Sarah Schroeder
Jenne Mustermann
How can you succeed as a creative entrepreneur without losing yourself in the process? Sarah Schroeder and Jenne Mustermann share their experiences on well-being, focus, and entrepreneurial freedom – and explain why true creativity requires space, honesty, and inner strength.
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Could you briefly introduce yourselves – who are you, what do you do professionally, and what led you to your field?
Jenne Mustermann:
I’m Jenne, founder of OH OH OM Ethical Sportswear, which is currently my main project. Alongside that, I work as a yoga teacher. Before that, I worked as a fashion designer in the traditional fashion industry and regularly felt the need to take breaks from the 9-to-5 routine. During those times, I practiced a lot of yoga and eventually realized that I no longer felt aligned with the fashion industry.
I consciously took time off, traveled extensively, deepened my yoga practice, and got to know myself better. After that, I quit my job and initially built my yoga business. Over time, however, I began to miss the creative design work – which led me back to my creative roots.
Founding OH OH OM was the natural next step for me: today, I combine yoga with my own fashion label. Sometimes one takes center stage, sometimes the other – and it’s exactly this combination that feels right to me.
Sarah Schroeder:
I’m a communication designer and over the years I’ve specialized in strategy and branding, particularly for people and brands in the ethical lifestyle and well-being sector. My path was quite traditional at first: studying design, working in various art director roles, and then eventually becoming self-employed. Mindt® Studio has now been around for almost nine years.
In 2020, I also founded the Designers’ Well-Being Hub – a platform for exchange and shared growth among creatives. Last year, I began exploring type design more intensively. At the same time, I increasingly see myself as a consultant for brand strategy, communication, and branding. As the traditional graphic design role continues to evolve, strategic thinking and creative processes are becoming more important than ever.
Sarah, you come from branding and visual communication, Jenne from the sportswear and yoga world – when and how did your paths first cross?
Sarah:
In 2017, I completed my own yoga teacher training and, together with my partner, ran a studio in Leipzig where we combined design, art, and yoga. During the COVID period, I continued this concept digitally – which eventually evolved into the Designers’ Well-Being Hub.
It was important to me to create a space specifically for creatives, where yoga is not only practiced, but where there is also room to exchange ideas about professional topics. Jenne was part of the Hub from the very beginning. That’s how we met.
Jenne:
I first came across Mindt® Studio through a friend and a magazine. I was immediately drawn to the aesthetic – I truly fell in love with the style – and started following Sarah on Instagram.
When I discovered the Designers’ Well-Being Hub, I instantly knew I wanted to be part of it. That was still before the official launch of my label. The exchange within the Hub carried me through that phase, especially at the beginning of self-employment, when so many professional, personal, and emotional questions come up.
At the beginning of 2024, I reached out to Sarah to design my new logo and signet – and that’s how our first professional collaboration began.
With The Muse Retreat, you’re taking a step toward mindfulness and mental health. What’s behind this project?
Sarah:
The idea of bringing the Designers’ Well-Being Hub into real life had been there for a long time. At the beginning of 2025, it became very present. I had just returned from a two-year journey through Southeast Asia and India, where I experienced work and life in a completely new way and realigned the Hub’s content.
I asked Jenne if she would like to create the retreat with me – and she immediately said yes.
Jenne:
In light of current global developments, mental health will become even more of a priority in the future. Knowing how to maintain our mental well-being is just as important as staying physically fit and healthy – something most of us have learned, more or less.
Content-wise, our retreat is built around the tools that have supported us throughout our own creative and self-employed journeys. Creative work can be incredibly empowering and inspiring – but it can also be demanding. So we asked ourselves: What truly strengthens us in the long run? Yoga, breathwork, essential oils, and above all, honest exchange. All of this set in the midst of beautiful nature.
Traditional networking has always felt challenging to me personally. The framework of the Designers’ Well-Being Hub and yoga as a shared foundation helped me open up. That’s exactly the feeling we want to create: a protected space for real conversations about creative work, challenges, and mutual support. Paired with movement and practices that can release physical tension and stress – so we feel lighter and create space again for growth and clear decision-making.
It’s important to us that participants don’t just receive input and see it as a one-time wellness escape, but that they have their own experiences – experiences that help them truly integrate these impulses into their everyday lives.
If you are interested in participating in The Muse Retreat, please join the waiting list (newsletter).
Why has well-being become such a central topic for you, especially in the design and creative industry?
Jenne:
For me, creativity is closely connected to my own essence. That’s exactly why energy can become depleted more quickly in creative professions. Creative work only functions for me when I truly feel empowered and aligned.
