Since i do a lot of business coaching of inspiring entrepreneurs and have a lot of focus on how to create a sustainable lifestyle and business for yourself, I decided to do a new storyline around inspiring entrepreneurs. What they all have in common is the need for living wholehearted and creating a lifestyle which works around themselves and their need to balance their creativity, business and personal life.
This time I went online and had a chat with the inspiring entrepreneur Hannah Krutmann (@Hannah_lagom), who’s living in Berlin, where I soon will move to. Hannah is such an inspiring soul, joggling everything she´s fascinated by from; her own business, her own magazine and her love for oils. Sit down with a coffee and enjoy this interview and some inspiration from a great role model, when it comes to living life in an authentic and more soft way.
Hello Hannah, can you tell me a bit about yourself and your thoughts of being your own boss?
Thanks so much, Cille, for having me here on your interview series. I am co-founder of the 70s inspired print magazine Almost 30 and ALMOST, a storytelling agency with no-bullshit approach. I also write as a freelance editor about fashion, interior and modern spirituality and give talks and workshops as an essential oils mentor. I’m a trained massage therapist, Reiki Master and fashion scholar.
I’ve been my own boss for 2,5 years now and I love it. To work for myself was a decision I took during a creative burn-out after years in the fast fashion industry and it felt pretty scary at that time. Instead of saving up for the worst case scenario I got myself an old VW bus (called Penny Lane), which I converted into a camper van, adopted my rescue dog Olav and acted as a very compassionate boss to myself for the first year.
For a few month now, I share most of my work decisions and responsibilities with my sister Marie, who’s the other co-founder of ALMOST Agentur and editor-in-chief at the magazine. This is honestly the prefect set-up for me, to have no one tell me what to do but always have a strong partner in crime by my side. I do sometimes find it hard to find the right amount of working on the scale of procrastination to total self-exploitation but it’s getting better with time. Although I’ve always been quite keen to pleasing others and doing “the right” thing, I seem to have a rebel-gene somewhere that never made it easy for me to deal with authorities. Working in the roles as a freelancer or consultant now gives me the chance to see eye to eye to the people I work for/with, which changes everything for me. Open communication and genuine interest makes it so much easier to let my creativity flow and bring playfulness into my work.
Doing PR is much more than making strategies, it’s a way of living and the feeling of being interested in other peoples stories. Can you tell me a bit about your relationship with words and story telling and why you founded Almost and Almost Magazine?
I have been fascinated by all kinds of stories as long as I can think and wanted to always embody and feel them as deeply as possible. From acting as the characters of my favourite Astrid Lindgren stories as a kid to dressing up as characters from fashion magazines or movies in my teenage years, which is probably why I ended up studying fashion theory, exploring sartorial expression and lifestyles as means of communication and a play on identity.
For me good PR means telling honest stories in all the languages at hand: visually, emotionally, in written and spoken word and especially in the way you relate to others and the world around you. Often PR is misunderstood as the part of Marketing that focusses on journalists but the way I see it, it is a lot more.
I realised that especially when we launched Almost 30 Magazine, where we did not have any advertising budget and yet press was featuring us. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying press shouldn’t be compensated - not at all actually, knowing that side too well myself, I think a lot needs to happen there - but it was proof to me that an honest story, honest emotions communicated in words and images are what matters to be considered relevant.
And what also showed, was that it is the relationships and the way you communicate with people that matter. Almost 30 Magazine developed very organically out of my almost 30th birthday party and has been an amazing journey so far. What I thought were my personal fears, worries and problems turned out to be shared by so many others, who could relate to the content of the magazine, became contributors and supporters and that’s all just because we found the words to put these feelings in writing.
Words are so incredibly powerful, which is, I guess, why we often don’t dare to say them out loud, because they can hurt or get us hurt, but they can also heal. I think there are such great ways of communication from photography, illustration, music and dance to fashion, but words don’t only stand for themselves, they also connect us to each other and support all the other forms of communication. With the magazine, I feel like we’ve done everything differently from what we learned and this is what makes the magazine and the community around it so special. It’s based on vulnerability. As for ALMOST Agentur, our credo is: no bullshit today, no bullshit tomorrow and that’s what we stick to. It was a logical and emotional decision to found the agency to create stories and communication concepts for likeminded brands in the way we do to for our own magazine. We care about the brands and projects we work with a lot and see it as our mission to tell each individual story in the way that fits best.
I know creativity can change over time and as a creative soul you can have lots of interest. What is the center of your creativity these days and what are you up to?
