K: How and when did you decide to become your own b o s s? How did it happen and what choices did you make? What path has your career taken?
C: I am a trained hairdresser, 35 years old, and have been in the job for 17 years. Seven years ago, I started my own business. I always knew that if I stayed in this profession, being self-employed was the only option, so that I could feel free. Otherwise, I’d have chosen a different job. I wanted to start my own business before I was 30.
And that’s how it was: the older I got, and the more skilled I became, the harder it was to be told what to do and defer to someone. When I was an employee, my boss didn’t tell me how to cut hair, but really simple things bothered me, like having to ask if I could leave early because I’d saved up so much overtime. I wanted to plan my working hours as I saw fit. And wanted to earn more.
My sister and I were taught by our parents not to make ourselves dependent on men, and to do our own thing. In this regard, they were very supportive. My sister is four years older than me and was always one step ahead. She led the way. She set up her own business first, which spurred me to do the same. We spurred each other on and still do.
I didn’t always know that I wanted to go into hairdressing. In the beginning, I wanted to be a makeup artist and work in film and television. Back then, you first had to train as a hairdresser to become a makeup artist. After I completed my training, I did an internship at the theatre in Ulm. I was used to working independently as a hairdresser — advising my customers, discussing what they wanted and working out how to do it. No one stuck their nose in my work. But as a makeup artist, I suddenly had to carry out what others wanted — for example, the head makeup artist or the costume designers. I couldn’t deal with it. That’s when I realized it wasn’t my thing after all. When I was 21, I went on to do my master’s qualification as a hairdresser. My parents always said that if I took up a trade, I should reach the highest level of training possible. In my case, that was the German Meister level. So I did it. — Afterwards, at 23, I had a little midlife crisis. I didn’t know exactly where I was going. I’d managed to do everything except start my own business, which took another five years because I gradually had to build up my client pool first. Then when I was 28, I quit being employed.

K: You then went into business with a colleague, and you still run a hairdressing salon with her …
C: Exactly. We’re very different but we complement each other. We can always count on each other. Whether it’s good to set up a business with a partner depends on what kind of person you are. In a team, you sometimes have to put your wishes on the back burner so that you stay together on the same path. If you always try to get your own way, it can lead to stress. There are pros and cons either way.
But this way, I can go on holiday and leave work behind completely. If I were the only boss, I’d still have to check my emails regularly and be available. On the other hand, I’d be able to make decisions on my own.

K: Is there a difference between being a man or a woman when it comes to setting up a hairdressing business?
C: When a man sets up his own business, he gets more recognition. Women still have to do more to be their own bosses — they have to work harder. Male hairdressers are usually better at selling themselves, and so they’re more successful. Sometimes being a good hairdresser isn’t all that important to them. So I’d definitely say there’s a huge difference.
As women, we’re more likely to win people over with our skills. I can be loud and outspoken, and I like to have a laugh, but I don’t talk for the sake of talking. If I say something, there’s a reason for it. The men in my field tend to be showmen. They might give you an average haircut, but they sell it to you as if it’s the best haircut on earth. And their clients love that.
We women hairdressers know we’re good and don’t need to shout it from the rooftops. On the other hand, we also doubt ourselves more, that’s my feeling. Men sell themselves better and spur each other on. We women sometimes make ourselves smaller than we actually are.
Women could do more to support each other in general.
But I love my job. The nice thing about it is that I get immediate feedback. I see what I’ve made with my own hands. I’ve known many of my customers for years and having a good relationship with them is important to me. People sometimes tell you all kinds of things, so you have to keep a bit of a distance. Sometimes they dump all their problems on you — whether you like it or not. But to them, you’re a neutral person. That’s another nice part of my job — I play a role in the lives of many people and their families. I find out a lot about them and see them going through really drastic or special phases in their lives. I sometimes even help them make important decisions. Mostly, we talk at eye level, which broadens my horizons, and I learn new things.

K: Do you feel like you’re a boss?
C: When we had two employees, I felt more like a boss. Now it feels more like we’re two freelancers. — How does being a boss feel? How’s it supposed to feel? I’m definitely proud that I’ve been able to do this for seven years now. But I don’t have any illusions about being the boss and I don’t go around town with my nose stuck in the air. I don’t need outside validation because I own my business. Some people have to constantly tell you about it. I sometimes talk about it too because I’m happy to have this business . . . and somehow I do think of myself as a boss . . . It’s an attitude that some people give off and others don’t, and I think I do.
But I’d say I had to grow into the role. When I think about how the past seven years have changed me, I’d say I’ve become more confident. My work brings me into contact with a lot of men, i.e. male sales representatives. Over time, I’ve learned to speak my mind. In the beginning, I didn’t necessarily feel like I was being talked down to, but sometimes a sales representative would come in, and his attitude would be like, “Hey, I’m the big dude around here — look at me! — and I’m going to show you little hairdressers how it’s done.” Today I don’t let people get away with that kind of thing anymore — arrogant behaviour leaves me cold.

