What We Do

We tell real stories

Here I tell the story of the encounters, experiences and turning points in my life.

I tell the story of the years I spent in Italy, the country I love deeply and where I was born on 1 May 1981, until 2020, when, for a series of reasons, my life changed direction.

Or perhaps I was the one who decided to change it.

I started again from zero and arrived on my own personal Planet England to work as a labourer for a building company.

MarketingSalento.com is the shop window of a life made of mistakes, failures, missed opportunities, recovered opportunities and, sometimes, opportunities lost all over again.

It is the story of an ordinary life, made of falls — so many of them — climbs back up, and then more falls.

Because when your mind runs fast, it is almost impossible not to fall. When a person tries to do something, to build or create an idea, it is impossible not to meet failure as well.

This is a journey without filters.

In this fucking world, almost everyone tries to present themselves as a successful person. I do not.

I am not interested in success. I am interested in the objective.

I am especially interested in the difficult objective: the one where the chance of losing is high, but which is still worth pursuing.

The important thing is not only to win. Sometimes the important thing is to lose, because a defeat can teach you something that a victory will never be able to teach.

Victory can represent an arrival. Losing, on the other hand, can mean refusing to stop, continuing to fight and continuing to search.

And sometimes losing also means losing yourself.

But perhaps it is precisely when we lose ourselves that we begin to understand which road we truly want to follow.

We document the history of our projects

Past projects and future projects: everything will be told here.

We will do it seriously, but also — and above all — with irony, because life must certainly be taken seriously, without ever forgetting to smile straight back at it.

The difficulties you encounter when you try to create something unique, something other people are not doing or cannot yet imagine, are endless. That is also why I decided to tell their story.

It is easy to look at a failed project and judge it from the final result. It is much harder to understand how much work, energy, time and stubbornness may have been invested in something that, in the eyes of others, appeared impossible from the very beginning.

Yes: revolutions and revolutionary projects.

My life has often been like that.

It has not been a straight, orderly or predictable life. It has been a crazy life: full of ideas, attempts, departures, changes, mistakes, discoveries and new directions.

I love reading, searching, discovering, documenting and telling the story of what I encounter while navigating the web and moving through real life.

I almost never stop at the appearance of something.

It may be a logo, a drawing, a name, a project, a person or, naturally, a beautiful woman. I always try to go further. I investigate, dig, study and try to understand something more.

Because behind what we see there is almost always a story we do not know.

In England, for example, I met extraordinary people: migrants.

People with different names and languages, coming from distant countries and continents. One of the greatest discoveries in life is born there: in meeting people who are not like us.

Through them you discover new experiences, traditions, flavours, cultures and ways of seeing the world. And while you listen to the story of their origins, you also find the space to tell the story of your own.

For me, this is one of the most beautiful aspects of migration.

I see it as a form of human deseasonalisation, not territorial deseasonalisation.

Territorial deseasonalisation tries to distribute people and experiences across different places and different periods of the year. Human deseasonalisation takes a person out of their familiar environment, away from their certainties, and forces them to live through new seasons of their own existence.

To migrate means changing landscape, language, work, habits and perspective. It means leaving your own season and learning to live in someone else’s.

In life, on social media and in communication generally, we are used to showing only the positive side: success, victories, results and our best images.

I believe, instead, that we should have the courage to observe and tell the story of our flaws, mistakes and contradictions too.

The same applies to a project.

You cannot tell only the story of its success. You must also tell the story of its difficulty, its problems, the moments when everything appeared lost and the times you continued without knowing whether it would be worth it.

Because the final result is only a small part of the story.

The real project is everything that happened while you were trying to make it real.

We study names and digital identities

Many years ago I lost a digital identity.

That loss pushed me into a world that, until then, I had known only superficially. I began to study, analyse and explore it until it became one of my greatest passions.

It is a discipline made of numbers, letters, words, extensions, lengths and typing times.

A digital identity can be connected to a person, a brand, a company, a small business, a city, a territory or even an idea that does not yet exist.

It is an infinite universe.

Once you truly enter it and become passionate about it, it becomes difficult to pull yourself away. Every word can create new combinations. Every letter can change the strength of a name. Every number can acquire meaning. Languages meet, translate, overlap and influence one another.

Digital identities are almost the prehistory of the network.

They come before content, before graphics, before platforms and before everything that will later be built.

Before creating something, you must understand what to call it, how to represent it and how to make it recognisable.