Well-being means being honest about my capacities, setting boundaries, and working in a healthy way – physically, mentally, and emotionally. To me, it encompasses everything that helps me stay healthy, capable of making decisions, and connected to myself.
Sarah:
I can absolutely relate to that. Even though Jenne and I have found these tools and continue to explore them, it remains a challenge to apply them consistently. Taking time for yourself, building in breaks, and avoiding constant distraction is difficult for many people.
Being creative is demanding. You can’t sustain creativity without regularly recharging your energy. It requires discipline, motivation, and passion – and that only works when you consciously allow yourself to rest, ideally before it’s too late.
Under constant pressure, there is hardly any room for genuine creativity. We’re currently seeing the consequences of this in the design and creative industry: burnout, overwhelm, and unhealthy relationships with work. Especially as solo entrepreneurs, it’s easy to give too much and forget yourself – I experience that at times as well.
That’s why it’s so important to me to protect the joy of this craft. This is exactly where The Muse Retreat comes in: we want to support participants in inviting their muse back into their lives on a regular basis – as a source of creativity, energy, and joy.
Between your own labels and projects like the Designers’ Well-Being Hub, you’re juggling many things at once. How do you organize yourselves to manage it all – and where do you personally draw the line?
Jenne:
To be honest, I wasn’t very good at that for a long time. For years, I stumbled from one project to the next, regularly overextended myself, and just kept going anyway.
Today, I approach things differently. I consciously define a clear focus – usually for a year or at least six months. That helps me enormously when making decisions and also means saying a clear no to many projects that might seem exciting at first.
I’ve learned to be honest with myself and my capacities. I used to think my energy was limitless – now I’m almost painfully honest about it. But that’s exactly what helps me stay healthy.
What also supports me greatly is a small, personal network of mentors and supporters. I actively seek advice and support, and that makes me feel much less alone as a self-employed person.
Sarah:
I find it incredibly inspiring how Jenne has built that network of mentors. I also work with focus phases, but mine tend to be shorter – I usually think in weekly or monthly cycles.
I notice that certain themes naturally take turns in my work. Sometimes one area moves to the forefront, then the focus shifts again. Many things interconnect, and that works well for me. We are cyclical beings, and I think it’s completely valid to adapt our work to that rhythm.
In the past, I often took on too much. Today, I can feel quite clearly through my body and intuition when it becomes too much – and step by step, I’m learning to listen to those signals in time.
What experiences – or perhaps even crises – have shown you how important self-care is in the creative process?
Sarah:
I often share a very personal example when answering this question. For me, self-care is a long process of self-awareness – and honestly, you’re constantly in the middle of it.
In 2019, I suddenly developed trigeminal neuralgia. The pain severely restricted my life. And yet, I kept functioning. My studio was only two years old at the time. I was managing client projects, teaching yoga, organizing workshops, and hosting events like Ladies, Wine & Design. At night, I often couldn’t sleep because of the pain – during the day, everything continued as usual.
Medication eventually helped, but I still didn’t allow myself real time to recover. Now, years later, I feel like my body and soul are only just catching up. I need a lot of sleep, and looking back, I naturally question what the underlying causes were and what long-term effects it may have had.
It wasn’t until I left Germany in 2022 and gained distance from my life that I truly began to process everything. The illness, for me, was a visible expression of something that had been building up over years – stress, worries, and existential fears.
Even though I had many tools and used them – yoga, meditation, healthy nutrition – the overall pressure was simply too high. Only with genuine rest and time for reflection could something begin to release.
Today I know: self-care isn’t just important for creativity; it’s essential for staying healthy in the long term and working sustainably – especially when you’re self-employed. Ideally, you begin before your body sounds the alarm. Because once you’ve crossed that point, it takes a very long time to return to balance.
Jenne:
For me, it was different – but at its core, very similar. I completely overextended myself and kept functioning, even though I already knew many of the tools in theory. Stress, combined with existential fears, was one of the biggest factors, and I first had to learn how to deal with this new kind of pressure.
My body had been sending signals for a long time, but I ignored them. On top of that, there were challenges I simply wasn’t prepared for.
It was only much later – abroad, surrounded by nature, with more space to breathe – that I was able to truly process everything and grow from it. Today, yoga, breathwork, and conscious pauses are firmly anchored in my daily life. They help me navigate overwhelm and challenges in a much healthier way.
What are your current goals – both as self-employed creatives and for your joint project?
Jenne:
My clear focus right now is on OH OH OM Ethical Sportswear. Continuing to grow the label is my central goal. Over the past year, my main priority was building my own e-commerce shop, and that will remain important in the coming year.
At the same time, I’m striving for more structure in my processes.
