Go-to-Market Maverick: Hell is my promise.

Hi! I won’t bore you to death with my 17+ years of super dope Go-to-Market Strategies blah, blah, blah. If I didn’t know impressive backgrounds are not enough to impress, what would that say of me as a marketer? I’d run away from he who succeeds at making himself undistinguishable from other marketers.

So, let’s get into the juicy stuff! Before I tell you about the time when I was suddenly fired from a great company, let me tell you a couple of things you should know about me. It is specially important if you are assessing working with me. Think twice before you do.

Why you should think twice before working with me.

First things first. You should think twice because I will make your life uncomfortable. See, I don’t play by the book. Not anymore. I have, for many years. Enough to understand it doesn’t make sense to follow the same rules everybody else is. The rules that have guided me this far, the ones that have made me who I am, now seem like forgotten, curled post-its on a wall —short of scope, old and don’t stick like they used to.

Anyway. I will probably burn to ashes every playbook you’ve used so far, and what I will come up with will look like nothing you’ve known. It might sound sexy, —and it is, it’s exciting to defy the world!— but let me warn you: this kind of cross-country riding is not for delicate spirits. You will jump with the bumps of the ride, hitting your head in the way up, and your butt going down. It will hurt.

If you’re one with a delicate a**, think twice.

This ride demands guts. And trust. And trust me, it will be a living hell. At least for a while.

Then it gets better. After. After, you might even love me and want to marry me.

But hell comes first, I promise.

Look, I’ll empower teams to disregard industry norms in order to make products unignorable. Because, well… it’s the only way! When every growth plan looks the same, all messages are crafted the same way and all sales workflows come from the same blueprint, how can you really expect to stand out?

It is a honest question. Do you, really? expect to stand out? with a Go to Market Strategy that comes from a template?

—Yes, because my strategy is customer centric and RevOps processes are best in class! —said the delusional Chief Revenue Officer to the naive CMO.

Shut up kids, grownups are talking.

As logical and intuitive as it may be, to drive in the opposite direction everybody else is driving to stand out from the herd, no one dares to take the necessary turns. Even those who say they are, their idea of a bold GTM Strategy is partnering with an influencer with a loud mouth or using funny wordplay messaging in a variation of an ad, part of the fifth AB Test in Q3. In practice, marketing and sales leaders reject putting their as*es in the line by stepping out of the “proven”. Better continue with ok results than stealing the pole position. “Who can blame me, I’m following the drill“.

And that’s totally fine, if you want to be one more out there, if you want to do just good. If you are ok with that, be my guest. Really. I respect your decision. Lots of people are happy being one more, making enough to be somewhat profitable. Going beyond is not mandatory.

I am not ok with that. Something burns inside of me when I’m engaged, hands-on, fully invested in something. It makes me crave the sound of the sonic boom —that blast when growth breaks the barrier of sound.

I believe whatever is not growing, is dying. If you agree, then you gotta do things differently: we can’t all grow by nourishing our companies from the same sources, in the same way.

To grow stronger I’ll stir the pot. I will bring hell all over the place: purists will pull their hair, know-it-all-a**holes will drill your ears, so called industry experts will lobby against it. That is why hell is my promise.

But it will be worth it. And that is my commitment.

As my favourite philosopher Batman once said, “the night is darkest just before the dawn” —and we are going to walk the walk right through the night.

If we ever work together, that is. So you shouldn’t work with me if you are not ready for this.

Remember. Hell is my promise. That it’ll be worth every second of it, my commitment.

If you’re after conventional, look elsewhere.

Now, before telling you why I was fired, an advertising break so you know some of the brands where I learnt to play by the book and some where I brought hell to. Guess which is which?

Brands I’ve broken rules at

Now… why was I fired?

Before I dive into it, let me tell you, it was hard. Today I can openly talk about it —as you can see, but it wasn’t like that. You might think it’s no big deal, but it was for me. Big time. It took me a while to make sense of it. I value my professional reputation greatly and being fired is just something else. It’s the only time it’s ever happened to me, and hopefully, the last.

It was a great company too. Great work-life balance, remote, several fun in-person events per year, good salary, great people… They just were not ready for my way. And I was probably not ready for theirs either. There was clearly not a cultural fit. I saw it right away, not a month has passed and it was clear that the whole company was in slow-mo compared to my pace.

The thing is, I was told that was ok, I was coming as an agent of change, to make teams wake the f**k up.

It turned out they wanted the benefit of changing, but without the mess it comes with, so… so much for the agent of change.

Look. It went down in matter of days.

I had been in the company for a few months. My plan was taking off and results were starting to show: growth rate doubled, caught almost $100k being flushed down the drain monthly due to deficient attribution, and was championing a company-wide brand repositioning. There were some frictions to my new ways in the team, which I judged as temporary and a normal sign of times of change. Other than that, I felt everything was going as planned.

