As an influencer with many followers, you affect many people. Therése Lindgren's journey began with makeup and fashion. Today, the focus is instead on a sustainable lifestyle, a focus that has meant that she can now also add the Environmental Champion of the Year award to her CV.

Therése Lindgren is one of Sweden's biggest and most influential social media influencers with over 1 million followers on YouTube. When she started her channel ten years ago, she quickly became popular with younger girls as she shared personal videos focusing on fashion and beauty. But a few years ago, Therése felt uneasy and felt that she no longer wanted to encourage overconsumption. She then chose a new path focusing on a more sustainable lifestyle, animal rights issues, vegan food and community involvement.

In addition to her social media successes, Therése Lindgren is an author. She has published two best-selling books, Sometimes I Don't Feel So Good and Who Cares? Now she is working on the book Really Important, which is published in collaboration with the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. In the book, we follow Therése as she strives to live a life that is kinder to the planet with personal reflections and tips. The book also contains factual texts that describe how the way we eat, buy, travel and live affects the climate. INRIKES met Therése Lindgren via Zoom, to find out more about her work and life in the countryside.

In collaboration with the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, you have written the incredibly interesting and inspiring book Viktigt på riktigt, which is about your journey towards a more sustainable life, to inspire others to want to join in. What does this collaboration with the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and the book mean to you?

– Being asked to work on this book was confirmation that what I am doing is good and it gave me even more motivation to continue the transformation.

What did your followers on YouTube and social media think about this change?

– The fact that I'm changing and talking more about sustainability and animal rights has meant that I've lost some traffic, because not everyone who follows me is interested in those topics. I think many people have been used to me giving advice about clothes, makeup and consumption, and some probably want me to continue that way. The change has also meant a financial loss for me, as I no longer accept certain advertising collaborations that I did before.

How does it feel?

– Of course, it feels sad when followers are not on the same track and they ask for things that I don't feel like I want to do. For example, many people thought it was funny in the past when I bought cheap throwaway stuff from eBay that I tested in videos on YouTube, and want me to make videos like that today. Whereas I would rather talk about veganism and animal rights and other things that I am incredibly passionate about.

What does a typical workday look like for you?

– It's really fun that I have quite different tasks during the day. I can also set my own schedule. Some days when I feel exuberant and energetic, I can get started and record videos and take photos and do all those creative jobs. Other days, when I don't want to get out of my pajamas, I can sit at the computer and do various computer jobs. The hardest thing about my job is that I am a very introverted person and therefore I can sometimes find it a bit tricky with social interactions. For example, sitting in meetings sometimes I can find it a bit difficult, it doesn't come naturally to me.

Do you have a whole team around you or do you handle most of your business yourself?

– I don't have any employees or a team, but I work with various consultants. For example, I don't do my own accounting. I work closely with my partner, he's the one who sells all my collaborations. So when I do advertising collaborations on Instagram or YouTube, he's the one who has all the contact with the advertisers.

Your new focus on animal rights issues, the collaboration with the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and life in the countryside – how has it changed your life?

– I realize now that I live out here that I feel so good. Right now I live in our summer cottage and I live here alone with all the animals I take care of during the weeks, my partner comes on the weekends. It's definitely not for everyone, because many people wonder how I cope with the loneliness, but this is really a life that suits me so well, being a little socially limited.

Do you sometimes miss the city?

– Stockholm is great, there's everything there, all the restaurants and such. But I'm mostly at home anyway and it's really sad for my dogs to go for a walk on the sidewalk and pee on a pole, so they have it much better here in the countryside.

What do you do in autumn and winter?

– I'm moving. My partner and I have bought a house so we're going to pack up and move there. We need to renovate a bit and my dream is to be able to take in even more animals. I volunteer for various organizations that take in and rehome homeless, sometimes neglected animals, and helping animals is my great passion in life, so I hope I'll be able to welcome more animals into our new house.

Therese Lindgren

Age: 36. 
Family Partner Anders Vesterlund and lots of temporary relocation animals.
Bor In a house outside Stockholm. 
Occupation YouTuber, author and social media influencer. Background, in brief: Therése Lindgren is one of Sweden's biggest YouTubers and also a successful author. Her debut book Ibland mår jag inte sa bra sold the most of all non-fiction books in Sweden in 2016 and also Vem bryr sig? which came out the following year was a great success. She has also made the audiobook Konsten att lyckas som medelmåtta and Mitt bästa år – a bullet journal that the reader can fill in themselves. Therése Lindgren has been pioneering with her open way of talking and writing about mental illness, and style-setting with her personal mix of humor and seriousness, beauty tips and animal rights issues, vegan food, community engagement and panic disorder. She has developed criteria for more sustainable influencer collaborations and interviewed the Swedish party leaders ahead of the 2022 election. Her YouTube channel is the first Swedish-language channel to gain over a million subscribers, and Therése also has a million followers on Instagram. 
Current book: In the new book Really Important (Bonnier facts), published in collaboration with the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, we follow Therése as she strives to live a life that is kinder to the planet with personal reflections and tips. The book also contains factual texts that describe how the way we eat, buy, travel and live affects the climate. The book will be released as an audiobook on December 27.

