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Pauliina Stranius is a prominent social media influencer and travel blogger who is originally from Finland but currently based in Spain. Her main goal in life is to inspire and encourage people to live the life of their dreams and she does this by sharing her travel experiences and her sense of style, as well as giving people a sneak peek into her healthy lifestyle.
Starting a blog has always been one of her biggest dreams for quite some time. In 2016, after working for around 15 years in the health care sector and the travel industry, she decided to pursue her dreams and start her very own blog. The year 2016 was actually a turning point in her life. In the same year, her father passed away, she broke up from a relationship, and she lost her job at the same time. As a consequence, she was both broke and broken financially and mentally so she was forced to reconsider her life. Until then, she had been working in the travel business as a flight attendant and in the health care sector as a registered nurse, but she just didn’t see herself in a nine-to-five job anymore. She was fascinated by successful bloggers who have become influencers, and she wanted to know how they’ve gotten to where they are.
After coming across a talk by Tony Robbins, she felt energized and she never felt more alive. She began to read more about dreams and freedom, and she also wanted to know more about living a financially-free life. That’s when she started to re-evaluate what she really wanted to do with her life. And what she eventually figured out was that she wants to travel, share her experiences to inspire other people, and she also wanted to set an example on how to live the life of your dreams. Her true passion is to endlessly explore new places in the world and to take other people on a journey with her.
Fast forward to today and Pauliina is now a successful social media influencer and travel blogger who has thousands of followers all over the world. She’s a boss babe world traveler who inspires thousands of women to build wealth and pursue their dreams in style. StarCentral Magazine recently caught up with Pauliina to discuss her journey to success and here’s what went down:
What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your business?
The world has changed a lot recently, and I am using this time as an opportunity to grow my business and capitalize on the great work I have already done. Being involved in the luxury travel market, seeing lots of great hotels and spa’s around the world – I saw the opportunity to show some of the great healthy habits I have seen and formed in various luxurious resorts. Health is the new wealth and I’ve got some more great things to be announced soon.
What social media platforms do you usually use to increase your brand’s awareness?
Instagram mainly as it has really taken the world by storm, enabling people like myself to access a large audience, and quickly. Many brands are also having massive success – I love to have the opportunity to post great content so easily and effectively. Facebook was the first one that I used and I feel it has become a fragmented platform, people do not trust it so much since it seems to have a lot of restrictions. I also use LinkedIn to professionally network with my clients and to post professional and business content.
What is your experience with paid advertising?
I have had a mixed experience as all people do I think. There is a place for it and it does work for some clients if they apply the right strategy and budget for the right campaign.
What is your main tactic when it comes to making more people aware of your brand and engaging your customers?
By creating quality videos and posting great pictures plus creating stories relevant to my brand – this formed a great synergy with my audience.
What form of marketing has worked well for your brand throughout the years?
The best one is referrals and word of mouth, but you cannot single one method out – you have to try different ways and systems to gather data and results.
What is the toughest decision you had to make in the last few months?
To have the courage to continue my work following COVID 19 and to restructure my direction into health and wellbeing with my current work. This was hard but the world has changed forever and I feel that we have to adapt to this new environment. We want to ensure that all business activities continue to survive even during this uncertain climate and we need to also figure out how it will all work out in the future. At the moment, there hasn’t been much activity in the workforce because of the pandemic so there’s a big increase in online activity.
What money mistakes have you made along the way that others can learn from (or something you’d do differently)?
Always save for a rainy day – short and simple. But you never know what is around the corner; saving a little every day will help you massively in the future. It’s easy to make money mistakes without planning so you need to structure your spending and really determine what you use your cash for.
What new business would you love to start?
An eco-building that would be a hub for new entrepreneurs. This would provide creative space for people to network and provide services to other people. These desk spaces will give a new cutting edge to co-working but then this idea would be more of a challenge now following COVID19 restrictions. I would relish this challenge which could be very rewarding.
If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what would you do differently?
I would not change anything as I believe everything happens for a reason so we should learn from our mistakes. Accepting these mistakes and learning from them is very important when it comes to building businesses.
What is the best advice you have ever been given?
Well that is a tough one but I would say it’s this: “be yourself at all times and always just try to be a better version of yourself every day and the rest will fall into place.“
What advice would you give to a newbie Entrepreneur setting up their first business?
To always work alongside smart, uplifting, and motivating people. Entrepreneurship is not an easy road and you will learn many skills along the way. I have had to change a lot of habits and get really organised. This has given me confidence and taken me out of my comfort zone. I have traveled to so many places after making my choice to be free and independent. Enjoy the journey and be patient with your results. It is not an easy road but very rewarding after you’ve gained momentum. Most importantly, learn how to manage your cash flow.
Jason Harris
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