One day, as many others, the CEO and I were talking about the future of the company, growth plans, we discussed the revision of the brand positioning and also about other more personal stuff like family or investment assets and funds –as we both are investing aficionados. We shared some good laughs, all cool.

A couple of days after that call, he opened a Zoom conversation saying, “this meeting is going to be hard for me, but it will be harder for you”.

Boom!

From hero to zero in a blink. What had happened?

In a nutshell teams were not ready to leave comfort zone. Delicate a**es all over the place. CEO too, didn’t want his to jump inside the 4×4 at full speed through a bumpy road. But hell is my promise, I didn’t have the slightest intention of being sucked up into driving Miss Daisy. Is just who I am, and the CEO saw right through that. He understood that disruption might not be as sexy as he thought it would be — it would have been, eventually, but it comes at a price.

So, there was only one way to let everyone lay back again and return to the comfort zone. Bye, bye Sergio.

But I’m the only one to blame. I mean it. I misjudged the willingness of the stakeholders to walk the walk. They talked the talk, but the bumpy road was no-go.

And like a teenager’s pimple on date night, I was out. Scar tissue grown, lesson learnt. Hence this piece you are reading, my fair warning.

From then on, more than ever, hell is my promise, that it’ll be worth it my commitment.

And right before I share a gift with you, another advertising break: if you want to get in touch with this Go-to-Market Maverick that got fired from a cool company, complete this form.

Its time for a secret. A gift. A secret gift.

Look at you, you’ve made it all the way down here reading my adventures. Good for you!

It is not by chance that you have read all my story, how many times have you read so much about someone? A huge percentage of this page’s visitors read all of it too. Do you want to know how to cause the same effect with your content? You can tell your team to apply the 4 techniques I’ve used to keep your attention, they are universal:

1. Speak like a person. Neither the tone, the format, spacing, line breaks or the style is corporate. It’s like natural conversation. People find it easier to read through a text that feels like someone is speaking to you. Our defences towards corporate text are high. When everybody else is speaking corporate, it’s your chance to stand out.
2. Be emotional. I bet you can tell how strong are my feelings about what you’ve read. That empathy kept you going. Connecting with someone’s feelings makes you want to follow through. That can be done with a product too, everything can become emotional.
3. Be unexpected. Why you shouldn’t hire me? Why I was fired? Really, in a page trying to sell myself? Really. Tell your story in a way that nobody else would. Communicate your message dressed in striking colors. Make unexpected your weapon to win attention.
4. Start with a cliffhanger. From the beginning you knew there was juicy stuff coming, and you don’t like to be left halfway. No way, once you knew I was going to tell you about how I got fired, you needed to know how it all went down. It’s human nature.

As you see, I put my money where my mouth is: I don’t do industry norms.

And it works.

If you still want to see the boring blah blah blah, then, boring blah bla bla incoming!

Or we can always connect on LinkedIn.

My Background

• 20 years launching and managing businesses
• 7 companies founded, 2 of them start-ups
• 16 years as Marketing and Sales leader with a strong focus in online business and digital products
• 10 years as CEO of Digital Marketing Agency
• 4 years in Web3 personally, 2 professionally
• Multiple industry experience: Agency, Consultancy, Web3, FinTech, EdTech, Automotive, FMCG, PropTech, eCommerce, SaaS

Data-driven strategist with over 15 years of C-Level experience leading marketing and sales teams to deliver world-class revenue growth for startups and Fortune 100 powerhouses across multiple industries. My 7-time entrepreneur background has provided a unique perspective on problem-solving and an unwavering sense of ownership. 

What can my Go-to-Market expertise help with?

I can help any team overcome their own limits and achieve growth in digital environments. As much as I enjoy planning a comprehensive Go-To-Market Strategy or designing a complete Revenue Operations system, I can also focus and help with specific areas like:

• Value Proposition
• Brand and Product Positioning
• Brand Messaging and Storytelling
• Demand Generation
• Inbound and Content Marketing
• CRM and Lead Management
• Data-Driven Sales Management
• Pricing Strategy
• Product Marketing and Growth
• Business Intelligence and Data Analytics
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
• eCommerce
• Marketplace Marketing (Amazon, Walmart, etc)
• SEO
• SEM & PPC
• Account Based Marketing (ABM)
• Affilate and Influencer Marketing
• Sales Enablement

Lastly, I have a genuine enthusiasm for web3, Bitcoin, blockchain, AI, ML, AR/VR, and DeFi, I’m driven to have an impact in the future these technologies are shaping for us. Sometimes I catch myself daydreaming of a world powered by smart contracts and DeFi, but hey, who doesn’t?

Reach out now and let’s talk!