From dashboard to global table.

When I walked in, the CEO was preparing to sell the company. Twelve months later, we were sitting in a different conversation entirely.

Liquimoly Chile was a Chilean operation of a German automotive brand — four product divisions, a tired team, two consecutive years of declining revenue, and a CEO who had quietly decided the business wasn’t worth saving.

He had reasons. The Chilean market was tougher than it had been in years. The sales team was demoralized. Marketing existed in the literal sense — there was a person with that title — but there was 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.

He hired me to look at the business and tell him whether to sell. I told him to give me a year first.

What got built in twelve 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 built the marketing department from scratch.
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 Marketing Manual I created 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. I redesigned the contracts so the reps earned more when the company earned more. Sales growth bonuses became part of the plan instead of an exception. Nobody lost; everyone gained when the business grew.

I set the sales goals — and made them visible.
The targets had been arbitrary and shifting. We made them clear, time-bound, and connected to specific actions. People stopped guessing what success looked like.

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. Fastest path to recognition at the time, and the cheapest. The team won races. We won the brand association.

I trained the team and built the infrastructure to keep training them.
Including, eventually, building out a third-floor training room — because if you’re going to invest in your people you may as well give them somewhere to learn.

The work that came after

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

I went looking for what was next.

The Argentina assignment.
After Chile stabilized, I was given oversight of the Argentina operation. Within months I uncovered serious operational irregularities — enough to prompt an investigation and, eventually, the removal of the partner. The work wasn’t pleasant. It was necessary.

The strategic gap nobody at HQ had named.
The German parent company did its global marketing in two languages — German and English. Liquimoly Chile, under my watch, 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. I was one of three people who created the development agreement for the South & Central American Spanish-speaking region — the document that would let Liquimoly’s Chilean operation manage the broader regional opportunity at a 14% commission structure.

I wasn’t the one who closed the eventual distribution deals — the Mann distribution agreement and the Mexico distributor relationship were negotiated by the owner. But those deals existed because the regional architecture I helped build made them possible. Without the foundation, there is 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 Liquimoly Chile story is the cleanest answer I have.

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

Years two through four, 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.