When I started the Skimbaco blog in June 2007, my first post was titled "Officially blogging - Our Cinderella story".It went something like this.

Skimbaco is an extension of our lifestyle.The name comes from a Finnish word “skimba”, which means downhill skiing, and “co” is for Colorado. And even though “skiing in Colorado” is just one fun thing to do with the family, we picked that for the name, since we happened to live in Durango, Colorado, at the moment.“Whale watching in Cape Cod” might have done it for us, or “shopping in NYC”, or “castle-hopping in Germany”.I guess you could say that we are those crazy people who never wanna grow up, life is a big adventure for us. It doesn’t mean that we don’t take responsibility, oh, we do. But we just like to enjoy life, see the world, and have some fun together and with our kids.It all started ten years ago when our worlds collided. I’m from Finland, and Matt is from Austin, Texas, so it must have been destiny.By the time I was 22, I had had my own radio show (only with a two-week contract, but who’s counting). Danced in the theater. Traveled around Finland as a PR person for the biggest phone company in Finland. Met Eileen Ford, and worked as a runway model. Studied Mechanical Engineering majoring in Production Management at a technical college. I had a job doing marketing for a big Entertainment Arena.There were a few things that I wanted to do in life, so I had started early.Matt, on the other hand, had only one thing he really wanted to do: fly.So he joined the Army to learn to fly. The Army sent Matt to Korea, and then luckily to Germany, where we met in an Irish Pub in Frankfurt am Main, and knew it instantly that our lives had changed forever.On the first date, Matt took me for a drive in the German countryside to see a castle. On a second date, I moved in with him. On the third day, I introduced him to my aunt, the only family I had in the country.Two weeks later, we were already planning how we could spend our lives together, and a week later, Matt had to fly back to the US to start his flight school.It was like a Hollywood movie, it was saying goodbyes at international airports, European train stations, and Army hangars. Sending overseas love letters, spending all the money on international phone calls… and having all your friends call you crazy. But we did it.We got married ten months after we had met. No, we didn’t have the Cinderella wedding, we got married at a courthouse, on Matt’s lunch break from flight school.I had a white dress, he looked handsome in his dress uniform, and the courthouse was packed with his flight school class, all wearing their flight uniforms. Very Top Gun.And who cares about the wedding, I got The One. After Matt got “his wings,” we headed back to Europe.We had three kids in three years. In three different countries. Matt got out of the Army, flew for TV for a while. We got a taste of corporate America. Didn’t like it. I wanted to do things that made us happy every day, so we moved to the Rockies.Matt saves people from the mountains with his helicopter, and I started Skimbaco to spread some sunshine to children’s lives. I love spoiling my kids, so I thought, why not make a cool shopping destination where other people can find things for their kids too? I am a jet-setting world traveler. I am a marketing-loving businesswoman. I am a cinnamon-bun-baking housewife. I am a “let’s-jump-some-more-on-the-couch-kids”-mother.

Our nomadic lifestyle of moving for jobs and building an online business while living it, wasn't really a thing in 2007, and yet I had already done it for years before even launching Skimbaco.It is even wilder to think what all happened after I published the first post. And second, and third, and at some point, there were over 2000 blog posts. And over 100,000 social media posts, and lots of life experiences I never imagined experiencing.I knew in 2007 that bringing my voice behind the online store was a way to stand out from large companies, and building a community around the store was the best way to market. Social media was "free", and back in 2007, I didn't know any other online store owners on Twitter, so it was also easy to stand out.I had been blogging only for a month when the first company sent me free products to post about. The company was Converse.A year later, I had created my first viral campaign that had expanded its way from blogs and social media to even some mainstream media. I had started the blog to promote my store, but it didn't take me long to figure out that blogging itself could become a business, and even got me to close the store and focus fully on content creation and marketing consulting.It was a weird year, 2008. It was when everything blew up for me professionally, but it was also the year we lost a baby, our dog died, I almost died, and we moved from Colorado to New York. I want to keep these things in mind when I now focus on growing Crush Movement. We are always full human beings, not just professionals, founders, or leaders. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, wives. We are parents, siblings, kids, and spouses. We have dreams that are beyond Q3 metrics.For the longest time, I kept the professional marketing strategist Katja and the lifestyle influencer Katja as separate people.I would be speaking at marketing conferences about social media marketing or designing campaigns for the largest brands in the world, and hiring hundreds of social media influencers to post about chocolate. And the following week, I was among the bloggers, test-driving the new Mercedes-Benz in a glamping resort in Montana and posting about it. I lived one life at my blog, another one on Twitter. And yet, I was always just me.For the longest time, I also didn't know which life I wanted. Did I want to be the Katja winning American Advertising Awards and pitching other influencers to be on the Today Show? Or did I want to be the Katja invited to the Academy Awards and posting about hotel openings in Bali?I don't know if I still do. I think it ebbs and flows. Both were amazing, until they weren't anymore.Our life took us from New York to a three-year commission in Sweden, where I grew Skimbaco Lifestyle to its heights, writing more about traveling, our international lifestyle, and my Instagram account started getting noticed and featured even in places like Elle Asia magazine. I was more often at the Amsterdam airport, transferring flights, than downtown Linköping, enjoying life in Sweden.

Making Dreams Come True to Not Dreaming Anymore

Something happened during the last year in Sweden that to this day I haven't been able to fully recover or to share online, and made me question wanting to be visible in any shape or form. Something died inside me, and it has been fighting to come alive for the past 11 years. In my mind, I also blamed having Skimbaco, being an influencer, and going after my dreams for what happened.There have been numerous days I've longed for the life I had, but to be honest, it's not the travels, free products, or likes; it's more the influencer community of bold people shaping their own success, and it's the excitement and almost like a high that I got when building a brand new industry, and building Skimbaco.I've been looking for the same community and excitement for years, and I've done it by working with innovative startups (astronaut training app, media for better indoor air, events about textile technologies, web3 social media, SAAS marketing and many more). And little by little, making myself smaller, more invisible, and just wanting to push other people to reach their dreams. Ironic that my clients called me the CEO whisperer."What about Skimbaco?" has been the question I have asked myself for years.I founded Crush Movement three years ago, and this May (2025), I spoke at my own conference for the first time alone on the stage. I asked what is now "my community" to raise their hands - how many knew what Skimbaco was. Almost two hundred women sat in the audience, and there were only a few hands up. My family, my sisters, and our keynote speaker, Gabrielle Stanley Blair of Design Mom, an influencer I have known for over 17 years."My community" didn't even know I used to have a blog that was often titled in the Top 10, Top 50, or Top 100 lists around the world, especially in the USA. A few million people had read Skimbaco, but I had not mentioned it to the people I was now building a new community for.Skimbaco was my baby.Skimbaco was one of my big loves, to whom I poured so my time and energy.Skimbaco was life-changing for me, and in different ways, for many of our readers, too.And here I was in my home country, Finland, speaking in front of people close to me, in my own event, and people didn't even know what Skimbaco was.It wasn't their fault, of course, but mine. That didn't hurt me, that nobody knew about Skimbaco. But it made me realize just how much I had been hiding.

Cinderella Grew Up

It's 18 years since I posted my little Cinderella post here at Skimbaco.What happens to Cinderella when she gets everything she thought she wanted? The prince, the kids, the castle, the adventures around the world, the true love's kiss, the fight with the villain, the keys to the kingdom. When she becomes that fairy godmother, the queen and lost in the woods, all at once?At some point, she will say, I am not your Cinder-fucking-rella, and I will build my fairytale and happy ending in a way I want to. And she will start a movement.