EP 1: Founding a GbR and Landing work with German Brands on Instagram with Emilia Puentes

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Emilia Puentes is a stop motion and paper artist originally from Wisconsin.  Emilia co-owns  Pairem with her business partner, Natalie, the brand director who takes care of all things marketing for Pairem. Pairem creates eye-catching visuals with the magic of stop motion and paper animation.

EPISODE 1 SHOW NOTES

When I came across Emilia’s work I was immediately impressed. I reached out to her and we got to know eachother, meeting eachother for the first time in person at A Creative Morning event here in Munich.

I had a million questions for her both as a fellow creative and as an expat business owner in Germany.

We covered a lot of ground in this first episode of the podcast, including:

  • How she saw a work opportunity for her husband as an opportunity for her to to freelance full time
  • Her approach to sharing her work on IG and getting noticed and work large brands
  • Selling and pricing creative rights to brands
  • Online courses that helped with the business side of running a creative enterprise
  • How she invested time and money to build a body of work even while living in AirBnB’s and hotel rooms so she had something to pitch
  • How LinkedIn is in some ways better than IG for her visual business
  • A tangent on LinkedIn in Germany
  • Working permission with a Blue Card visa
  • How often she had to pitch to get her first two German projects
  • How feeling isolated as an expat lead her to her business partner
  • The process and services they used to start their GbR (and what that even is) as well as what it cost
  • Making creative and artistic decisions around the kind of work she really feels passionate about (paper vs. product stop motion)
  • The clever productized offering Pairem created for brands
  • The power of networking
  • The challenge around selling B2C products within Europe

Also, I finally learned the correct way to pronounce ‘Cricut’ while we dug into some creative shop talk.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Rachel Ryle

Colette Perry

Happy Brush

Firma.de

Sorted.de

Cricut

Munich Creative Business Week

Where to find Emilia and Pairem

Pairem.co
Instagram
Emilia on LinkedIn