K: How many days do you work a week? In what kind of conditions?
C: I now work four days a week. But they’re very long days, so I can make up for the hours I miss on day five. My co-boss and I both have two days plus Sunday off. I either have Monday and Saturday off, then I’m in the salon all day from Tuesday to Friday. The following week, I have Wednesday and Thursday off and am in the salon on the other days — Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. This model works very well for both of us. When we’re here, we’re here. We have to deal with anything that comes up at work. When we’re away, we’re away.
It means I’m free to divide up my time the way I want. But then again, not really, because I can’t work from home, for example. For me, being at work always means having to be in the salon – after all, hairdressing is a service where you have to be physically close to people.
An important reason for me to go freelance was that I used to have to work every Saturday. My parents and sister would sometimes stand outside the salon where I worked, waiting for my shift to finish after they’d been for a stroll through town. Working Saturdays really annoyed me because it meant I had to give up many things. Today I only work every other Saturday. I have more free time and earn a bit more money by being my own boss. I can pursue my hobbies, too. To find a balance between work and my free time, I go dancing – I’ve been doing it since I was six. Or I go horseback riding or hiking in South Tyrol. Whatever I do, it’s always connected to nature or music. When I’m riding a horse, I have no mobile reception and can simply be myself — no makeup, no hairstyling. It’s a totally different world to my work life.
At the moment, I actually have to force myself to socialize. At work, I’m in contact with so many people every day that I often want to be my own in my free time. I’m a very empathic, sensitive person and after a week of work, my nervous system tells me I need a break. Socializing at work is very demanding. I like it, but it also uses up a lot of energy.
Is being your own boss compatible with having a family? Well, it actually holds me back because I’m a one-woman show. If I had a partner, he’d have to be the right one and if he wanted a family, he’d really have to commit to it because I couldn’t stay at home for two years. He’d have to be understanding about my working hours and everything that goes with it. — There’s no political support for this either. After all, you’d have to prepare yourself financially if you want to start a family or have children.
My nieces are very special to me, and my sister is the number one person in my life. She supports me in all kinds of ways and we’re constantly in contact about our businesses. I’m very happy she has two girls. It means I have already enough children in my life. I don’t need my own kids to be a happier or more satisfied person. That would be the wrong reason to have them anyway.

K: And now a more general question: do women get more done than men?
C: I feel that, in general, things are going backwards for women at the moment. More women are staying at home and their husbands go out to work full-time. My sister, who’s self-employed and has her own practice, said from the start that when she and her partner had children, they’d share the childcare equally, meaning 50-50. That’s rare. Generally speaking, I think that the achievements in the fight for equal rights for women are generally going backwards.
We take it for granted that we can decide what we do — whether we want to work or own a business. The generations before us protested on the streets for these things. My mother drummed it into me not to take this for granted — it was always very important to her. My grandma still had to ask her husband for permission to work.
When I get to know men, I always say what I think honestly and directly — a lot of men don’t like that I’m not a pushover. I would need a strong partner by my side, one who can stand up to me too, but also one who I can lean on, and who I can be myself with. But it has to be on an equal footing. I think I’m just too strong for a lot of men. Many men need a woman to look up to them, and maybe they’re scared or envious that I have my own business.

K: What’s your job? What kind of boss are you today and how did you end up where you are? What has been your career path?
M: I come from a family of entrepreneurs and I chose to do the opposite of what they did. So I studied philosophy and ended up in Berlin. I tried out a lot of different jobs and eventually fell into the startup scene.
That was when I was 30, and I realized for the first time that the business scene wasn’t at all dull. And I realized that there was another kind of business scene — one where people were trying to improve the world and create beautiful products, rather than just making a fast buck so that they could quickly get out again, or buy a yacht in Saint-Tropez. And this was the kind of business I liked, especially because it was much more mixed. There were lots more women working in it, and everything was more casual: people wore sneakers not suits, drank maté and had ping pong tables in their offices — I found all of this very attractive.
As a result, I decided I wanted to go into business after all and play a role in it. I wanted to found a company and hold a senior position, at least in a startup.
I did some research into how I could make it happen and looked at who was in senior positions, creating the products, earning the money and making the decisions. I found out these were investors, founders, and programmers who created the products. The products themselves were mostly technical and highly scalable. Suddenly the scene didn’t look very diverse: all of these people were men, almost 99 percent. There were also a few female founders, but they’d founded pantyhose or flower delivery startups or something similar.
Women tended to work in the background, as office managers, graphic designers or social media managers, doing jobs that were paid very precariously, even in the startup scene. So the people earning the money were almost all men. It really bothered me because I’d thought I’d discovered a new business scene, had been like, wow, great, it’s so much more diverse and completely different from the traditional business world I know from my family.

