My Story
Entrepreneur, yoga teacher, hypnotherapist, and a lifelong student of being human.
For most of my adult life, I thought life was about working hard, building a successful career and creating enough financial freedom to eventually do whatever I wanted. That's what you were supposed to do, right?
And for a long time, I genuinely loved what I was doing. I built companies, worked with entrepreneurs, became an investor and served on boards. I loved creating things, solving problems and discovering what I was capable of.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that even though my life looked really good from the outside, it wasn't actually the life I wanted to live.
Background
- Founder and former CEO
- Investor
- Board member
- Coach
- Yoga teacher
- Hypnotherapist
I grew up in Piteå, a small town in northern Sweden. I don't remember much from my earliest years, but I know I loved singing, dancing and being on stage. I was curious, expressive and not particularly worried about whether I was good at something before giving it a try.
When I was 14, life suddenly became a lot more serious. Within six months, my childhood friend, the girl next door, died, my father was diagnosed with cancer and I lost my maternal grandmother.
Until then, I'd never really thought about security because I'd always felt safe. Suddenly, I understood that the people and things I trusted could disappear.
Looking back, I wonder if that's when I started trying to create security through achievement, money and having everything under control. I was building what I thought would keep me safe, but it was all external security rather than something I felt within myself.
The adventurous, expressive side of me was still there. But so was a growing need to make sure life couldn't catch me off guard again.
The girl who loved the stage
The life I thought I wanted
After high school, I spent a few years exploring different paths. I worked at a few companies, took university courses and tried living in different countries before eventually moving to Stockholm.
In 2013, I founded what eventually turned into Aimfor, a digital marketing company that grew to 23 employees and was recognized as a Gazelle company twice. Alongside running the business, I invested in other companies and served on several boards.
I loved entrepreneurship, and I still do. Building something from nothing taught me an enormous amount, and I don't regret those years.
But I remember studying Simon Sinek's Start With Why during a leadership program, and it became increasingly clear to me how difficult it was to find a why behind my own work that genuinely mattered to me. Creating jobs and helping businesses grow were valuable things, of course, but they didn't feel like a strong enough reason for me to dedicate my life to it.
I wanted to do something that I truly believed made a difference.
Around that time, I remember standing in my kitchen in Stockholm, looking around at everything I'd built. I had the company, the home, the boyfriend and a life that, from the outside, looked pretty much like the one I'd always wanted.
But I wasn't happy.
So I asked myself: Is this it?
That question stayed with me, although I didn't immediately do anything dramatic about it. I just started paying more attention to the things that didn't feel right.
Then my mother became seriously ill, and something shifted. I began questioning life more deeply, what really mattered to me and how I wanted to spend the time I had.
Two questions in particular stayed with me.
- What is health, really?
- And what if I only have 28 good years left? What would I want to do with them?
Is this it?
A different kind of education
Those questions led me to explore things I'd previously known very little about. Hypnotherapy, Life Force Activation, and eventually yoga, alongside travelling and discovering different ways of understanding myself and the world.
Travelling around the world challenged many of my assumptions. Meeting people from different cultures and seeing how differently people live made me realize how many of the things we consider essential for a good life are simply ideas we've grown up with. Things that seem completely obvious in Stockholm might make very little sense somewhere else in the world.
I sometimes joke that I have a university degree in Annelie. But there's something serious behind that joke. I've spent years getting to know myself, understanding my fears, exploring my patterns and learning to recognize what actually feels right for me.
What made yoga particularly important during this journey was that it became a daily practice. Unlike experiences I might have occasionally, yoga gave me a way to reconnect with my body, notice what was happening inside me and practise being present every single day.
I'm still learning, but I understand myself so much better than I used to. And perhaps more importantly, I'm getting better at actually listening to what I know.
Learning to trust the unknown
In 2025, I sold Aimfor and gave myself permission to take some real time off, without having a job or a plan to return to.
I travelled, studied, explored new business ideas and allowed myself to see what might happen if I stopped trying to figure everything out in advance.
And eventually, I found myself back in Piteå, the town I'd left so many years before.
Moving back wasn't something I'd planned or particularly wanted. Yet somehow, it felt like the right thing to do, and I'm incredibly grateful I listened.
Today, I live closer to nature, and my relationship with time has changed. Instead of a calendar booked weeks in advance, I often let the weather, my energy and what needs doing shape my days.
I'm aware that having this kind of freedom is a privilege, although I also wonder how many more people could create some version of it if they allowed themselves to question what they think they have to do.
For me, the biggest change isn't having fewer things in my calendar. It's learning to listen to myself rather than constantly rushing towards the next thing.
Letting go of control, the need for a plan and the habit of always thinking about what's next is still something I work on. Probably more often than I'd like to admit.
Doing things just because I love them
Recently, I started taking singing lessons again. When I first walked into the classroom, I was terrified. I thought my voice wasn't good enough, I couldn't control it properly, I struggled with the high notes, and honestly, I was just scared.
Which is pretty funny considering how much I loved being on stage as a child.
During that first semester, a lot of the work was simply about daring to sing and letting go of some of that fear. This semester, I feel so much more confident, and I've been given a musical theatre song to work on. I absolutely love it.
I'm not particularly good at it yet, but that's almost beside the point.
I think that's a pretty good illustration of what this chapter of my life is about. Giving myself permission to explore, play and enjoy things without needing to achieve anything.
Today
Today, I bring together my experience in entrepreneurship, coaching, hypnotherapy, yoga and other practices to help people get to know themselves better and make choices that feel like their own.
I'm also building Bryohm, a wellbeing platform and passion project. I still love entrepreneurship, although I'm approaching it a little differently these days.
I was never particularly motivated by money or status, but somewhere along the way, I found myself caught up in a world where both seemed to matter enormously. And the recognition that came with running a successful company wasn't always something I enjoyed.
Looking back, I can also see how much of my thinking about money was connected to security and making sure I'd have enough in the future.
With Bryohm, I'm more interested in building something I genuinely believe in, and creating a business that can grow without depending so heavily on me.
I learned from Aimfor how difficult it can be to change that dependence once it's already built into a company.
I still love creating, solving problems and seeing ideas come to life. I'm just paying more attention to how I want to spend my time along the way.
I still have fears, fall into old habits and occasionally try to plan my way out of uncertainty. But I'm becoming much better at recognizing when that happens.
And the funny thing is, I think I've known quite a lot about who I am all along. I'd just stopped giving that part of myself enough influence over my decisions.
Now, I'm learning to let that part of me lead. And every day, I'm becoming a little more fully me.
Would you like to be more fully you?
Explore working togetherRead “What are you building?” on Substack (opens in a new tab)