Meet Hannah Venema

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hannah Venema a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hannah, so many exciting things to discuss, we can’t wait. Thanks for joining us and we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with our readers. So, maybe we can start by discussing optimism and where your optimism comes from?

I owe a lot of my optimism to doing the work with therapy, sobriety and connecting with my community. Through all of that, I have learned that it’s a lot more work and stress to worry and question your self worth than to just see situations through. I feel that there is always a lesson to learn and that it’s happening for a reason so you might as well grow through the experiences rather than dread them.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a trailblazer! I focused on my passions during Covid lockdown and saw how happy they made me, resulting in deciding to pursue a business in them. I have my Bachelors in Fine Arts Painting and a background in hands on home repairs and renovations. I created my business three days after deciding not to go back to my former desk job and have been going full speed ever since. I specialize in residential wallpaper installation and interior painting, but can also offer other odds and ends needs such as lighting installation, switching out door handles, flat pack furniture assembly and more.

I love meeting and connecting with the community in a way that allows me to be of service to them. I really enjoy problem solving on their home projects and being inspired by all the new trends, products and designs.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

It’s hard for me to choose a few areas of life that have been most impactful since I truly feel that my career now has been a culmination of every experience in my life. Everything from growing up working in my family’s small hardware store and seeing my dad own his own business, to going to art college and refining all my hands on skills there, to working in many different settings including retail management, working in a paint store, and then doing the accounting at a commercial photographic and wallpaper printing company.

Somethings that I have learned to be important qualities since starting my business have been: being a good listener – it’s important to hear your clients out fully and not talk over them to help build an open and trusting relationship; patience – installing wallpaper requires a lot of patience to get the pattern right and not waste any expensive product and time; and saying “no” to projects you don’t feel confident in achieving to their best outcome – there are a lot of things that I will try out and do in my own home, but I would not do in others. It’s important to have the knowledge and experience but it doesn’t make you an expert and I don’t want to offer services that I am not an expert in. Results matter.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

My number one obstacle over this past year has been social media. I don’t feel like a content creator, nor do I want to be one necessarily, I just like doing the actual jobs, but I know that I should be posting more than I do. Social media can be a huge help to aid in spreading the work you do and be a marketing tool, but it’s hard for me to sit down and spend additional time on the computer or phone creating stories of my days. After leaving my desk job, I fear ever ending up back at one, so creating posts is one aspect that I really don’t enjoy doing but I know that people really love seeing transformations as much as I do. I would like to try and tighten up my posting schedule for this year.

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Image Credits

Brittany Renee

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