K: What’s the definition of a start-up?
M: A startup is a company with an innovative product that hasn’t been around for very long. I don’t have a startup, for example, my company is an agency. That means our business model is relatively standard — we might work on very innovative projects, but our business model is being paid to develop software. It’s a model that’s been around for a long time.
But if I have a specific product, for example, if I think up new software and sell it, it would be an innovative product and I’d be considered a startup. And people are interested in investing money in start-ups because if they’re a success, they can increase their investment tenfold.

K: How did you get to know the startup scene?
M: Back then, I was the head of a coworking space where a lot of startups were based. I worked there as an event and community manager, and I created networks. When a startup was looking for a programmer, for example, I spoke to the programmer on the second floor and asked if he could support them. When an investor told me that he wanted to invest in the real estate sector, I connected him with a start-up from that business sector.
I knew people and made sure they got to know each other. I still have many friends from that time. I enjoyed it because I was a kind of network hub. But the job didn’t pay much — quite the opposite, in fact. I was paid the same as someone who works in a restaurant. And that was exactly my background: I’d finished my degree in philosophy and then waited tables afterwards. I had absolutely no work experience. — But then I thought of something. What I was missing, what made me different from the people earning money in the startup scene, was tech know-how. And that’s exactly why there were so few women in the scene. Almost no women had tech skills combined with entrepreneurship. So I decided I wanted to acquire those skills and started teaching myself. While I was still doing my job as a coworking space manager, I did evening video courses in programming. Then I got some experience by setting up websites for artists, DJs and other people I was friends with. Next, I joined my father’s company because I could start there right away as a programmer without any kind of qualification. That’s why I came back to Hanover and moved back in with my parents when I was 31. It felt like the low point of my life at the time, but it was the launching pad for everything that happened afterwards. That’s what I was hoping would happen, but for a long time, it didn’t feel that way. I moved back into the house where I grew up. None of my friends lived there anymore. In Berlin, I’d lived in Prenzlauer Berg and had been invited to all kinds of parties and had a great network. I didn’t know anyone in Hanover anymore. No one at work took me seriously. I was the only woman in a development department of sixty men . . .
It took half a year before I was allowed to join them for lunch for the first time. No one believed I was capable of anything or understood who I was and what I wanted — I’d studied philosophy in Berlin! My colleagues had never seen a female programmer before. It was all very difficult for them to understand. — But still, I was in a privileged position. Without that help, I’d have had to do unpaid internships again. I hadn’t set any money aside. And so it was an opportunity.
In the evenings and at weekends, I worked towards a certificate in software engineering by distance programme. I had no local contacts anyway. All I did was work and study. When I was 33, back in 2017, I founded my agency. That was three years after I’d decided I wanted to work in tech and found a company. All on my own, I started developing apps. I set up my company remotely, with employees from different countries and travelled a lot myself. A week after founding my company, I moved to Vietnam and lived in Ho Chi Minh City for half a year. That was also part of my plan: I wanted to emigrate and take advantage of the fact that I could live more cheaply elsewhere with a nice climate and delicious food, and serve German customers. But I’d also just met my husband, who came to visit me there. I missed him so much. He didn’t want a long-distance relationship. I came back to Hanover for him and have been here ever since.

K.: You’ve lived in other countries and speak several languages, so you’re totally cosmopolitan and that’s probably also very important in your job.
M: In my twenties, I didn’t do much besides studying, travelling and learning languages. It was wonderful. I really enjoyed my studies. I always earned just enough to get by. But I didn’t save money or think about my future. It wasn’t until I was 30 that I asked myself how I could earn money easily and make a difference in the world. How could I straddle this divide? How could I manage to do that after living a wonderful life for ten years?

