My story - From the chicken’s poop to Google (Intro)

I love stories. It’s amazing how capable they are to create emotions, change perceptions and spark learnings. Stories live in tons of places: from movies, books, podcasts to memes on the internet, the latest news from the weekend, in the past, in the present or even in the future.

In matter of fact, I love stories so much that I’m currently working with storytelling at Google in San Francisco. And you know what’s the funniest part? To get here I had a really long story full of unexpected events, plans, failures, achievements, joy, challenges and so many remarkable moments. I believe each person has a unique story and that their choices determine their future and create a legacy. It’s impossible to recreate, imitate or even judge somebody’s life story. There are so many variables involved and no doubt each one knows what he or she has lived so far, and is the protagonist of his or her own life.

I’m here to tell you a little bit about the story of my life, and even though your story is different than mine, that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn and be inspired with each other.

---

I was born in the city of São Paulo in the year of 1990. I came from a middle class family and lived for the first 14 years of my life in the same 600 square feet apartment in the west neighborhood of the city. Actually, after I got married, I still lived in that apartment for a couple of more years. I studied in private school until I was 12 years old and I always had everything I needed at home. However, after my father faced the challenge of being fired and trying to get back to the market things got a little bit tougher for our family. I had to move to a public school (they’re not a quality reference in Brazil), and had to live with less and struggle more.

When 14, our family had to leave the apartment and move to São Lourenço da Serra, a small town with approximately 15 thousand population, located 30 minutes from the big city. Another tough start over, where we used to sleep all in the same room in a tiny house in the middle of nowhere, not to mention the inconvenient bullying that happened at school for being the ‘boy from the city‘.

My uncles had and still have a farm store in the region and at the peak of my 14 and I started to work there earning $20 per month. It was 3 years working as the ‘do everything‘. Really, everything: from cleaning chicken’s poop to carry ration bags on the back and giving medicine shots to sick chicken. I use to say that that was when my career has begun and I’ve certainly learned a lot during that period.

However, everything changed when inspired by my older brother’s profession I started to read a book about advertising and communication business. The year was 2007 and the golden age of blogs was beginning to soar, inspiring me to create my own blog called By the Way. Through the blog I made friends with other bloggers and this network gave me an opportunity to get my first job in an advertising agency in São Paulo. I went to the interview, and as crazy as it sounds, me, living in a small town, without previous experience in the field, with 17 at the time, passed!  

Another challenging start over was about to happen. I moved back to the apartment with my older brother and I still had 6 months of high school to get through. I was then transferred to one of the worst public schools in the region and attended classes during the evening. On top of that, I had to work during the day, take crowded bus and face intense hours of traffic at the Paulista Avenue. I thought about giving up and even asked my parents to come back home, but my family supported my and urged me to continue steady and face the challenge with courage. I’m glad they did that. This whole experience was the front door for my personal, professional, emotional and spiritual growth. I was ready to face any challenge that might come.

From my first job at this advertising agency I went to another one (this time as a strategy intern) after participating in a contest that I ended up not winning but that opened other doors to me. From my second job I went to a third agency called Africa, one of the biggest ad agencies in Brazil, where I worked for about 1 year and a half. At 19 years old, I had to face another important decision in my life. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I was called to serve as a full-time missionary, or in other words, a 2 year voluntary service where I would leave my family, job, college, girlfriend and friends behind (I didn’t have a girlfriend anyway :p), to help people. I was designated to serve in Brasília, capital of Brasil, and I served with all my heart, having experienced things that are not of this world.

2 years flew by, I came back to São Paulo and had to start all over again. Thanks to the people I met and worked in the past, I was able to get a job at a digital advertising agency called F.biz. I worked there for 2 years and started my Graphic Design bachelor’s degree at FMU college. A couple of years later I went to another agency called R/GA, where I worked as a strategist for 3 years and finally graduated from college (overcoming again the challenge of working during the day and studying during the evening).

While at R/GA, I had the chance to work with the Google account, establishing a trust relationship with the team. From this relationship another opportunity came up to start working at Google initially as a temporary contract. At this time my wife and I had had our first child and I worked really hard to prove my value as a temporary worker. It worked! I was hired as a FTE in the marketing team in Brazil. After 1 year and a half and lots of projects later I participated in a program to go on a rotation to work on another country. I was chosen and accepted to be part of the Brand Studio team at Google San Francisco, working specifically with brand storytelling. And here I am since then, 1 year and half and counting.

What I wrote above was just a small summary of my story, however, so many things had happened during each phase of my life. That’s why I decided to make a series of 6 chapters telling about the experiences and learnings I had that I consider key to my life.

Why I decided to write about my story

As I mentioned in the first post, one of my goals with the blog is to inspire people through stories and practical learnings that can be applied by anyone. I believe that my story can be a source of inspiration for people that are writing their own stories, same way I’m also constantly looking for inspiration in stories from people that I admire. And that’s the beauty of it: no matter if you’re famous or not, extroverted or introverted, rich or poor etc. Each one of us have incredible stories to share and the opportunity to learn from each other.

What I learned with my story

All of us go through challenging moments in various aspects of our lives: professional, social, spiritual, educational, emotional etc. In my 6 posts series I will tell a little bit about remarkable experiences I had and how they have helped me to develop attributes that go from feasible professional skills to abstract skills like faith, resilience and love.

Chapters

Below you can see what the 6 chapters about my story will be about. I will launch one chapter per week and will be updating the links below as the posts go live.

Chapter 1: Creating a Spider-Man website

About the challenges of adaptation and how I learned to learn

Chapter 2: The chicken’s poop, the blog and the advertising world

About the non-glamorous beginning of my professional career

Chapter 3: Diving into the planning universe (where nothing worked as planned)

About how I found what I like to do and started to act upon it

Chapter 4: Called to serve and coming back to the real world

About giving yourself completely to serve others

Chapter 5: When design and strategy meet

About the journey of deciding what college course to study

Chapter 6: Google and my personal Golden Gate Bridge

About the challenge of working in a worldwide huge company and living abroad

If you, just like me, are still looking to learn in your life and get better each day I think my story can certainly help you as it helped me. However, my story is still being written. I’m pretty sure yours too. And together, we’ll get there someday.

Stay tuned for more posts in the upcoming weeks! ;)