MyStory

I started out in the most unlikely way possible for someone who now lives off marketing: studying Veterinary Medicine at UFU, then a master's in Animal Reproduction at UNESP Jaboticabal. I liked the field. But it was the strikes, and watching my own professors grow disillusioned with the career, that showed me that path wasn't going to take me where I wanted to go.

I walked away from the security of an academic career to bet on what had always been my real passion: the fitness world. Years later, already inside the market, I went back to school for an MBA in Controllership and Finance at FEA-USP. Because strategy without numbers is just guesswork.

I met the athlete Fernando Sardinha: a guy with 98 titles, a great communicator, whose career nobody was managing. I proposed a handshake deal: I'd handle his visibility and keep 30% of whatever we sold because of it. My pay tied to the result. That standard never changed.

I bought a Nikon D90, one of the first cameras on the market that could shoot video. It overheated and needed to rest every five minutes of recording. That limitation forced me, the hard way, to learn what became my signature: cut the fluff and get straight to the point.

I read every single comment on the videos to understand what the audience wanted. In no time, half a million views on YouTube. That's when it clicked for good: whoever has an audience and attention has everything.

Sardinha had plenty of earned authority: the titles, the knowledge, the track record. What he lacked was perceived authority: the market simply couldn't see any of it. I rebuilt his entire career, from the videos to Instagram, from his message to his positioning.

When the two authorities met, the results exploded. Talks that barely covered gas money to get there started getting booked by the biggest events in the country. The biggest sponsors in Brazilian fitness came calling. And the Sardinha Evolution digital product line became one of the most profitable assets of his career.

The partnership lasted 15 years. And it gave me definitive proof of the method: the moment the strategic content stopped, sales dropped the very next month, even with paid traffic holding steady. Strategic content is what makes people buy. I learned that firsthand, 17 years before it became common wisdom.