After getting fired for taking too many risks as a Logistics Assistant, I had a few other jobs that helped me grow into a cross-functional Software Engineer. In this post, I’ll talk about the time between my first attempt owning a business (from waiter to manager) and ranking websites for “plastic surgery” in Google’s top [organic] search results for a living.

Waiter

Income: minimum wage.
Working Days: 7 per week.
Age: 18.

After leaving the Logistics Assistant role, I was unemployed for a few weeks until I got a job as a waiter in a faimly-owned restaurant. It was a standard waiter+cashier role: I had to serve food to customers, take their orders, clean up after them, restock the kitcken, etc. Except, I had no training, no experience, and no idea how to succeed in that role.

The restaurant was not profitable yet and the owner mentioned in a few occasions he was trying to find ways to improve it. Given I was about to get married and had plans on pursuing college, it sounded like a good opportunity to learn more about business and entrepreneurship - specially because I was not assigned to solve that specific problem.

I looked around and captured the following problems within the first two months:

1. Some customer(s) would complain the food was too cold, too salty, or not diverse enough.
2. 100L worth of food were thrown away. Every day!
3. The owner allowed customers to “eat now, pay later”, which contributed to a lot of bad debt and lack of predictability on the restaurant’s cash flow.
4. Dishes were removed from customers’ table too quickly, which made them feel rushed.
5. Customers finished eating their food before drinks arrived.

Those were some of the problems I captured that I believed were preventing the restaurant from becoming profitable. I showed the list of problems to the owner, but he wasn’t convinced if we solved those problems, the restaurant would become profitable. I wasn’t sure how much it would help, to I decided to run a survey to figure out.

Opportunity: prioritize through surveys

My wife had this idea about letting customers fill out a survey and vote for things we do well and things to improve. My wife and my in-law (yes, they used to work for the same restaurant) got together and came up with this box and a bunch of forms customers could fill out and provide feedback. The forms were strategically placed on their way out and they had to put it in a box close to the cashier’s counter.

It was a success! Many customers participated and validated my assumptions about which problems we should tackle first. At the end of the day, I addressed all problems, but this technique helped me gain trust with the owner (and customers) - which listened to my ideas more easily from that point on.

Lessons Learned

• Customers felt heard, understood and appreciated. I took every recommendation seriously and took action. In one occasion, I collaborated with one of our customers to come up with food delivery. His company ended up hiring our restaurant as their food delivery partner. Money, money, money!
• The survey was so popular that I decided to keep it running continuously as a feedback loop to prioritize issues. This helped understand if ideas we were implementing were working or not.
• I learned being customer obsessed can improve customer satisfaction and make the business successful.

Right after analysing the results of the survey and coming up with ways to address them, I got promoted to restaurant manager. Same salary, through; Given the context I was in, my insticts were telling me the knowledge I was gaining was worth more than any pay raise I could get, so I was ok with that.

Opportunity: reduce food waste

I started distributing tokens for customers, which they would return to the cashier after payment. We didn’t have a computer back then, so this was the easiest approach to allow me to estimate how much food we neeedd to buy based on demand. At the end of each day, I’d sit down with the chef and we would discuss what I’d need to buy for the next day.

The next approach I took was to run another survey to understand what food customers preferred and overindex on that. This helped me minimize waste, because we started to cook only what we knew were going to be eaten. As a side effect, some customers were unhappy about the lack of variety - which was ok, given I was trying to minimize waste, not maximize variety. A quick chat with those customers and some eye to eye contact was enough to convince them that was the best approach. I would even prepare customized meals for them, which was a great way to show them I cared.

Lastly, I created a game to encourage customers to guess how much their food portions weighted. If they guess the exact weight, they wouldn’t have to pay for it. This helped with the food waste problem, because customers became more aware about the amount of food they were selecting. A few of them won and we would ring a bell to let everyone know they saved a few dollars. The idea was not mine by the way; but who cares… I improved food waste AND customer satisfaction!

Opportunity: minimize late payments

Customers were allowed to eat and drink for a month without paying. I’d record their names and the amount they owned every time they came in. Once a month, they were expected to come in and pay the outstanding balance. This is when I learned the moment you allow them to pay later, the problem becomes a lot bigger:

• Most didn’t pay on time, making financial planning a lot harder.
• Some customers would “forget” to pay and I’d have to remind them constantly.
• Some (very vocal ones) were abusing the system to pay whenever they wanted.

