Clarify your ideas. Build for impact. Claim your dream.

6 week-program of learning experiences giving you clarity – designed to change your career and make you feel alive again. 

Time is your most scarce resource. Make it count!

Join the Idea Shapers Discovery challenge to STOP you from:

✔ Feeling directionless and overwhelmed with so many different ideas and unclear dreams in your head   

✔ Procrastinating to launch your dream business, because there are still missing pieces you are looking for to figure out what you want to do

✔ Keeping yourself small and not claiming your full potential 

Get crystal clear on how you can use your different ideas, talents and interests to create a business concept that is a full expression of you. And that your clients will love. 

What is the Idea Shapers Discovery Challenge?

An experimental program set over a period of 4 weeks, designed to help you figure out what you want and pivot your career. 

Each week – on a weeknight, together with a group of likeminded professionals, you will get live interactive workshops, coaching and practical challenges to help you further in the realisation of your ideal business concept. 

The first two weeks are dedicated to clarify your values, ideas and direction. The remaining weeks are all about getting you the startup skills and curiosity mindset to define your business concept and testing this with the market.

Immerse yourself into an adventure in the unknown, bond with likeminded people and have fun while taking ownership to make your career pivot happen for real.

What does the program look like?

Step 1. Your story

Your life story contains the answers to figuring out your zone of genius. By looking back at your different experiences you will be able to connect the dots and find direction for the future. 

Clarity about your talents, skills and values.

Clarity about your unique added value.

 

Step 2. Your business concept

Get clarity on how to transform your story and added value into a business by focusing on your clients.

Who is your ideal client?

What problems are you solving?

How will you solve their problems?

Step 3. Experiment and test 

Learn tactics how to validate your business concept on the market and get input from real clients. Create a roadmap to make your business come alive. 

Test if your solution solves your clients’ problems.

Create a roadmap to validate your business concept.

How does the approach work?

Clarity means power. Action provides answers.

This is not like the usual or standard career coaching or business creation program. We combine effective career crafting methods with proven lean start up tactics. Mixed together in the form of fun challenges to help you get results quickly.

No endless hours of talking. We believe that the answers you need come from taking actions and running experiments. We also believe that passions are found in experiences. In either past experiences or new ones. Through the different discovery challenges you will get full clarity what your passions are and how to combine them with your talents and mission to make a business out of it.

For who is the Discovery Challenge?

Professionals who have multiple passions, ideas, skills and “un-figured out” dreams.

Also called generalists, jack-of-all-trades, multi-passionates, career hoppers or passion seekers. Experienced professionals and freelancers who operate as a specialist in one particular field and feel there is more to it.

We work with:

– Professionals who had a few jobs or career changes already and are still looking for their ideal combination of passions and talents to kickstart their entrepreneurial journey. Backgrounds vary from marketing, hr, finance, creative agencies and more.

– Freelancers in the knowledge and creative industries who are looking to bring the spark back into their business.

– Typical age group: 28-40 years old from all kind of nationalities. 

Who is the lead trainer?

The lead trainer is the creator of Idea Shapers, Melanie van der Storm.

Nice to meet you here! I am a multi-passionate at heart. I worked for over 8 years as a Marketing team lead in different companies and locations like Madrid, Malaga, London and Kuala Lumpur.

In 2016 I moved to Amsterdam and pivoted my career to become an Innovation Freelancer to help companies launch new services in the market using design thinking and lean startup methods. I also work as a facilitator and trainer, clarity coach, event organiser and entrepreneur, speaking of multi-passionates.

During my career, people often came to me for direction and strategies to figure out what to do next in their career. To help more people solving this problem I am now dedicated to transform the way we shape our careers and help people find their unique added value. I experienced that combining career hacking methods with design thinking methods achieves answers and clarity quicker than the usual career coaching methods. I work with a team of innovators and modern career coaches to create the most effective discovery programs. 

What do others say about Idea Shapers?

Smart people with big dreams are usually the ones who struggle the most to achieve their goals because they get overwhelmed with all the details and the complexity involved in running a successful project.

However, if you are committed to achieving your vision and you are up for a challenge, I suggest you reach out to Melanie for fast and measurable results.

Cristian Fontanelli

Wealth Strategist

I would recommend Idea Shapers to anyone who, like me, is struggeling with focus and has many ideas but also for those who are looking for a new way in live that brings them joy and uses their potential. 

Melanie helped me to give shape to my business ideas. Through visualizing personal values ​​and goals I learned in which way I come to full advantage of my potential. Melanie made this very insightful, using illustrations and mind mapping, and it surprised me how she was able to complete me whenever I was a bit confused.

One of the most important surprising insights is that it’s okay if I work on several projects at the same time. As a multi-passionate – a term previously unknown to me – you are at your best if you can let your creativity run free and you stay sharp by constantly challenging yourself with variety.

I found this very surprising given that I was always under the assumption that it is better to focus on one project, while I had great difficulty with this and therefore had to constantly constrain my creativity. 

Jana Voyvodich

Freelance writer and Model