Freedom is a core value for me. That’s why I’m intentionally building the label in a way that allows me to work independently of location. In the first few years, my focus was heavily on product development, circularity, and design. I postponed marketing for a long time. Today, I know that starting early is crucial.
I now work with a small team and want to grow more into entrepreneurial areas like strategy, structure, and controlling. I’m also
working on integrating AI more into my daily workflow, as I see huge potential there – especially for small labels and solo entrepreneurs.
Sarah:
I recently released my first typeface, “Bárur,” and I want to continue expanding in that direction – with new fonts and my own shop.
Instead of selling through external platforms, I deliberately chose to distribute it via my own website, with the long-term goal of focusing more on digital products and gradually moving a bit away from purely service-based work.
My overarching goal is also freedom: working independently of location, staying flexible, and setting my own pace – while genuinely enjoying what I do.
For the Designers’ Well-Being Hub, I hope for greater visibility and new members. I’m especially looking forward to further developing the retreat together with Jenne – and finally meeting her in person, as up to now, we’ve actually only known each other digitally.
How do you see the future of creative work – between self-employment, collaboration, and sustainability?
Sarah:
For me, mindfulness is a key word. In my work, I increasingly long for slowness, for handmade processes, quality, and things created with care – moving away from “fast and cheap,” and in some ways counterbalancing many AI-driven developments.
For me, sustainability doesn’t only refer to ecological aspects, but also to the mindful use of our own resources: How do we work? How do we manage our energy?
I clearly see collaboration as a model for the future. Especially when you work a lot on your own, collaboration creates a powerful dynamic. When several creatives come together, I find it incredibly energizing – and I truly love these shared projects.
Jenne:
I see the future as deeply rooted in sustainability. We need people who dare to think differently and be different – who are willing to find creative solutions and, most importantly, to actually implement them.
For me, sustainability exists when something is meaningful and honest – meaning plus honesty equals sustainability.
I also see something positive in the development of AI: it can take over pure knowledge-based and repetitive tasks, potentially giving us more space to focus on what we consider meaningful – on what brings us joy and serves the greater good.
If you could send a message to yourselves five years ago – what would you say?
Jenne:
I just started writing, and it turned into a mix of German and English:
Slow down. Spend more time in nature. You already know. Let go. Everything comes at the right time. No rush. Flow, not force. Don’t forget to make time for sports. Focus on one thing at a time. Huge mountain of tasks? Pick one. Write an action plan. Take one week off and do it. And again, so I don’t forget: spend plenty of time in nature. Don’t eat crap. Nourish yourself well.
Sarah:
You can definitely tell how similarly we think. I wrote to myself:
Take care of yourself first. Rest. Prioritize everything that nourishes you. Be creative. Pick up brushes and paint. Move your body. Go out into nature. And trust yourself. Everything you need is already within you – even if it sometimes looks like the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing. You are strong and capable of anything – but only if you are truly well while doing it.
And conversely: what do you wish for the next generation of designers and creatives?
Sarah:
I wish for a movement away from unhealthy comparisons. Away from the constant hustle and the pressure to always perform. Away from misleading ideas like “fake it till you make it” and away from an excessive focus on just the end result.
Instead, I hope for a shift toward more honesty, authenticity, and a genuine appreciation of the creative process itself. That the impact of creativity is recognized – even outside our own bubble. Because the world needs creative people.
I want creative professions to be seen as just as legitimate and valuable as any other job. And honestly: better compensation too – for the next generation, but ideally also for us.
I also hope for a consciously integrated work and personal life. Creativity doesn’t just switch off when the workday ends. We are holistic beings, and we love what we do. Ideally, this core remains for the generations to come.
A dream would be a basic income for artists, like what has been introduced in Ireland. Many creatives suffer under societal structures built around traditional 9-to-5 jobs – structures that often don’t fit creative ways of living and working.
I hope more people have the chance to access self-expression, self-determination, and flow – and that society makes it easier for them to do so. To say: I pursue my ideas, my vision. I dare to.
Jenne:
I wish that self-care and well-being become completely natural – essential. And that we integrate it much earlier – for example, in school.
I don’t mean spirituality here, but concrete tools and structures that help people stay healthy, stable, and empowered. That well-being gains a new importance and is no longer seen as exotic or “nice to have.”
I also hope more companies align themselves ethically – that there are many good employers for the next generation to consciously choose from. Things are moving in that direction, but I hope it becomes normal rather than a niche.
Above all, I wish we manage to detach more from our phones and spend less time mindlessly scrolling. Instead, we should focus on forming our own creative thoughts – and ensure this ability isn’t lost.
If you are interested in participating in The Muse Retreat, please join the waiting list (newsletter).