I showed how much money was owned by each customer and the owner was shocked. Because he had close relationship with most of those customers, he decided to talk to them first. And guess what, they pushed back on the idea of not being allowed to pay whenever they wanted. Despite the push backs, I went ahead with the change and prohibited late payments.

In 30 days, those few customers had a target on my back. Some of them stopping coming and would even talk bad about the restaurant. In a matter of days, I went from the prodigy manager to being the most hated employee of the month. Since customer service and food quality were superior to the competition around the block, customers got used to the new rules and came back, eventually.

Opportunity: headcount optimization

After minimizing waste and improving customer satisfaction, I realized very quickly the owner overhired. The kitcken had 1 chef and 4 assistants. At that scale, the chef should be more than enough to operate the kitcken. Same for waiters: we had 4 of them, but at the busiest time of the day, only 2 of them were on full capacity. I recommended reducing the headcount and the owner agreed to it. The only problem is that he told me to do it. I was 18 years old, recently married and had no experience in dealing with my own emotions lol… this could go wrong in so many ways, but it was ok, I did it the best way I could back then.

Lessons Learned

• I wouldn’t be able to make everyone happy when trying to achieve business outcomes.
• I was convinced I had great skills to find problems (curiosity) and solve them (bias for action).
• There were many variables that contributed to business performance.

A few months later, I got fired from the restaurant - unexpectedly - due to some internal conflicts between the owner and his family.

Street Food Vendor: Hot Dog

Income: less than minimum wage.
Working Days: 7 per week.
Age: 18.

After being fired, I moved back to my mom’s house (rented) to save some money until I could figure out what to do next. I had a few hundred dollars in my bank account and the first thing that came to mind was to buy a hot dog attachment for my car and sell it in the streets of São Paulo. And that’s exactly what me and my wife did.

I was confident enough about selling products and how to deal with customers. What I didn’t know was how broken the system was and how dangerous it was to be a street vendor as an adult in Brazil.

First, you have to acquire a license from the city hall to become a street vendor. Something that didn’t exist when I was working with my aunt as a street vendor back in 1997. The problem was, the only way to get a license is by building connections with influentional people from the city hall - and I obviously didn’t have any at 19 years old; in fact, if I knew this was how it would be, I’d probably try to do something else. Back then, the alternative was to look out for the police and quickly run away if you saw them to avoid getting caught.

Incident: you’re only in trouble if you get caught

It was a warm saturday morning. I don’t recall if it was 2008 or 2009, but we drove to São Paulo Gay Pride Parade in Paulista Avenue and parked in one of its intesections. According to wikipedia, 3.5 million people attended that event… just wow! I had never seen so many people in my life. I was beyond happy and excited, because we would surely sell all of hot dogs and get back home with enough money to keep us going for a while.

It didn’t take too long until we were caught by the police. 30 minutes later after we arrived, many folks started running, which seemed weird, but it was so croweded, we didn’t think it was a big deal… until it became a big deal: the police jumped into our car out of nowhere, took everything we had and threw them into a plastic bag. They also took away the materials we used to prepare the hot dogs, including half of the hot dog car attachments - which were quite expensive back then. Our products were gone, so I drove off. Both me and my wife cried out of anger and frustration on our way home. I was lucky they didn’t ask for my driver’s license, because it was expired - if they took my car back then, I’d never be able to get it back, which would represent a huge finantial loss, considering I still had 50 repayments to do. lol.

Many other smaller issues happened before and after that incident, which made us reconsider this job and look for something else.

Shoe Salesperson

Income: minimum wage + commission
Working Days: 7 per week.
Age: 19.

After getting traumatized when trying to sell hot dogs in São Paulo, I sent my CV to almost every store in Plaza Sul Shopping Mall.

Shoebiz

I got a call from Shoebiz - a shoe store - and got hired a few days later. They paied me minimum wage, but I had a selling goal to meet every month. That was cool, I liked being challenged, but I had no idea how much I would have to work to achieve that goal, fortunately.

The job seemed easy: talk to customers, show them the shoes, and sell them. In reality, I had to pray someone would come and buy an expensive shoe, because that’s how I’d be able to hit my monthly goal. Some customers liked to talk A LOT, and it was quite challenging to handle those situations, because the more they talked, the less I could sell. So my strategy was to minimize the talk and maximize the sales. By the way, my legs and my back hurt badly. The shoes were stored in a warehouse on the first floor and the only way to get there was by stairs. Imagine walking up and down 100+ times a day. It was a torture, but I managed to survive it.