It sounds very exciting and I'm guessing you'll learn a lot about animal care and medication and such.

– My plan is to train as a wildlife rehabilitator. I have a dream that someday in the future I will be able to help hedgehogs, squirrels or hares in need of care and rehabilitation.

How long have you been eating an exclusively plant-based diet?

– I switched to a completely plant-based diet in 2016–2017, but I certainly didn't do it overnight, but I think the transition took me about a year. The plan was never for me to become vegan, but by chance I came across videos of pigs on Swedish farms that made me want to learn more about the situation of pigs in Sweden. The more I read, the more sure I became – I never want to be part of supporting that industry. So I stopped eating pork. After that, I learned more about beef, and stopped eating cow meat, and that was it!

What's the best thing you cook when you're hosting a party?

– I'm pretty bad at cooking, but a safe bet is usually different pies. If you make two different pies, there's always something that everyone likes. A version that children like and a version with slightly more adult flavors.

I've seen on your social media that you grow vegetables. Tell me a little about what you grow.

– It's a new interest, it's incredibly satisfying to put a seed in the ground and then be able to eat it a few months later. It's the best thing you've ever eaten. This year I grew fresh herbs, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, rhubarb and every berry you can think of, and now at the edge of autumn I planted onions for the first time. It's going to be so exciting to see how they do next year.

You always have a thousand things going on, what do you think your life and work will look like in ten years?

– My dream is to be able to devote myself full-time to philanthropy and work exclusively with charity and animals. It is my great passion.

You used to run a beauty business. Are you still working on it?

– No, I sold it last year. The reason I started it wasn't because I really had a huge interest in beauty. But then, in 2017, I just started my transition to eating more plant-based and then I started to realize what different beauty products actually contain. I learned that the face cream I used contained ingredients from animals, the lipstick contained beetles and I understood that a lot of makeup contains various animals. That's why I started my beauty company – to show that you can make good beauty products without animals, and also do it in Sweden, at a good price. Indy Beauty, as the company is called, helped change the standard in Sweden, because today most new companies that release beauty products are careful to label the products which are vegan and which are not. It has become noticeably much better than it was in 2017 when we started. So a year ago I felt that 'my job is done here', and then I sold the company.

I think when I started ten years ago, I had really good timing. I was 26 at the time, but most of the people who watched my videos were under 20, so a lot of people probably saw me as a bit of an older sister.

What do you think is the key to your fantastic success as an influencer?

– I think when I started ten years ago I had really good timing. I was 26 at the time, but most of the people who watched my videos were under 20, so many probably saw me as a bit of a big sister. I got a lot of questions where they wanted to know things like 'what was it like the first time you got your period?', 'what was it like the first time you moved away from home?', 'what did it feel like the first time someone broke up with you?'. I think there was a lack of such a big sister online for young girls back then.

You also offered an openness and personal touch that was perhaps a bit unusual at the time.

– Yes, I also talked about the fact that I suffered from mental illness. I had a lot of problems with panic attacks that came at all times, and the fact that I shared that probably meant that many people could relate to me. Back then, ten years ago, not many of those who worked as bloggers and influencers talked about such things. Most of what was out there back then was quite cheerful, superficial and glamorous.

Environmental Hero of the Year 

Therése Lindgren was recently awarded the Environmental Hero of the Year award by the World Wildlife Fund WWF. The award is given each year to a person or organization that has acted in an inspiring, creative and innovative way to be a role model for sustainability and biodiversity during the past year. The prize money, which amounts to SEK 100,000, will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund's Arctic Fox Project, a project that aims to preserve and increase the population of Arctic foxes in Sweden. - For me, it feels extra important to protect animals and nature because they cannot speak for themselves or stand up for their rights. I am also passionate about the issue of reduced consumption. I am active in, and have greatly contributed to, a climate in social media that normalizes and glamorizes excessive and unnecessary consumption. I want to do everything I can now to put that right, comments Therése Lindgren.

Some may think that influencers live very perfect lives.

– Yes, exactly, so it was probably a bit liberating for people that I showed up and started talking about mental illness and stuff like that.

Who are your followers today?

– Those who follow me today are mainly women aged 20–35. Many have followed me for many years!

Which chapter in the book Really Important are you most proud of?

– The book is divided into chapters 'eating', 'buying', 'traveling' and 'living', because those are the four parts of life where you as an individual can make a big difference to the climate. The chapter that deals with the home and how you live, there are parts that deal with what kind of electricity is best, how you should sort your waste, how you can think about interior design – that you don't have to follow interior design trends and that you can buy things second-hand and so on. I also wrote a bit about farming and things that I think about a lot myself. So that was the most fun chapter, I think, because it's a lot about where I am in life right now.