So true. I can sometimes get really frustrated with myself when I witness my creativity shifting to a new project or form of expression, because the lazy cat in me always wants me to stay put and simply enjoy what I have. After all it’s what I always wanted - at some point. But I am getting more and more compassionate with the part of me that keeps wanting to transform and more curious in a way. Also, I decided to stop judging myself for changing focus from time to time and rather see the connection between the things I do. A big topic in my work with Almost 30 magazine, my spiritual writing and my essential oils work has been the topic of "emotional nudity". Currently, I am working on two other big projects with my sister and I’d say the connecting topic is "empowerment and sisterhood". I hate when people ask me what my job title is because I don’t have a word (yet?) that grasps it. So in the meantime, I dedicate my work to purposes like "empowerment and sisterhood" instead of job titles. Unfortunately, I can’t say much more about those upcoming projects yet, but at the core of them, it’s all about words again - written and spoken ones.
Theres a lot of talk around “The new normal”, what have Covid 19 done for you and your business and which learnings are you taking with you into the new reality?
I am definitely not a fan of this “new normal” expression, probably because it frustrates me that how things were before was considered “normal”. So much of what has been coming to the surface in the past months - and currently continues to in the world, in public, in families, in work relations and within ourselves - are loudly screaming hints, that everything was not “normal” before. We just didn’t want to see it or deal with it, because we love the the feeling of “normality”, safety and control.
As uncomfortable as I find the feelings of not knowing, uncertainty, grief, anxiety, helplessness, loneliness and sadness myself, they can be very grounding and transformational and teach us to let go of the unnecessary and decide what really matters to us. My past months have not been a piece of cake financially, emotionally or relationship wise and yet, I know that I am still in a very very privileged position. It’s tricky to answer this question as it is important to me to neither deny how unbearable theses past months must have been for many people, nor do I want to give a hippie-speech on embracing crisis as a chance and come across as anyone promoting spiritual bypassing.
I do want to say though, that for some of us this year can be a moment to catch a glimpse at what yin energy in the world might actually feel like. Qualities of waiting, caring about each other, compassion, letting go of control, slowing down and reconsidering our values and purpose in life, job and relationships.
Having my personal values and purpose more in order, is definitely something I take into my professional life. The other thing I saw again in this time is that creativity is not a luxury add-on to make campaigns or products more colourful, it is an essential to give us a feeling of security when we realise that structures can easily fall apart within a few days. Creativity gives you the strength to react from a place of empowerment, to adjust to new situations and find solutions that are actually right for you. Creativity means freedom.
Last but not least, I realised again how important our relationships and communication are. With ALMOST we kicked-off a portrait series called #TOGETHERindependent at the beginning of the lock-down, in which we feature different independent labels and creatives to support each other, listen to one another and strengthen the network, which also helps us all to feel more secure because we know we are not alone in this. We are still releasing interviews every week:
https://www.almostagentur.com/zine
You are a very inspiring leader, what do you think defines the new soft definition of being a leader and how can we take vulnerability and empathy into our work?
I think we’ve all been craving equality and authenticity for quite a while now and unfortunately it’s still a long way to go. I admire everyone who’s fighting for it in the big and small spectrum, we all need to play a role on this. There’s so much that still needs to change but a very good way to make a start is in the way we lead. It is scary to make yourself vulnerable and dare to meet people at eye level because it actually requires you also to know your own boundaries and to constantly call yourself out when you tap back into old patterns.
So basically it means having actual caring relationships with the people you work with and with yourself. Learning to actually allow your emotions a role in your work is a first step. Getting to know them, seeing how they can work with you and not over-identifying with them is a next. The cool thing, if you sign up for this job, is not any life-long security but you most likely sign up for a community that has your back. Having likeminded people around you that support you, mirror you when needed and honestly discuss challenges with you, is all you need to do this. The patriarchal PR team has done a great job forcing intuition, sisterhood and emotions out of anything work related but that shouldn’t stop us to rebrand them and invite them back in. It’s the perfect time to reclaim them.
If you could give aspiring entrepreneurs an advice, what would it be?
I feel like Pinterest is full of good advice about, how growth is always outside your comfort zone and how it’s worse to regret not having taken a chance than regretting having done something, but to me that all never really helped to get me to dare things.
What helps me though is thinking of the worst case scenario (scary thought for all the "think-positive-spiritual-bypassers”, I know) and then playing out what empowering story I could make out of that. This mental game usually helps me to get over my fear because either way will be ok - it even happens sometimes that I get disappointed if everything works out like plan, because no one is ever going to hear the brilliant story I created around the “failure”.
This thought experiment also helps me to rarely feel embarrassed or regret anything, which is a good base to cultivate compassion and vulnerability with yourself. You can try this with really small situations, like giving a note with your phone number to a crush. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Your crush never calls? Well it’s quite likely a brave story, that your crush will tell their friends, so why shouldn’t you too? It was a brave, self-empowering and bold act of you - no matter the outcome. Just own your story, whatever story you write.
Wanna know more about Hannah go to https://www.almostagentur.com or @Hannah_lagom
