his Chinese partner, and they had to start from scratch. Given that it was just the two of them, Simon and his partner ignored lots of business frameworks and just focused on growing their business. Hiring people the old school way In about a year or so, Simon’s business had taken ground and was recruiting people, and suddenly the company had 12 people. While the growth was good, Simon and his partner were hiring all these people, not because there were positions to be filled as there were no existing jobs. Jobs were created and filled based on opportunity. They had no structured way of recruitment. In came the chaos With no formal work structures, chaos hit the company. People were working independently with no clear vision. Everyone was on their own little island, and this started affecting the business. While everyone was hard at work, running in different directions was hurting the business’s bottom line. Most of Simon’s best employees left the company as they no longer saw the company’s vision. This was a huge blow on Simon as these were people he had fought for to get them to work for him, he’d groomed them and worked hard to get them excited. Simon realized that his worst investment was not investing