Who is Freek Minderman?

To start off my personal website I would like to properly introduce myself. I have been telling a lot of stories of my experiences throughout the years, but I have never put these into written down words. Imagine having to tell your own biography almost on a daily basis, wondering if there isn’t a faster way to just export it and have the other party consume it. I found a way:

My name is Freek Minderman and I am a self thought Growth Hacker and Marketeer. I do have a lot of other hats I have been wearing over the years, but these are the primary ones right now. As a child I have always been interested in solving problems in a quick and practical way. One of the embarrassing video’s shown on birthdays was of me trying to pick up bricks as a two-year-old and move them to another location. So you see me in my overalls getting in a squat position, falling over and still picking up the brick while in sitting on my bum. To make matters worse, I tried to lift the brick from my sitting position, to a squatting position, to finally stand up and carry it to the location a couple of meters further. The amount of wheezes coming from me in the video entertained my family for years, but – looking back on it – you can see the perseverance and changes I made in the way I handled carrying those heavy stone blocks every new trip. You could see me think of more effective ways of doing the same thing over and over again.

Freek vs The Music Industry

Twelve years after the notorious video of me and the bricks, I had a new goal. I was fourteen years old and I wanted to start a record label. I made a website (and a PHP forum attached to it) with the help of an old classmate and started getting artists together on Hyves and PP2G, which were the biggest social websites in The Netherlands at the time. I even managed to get a couple if artists with reasonable amount of following to get behind my dream of MATCH Records. The people at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce were thinking otherwise, because I didn’t reach my eighteenth birthday yet. I had to let a couple of artists down, but one of them still had faith in me. We both have Polish roots and great self awareness, which translated in a work ethic that might be typical for Polish stereotypes. His name was MC Polski, but we later changed that to Mr Polska. A young rapper of the same age from Overvecht in Utrecht, The Netherlands. As the conversations on MSN breached sunrises, the dynamic changed. I wasn’t just a rapper (a title I dropped after just 2 recorded songs) with a dream of owning a record label, but someone who managed an artist. And I did what I thought – at the time – a manager should do.

After countless chats about Mr Polska’s branding, we settled with the fact that a hint of Polish accent, stereotypical drinking and work related subjects would be a good addition to his image. I contacted a random website designer and created the worst website ever to promote Dominik’s first breakthrough EP. I added his bank details on the website to transfer €7,50 directly to his account to get a physical CD and e-mailed Aldi Netherlands for a sponsorship. Luckily they were sympathetic towards two young people with a dream and granted us €100 and a case of energy drinks to get their bag on the cover of the EP. We bought a printer that printed directly on blank CD’s and started selling. “De Voorbereiding EP” was a succes. Not only due to the way Mr Polska’s image connected to the public, but also the refreshing sounds of the productions by a young producer based in Gorinchem called Boaz van de Beatz. Even the music video for “Wie is Polski?“, which I directed with Eddie the camera man, got a spot on the then top-tier Dutch Hip-Hop website 101Barz.

Freek vs Education

While my pseudo-professional career was lifting off into the stratosphere, my education suffered. I didn’t feel like putting in work for information I wouldn’t need in the future. So I flunked badly and had to do a year over, in which I chose to go a tier lower in education and aced the easier exams with flying colors. At the age of 18 I thought I had to go to Art School (HKU in Utrecht) to stay in my desired trajectory, but I found out building websites and animation wasn’t something I really felt comfortable with doing for the rest of my life. Needless to say I kept doing a lot of branding and PR for Mr Polska and Boaz van de Beatz, who set up a friend group with rappers Stepherd, Tiny (who later became Jebroer) and Digitzz. The group that later became ‘Nouveau Riche Music’. One of the press releases I wrote got picked up by an online Dutch Hip-Hop Magazine called State Magazine and got me a job at BNN, the Dutch rebellious TV broadcaster. Through them I have worked for ‘101Barz’, ‘101TV’ and ‘Spuiten & Slikken op Reis’. It even opened doors to get my friends “Studio Sessions” which culminated in national fame and my bald head on the internet forever.

I decided to go to InHolland University and study International Communication Management. During this study I started working with Mr Polska on just his online presence, while his record label and manager did the rest surrounding his career. His shot to fame got him a place in the Dutch version of Survivor: Expeditie Robinson. He came to me because he felt like his grasp on his followers weakened. So I – and my old pre-UniBody MacBook Pro from 2007 – got to work and created content during the episodes of the show. I’ll make this into a more in-depth story. The project got traction and got noticed by Dutch broadcaster RTL. In school I had constant arguments with my teachers. Not because I didn’t believe their succes stories, but because the way they labeled social media as “not something we could make money off” (while I already did at the time) and “a tool you can buy followers for”. I remember vividly that during one of our projects another group passed by saying they’d buy a million followers on Facebook for €1000 to make their music festival a success. As you can read, it still bothers me to this day. Needless to say, it wasn’t for me. The course got scrapped while we still needed to graduate due to a whistleblower classmate.

Freek vs Companies

After a great campaign for Mr Polska’s 2015 album “$noller” I felt like my time with him was done. I went for my first real job at a BeNeLux PR agency, where I immediately started as a medior Online Advisor for all of the sub-brands. I’ve worked on internal presentations, but also for pitches for Turkish Airlines, LG, Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle to name a few. The fit didn’t feel right, so I went to work for Cloud 9 Music, where I pitched a rebrand to get their brands under one umbrella and later left for Ace Agency, the booking agency for International DJ’s, where I was also responsible for the online branding of Wiwek. In 2017 I had a fall out with an artist I was working for as a ‘professional catfish’ and decided to do my magic tricks for companies. In my mind artists are innovative companies, that need to be the first at anything to be better than their competition, because the second artist to try the same will be a rip-off. That’s the mentality I brought to companies. I later found out, that those ideas arose from the fact I could naturally relate with the target audience. I read data as people and find their quirks, so I can find a way to connect. It’s the skillset I gathered over the years that makes it possible to transform that connection into a communication- and/or marketing plan.

Freek vs The Future

My eyes are on innovation and the changing way people can operate the fast moving technology. I don’t think we should be afraid to be without a job because of AI, but you need to be willing to change your perspective and approach to your old ways to adapt. If you don’t adapt to the environment, you’ll get eaten or replaced by a Gen Z’er that grew up adapting to what was new in tech. I want to teach people to relax some more and get in touch with their intuition when it comes to marketing and communication, because I see a lot of generics being shared online by ‘guru’s’, which will never stand out to become the incredible impactful projects you would like to be part of. But most of all: I want to help companies, artists and whoever else to become what they want to be. Through growth, connection and authenticity. If you made it this far and you still have questions: Feel free to contact me.