Henri Isometsä is the former forest economics student who changed career path and became an entrepreneur within social media. Today he works as a Marketing Project Manager at Nordnet in Finland. Here he shares his career story, motivation and passion for stocks.
Name and age: Henri Isometsä, 32 years
Education: Masters’ degree in forest economics from Helsinki University
Henri, you have made an interesting career. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you started at Nordnet?
I started to study at Helsinki University in 2006. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted from my adult life back then, but I knew I was interested in economics and investing – and moving to a bigger city from my home town of Nokia. I applied for something called forest economics – why? Because it was pretty easy to get in and I knew I could then choose all sorts of interesting courses inside Helsinki university, not only within forestry.
By the end of my studies, I founded my own social media company and platform together with my business partner. We started to publish fun and engaging food-related content on two Facebook pages that we created by coincidence, called “Coffee” and “Barbeque” in Finnish. Back then, Facebook was still quite new type of media and its’ algorithms recommended people to like pages like these – just so that you could show your friends that “I like coffee” and “I like to barbeque”. Through this algorithm-based boost, the pages quickly got around 200 000 followers both, which we in turn directed to our platform. We quickly rose to the top 5 most visited food-related online websites in Finland.
In 2016, I decided to do something new and sold my stake in the social media marketing business. I’ve been actively saving in stocks since high school and even writing a bit about the stock market on the investment network SeekingAlpha.com. As a Nordnet customer since a long time back, I’ve always been happy with Nordnet’s services and products. I found out that Nordnet was looking for a marketing coordinator and I saw it as the perfect match! Here I could combine my real-life experience with creating content that works in social media, with my passion for savings and investments.
What is best about your job as Marketing Project Manager?
No day is the same, and there’s never a dull moment where you’d feel bored and without anything meaningful to do. As with any job, everything is about prioritizing tasks, doing your best and having fun doing it. In practice, my job includes tasks like creating landing pages for campaigns, compiling newsletters, translating new features in our web service and app from Swedish, posting content in social media as well as answering customers’ questions there.
How would you describe the culture at Nordnet?
It’s open and friendly. We all help each other and we are not afraid to give feedback. I would say we have a constructive and empathetic culture where everyone can speak up.
What’s your career motto?
I’m a Warren Buffett follower, as I guess many other investors are too. I think it’s important that you find joy in your work so that, like Buffett, you can “tap dance to work” (at least figuratively). I really like my job, my colleagues and the whole Finnish workplace. You can follow my “sort of Buffett-inspired” portfolio in Nordnet’s social investment network Shareville– my nickname there is Bulvis.