Text and photo: Taneli Rantala
As an eight-year-old, Susanna Nousiainen was given a task: draw your future in a bookmark. Susanna complied and drew a beach, palm trees, and a painting.
As an adult, Susanna pondered wanting a job she could do from home. When drawing merged with a master’s degree from the textile art program at the University of Arts, Nousiainen began designing surface patterns primarily for foreign clients, mostly from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The bookmark became a reality: Susanna moved to Spain in pursuit of a more comfortable climate and the seaside.
In the early 2010s, Susanna became one of the first digital nomads — before that term even existed and before working with a laptop around the world became fashionable. There were plenty of clients and Susanna spent much of her time in Spain. A few years ago, Susanna packed her laptop into a van and set out to tour Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.
Now the road has brought her back to Finland for at least a couple of years. “When you’ve been on the road for ten years, you can say you’ve seen it. I’m not yearning to go back yet,” Susanna says.
Core competence is no longer enough
Things have also changed, especially in her own field. “When I started, I was a pioneer. Now I have to update my skills again to stay at the forefront,” Susanna says. Competition in the textile industry has intensified, and nowadays, students in the field often work already alongside their studies. “Previously, clients were divided among a smaller group of experts,” Susanna says. “Nowadays, clients are scattered among an increasingly wider range of entrepreneurs.”
Skills outside of core competence are nowadays even more important for an entrepreneur. “These days you have to know a lot of things,” Susanna says. “My intention is to continue entrepreneurship on the side and study more for example 3D animation, which is nowadays being taught in the textile industry schools even at the basic level.”
Susanna started in the Volume! program in early 2023. “The best part of Volume! has been the discussions with other entrepreneurs in my field,” Susanna says. “After returning to Finland, I have found new connections and tapped into the mindset of how things are perceived here.”
Although the digital nomad has temporarily settled in Finland, nothing is ruled out. “I still have that bookmark.”
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Empowering Solo Entrepreneurs through Volume!
The Volume! – Empowering Solo Entrepreneurs through Global Readiness -program offers free higher education in creative industries’ business and entrepreneurship, group consultations, workshops, and networking for solo entrepreneurs. We are publishing a series of entrepreneur stories from solo entrepreneurs participating in Volume.
The program is open until the end of 2024, running programs in both Finnish and English.
Learn more and sign up here: https://www.creve.fi/en/training-programs/
The Volume project is funded by the Continuous Learning and Employment Service Center, SECLE. The project is implemented by Humak / Creative Industry Business Service Creve from 1st January 2023 to 28th February 2025.