There are incredible stories about digital identities: opportunities inexplicably left available, names lost, recovered, forgotten or suddenly transformed into something essential.

The network is infinite. It is the only place where a person, starting from a small room and an inexpensive computer, can genuinely try to connect with the entire planet.

I explored this secret discipline invented by the English mainly while living in England.

Joking, but not entirely, I always tell the English that I am ready to challenge them in the very discipline they invented.

And if I lose, I will accept defeat.

The problem is that, so far, they have not accepted my bets. Perhaps they already know how crazy I become when I enter the world of Computer Science, names and digital identities.

Finding a solution for a person, a business or a project without a real online identity is not simple.

I studied this world for five years, day and night.

I have pushed every personal computer I have owned to breaking point.

My computers are Fiat 500s, but I make them fly like Lamborghini Diablos.

And I want to make one thing clear: learning to do what I do does not necessarily require a £1,700 Apple computer.

I have never used one.

I have always worked with £450 computers. I squeezed every last component out of them and, sometimes, managed to go beyond what other people achieve with much more expensive equipment.

What you truly need is something else:

Passion, love, patience and a healthy obsession with what you are doing.

How did I learn?

The answer may sound unbelievable.

I also learned while working as a refuse collector here in England.

I learned by spending every day alongside migrants from all over the world, listening to names, languages, numbers, pronunciations and different ways of describing the same things.

I learned by analysing words and combinations.

I learned by spending hours, hours, hours — and then many more hours — in front of a computer.

At a computer, not on a phone endlessly scrolling through social media.

No job is insignificant when you perform it with dignity, passion and a desire to learn.

Here in England I have done almost everything. And precisely by doing jobs that some people consider humble, I learned far more than I could ever have learned by sitting comfortably and talking only about theory.

That story will also be told.

NO LIKES PLEASE

I am not against social media.

I also have a Facebook profile, publish Stories, joke and enjoy myself enormously. Social media can be useful, fast and capable of creating relationships.

But NO LIKES PLEASE was born to communicate a different idea.

If you want to reach the world, build a reputation and leave behind a recognisable presence, social media alone is not enough.

Social media lends you a space.

The network allows you to build your own.

Social platforms can give you visibility, contacts, entertainment and interaction. But a real digital identity must also exist outside those platforms, through a name, original content and a structure that can still be found over time.

A Like lasts a few seconds.

A strong digital identity can last for decades.

Digital Name Intelligence

Digital Name Intelligence is the name I chose for my research into digital names.

Yes, exactly: to work seriously in this field you need a particular form of intelligence, powered by endless study, curiosity and the ability to notice what other people do not see.

You need to analyse:

• the strength of a word;
• its length;
• how easy it is to pronounce;
• how long it takes to type;
• linguistic variants;
• acronyms;
• numbers;
• extensions;
• international recognisability;
• editorial and commercial possibilities;
• the ability of a name to become an identity.

In this magazine we will also discuss comic, absurd and apparently impossible digital identities.

But above all we will discuss very serious names through which businesses, projects and major commercial opportunities can be developed.

It is not necessarily difficult.

But you have to love it.

You must be willing to stare at a word, a logo, a colour or a combination of letters for hours and ask yourself what it could become.

This discipline will be fundamental to the future of people, territories, brands, small businesses and major companies.

And this is exactly what I do every evening after ten hours on a construction site.

It is what I want to communicate especially in Italy, the country I love deeply, which I still consider far behind in understanding digital identities and their future value.

This is my real life in England.

Observing names, logos, colours, drawings and words.

Investigating, exploring, comparing and trying to understand what lies behind appearances.

In the evening I am often in contact with international partners to discuss the future of this world and the opportunities that almost nobody can yet see.

Never judge by appearances

Many people who followed me on social media and laughed at my comic Stories about breaking records on construction sites probably thought I was only acting the fool.

I was not.

For me, a construction site is sport, life, effort, discipline, experience, places and encounters with people from every part of the planet.

Construction work is hard, but in some strange way it relaxes me.

The heaviest part of my day comes in the evening, when my research begins and I put under pressure the brain that many of you probably think I do not possess.

My life is also made of this contrast:

during the day I carry materials, clean, build and work with my body;

in the evening I study words, numbers, names, identities and the future with my mind.

That is why you should never judge a person by appearances, by the job they do or by the way they choose to have fun.

Behind a joke there may be research.

