About
Me

It was the fault of my Tupperware sales rep
In 1999, my Tupperware sales rep mentioned several times that she had a friend who owned a typing office and was looking for “nimble fingers”.

I took the offer.

I could teach my bosses a thing or two

I quickly realized that transcribing spoken word was my thing. At previous jobs, I had already been eager to take over dictation tasks. It was a particular pleasure for me to argue with my bosses about “correct spelling”. I almost always “won”. And during those discussions, I grew more and more confident, despite the fact that I was discussing with superiors. Just because you’re the boss doesn’t automatically mean that you’re always right.

Now texts became more and more interesting to me. I had the chance to listen to texts from a variety of different areas and I fervently followed the words and opinions from the different fields.

For one year, I did that next to my main job. Special thanks go out to my ex-husband whom I worked for at the time, for tolerating me pursuing my new passion during regular working hours.

I focused on my own projects

More than once I felt disturbed when the phone rang, or he had a business-related question. It was much more important to me to complete my own projects. NO other employer would have tolerated that.

Inevitably, I got the urge to generate my own clients and so I put more and more time and effort into getting my service out there.

My vision was growing

I had a vision that wanted to be put into practice. Before my inner eye, I saw an open-plan office with countless desks and employees eagerly typing non-stop. I didn’t want to achieve any less than that!!!

Growth

Today I have a workforce of around 80 nimble hands. Granted, it’s not an open-plan office, but that’s not necessary.

After countless emails, I managed to win over my first client. That was in 2001, and the numbers of regular clients was consistently increasing.

In 2011, I received an enquiry from one of my clients asking if we (by now I had a freelance employee) could also do direct translations. That became my next challenge. Incidentally, I had a skilled employee who was very excited about this new task.

It’s not a job, it’s my vocation

I always learn new things and opinions from people whom I would have never met and whose impressions and views I would have never experienced had it not been for this “job”. I’m reluctant to call it a “job” even. I am grateful for having been able to do what I’m most passionate about for 21 years now. And one shouldn’t forget that it’s not just a desk job anymore. Nowadays, my main task is to be a problem-solver.

I know that – and that makes me proud –there are many people who turn to me when they don’t see any other solution. I can often tell that people have this “She will fix it. She can do it” feeling when they come to me. Of course I often thought to myself: “Why am I not their first choice?” That way, it wouldn’t have become that urgent and we could have saved our clients a lot of stress. 

Last-minute… but that’s how I grew stronger

But with such „last-minute projects “, I could usually build a regular cooperation because my clients learned that they could trust me from the start and wouldn’t have to worry about their projects anymore. They placed the order and received their product.

I’m proud of the fact that there were only very few times in all those years in which we couldn’t meet the deadline, and even that always happened within a certain tolerance limit so that these delays didn’t have major consequences for the clients.

That is the most important thing about a cooperation, that our clients know with absolute certainty that their job is in good hands.