We are natural connectors, insatiably curious... healthy carriers of stories.
There’s one thing I want to tell you right away: you won’t find shortcuts, tricks, or universal methods here. That’s not my job and, if you think about it, you don’t need them either.
I believe in stories.
Because stories don’t tell you what to do: they speak to you, they get inside you and they force you to look at yourself in the mirror. You don’t copy stories: they inhabit you, strike you, contaminate you, they make you ask that extra question which, if you hold onto it, becomes your key.
Do you know what I’ve realized over the years?
That I have never been “outside” the experiences I’ve lived: they weren’t just a parenthesis or just a job... they shaped me, crushed me, exalted me, betrayed me, and rebuilt me.
I found “my why” behind a “soundproof station,” equipped with headphones and a microphone: I was supposed to “just sell following a script” and yet, every call gave me back a piece of a country made up of people in difficulty, tired, distrustful... “who listen to you if you listen to them”; and then, the dialects, the idioms that changed depending on the time of the call... snapshots of life that had nothing to do with the script or the “training” received.
“Ma’am, if someone gets run over on a crosswalk, it doesn’t mean you should never leave the house and cross a street at a crosswalk again! You just need to pay more attention when crossing (even at the crosswalk).”
I remember answering this way to someone I called, who didn’t trust what I was saying... remembering terrible previous experiences with other phone consultants.
This way I handled the objection, at that moment, broke through not so much with the lady on the phone, but with the colleagues listening to me (my tone of voice went beyond the soundproof walls!) and the “floor/campaign supervisor.”
And that was my “salvation”: more and more often, I used my “slang” in an advertising style, I experienced the calls almost like a radio commercial... and more and more often they called me for script reviews, then for training and then... “I left the headphones to be on the floor.” And I remember perfectly what I thought: “now I can really share the change”: I could intervene in every “call,” operator by operator... I could refine the language, improve listening sensitivity... I could make the operator understand how important the daily life of the person called was.
In that room there were operators who, after a while, would find their path becoming doctors, entrepreneurs, trainers, permanent employees but also theater actors, freelancers, or “nomads in search of fortune.”
I left that room aware that I had given “a piece of myself” to each of them.
This is also why I always say that I owe everything to communication, advertising design, marketing...
Even knowing that they spared me nothing: they demanded the most, to the bone. They entered my life “with a flying tackle,” without asking permission: they disguised themselves as dreams, good intentions, vices, curiosity, gifts, books... they took on forms and languages perfectly in line with me, with my daily life.
It feels like yesterday that, working at an Accounting Firm, between a balance sheet, a “bank reconciliation” and a cash book... I realized that it wasn’t for me.”
As a good “accountant programmer with an IGEA focus,” it was my daily bread, it was all stuff I was pretty good at, with all the difficulties I could encounter (obviously, no one is born knowing and... I admit, I never stopped learning new dynamics).
But I was never interested in the result of the numbers... but in the nature, the process. Even here, “why does 2+2 always make 4.” And I liked “being in contact with people”: visiting clients to pick up invoices, receipts, expenses, cash book and solving the “notorious” tax dispute with the Revenue Agency!
Check, verify, study... “find a way” to get the file written off, canceled, or totally reviewed. “Find a way to protect your client.”
Today I understand why I keep writing the words “Businesses” and “Clients” with a capital letter: because I consider them “proper names,” because behind the word BUSINESS and CLIENT there is always (at least) ONE PERSON, the same one I visited to pick up documents or represented during a dispute.
Relationship with people, deadlines, numbers... and then, thanks to my mentor and some colleagues at the firm, I delved into some business procedures, some company forms... And then, the evenings spent at the firm between “pizza and balance sheets” and giving a new look (and a new meaning) to New Year’s Eve... and that damned question (with answer attached) that stuck in my head “we can do things differently: why not try? Why not do it? Why have we always done it this way.”
I saw things change around me and I understood the meaning.
But it wasn’t enough for me: I wanted to be an active part of it!
And in this struggle, in this continuous dance between desire and effort, I understood when we can talk about change:
- when you are aware.
- when it is lasting.
- when it is disruptive.
- when it “shows the way.”
I had already changed... finally and irreversibly. But I didn’t know it... or rather, I still had to “take shape.” You can understand the difficult moment: when you know you can do a lot, that what you have in your head can work but... you still don’t know who you are! When you elbow your way, want to make room but “flounder”... and it hurts (physically and mentally).
“I had to lose everything to “gain” everything...”
I had to understand what was behind “the graphic sign,” the writing of radio commercials. I had to understand the dynamics, the nuances... the variations, the lexicon (not just technical). And then calligraphy and “how to be read.”
Emails were still a must. Mobile Apps were the innovation and we still edited TV graphics with Combustion and on the Targa3000 Platform.
I worked (and studied) even at night, on Saturdays and Sundays to send the lower thirds for interviews and starting grids, in London, for the SBK world championships... Some tried to undermine my path... they mocked me because I did all this “for expenses only” or because I kept “crazy” hours (completely spontaneous and the result of my very personal discipline)... “What are you doing: going to bake bread?” they’d say, seeing me “around” at 4 in the morning!
I slept in front of the “editing station,” on a (unlikely and makeshift) sofa, waiting for the scene rendering to finish so I could send the material to the client.
The memory still moves me...
I’m writing this because I know that, deep down, you’re like this too. You too have lived moments when experiences took you by the hand (or by the throat) without giving you a choice. And every time, from that impact, you came out different... changed.
That’s why I believe that you and I are “natural connectors.” We’re not content to just live things: we want to understand them, feel them, tell them. Because in every gesture, word, or look... there’s always a hidden meaning to set free.
What I share with you, today and tomorrow, are not manuals or recipes but stories: mine (certainly) but also yours, those around us, those I meet... stories that resemble us or that surprise us.
Within these stories you can extract MEANING, SENSE, PURPOSE, and FEELING: you can make them your own, bend them to your life, transform them into concrete tools for your daily experience.
I have no truths to impose. And I don’t want to have any! I only have words and experiences to offer you. And if even just one of these words manages to open a gap inside you, then I’ll have done my part: to serve, not to stand out.
Because, you see, just like you... I’ve had 2+ jobs, I’ve had panic attacks, important moments of difficulty, tough choices to make... hard times to face (even today).
Every day I try to give things a name, to give meaning back to fragments, not to throw away what passes through me.
And every time I find a thread, I “grab it by the end”: for me and, if you want, for you too.
I will never give you a “how to.”
I will always give you a “why it’s worth it.”
And that’s where it all begins.