Behind dirty work clothes there may be a global project.

Behind a defeat there may be the first step towards a discovery.

Always stay humble. You may conquer the world, but first you must conquer yourself.

We tell the story of Salento and Puglia without confining them

This journey evolved for a series of revolutionary reasons.

From MarketingSalento.com we arrived at MarketingPuglia.com: an even more complex challenge, because Puglia is a larger territory, a region made of different identities, cultures and landscapes.

Salento is the point of origin, not the limit.

What initially appeared to be a problem became an opportunity. We will tell what happened in another revolutionary space, because that story deserves its own time and place.

Who said that great, beautiful and international projects cannot be born and developed in Southern Italy, in Lecce or in Salento?

I am telling you that this is not true.

My small company of challenges started from a problem connected with Salento and suddenly found itself having to look at the whole of Puglia.

And who said that Puglia cannot reach Italy?

And Italy cannot reach Europe?

And Europe cannot reach the world?

And from the world — from this fucking world — perhaps one day you will send me to another planet, inside another galaxy, belonging to another universe.

All right, I admit it: what I have just written is completely mad.

But, dear readers, through this secret discipline invented by the English, it is genuinely possible to travel very far.

You must work, study and stop believing that the entire digital world is trapped inside the screen of a phone.

Every so often you must detach yourself from social media and understand that different spaces exist: larger, deeper and, very often, better ones.

Salento must not be locked inside its own borders.

Puglia must not be described only as a summer destination.

A territory can begin from its roots without becoming their prisoner. It can preserve its identity while speaking to Italy, Europe and the rest of the planet.

To travel far, we must not forget where we began. We must transform the place we come from into the first point on a much larger map.

From construction sites to Digital Diamonds

When I returned to England after a year in Italy — a year I would honestly describe as depressing — almost nobody believed in me any longer.

I went back to work.

I worked hard, always on construction sites, but especially on a major site at Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire. I remained there for nine months and, during the final three, I worked Saturdays and Sundays as well, without a single day of absence.

It was there that, because of — or perhaps thanks to — a young and exceptionally talented manager, I became Super Mario.

And, thank God, I was paid extremely well too.

That job gave me far more than a wage. It restored my strength, discipline and peace of mind, and above all it gave me the possibility of taking back what I had lost in 2022.

I still cannot calculate it precisely, but we are talking about approximately five or six hundred digital identities.

Five or six hundred tools, names, projects and possibilities that had left my life and that I decided to reclaim.

This return to England, which almost nobody believed in, created an extraordinary force inside me.

I did not simply recover those six hundred jewels.

I transformed them into more than one thousand Digital Diamonds.

I call them that because I do not see them simply as names or technical tools. Inside every one of them I see a possibility, a story, a project, a territory, a business or a future direction.

But I do not want to keep all these Diamonds locked inside a safe.

I want to make them available to people interested in working as a team.

Because through these tools we can try to travel far.

Very far.

I am not looking for people who will work only for me

Your collaboration is not essential only for me.

To make a living from this discipline, ten of my Digital Diamonds might probably be enough for me.

The others can become opportunities for people who currently have no work, for those who want to change direction, for people with abilities they have not been able to use and for those prepared to learn something new.

I can offer training, experience, ideas and digital assets reclaimed through financial investment and thousands of hours of work.

But I am not looking for spectators.

I am looking for open-minded people, people with vision and, if possible, slightly less television.

People able to look beyond what already exists.

People who do not immediately ask:

“How much will I earn tomorrow?”

but who can also ask:

“What can we build together over time?”

I will state it clearly: I may lose again.

I do not promise easy victories and I do not want to sell illusions. I am simply a person who tries.

I try, make mistakes, fall, begin again and try once more.

And if I lose again, I will continue working on construction sites. It would not be the end of the world.

After all, I enjoy myself there too. Every day I meet brothers from different nations and continue discovering people, languages, cultures and different ways of living.

What am I asking for?

I am asking for seriousness.

But seriousness does not mean working without smiling.

We will enjoy ourselves, laugh, learn and grow together.

I am asking for commitment and application. You do not need impossible knowledge or abilities reserved for a chosen few. Many of the things we do can be understood, provided there is curiosity, patience and a willingness to learn.

We will build the training together.

We will provide tools, method and experience to try to carry our projects across Italy, Europe and the world.

But to do that, we need a team.

We need Team.

We need collaboration.

And we need sacrifice.

