From dashboard to global table.

When I met the CEO he was ready to sell the business. Twelve months later, we were sitting in a different conversation entirely.

Liqui Moly Chile is the distributor of Liqui Moly GmbH, the German company specializing in oils, lubricants and additives — 4,000+ products across four product divisions. Twenty-five years in the market, a tired team, two consecutive years of declining revenue, and a fed-up, bored CEO who had run out of ideas and was contemplating selling the company.

He had reasons. The Chilean market was more depressed than it had been in years. The sales team was demoralized — they hated their job, they didn’t understand the product, they had no new ideas, and the old ones were past overdue. There was no marketing department, so the advertising was poor and inefficient: no department, no plan, and no brand presence anyone outside the office could name. The company had four divisions and not one of them had its own visual identity. And the CEO — an engineer with extraordinary knowledge and experience in motor oil and additives — had a better relationship with the Finance Manager than with the sales team of fifty.

He hired me to open the marketing department, to see if that last effort could change things. Not in his wildest dreams did he think we could do what we did.

At 35 and looking like a primadonna, knowing nothing about cars, oils or additives, I walked into a room full of sales people who took one look at me and discarded me immediately. I confess I felt a bit terrified at first — I was wondering, “What am I doing here?” It was a much bigger step than I had originally believed. Nevertheless, I rolled up my sleeves, figuratively, and got to work. After introducing myself as someone who knew nothing about the motor industry but a lot about marketing and business, I asked: “Does anyone here have an idea about how we can improve sales?” The answer? Make the product cheaper. I realized we were starting at a very low place.

After meeting with the team, introducing some basic marketing philosophy, and explaining that there were many ways to work this out, I met with the CEO and told him to give me six months.

What got built in six months

The work that produced the year-one numbers was not a sales push. It was structural — the kind of rebuilding most consultants describe in 80-page decks and never actually do.

I started with the people.
First step: meeting with each employee alone, getting to know them, getting all the information only an employee knows; then reassuring them that things would change for the better, and getting their commitment to be open to what was coming. Talking to the employees is like going through the company files — they know everything.

I built the marketing department from scratch.
My work was a crossover between Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, Coach, Psychologist and Visionary. Not just a person and a budget — a department with goals, brand standards, division-level visual identity, and a plan that connected campaigns to sales targets. The Business & Marketing Plan, the Sales Manual, and the graphic design system I built for the four divisions became the spine of how the company showed up in the Chilean market.

I renegotiated the sales rep contracts — in a win-win.
The existing structure rewarded effort, not outcomes; the sales team had no north. I redesigned the contracts so that everyone benefited and reps had reason to go the extra mile: they earned more when the company earned more. Sales growth bonuses became part of the plan instead of an exception. Obtainable goals replaced arbitrary ones. Nobody lost; everyone gained when the business grew.

I was told the sales reps would never sign such a contract. I said: leave that to me. Two weeks later, all 50 contracts were signed gladly.

I reconnected the company and aligned them around the same goals.
At the three-month mark — with documents, contracts, training, costs, campaigns and imports all in motion — the team was ready for a four-day retreat where everything could be shared and reconnected.

The CEO had still not really engaged with the sales team. He was the most knowledgeable person in the company and shined when he talked about the products to me, but I needed him to come down from his pedestal and share his knowledge with his people.

I couldn’t foresee what would happen. We presented the Business and Marketing Plan, and we hired a psychologist to guide some sessions on team building. One of the modules separated the team into four groups; each group drew what they thought of the company before the restructuring and compared how they felt now. The results were breathtaking. One of the drawings actually became a reality — a third floor of the building, dedicated to training. If you’re going to invest in your people, you may as well give them somewhere to learn.

I repositioned the brand in the Chilean market.
German engineering had been the only story. We added a Chilean story — the Chilean motocross team became our brand awareness vehicle. They were at the top of their careers, and the CEO was friends with them. Fastest path to recognition at the time, and the cheapest. The team won races. We won the brand association — in exchange for oils and additives. We had a great time developing that effort. It paid off greatly.

The work that came after

Most operators stop here. Year-one results are achieved. The company is stabilizing. The job is, in theory, done.

I went looking for what was next.

The Argentina assignment.
Throughout my time at Liqui Moly Chile, I had heard about the problems with the Argentine market. After the success in Chile, I was given oversight of the Argentina operation. Within months I uncovered serious operational irregularities — enough to prompt an investigation and, eventually, the removal and dissolution of the partnership. It wasn’t pleasant. It was necessary.

Later, that decision opened the opportunity to negotiate a distribution agreement with Mann Filters — a total game changer, with its distributors all over Argentina.

The strategic gap.
The German parent company did its global marketing in two languages — German and English. Liqui Moly Chile had been the first, longest, and largest distributor in the region; under my watch it had been building a fully Spanish-language marketing program for the Chilean market. I had spent years before this in franchising with Yum Brands across Latin America. I had seen, up close, what happened when a global brand met a Spanish-speaking market with English materials and a translator.

There was an entire region the parent company wasn’t serving in its own language — most of South and Central America. The opportunity was sitting there because nobody had built the framework to claim it.

So I built the framework and pitched it: take charge of the South and Central American markets and earn a commission on sales; service the distributors in Spanish; create campaigns; run the trainings; grow the market; open new distributions in countries that were available; and host a yearly regional event to learn the lessons and share the successes. We negotiated the agreement with the Germans, and after some months of back and forth, we signed at a major commission structure.

The proof came at the first South and Central American Annual Convention in Chile, with all parties involved. Within the first year after signing, we landed Mexico as a distributor and unlocked exponential growth in the region.

I wasn’t the one who closed the eventual distribution deals — the Mann distribution agreement and the Mexico distributor relationship were ultimately negotiated and closed by the CEO. But those deals appeared as a result of a vision no one else saw. Without the foundation, there was no table to sit at.

What this story is really about

Founders sometimes ask me what they’re actually paying for when they hire me. The Liqui Moly Chile story is the cleanest answer I have.

Year one, I built the operational model that produced +36% revenue and −10% costs.

Years two and three, I used the room that operational success created to look for the strategic gap nobody else was looking for — and built the agreement that would let the company claim it.

That’s what an operating partner does. That’s what your business is buying when it brings me in.