Hazekamp Marketing: A Story About Starting Over

If you'd asked me a year ago where I'd be today, I don't think I would have guessed "running my own marketing business." Like many of life's biggest adventures, this one didn't begin with a carefully crafted business plan. It began with a leap of faith.

Last fall, my husband and I packed up our lives in the United States and moved to the Netherlands. It was a dream we'd been building toward for years. My husband is Dutch, and after a few years of living together in the U.S., we decided it was time to make the move and establish ourselves here.

Moving abroad sounds romantic (and in many ways, it has been), but it was also one of the hardest things we've ever done. We left behind our jobs, sold or donated about 95% of our belongings, packed up our pets, and started over in a new country.

This photo was from our yard sale at our old home in Charlottesville, VA. We sold or gave away the vast majority of our possessions.

For a while, everything felt uncertain. Before I could even begin looking for work, we had to navigate immigration and residency. Once my residence permit was approved earlier this year, I threw myself into the job search. I spent months polishing applications, tailoring cover letters, networking, and interviewing whenever I could.

The reality was that breaking into a new country's job market wasn't easy. While I brought more than a decade of marketing and communications experience, I was competing in a market where many roles expected Dutch fluency or global communications experience that I was still building.

After enough applications, I found myself asking a different question. What if I stopped waiting for someone else to give me an opportunity and created one instead?

I'd flirted with entrepreneurship before. I'd helped friends with marketing projects, built résumés on the side, and always imagined that someday I'd work for myself. But "someday" always felt comfortably far away.

Moving to the Netherlands unexpectedly gave me something I hadn't had in years: space. Space to explore. Space to travel. Space to meet people. Space to learn about Dutch history and culture. Space to connect with other internationals who have taken the leap to start businesses here.

We enjoyed our first holiday season in the Netherlands.

Koda and Brindle, our favorite Christmas dogs.

It was lovely to receive a Christmas card from loved ones in the States.

We loved visiting cities at Christmastime to see festive lights.

Somewhere between coffee chats, networking events, and conversations with fellow entrepreneurs, the idea stopped feeling impossible. It started feeling... meant to be.

Around the same time, I became involved with the Hague Humanity Hub. I had the opportunity to meet people working every day to advance peace, justice, humanitarian aid, and social impact around the world. Their passion was contagious. Listening to their stories reminded me why I'd spent so much of my own career working with mission-driven organizations. I realized I didn't have to change who I was or what I cared about. I could build a business around it.

That realization didn't magically erase the imposter syndrome. There were plenty of moments where I wondered if I was qualified enough, experienced enough, or brave enough to do this. Starting a business has a funny way of making you question everything you know.

But every time doubt crept in, I reminded myself of something simple: I've done this work before. I've helped a food bank raise enough money to provide more than a million meals to neighbors. I've built campaigns promoting new events from scratch. I've redesigned websites, written countless stories, managed communications during crises, launched fundraising campaigns, and helped organizations connect people to causes that matter.

Why shouldn't I believe I could do it for my own clients?

Building Hazekamp Marketing became an exercise in betting on myself. The business plan came first, and I'm grateful to my dad for helping me think through what kind of business I wanted to build—not just one that could succeed financially, but one that reflected my values and the value I bring to clients.

Then came the branding. People often ask about my logo, and it's probably my favorite part of the entire project. "Hazekamp" roughly translates from Dutch to "hare field," so the rabbit ears felt like the perfect symbol. They're a small tribute to my husband and my Dutch family, who welcomed me with open arms and gave me a soft place to land as I built a new life here.

The brand for Hazekamp Marketing is a reflection of me, my family, and my values.

The colors—teal, blue, and purple—weren't chosen because they were trending. They're simply colors that have always felt like me: calm, hopeful, and confident.

And the words throughout my website? Those come from somewhere even deeper. Helping people. Telling stories. Moving people to action. Those aren't marketing buzzwords. They're values I learned growing up. My parents taught me the importance of serving others, and my family nurtured my love of storytelling. I wanted my business to reflect that from the very beginning.

Once the branding was in place, building the website came almost effortlessly. After choosing Wix, the words poured onto the page. Ironically, writing about my own work turned out to be easier than I'd expected. The hardest part wasn't writing; it was looking back. As I built my portfolio, I sifted through hundreds of projects spanning more than a decade of campaigns, websites, publications, social media, fundraising, public relations, and storytelling. It became an unexpected reminder of just how much experience I'd accumulated along the way.

The finishing touches were less glamorous but just as important: optimizing for search engines, improving accessibility, and recruiting a few wonderful volunteers to help QA every page before launch.

Now that the website is live, I'm incredibly proud of what I've built, not because it's perfect, but because it's honest. Hazekamp Marketing isn't just a business. It's the result of choosing courage over certainty. It's proof that sometimes starting over creates opportunities you never would have found otherwise.

Most of all, it's a reminder to myself that the things we spend years encouraging our clients to do—to tell their stories, to trust their expertise, to put themselves out into the world—are things we have to practice ourselves.

This business is my way of doing exactly that.

I'm excited to see where this journey leads, and I'm grateful you've found your way here.

Welcome to Hazekamp Marketing.