Opening Spain for a Swedish company

Storisell is a content and video production company from Gothenburg. They knew me from the client side, because I had worked with them while I was at BeYou. They flew from Sweden to meet me, and in January 2020 I started as Managing Director in Spain.

There was no team, no client and no local brand. The Spanish company was incorporated in February.

A new subsidiary has to prove itself to headquarters quickly. Two months after I started, Spain went into the Covid lockdown, and many companies were closing or cutting staff.

• Signed the first client in week one, the second in week two and the third in week three.
• Used part of the Swedish playbook, and built the funnels, strategy, go-to-market, website, landing pages and content for Spain from scratch.
• Hired a designer in early March 2020. The Covid lockdown came a few weeks later, and I committed to keeping her employed.
• Narrowed the target after a first quarter of outreach that was too broad: CMOs of tech and fintech companies that had just raised money. With a sharper consultative pitch for C-level buyers, conversion went up and the pipeline became predictable.
• Sold, negotiated and ran every account: I led each project with the client and with our team, planned deliveries, fixed whatever needed fixing until the client was happy, and kept the relationship going for years.
• Ran every hiring process myself as the business grew: motion designers, creative project managers, strategists, salespeople and web developers.
• Chose the suppliers around the company, including finding and moving to a new law firm.
• Grew strongly in 2021 and 2022 through agency partners, fintech, SaaS and health tech, with clients such as Nespresso, Amadeus, Thales and Pernod Ricard.
• With Spain running, took on other regions, with the US as the main focus. There we widened the offer into consulting, and I worked as fractional CMO for vCreative and Counterpoint.

€3M+ in sales closed and 160+ businesses consulted, with the annual target met every year. The Spanish business has made a profit in every quarter since it started: 26 out of 26, from Q1 2020 to Q2 2026.

In September 2026 I joined Storisell’s board.

My most expensive mistake that year was a quarter of outreach aimed too wide. In a new market I now narrow the target before I add volume.