Employee of the month

In my first 30 days, I hit my sales goal and also became the top seller. The “funny” part is that the former top seller got pissed at me and treated me differently. I don’t know how much she influenced in my next decision, but after achieving those results so quickly, I realized I could make more money if commissions were better and shoes were more expensive - which also meant sales goals would be higher and harder to achieve.

World Tennis Classic

I applied to a role in a shoe store named World Tennis, which had the best comissions and the most expensive shoes in the entire mall. The day I got hired, I realized they sent me to World Tennis Classic, which is a different branch that sells shoes as pricey as World Tennis. The main problem is that the shoes were not as popular (mainly casual), so it was SUPER DIFFICULT to sell them. I was pissed off and worried, but I didn’t think I could ask to be transferred to the other store, so I stayed and took the challenge.

Context

Back then, I was still living in 1-bedroom room with my wife. We were working from Monday to Sunday and didn’t have much money (and time) to do anything else. She wanted to be a psycologist, I had no idea what I wanted to do yet, but I was hoping to get into uni to study something that could help me have a better life. Until then, I had to do whatever it took to survive.

Size doesn’t matter, sales do

Customers not always knew their size and in many occassions, they would not buy the shoe if it doesn’t match the size they had in mind - even if the size they had in mind doesn’t fit in reality. So, yeah, I sold many shoes to customers that didn’t match the size they were asking for. Whether it matched their feet or not, that’s another story. I felt really bad about this, even though I was trying to help them - but the exchange policy was solid, and, more importantly, this helped achieve my sales goal and get my commission - which I happily used to buy some McDonald’s and watch movies in the cinema with my lady. let’s go.

I’m kidding, seriously

The thing about selling shoes is that most of the time, people don’t need them. Being a street vendor helped me understand how to identify potential buyers - and that’s what I did. Instead of investing the same amount of energy in every customer that asked about a pair of shoes, I focused on the ones that were more likely to buy one, according to a few pre-conditions. Back then, I paid a lot of attention to body language, facial expressions and other non-verbal clues, such as the way they reacted to my jokes. This worked so well, in one occassion I managed to sell two pairs of the most expensive shoes in the store in one sale. That was also the sale that helped me achieve my monthly goal and pass the probation period. I was so happy about the sale, that I rushed to meet my wife and celebrate the achievement during lunch time. When I came back, my co-workers told me I lost the sale, because I didn’t meet one of our requirements to put the shoes that I didn’t sale back in the shelf. They made me believe this was for real and it took me a while after they told me it was a joke to realize it really was. Kinda my fault, that’s exactly how my jokes would be perceived by others, including customers.

SEO Assistant

Income: minimum wage to 3x minimum wage.
Working Days: 5 per week.
Age: 19-23.

First Round: Red Bricks Media

I was really tired of working from Sunday to Sunday to make a living. It was also challenging to study anything because I didn’t have the resources (both money and time) to do so. Luckily enough, I made many people laugh when I was learning English at CNA Vila das Merces, which helped build my network at such a young age at 14 years old. When I heard one of my friends from CNA was coming back from overseas (USA) to open a branch (kinda) of Red Bricks Media in Brazil, I didn’t think twice before reaching out to him and asking to meet him to know more about his experience in the US and what were his plans with this new branch. I asked my wife what she thought about it… and the answer was not exactly what I expected to hear:

“It doesn’t look like you were close friends. I don’t think he will meet you and I wouldn’t ask to meet him at all. It sounds innapropriate.”

I already had the no, what else could I lose? We met and I was overly excited about his time in the US and asked a million questions about it. At some point, he told me there was an opening in his agency in Brazil: it was from Monday to Friday, sitting on a chair in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. The title of the role was “SEO Assistant” and it had something to do with ranking websites by keywords in Google’s organic search results. The funny thing is that two people that already worked in there were also from CNA: one of my teachers and one of my classmates. I didn’t think twice before accepting the offer.

Outcomes

That job was important to me in so many ways, but these were the key outcomes:

1. I learned how to use Microsoft Excel to automate tasks.
2. I learned how businesses make money by ranking their landing pages on search engines.
3. My English skills improved a lot, since I had to read and write daily.
4. I discovered Computer Science, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and learned about programming basics with PHP.

Second Round: AD.Dialeto

I don’t really remember why I left Red Brids Media, but I somehow ended up working for AD.Dialeto as a Junior SEO. The agency was located very far from home - it was 1h:30m commute. I used to live in the suburbs of São Paulo and the company was located at Faria Lima - a commercial and financial centre. I had to take 2 buses and 1 subway to get there. Despite the long commute, it was a great opportunity to learn more about SEO and digital marketing.

