Hans van de Rakt

founder of the Business Hippie Club, quality of life thinker, QOL Tour explorer

Who I am

I am Hans van de Rakt – a 65-year-young Dutchman living on Ibiza. A writer, thinker, and someone who got tired of the wrong answers.

For over three decades I worked at the intersection of business, human behaviour, and one question that refused to leave me alone: what actually makes life good? Not on paper. Not in theory. In the actual lived experience of real people.

Most people ask that question quietly and move on. I decided to make it my life’s work.

At an age when most people slow down, I am doing the opposite. Not out of restlessness – out of conviction. Life has a way of making things clearer the longer you live it. What once felt like detours turned out to be the route.

How I got here

It started with a simple question. I launched a national survey asking people what comes first – happiness or success? The answers were revealing. So I took the question outside.

I spent two months cycling across the Netherlands – alone – talking to many people about what their ideal world would look like. This Utopia Challenge on the road with all it’s conversations changed something. They made clear that the question I had been circling my whole career had a name: quality of life.

That journey became the seed for the Quality of Life Tour. A long-term journey through cities and communities across Europe, observing how daily life is actually experienced. Not from conference rooms or data dashboards. From streets, terraces, neighbourhood cafés, and honest conversations with people living under real pressure.

Ibiza. Lisbon. Bologna, Rome, Barcelona, Athens and beyond. Each stop produces field observations, reports, and insights that address the structural tensions hiding beneath the surface of modern life.

I am 65. I travel through cities alone, talk to strangers, and build a body of serious work from what I find. Nobody does this at my age. That is exactly why I do it – and exactly why it means something.

What I believe

Quality of life is the most underused lens in business, policy, and daily decision-making.

Most systems are optimised for output, growth, and efficiency. These things have value. But they tell us very little about whether the people inside those systems are actually living well.

The problem is not effort. It is the goal.

I have learned this through work, through failure, through reinvention – through the kind of crossroads that teach you more than any classroom ever could. Clarity about what truly matters comes slowly. And most people already sense what is missing. They just lack a language for it, or permission (from whom?) to take it seriously.

That is what I offer. A clear lens. A different question. And the lived experience to know the difference between what looks good and what actually is.

Surface and reality are not the same. A city can look thriving while people struggle to stay. A business can grow while the people inside lose energy. A life can look complete while something essential is quietly missing.

When quality of life becomes the compass, the decisions change. That is what Business Hippie Club is built around. And that is what I have dedicated this chapter of my life to – with everything I have.

Work with Hans

I speak, advise, and collaborate with people and organisations who take this seriously.

Speaking — keynotes, panels, roundtables, and conversations on quality of life, modern success, conscious leadership, and livable cities.

Guidance — private advisory for founders, leaders, and organisations at a crossroads. A thinking partner with decades of lived experience and a clear lens.

Sponsorship and collaboration — for brands, cities, and initiatives that want quality of life to play a more serious and impactful role in what they do and how they tell their story.

If something here resonates, the best next step is a conversation.