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Interview with Anja - founder of @call.me.the.pauli

· Food Blogger,nutrition,Healthy Eating

We’ve been following Anja’s @call.me.the.pauli journey on instagram for a while and were so excited to see her recently join the women entrepreneurs tribe!
This woman with a sparkling warm-hearted personality has been able to grow her private food diary into an amazing business that helps women to easily take care of their nutrition while being busy with their jobs and families by providing them clean meal preps.
Anja’s project #paulikocht has been launched in the end of 2016 and is already skyrocketing, her social media accounts exploding, and the ball of entrepreneurial turmoil quickly rolling .
Read Anja’s inspiring story in her interview to @ichselbstaendig in the next posts.

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@ichselbstaendig: What inspired you to start your instagram around healthy food and have you expected it to grow so huge?

 

Anja: I startet my account in may 2015 - as a private food diary. The first months it was not even public 😊. But it went boring, because no one commented or reacted on my pictures....and I saw other accounts, which I followed, grow and develop a community....so I decided to change into a public account.
I can remember how I celebrated the first 100 followers...I couldn't believe my eyes... strangers were interested in my food (I only posted what I ate every day)....and the community started growing...not fast, but continuously....and suddenly in 2016 there were 10000....and in the meantime I had TWO fulltime-jobs at the same time...

 

@ichselbstaendig: You are now taking a plunge into entrepreneurship - congrats! Can you tell us a bit about your project?

 

Anja: Paulikocht is a company that will help modern, busy, fulltime-working women who are on a diet or live consequently after a nutritional plan and train regularly by delivering clean mealpreps. But since it isn't that easy to startup so quickly in the foodsector without an own production facility, I also develop foodblogger-activity-addons (I actually don't know how to call this properly 😆 ) - so I released an online-offline-advent calendar for Instagram-Foodies. Besides my blog on the website and my instagram profile I also launched a Facebook-Profile and I'm working on other social media products with a high added value for Instagram-foodbloggers.

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@ichselbstaendig: Was it a hard step to quit your full time job in order to start your own business? Would you recommend it to others and at what circumstances?

 

Anja: As I'm not 20 anymore (I happen to be 37) it was very difficult on the one hand and quite easy on the other. I left a very good position - where I was chief of 25 employees - to build a startup in a totally different field of profession. To resign from a safe job with a quite good salary is not that easy, when you already have a higher standard of living, then a recently graduated student. But on the other hand I have gained many years of leadership-experience.
Of course I have been scared to death - but I believe if I wouldn't have been - my goals hadn't been big enough.
There are no circumstances which I would call the perfect requirement for taking a plunge into the uncertainty of entrepreneurship, BUT a burning heart and mind!!
I have read a hundred times you should save at least as much money to survive 6 month without any income, BEFORE you start...but I think that's the reason why so many good ideas are still only written down on scribbling pads, than brought to life.
In my opinion the only thing you need is the support of the people you love - my husband and my family always supported my idea and without them I wouldn't be able to live my dreams.
You know what my grandma said, when I told her about my plans? She said: Well - you cannot fall from the ground...so seriously - what could happen?
She is absolutely right. I can return into my profession in a heartbeat....whenever I need to or am running out of money....

 

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@ichselbstaendig: What would you advise to other girls considering to start their own project (online or offline) but hesitating for various reasons?

 

Anja: Hesitating is not a bad thing. Those who do - should ask themselves what they would need to at last take the chance.....What's still missing?
The questions you should most importantly and carefully answer, before you decide to start your own project is: Who are your customers? And what kind of value proposition offers your product them?
Besides that, you MUST start to develop your own personality to become an entrepreneur. And I believe, that entrepreneurship also means management.
So...making plans and building canvases is a good idea, but you still have to DO it. Because entrepreneurship is DOING IT and building a startup won't happen by making perfect plans for the next 3 or 30 years. 😊

 

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