K: You develop software for your own apps. But do you also write software for companies, programme their websites and develop apps as a service provider?
M: Exactly, I’m mostly a service provider and develop mobile apps for other companies. But for a long time, I’ve been thinking about launching my own product. Once you’re in a position to do that, you can stop exchanging your work time for money. You only need to create something scalable and then you can sell it as often as you want. It’s like the difference between repairing shoes or designing a shoe, and selling it many times. The nice thing about software is that you don’t have to create it many times, just once, and then you can sell it as often as you want. We’ve now been developing a product like this over the last year and a half, a city app. Cities can buy the app once for a set price and then pay a monthly fee to use it. Via the app, the city can pass on information to its citizens, conduct surveys, and receive problem reports. It took a year and a half to develop, design, and so on. It’s been running on a trial basis since August, and has around 1,000 users every day, who we talk to, to improve the app. This phase costs money. Normally you look for investors at pitch events who pay for the development. But it’s not easy and I didn’t want to be dependent on someone again after having just set up my own business. That’s why I founded my own agency and also thought about the kind of product range we could build up. I financed the app myself because I was able to make a profit with the agency in the years before, and could invest it into product development.

K: This is a good segue into the next question: Do you feel like a boss?
M: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately because we have already felt the effects of the recession and I keep having to ask myself what I’ll do if this doesn’t work out in the long run. Will I start applying for jobs again? Or should I try to keep this company up and running, no matter what? Am I a businesswoman at heart, or is that something I could switch off again? It’s hard for me to answer, I don’t know. But I do know that I really love my freedom and would find it incredibly difficult to give it up. And I think that I do what I do pretty well most of the time.

K: So this is a question that pops up at least once in a while — Is this really me?
M: I find the word ‘boss’ problematic because it has to do with hierarchy. I would find it difficult to tell other people what to do. I tend to choose people for my company who work independently and have similar principles to mine. I guide them to concentrate our efforts effectively. I’d rather call myself an entrepreneur. At heart. Being an entrepreneur means being willing to take a risk — a calculated one, not a stupid one — to make a profit later on. I’ve lived my whole life as an entrepreneur, no matter if I decide to buy an apartment instead of renting, or think about how to maximize profits, or care for my future and that of my family. I think it’s anchored deep inside me. In every person, actually. You just have to bring it to life. I think every freelancer, self-employed person or artist is familiar with this responsibility.
But many people get stuck in the belief that they just have to be good enough at what they do, and then they’ll be able to sell themselves. They rarely get around to planning or investing money for their retirement. I know so many people — especially women in their mid-40s — who haven’t provided for themselves and are living precariously. It makes me sad because often, they’re very cool women. But if you’re a yoga teacher, it’s hard to earn enough so that you can put something aside. As a result many women tend to financially rely on, for example, their partners which is something I wish women wouldn’t do.
I don’t think women’s lack of consideration for how they’ll live in old age is down to naivety, but because they don’t realize that the model of exchanging time for money isn’t very profitable. As a freelancer, it’s very difficult to earn enough money to get by. Maybe it’s possible in the IT sector. But elsewhere, it’s difficult.

K: What qualities does it take to be a boss in your sector? Would you say that you had to try harder in your field than your male counterparts? Is there a gender bias in your industry?
M: The story of women in tech is more complicated. If you’re a regular guest on panel discussions, for instance, which I have been, then you initially enjoy a positive gender bias because you’re often the only woman in the room/ on stage. You receive requests for conferences, and clients and network people remember you well. At conferences, I’d often be surrounded by men in typical developer outfits, and I’d be the only woman in a light purple blazer and with platinum blonde hair. I was known all over the place. That definitely helped me.
After leaving school, I would never have dared study computer science. But after I graduated with a degree in philosophy and managed to do a few other things, I was sure I could do tech if I put my mind to it. A lot of women don’t get that far — they don’t consider going into tech. One thing that might help would be to offer more IT classes at schools so that young women have positive associations with it and say to themselves that they can do it, and maybe study computer science later on. Men often — of course, not always — overestimate themselves. They think they’re geniuses just because they’ve managed to hack an online game. It’s hard to talk about this topic without replicating gender biases. None of it is inherent in being a man or a woman, I think, but in the way we’re raised.

K: I was going to ask that.
M: Women quite often don’t dare to be entrepreneurs or go into tech jobs after school. They either need the relevant encouragement at school, to be introduced to role models, or be given opportunities to enter this sector from other fields later, so that more women are attracted to the tech business. Germany is at the bottom of the table. It’s quite a different story in other countries. So it has something to do with how our society thinks about women and these professions, and what our society does to create gender equity. Once you get into this industry as a woman, then people believe in you.
But this sector isn’t geared towards women because it’s almost exclusively shaped by men. It means that the few women who do work in tech often leave at the latest after they’ve had children. Because the tech sector doesn’t take women into account.

