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No career plan. But a pattern: say what you want out loud, and then pay the bill that comes with it.
I am Kevin van Grondelle, commercial strategist and founder of STS Strategy. Below are the three moments that set the direction. If you would rather know what I do for your company, start at who you get at the table or at fractional and interim.
And then had to deliver on. Each of the three cost something, and each of the three decided where I stand now.
“I have never done it, so I think I can.”
I came in as the youngest at the table and immediately set up the Venue Partnerships department. Colleagues called me the bull in the china shop back then, and they were right.
I have never regretted it. Broken china brings luck, as long as somebody is willing to sweep it up once. That is exactly what an organisation has to arrange if it wants anything new to happen.
“I want to be commercial director before I turn thirty.”
I said that out loud to the two founders years earlier. The title itself meant little to me. The point was to pin myself to something I could no longer walk away from.
CBDO from September 2022, CCO in late 2023, at twenty-nine. What I took from it is the lesson underneath: if you do not say what you want, it never happens.
“Growth rarely fails on ideas. Almost always on confusion.”
With Muriël Labahn I led the commercial strategy and pre-opening of a five-star safari lodge in South Africa. Different sector, different continent, the same pattern: the strategy was right, the team understood it, and nothing moved until somebody chose.
Then STS Strategy, in November 2025. Clarity is the one thing I consistently add value on, so I built my practice around it.
Every figure and outcome sits with source and context on the cases page.
Elsewhere on this site
You describe where you stand. I keep asking until the real question surfaces. Then we pick the format that fits, or I tell you I am not the right person. No prep needed.