This was the first time I had my lunch paid by my employer. Given I wasn’t really into cooking, this was a big plus for me. My employer gave me lunch vouhcers which were supposed to last 22 [business] days. Since we’re [still] talking about Brazil and Faria Lima being a rich area, my lunch voucher wouldn’t last more than 5 days - but I enojyed it anyway.

The funniest thing I remember from working in there was when one of the bosses bought ice cream for everyone and asked us to post on social media how cool the company was. To this day I still don’t know if he was joking about it or if I didn’t realize he was indeed joking. It had to be a joke.

Outcomes

1. I learned how to use Google Analytics to measure the impact of SEO.
2. I engaged deeply with the SEO community and quickly learned how to implement the best strategies.
3. I learned 1:30m commute time is a lot.

Third Round: Ogilvy

Work at AD.Dialeto was ok, but I learned I could make more money in a bigger company. That’s when I learned about a job opening at Ogilvy. I applied and got through the interviews. The role was one of the most exciting ones I’ve ever had: I was going to work as a Senior SEO (not because I had lots of experience, but because there wasn’t many people with experience available) in a team of UX Designers and Product Managers for the biggest brands in Brazil, such as Claro, Tang, Jac Motors, Ronaldo’s 9ine marketing agency, etc.

I had so much fun at Ogilvy that I didn’t even care about the 2h commute time. This career move was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I learned A LOT about product development with that team, but I had no idea back then how useful that would be in the future.

Outcomes

1. I learned about how to refine products through user interviews.
2. I learned the impact of usability to digital products.
3. I learned about Amazon.com success through “Don’t Make Me Think” book by Steve Krug.
4. I learned how much millions money big coorporations invest in paid marketing every year.
5. I learned how big brands handle their digial presence and customer support.
6. I learned how much money IT vendors were making by building wordpress websites (This definately made me think about learning programming, but I wasn’t ready yet).
7. I learned about [paid and organic] social media strategies.
8. I experienced the excitement (and fear) of launching a nationwide marketing campaing on one of the most popular TV shows in Brazil (Faustao).

Last Round: AO5

Ogilvy was great, but I was working alone, without support from any peer that understood SEO as much as I did, so I decided to join a company that had an entire team dedicated to SEO strategies: AO5. The second main reason why I changed jobs is because I met one of the founders of AO5 and beyond being such a nice person, his company was just a few kilometers away from where I lived. By car, it was a 10 minute drive - OMG, yes!

This company also built websites, and they had a frontend development team, which I obviously got close to, so that I could clarify the infinite questions I had in my head.

Outcomes

1. I learned about the importance of using processes to scale.
2. I learned drain cleaning service is one of the most competitives markets in google [paid] search.
3. I learned the importance of showing impact to customers that are paying for a service (SEO) they don’t understand much about.
4. I learned why clients cared more about converting clicks than being ranked at the top.

Shift to Software Development

I was happy doing SEO, but I always felt like I was capable of doing more and each time the engineering team launched a new website, I couldn’t stop thinking I would like to learn how to do that myself. Back then, one of the aspects of Software Development that I resonated with (a lot) was logic: “given A, if B, then C” as opposed to “do A because I find it cool”. I used to work best when I relied on data to solve problems rather on my selling pitch, for example.

During that time, I was also worried about which career I’d like to pursue. I had already thought about Vet, Marketing, Business Management, but I couldn’t see myself building a career on those areas.

Then this happened: I asked one of the frontend developers at work what they thought about Java, because I learned online that’s how mobile applications were built and I wanted to see if that’s something worth learning. His answer: “Dude, Java is hard and terrible. Don’t even try, you will regret every single day”. So I took the advice, momentarily, and started learning web development through MDN. I liked it, but building UIs was not my thing, so I started reading How to Think Like a Computer Scientist using Python. By the time I finish reading that book, I was already convinced problem solving was something I really enjoyed doing, so I started reading about career in IT, popular programming languages, popular companies and everything else I could find online to help me make a decision. Which led to me enrolling for Computer Science at Anhembi Morumbi University in 2012, which led me to leaving AO5 and joining an internship at iG.

What’s Next

Next up, I will talk about how was my first job in IT (internship at iG): how I dealt with my onboarding, what did I do to get promoted to full time employee within 6 months, how I built a strong network that later helped me find better jobs, etc.

See you next time!