Press: Ladies Drive interview

I was recently interviewed for Ladies Drive, a business magazine geared towards career women. The article is titled "Live Your Dream" and is a portrait of three women from very different backgrounds and walks of life who have made their dream their reality.

I love this article for a few reasons. For one, it's not specifically about Youtubers and how much we earn, which seems to be the repeating trend with these types of articles (not that I'm not grateful for the press, I am, but it just gets a bit dull.) More so it's about how women can empower themselves to make the most out of their lives, and have their careers go in a completely different direction than anticipated.

I enjoyed reading about the two other protagonists, one is a Tibetan women who was born in Switzerland and worked for 20 years as a financial advisor in a bank, then turned to Tibetan folk singing. The other is about a woman who discovered meditation upon visiting an Ashram in India, and decided to enter a career as a meditation coach. Lastly the article also talks about myself, who started off as a Political Science graduate and suddenly rediscovered myself as a beauty blogger.

Here is the article in full in German, click on full size images to read the text.

Some excerpts I've translated to English:

What experiences have shaped you the most as a person?

 After I graduated from high school and before going to university in Canada I traveled around the world for two years, earned my own money. This really changed me. I became more accustomed to taking risks. Lots of things happen when you travel on your own. This unknown factor to experience something totally new definitely shaped who I am today. Beauty isn't everything to me. I guess it's also quite a contrast to what I do on my channel.

Are you happy and proud of your "pioneer" work on Youtube? 

I'm super happy about everything! I put a lot of work into my videos, I pour my heart and soul into them. My videos can be pretty elaborate to make. Sometimes a 5-minute video is actually a result of 10 or more hours of work. I'm proud of that. If you do something with love and passion, it's a very rewarding experience. It's nearly a full time job by now, I work part-time. Especially answering comments and such on Facebook and Twitter takes lots of time. But that's a part of the whole Youtube experience and I love getting feedback from my viewers. My subscribers know I'm available to them. Of course I don't get paid for that but I enjoy it. It's hard to get back to everybody though because by now I have so many fans who ask questions.

How can we imagine your work environment?

I do everything myself, I'm completely a one-woman show. I record the videos myself, I do all the editing, cutting, photography, and respond to comments myself. The advantage is you have complete creative control and I don't have to share my earnings with a production team. Some Youtubers are doing it that way now but for me it's out of the question right now. I think these kind of videos don't look natural anymore, they just come across as commercials. I don't want that for my channel. I like how personable my videos are and that I can be creative. 

What is your vision of beauty?

Well, there's a really traditional picture of how women should do their makeup - very neutral and toned down, and it should be done to appear attractive to men. What a load of crock! I think each person should present themselves as they wish, and not care so much about what others might think. I don't like these traditional stereotypes at all. As a Blogger I try to present a variety of looks so that everyone might find something they like, regardless of their taste.

Do you think people stereotype you?

I think some people probably think, "Oh she's just another one of those shallow makeup girls, she just cares about what she looks like, what an airhead." I think it's dumb to stereotype people like that. This isn't the only important thing in my life. There's a lot of really young girls nowadays on Youtube who also make makeup tutorials for school makeup and things like that. But just looking pretty isn't going to get you very far in life! Makeup is fun and it's a creative outlet for me, but it's not the most important thing in life to just be beautiful.

How important is it for you to be able to "live your dream"?

Very important! I love what I do, but I haven't set everything in stone for my future. I just try things out and see if it works. In the beginning, I didn't earn a single penny doing this. When the Youtube Partner program started I had no idea where it would take me. But my goal isn't to be super rich, I'm not like that. I know in what direction I want to go but you never know where life will take you. Especially since the Internet is very volatile - what's hip and cool now might be out already next week.

Thank you to Sandra Triebl for the interview!

To see more Press about me, click here.