It all started in 2006. After qualifying as a surveyor and enrolling in architecture school, I needed a job. After three years as a surveyor at a large brick and prefab company (2003 to 2006), I realised that was not my place, and I started working with a friend at an advertising agency.
With no experience in graphic design or advertising, he sent me out to knock on company doors and bring in clients. I don’t need to tell you how easy it was to find clients back then, even for small jobs.
Having lots of clients with small jobs has its advantages:
- Less risk of not getting paid
- Small jobs, small complaints
- A great chance to learn:
- how to use graphics software
- how to understand what businesses need
- how the advertising products market works…
In those years the number of real estate agencies grew fast, and so did the demand for products that could move people to buy a home. Competition was tough and every agency wanted to show its properties at their best. Each had its own way and its own tools, and asked for designs and printed pieces completely different from one another: real made-to-measure work. It opened my mind and showed me that, for a single type of business, many different tools, products and services can reach the same goal.
That proved very useful in the following years, when the property crisis hit hard and everyone was looking for new ideas, projects and ways to find buyers. The market had turned: the focus moved from the end buyer to the builders. Builders preferred to work with just a few agencies, often exclusively, and chose them by the market strategies they used to promote their properties. That was the first time I heard about market strategy, and I loved it.
From there I set out to study what STRATEGY really means and how to apply it to selling. I moved from Italy to Switzerland, where the work became international, and then from Switzerland to Spain, following the market and learning from different markets, cultures, needs and customers.