I work in marketing for fashion and ecommerce brands, mostly around email and growth. My world is the buying process: why people pick one brand over another, how you keep them coming back, how you turn a first purchase into a real relationship. I'm based in Spain, but the brands and the people I talk to are spread all over the place, which is half the fun of it.

The through line for me has always been curiosity about how other businesses actually operate. Early on I was working in ecommerce for fashion brands and doing a fair bit of exchange and brainstorming with other brands in the sector. I liked that part more than almost anything else, sitting down with someone who does what you do and comparing notes. You read endless articles online about Facebook ads or email marketing, but it's very different to talk to someone who has actually been through it and can react to your specific situation.

That instinct is basically what shaped my whole path. I followed the conversations, the brainstorming, the back and forth with other practitioners, and over time that turned into the work I do now and the way I think about it.

First of all, it's meeting new people, and meeting them from very different areas. I'm active on LinkedIn, but on LinkedIn you live in your own little bubble of the same kind of people. On a platform like GrowthMentor you find people from other verticals, other industries, other countries and markets you don't really know about. I've talked to someone in Singapore about the state of the fashion industry there, why people buy certain brands, the whole mentality of it. The cultural side of that is fascinating to me.

The other half is that I learn just as much as the people I'm helping. I've done around 180 sessions, and even though I'm the one who's supposed to be helping, I constantly come up with solutions for myself in the process. Someone explains a marketing strategy, we brainstorm, an idea pops out, and I think, that could actually work really well for my own clients. So it's never a one-way thing where the mentor just gives. It's an exchange of ideas, resources, and feedback. The mentee walks away having learned something, and so do I, which is the part I love most.

It depends on the mentee and what they put in the request, but I always try to get very specific before the call about what we're actually going to cover. Since I only do thirty minutes, I work out an agenda ahead of time, usually three main bullet points. What's the one big challenge or question or piece of advice you need? Then I try my best to deliver exactly that.

When I get into the call, the first ten minutes are questions only. It's a bit like a doctor's appointment. What are you working on, what are the challenges, and you balance your questions out of that. Those ten minutes are how you actually pinpoint the real issue, and then the remaining twenty are pure exchange. If you walk in firing off this is the solution, this is the solution, you're not listening, and in such a short window you'll do a bad job. Listening first is the whole thing.

I just tell them honestly that I don't think it's the right option. At the end of the day I have nothing to gain from telling someone their idea is good when I don't believe it. I try to be as constructive as I can and never just say your idea is horrible, because you genuinely never know. But I'll say something like, you could try it, just don't put ten thousand euros into it yet, because I don't think it has the potential you think it does.

I hold myself to the same standard in my own business. When a brand comes to me wanting to invest in email marketing and I look at the analytics and don't think it'll work out yet, I tell them they need more time to develop their product and their market fit first. Sometimes you just have to be straightforward. They might take it the wrong way, or go try it anyway and prove me wrong, which I'd be happy about. But every piece of advice I give, I give as if I were in the business myself, because I don't want to set false expectations.