Rebel Leaders: Let’s Start a Crush Movement

In this Talk Show, we talk with interesting guests about entrepreneurship, leadership, and feminine values, and also crush old myths.

But first, let's talk about who we are and why we became entrepreneurs.

Katja, how did you become an entrepreneur?

Katja: I’m from Finland, and I moved to the USA over twenty years ago. 

And at some point I realized I was a stay-at-home mom, I had three small children and all of my work experience and education were from Finland.   

I thought, I will never get a job, and I decided to start my first company. 

 Luckily there was a thing called the internet, so I started my first digital business already in 2004, and I have worked distantly mainly from home ever since. Mainly in the field of digital marketing. 

We moved often because of my husband's career. At first, I sold clothes in Finland on Huuto.net auction site, and I saved the money to start my first online store in the USA, and I imported Finnish products. That started my first eCommerce business. 

I started using social media really early on. Even during the time people didn’t even talk about blogs yet, I already had one where I collected pictures from my customers and posted them. 

I was an early adopter of using social media, and my own company gained so much visibility in social media, that at some point other companies started asking for my help. One of the first companies asking for my help was the largest company in the world, Walmart. 

That launched my consulting career, and I have done business and marketing consulting pretty much since 2008, mainly remotely, while taking care of the three children at home. 

What about you Anna? Share your path to entrepreneurship. 

Anna: I have been a much more cautious entrepreneur, and I have always heard horror stories about entrepreneurship. 

I am a child of the recession era, and during that time there was a saying “never become an entrepreneur, you will always work, you will work yourself to death, and you will never be able to take a vacation, you are married to the job". 

Somehow, I never thought that entrepreneurship was my thing, but then, on the other hand, when I was working, I noticed that I was interested in a little bit of everything, and I bounced from position to position.

I've always done something related to marketing, but I've been on the sales side or organizing events, been on the media side, and most recently in a big corporation producing an event for entrepreneurs. 

Through that, I got to learn more about entrepreneurship, and I realized that I must have been a difficult employee because I have been the one who questions and asks "why can't we do this in another way, and I think there would be a faster way to do this".

I like to take the reins and do things efficiently, but that is not always a good thing or a characteristic that is sought after in every organization.

 When I was working with entrepreneurs, I got the feeling that maybe that could be my thing. But I had no idea what I could start doing. There wasn't a single thing or skill I was good at.

Then I attended a startup event and I met a woman. She was a startup founder, and I thought she was a wonderful person. We joked that, for once, there was an event where there were really short queues in the women's bathroom. She told me she wished there was a community for women entrepreneurs, where you could really talk about business and help each other, talk about money. And talk about how to get investments, how to grow your company, and not just about making crafts like dish rags and Christmas cards.

This stuck out to me. So she meant that many times women think that "well, I'll just turn my hobby into a business" and the business might be really small, even though her ambition level is much higher. 

Dish rags and Christmas cards stayed with me. 

I thought that maybe with my experience in marketing and organizing events, my strength could be that I bring entrepreneurs together, and that's where the idea of ​​Female Founders Finland came from. 

Of course, in the beginning, I had this kind of impostor syndrome, that I was organizing events for entrepreneurs without being an entrepreneur myself. I acknowledged it right away at the first event and said I was going to fix this. At the same time, I thought that when you surround yourself with the kind of people you want to become, you will become that too. And that's what happened to me, now I'm an entrepreneur.

How did you two start working together? 

Katja called Anna all of a sudden.

"Hi, I'm Katja, and did you know that we do a bit of the same thing?"

Anna just answered that “I didn’t know, but let's talk more.”

We too often put ourselves in a competitive position, and we think that we are competing against something. But the fact that we were doing something very similar and we both wanted to support women entrepreneurs, we had similar goals.

We have always believed in the power of working together. 

We could both be here doing this alone, but the message that we are working together has much more power.

Why did you decided to start Crush and what it is?

Katja: For me, this already started with writing the book Big Rich Money and, for example, talking about money, talking about success. 

I interviewed a lot of women and many even said that "I don’t want to be successful". Or that "I don't want to make a lot of money, I have other important values ​​in my life". 

I think this was somehow really sad. First of all, the fact is that with the help of money we are able to do a lot of good in the world, money in itself is not a bad thing.

And then secondly, we ourselves can define what success means to us. So these were among the topics I wanted to start crushing.

Another thing is that the world has been dominated by masculine energy for a long time. That relates to how money or success and other things are defined. The definitions are really masculine and I think we need more feminine energy in the world. We need feminine values ​​to come out better. 

 At the moment, there is already a lot of talk about soft skills and feminine values ​​and skills. Men also talk about these exact same things. We wanted to start crushing these patriarchal norms and promote feminine and soft values. Through them, we are able to do so much more good in the world, both for people and for the earth.

What is Crush?

Anna: We don’t think that this is just a Talk Show, or a Podcast, or a single big Crush Event, but we wanted to create a Movement from this, i.e. a continuum. For me, the reason for starting this was that even though many things are talked about, they should be discussed more honestly and openly.

I think one good example is pay equality, which still hasn't been realized. The Equality Act has been in force for 30-40 years, but we still have inexplicable wage differences. There are many things like this that have already been identified, but some may still not exist in reality - but how could we speed up change in these issues?

I think it is important to promote values ​​like empathy and listening. As you’ve said, it's a bit like they laughed at a while ago, but now suddenly soft values ​​are starting to be on the agenda of even big corporations: how to communicate better, how to take into account the general well-being of employees, and how to bring empathy into working life. These are definitely what we also want to discuss within the framework of Crush.

Katja: Exactly. In reference to that, I used to speak at conferences about how to build communities for companies and brands.

Often community building and social media were seen as a bit of a "women's thing" and not that important. But as soon as I started to point out that, hey, actually when brands and companies start focusing on building communities and being more empathetic, it also affects the financial bottom line. 

Unfortunately, on the other hand, it wasn’t until you started talking about money that people started listening. I also started thinking that’s OK, let's talk about money then, if it's a topic that can make good things happen for everyone. I am glad that the world has changed so much in these ten years that now it is, fortunately, starting to be talked about. But we still have a lot of work to do on this matter. 

Anna: A funny example of this: although everyone knows today that you can make money and support yourself by being an influencer on social media, but why are the influencers still belittled, even though they've made a career out of content creation? It’s quite silly. 

Tell more about plans for Crush.

We have big plans for 2023 as well, we are going to organize a big event and there, in addition to us and our wonderful guests, different thought leaders will be able to voice their thoughts. There will be networking and inspiration, and really interesting discussions.

At this point, we would like to invite you to join us in the Crush Movement.

Read more on our website crushmovement.com and we really hope you like and share our talk show episodes on social media.

Comment your thoughts, we would like to hear from you. 

MORE ABOUT CRUSH MOVEMENT

Movement for new rebel leaders.

Crush Movement was founded by Anna Pyykkö and Katja Presnal. Crush Movement brings thought-leaders together to redefine what success means today. Together we crush the patriarchic norms, and build a better future by empowering feminine energy and soft values. Together, we will change the world through female entrepreneurship.

Crush Movement was filmed at the Wolttigroup Studio in Helsinki. Wolttigroup is the most reliable emotion agency in the world and most awarded event agency in Finland. They evoke emotions through events and encounters, and get their clients fired up. Emotions lead to results.