Christine Hansen never intended to become a business owner. Or a sleep expert, consultant to Luxembourg’s most under-resourced entrepreneurs, or an interpreter between horses and executives yearning to know themselves.
Born in Colombia and adopted into a traditional Luxembourgish family at four months old, Hansen grew up in Esch-sur-Alzette surrounded by people working at well-paid and secure government jobs.
“My sister is a judge. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a teacher,” she said. “I was an English teacher for 10 years at a lycée. So for a long time, I didn’t even know I was an entrepreneur.”
But Hansen also had entrepreneurship in the family. Ancestors were among the founders in 1920 of Luxembourg’s first insurance company, now known as LaLux, she said. Her mother’s cousin, Claude Wagner, built more than a dozen companies active in construction, sporting goods, do-it-yourself stores and interior design, Hansen said.
The first crack in the career mould appeared after her university studies in the UK. “I saw people study geography and work in totally different fields,” she said. “That was the first time I realised, oh, the world is actually more diverse than you think.”
A mother’s insights
Her post-graduation teaching career hit a fork when she became a mother. When she tried to return to the classroom, she noticed that she had changed.
“It was a perfect year […] I had a great schedule and I had great students. So, theoretically, everything should have been fine. But I really had to force myself to go to work every day. I just didn’t want to anymore,” she said.
Then came the email.
Hansen had signed up for a programme offering advice on how to help her baby sleep. A year later, an email landed in her inbox asking if she wanted to apply to train as a baby sleep consultant. If the company selected her, she could launch a business that would require only a reasonable number of monthly sales to meet or surpass her teaching salary, the message said.
She applied and, in hindsight, was unsurprisingly selected to receive training for their €8,000 fee.
“Looking at it now, I have to laugh about my own naivety,” Hansen said. “But it was seeing that calculation. It was really a light bulb moment for me to see the math and to understand that there are other ways in life to do a decent living other than being a government employee in Luxembourg.”
She did the training, but a year or so later she dropped her efforts helping children sleep.
“Turns out, I really don’t like babies. But I knew that sleep was a really interesting topic, because people would ask me, ‘Oh, do you do it for adults?’ ” she said.
So she shifted to her own startup – a consulting business for adult sleep issues that integrated lab tests with coaching in packages costing €6,000 to €10,000.
“We looked at body functions like hormones, and gut health, and hair, tissue, mineral analysis, but also stress resilience,” she said.
The timing was right. Media founder and celebrity Arianna Huffington had just published a book emphasising that despite what those seeking success might think, sleep is not a luxury but required for a healthy and productive life.
Amid the public interest and Huffington’s public relations push, she “couldn’t answer all the interview requests,” Hansen said. “I realised that, and immediately got a website up with the SEO keyword ‘sleep expert.’ I got tonnes of requests for interviews, because there was nobody who did sleep consulting for adults.”
By 2019, she was making more than she had as a teacher. “That was when I was really happy, monetarily,” Hansen said.
Time for another transition
But managing a business that had added far-flung franchisees from Germany to Singapore meant Hansen now had what was to her the unpleasant chore of managing people.
“Businesses are obviously full of people’s problems. And that was something the books don’t tell you about that,” she said. “That’s when I decided – you know what? – I’m going to sort of give myself permission to scale it back down.”
She sold the business to her Canadian franchisee.
Hansen briefly considered going back to a salaried job. Five applications, three interviews. But neither she nor hiring specialists could line up the right fit.
“I’m completely unemployable in terms of my CV, but also myself. I don’t think I could sit in an office with people who’ve never been struggling, who never really understood the value of every euro that you earn,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault, but if you always had a fat salary where taxes are already deducted, you don’t understand what the cost of living actually is.”
Hansen launched Christine Means Business, consulting with small Luxembourg businesses on communications, digital marketing and web design (which she taught herself). One of her missions is fixing bad websites that small companies tolerate rather than updating and enlivening the one they launched a decade ago.
Why are so many website experiences in Luxembourg terrible?
“It’s because agencies that are doing web designs are incredibly expensive. Most of them work with government contracts or with commune contracts, and they charge six figures – minimum. And for a small business owner, that’s not doable,” Hansen said. “There is a big discrepancy that we have in Luxembourg. With everything. It’s the government budget versus private budgets. It doesn’t coincide at all.”
Clients also get a blend of business strategy and individual mindset coaching, even if she doesn’t label it that way.
“The coaching comes in because I work with people who are just people. They are not experienced in putting themselves out there,” Hansen said. “A lot of the time I need to help people understand the value that they have because they’re reticent. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’m just a little business.’ Or, ‘you know, everyone can do it.’ Or ‘I don’t see my value.’ “
Now 42, Hansen recently started a side business with the instructor who taught her to ride horses over the past four years. The idea is to use their natural sensitivity to unseen energy – developed to notice threats from predators – to develop human self-awareness and leadership. Their target clients are in the banking and public sectors.
“We’re launching a LinkedIn campaign in September for HR directors and executives,” Hansen said. “It’s moving fast.”
And she won’t chase seven-figure-income dreams.
“Why would I want to work myself to the ground to make that figure if I can live my life exactly the way I want to with less?” Hansen said. “I want to work exactly with who I want to, how I want to, making enough money that I can do everything I want. That has liberated me in a big way. So that’s why I’m quite affordable.
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