K: Does that mean more women need to join the tech sector for the industry to react to their needs?
M: Exactly. Also, the products created in the tech sector would also benefit from having women behind them because, so far, most of them have been created by men for men.
The current discussion is about how AI often replicates gender relations. For example, when you ask ChatGPT for an image of a woman in some profession or other, it always comes up with a picture of a woman who’s “hot”. That’s when you realize, ah, the data being fed into the model hasn’t taken into account that sexualization isn’t a factor.
I tried to create a photo of an older woman leading a younger woman through the jungle. It was supposed to be a metaphor in a LinkedIn post I wanted to make. It took me over half an hour to create an image because the data always wanted the younger woman to lead the older one. The nearest I could get to it was getting them to stand back-to-back. When I changed the prompt and introduced a man, though, it worked.

K: What was the picture being used for?
M: I was talking about how important it is to have an older mentor to get through the jungle of business life. I wanted to use a woman as an example, because why not? After all, I am talking about women.
However, it wasn’t possible to generate this image with AI because the programme didn’t link older women with leadership or survival skills. When you think of Crocodile Dundee, you obviously think of a man. These are small things that show that AI is being developed by companies that don’t take women into account. It’s typical of tech products. For example, when Apple Health came out in 2007, it was the innovation. Suddenly, you could use your mobile phone to track your health and measure everything that didn’t require a blood test. The only thing you couldn’t track on Apple Health was your period. Which is pretty much the most important thing for over half of the human race. It’s quite relevant for men, too, whether and when their wives or girlfriends get their periods. – It took a woman to develop an app that tracks periods, and to acquire an unbelievable number of users and earn a lot of money, for Apple Health to respond by saying, Oh, there’s a market too! These little things shape our digital lives. And our lives are becoming more and more digital, and the digital world is made by men. This has to change.
Of all the money invested in startups in Europe in recent years, only one per cent has been given to female teams, twelve per cent to mixed-gender teams and the rest — 87 per cent — has gone to all-male teams.

K: Why?
M: Basically, it’s closely related to the fact that we don’t have enough women in tech. Most investors who want to put money into startups tend to invest in their own gender. And most investors are men.
We need to break this cycle. We can’t do it just by regulating the system. Women also have to have the courage to go into this area of business. At the same time, things have to be changed systemically.

K: A very general question now: Would you say that women get more done than men? That women have to work harder than men?
M: I do think women work harder than men. I also believe that men often have more impact than women while doing less work than them, simply because they reject responsibility or ignore things that women don’t ignore. We learn to be polite and responsible, and we learn to take care of others right from the start. What I’m saying now is very simplistic, and doesn’t apply to everyone. But it’s harder for a woman not to answer an email, for example, than for a man. I’ve been training myself to do this for the last few months. I get an unbelievable number of requests for — often unpaid — events featuring “omen in power”. I’ve decided to do only five unpaid events a year. This year I started not to answer requests like these straight away like I did before. In these cases, I’d be contacted again two weeks later with a message like: You didn’t even respond to our email, we would love to have you as a spokesperson. Then I think, okay, I must take the time to explain why I don’t want to do it. — I think a lot of men would simply delete these kinds of mails and carry on. As a woman, you feel responsible — you want to be polite and explain yourself. Men are more likely to say: I don’t give a fuck. That’s why they can concentrate on the really relevant things, like how to increase sales, for example. This, in turn, is something that women find very difficult because they don’t want to get on anyone’s nerves and make cold calls or anything like that. That’s why I often see men working more effectively. Not because they’re smarter or work better, but because they work less responsibly or care less. They don’t have a problem bothering someone when they need something.

K: Should men conversely learn to take on more responsibility? For example, being given dolls to play with as children so that they learn to take care of their own children, if they have any, later on?
M: Yes, that’s another thing, of course: women entrepreneurs take on care work as well as caring for their businesses; if not for their children, then for their parents. Male entrepreneurs don’t usually do this, which means that female entrepreneurs are more likely to carry a double burden. Women actually work more, but they don’t necessarily create more value for their company. I think our economy would be better off if men were more empathetic and polite, and tried harder to be more loyal, etc. All of these attributes are more likely to be branded as female. At the same time, I think women must learn to give less fucks.

K: You also have a family with a child. Do you manage to divide things more fairly between you?
M: I’d say there hasn’t been a fair division of labour because my husband took on most of the care work. But we agreed that if we decide to have another child, which we’re not yet sure we will, then it’d be my turn. Only then will it be fairer.