Our grandparents made enormous sacrifices to change the lives of their families. If we want to build something different and live better, we too must be prepared to do our part.

We cannot desire change without accepting the work required to create it.

From Salento to the world

From Salento to the world, and from the world back to Salento.

It is not an impossible challenge.

Everything can change.

A person can move from a period of depression to a new inner peace. It is possible to rediscover balance, direction and mental wellbeing worth more than any financial result.

For me, this is the true wealth of life.

Of course, financial results matter. They are necessary to live, invest and transform ideas into concrete projects.

But they arrive through work.

Through sweat.

Through patience.

This is life.

We cannot spend it only complaining or feeling sorry for ourselves.

We are the children and grandchildren of people who made enormous sacrifices. We must learn from their strength, without being ashamed of hard work and without believing that everything is owed to us.

Until I was twenty-five, I found almost everything ready for me.

I began to understand the real value of things only when the difficulties arrived.

It was precisely through those difficulties that I truly began to learn.

Today I am happy to tell the story of these emotions too, because perhaps they may help someone who feels stuck, confused or convinced that they have already wasted too much time.

Have you made mistakes?

No problem.

Mistakes are universities.

Have you made a huge number of mistakes?

Even better.

A huge number of mistakes means a huge number of first-class master’s degrees.

So, if you have made many mistakes — as I have on countless occasions — perhaps you are already much better prepared than you think.

You are trained to face life with a new vision.

You do not need to erase everything you have done.

You need to learn how to use defeats, falls and bad decisions as tools for building a different direction.

A mistake can become experience.

A loss can become research.

A fall can become the point from which you begin to rise again.

It is never too late to begin again.

We analyse marketing in practical terms

I do not have a university degree.

I qualified as a mechanical engineering technician, yes. But I do not hold a degree in Communication Studies, Marketing, Web Marketing, Mathematics or Computer Science.

I do not have any degree at all.

I have only a passion that began when I was very young. I read constantly, searched for information, studied through Google and Wikipedia, followed specialist magazines — especially in franchising — and observed companies, brands, advertising, signs, shops, colours, names and people’s behaviour.

And above all, I made mistakes.

Many of them.

I repeat this constantly because I do not want to present myself as a professor standing at a lectern explaining to everyone else how success is built. I do not give academic lectures and I do not sell magic formulas.

I simply tell the story of what I have observed, attempted, misunderstood and learned while living in real environments, often far away from social media.

Stories are not my life

Many people know me mainly through my Facebook Stories.

The funny thing is that I do not even possess the password to my profile. Yet, because I publish several Stories during the day, someone may imagine that I spend hours and hours on social media.

I do not.

A Story often takes me less than a minute. I make them because I have fun, joke, tell what is happening around me and transform even the hardest work into a small comic performance.

I will put it with my usual elegance:

I masturbate in Stories, but I make real love elsewhere.

Stories are entertainment, irony, provocation and immediate contact with people.

But the real work comes afterwards.

It begins when I put down the phone, switch on the computer and start studying, comparing, writing, planning and searching for what does not yet exist.

We begin with the foundations

With me, we begin with the foundations.

You do not need extraordinary technical knowledge. You do not need to know every program, every language or every theory of communication.

What you need above all is curiosity.

You must want to ask why one thing works and another does not. Why we remember one name and forget one hundred others. Why we immediately recognise a colour, a sign or a shape. Why some projects make people talk without spending huge amounts, while others disappear despite constant advertising campaigns.

Marketing does not begin when you publish a photograph.

It begins much earlier.

It begins when you try to understand who you are, what you represent, what you want to communicate and why anyone should remember you.

Marketing does not happen only on social media

Marketing is not done on social media.

Or, at least, it is not done only there.

Social platforms are tools. They can be useful, fast, entertaining and capable of creating relationships. But they do not represent the entire digital space.

Many people have turned social media into their home, when in reality they are living in a room temporarily lent to them by somebody else.

I say it clearly:

Social media is your prison, not mine.

My presence cannot depend solely on a platform, an algorithm, a number of views or the sudden decision of somebody who can reduce my visibility from one day to the next.

Real work is built on a broader structure.

Social media can amplify an identity.

It cannot replace one.

Identity first, advertising second

Advertising does not mean possessing an identity.

You can spend thousands, appear constantly, buy space, publish videos and show your message to huge numbers of people.

But if nobody can understand who you are, remember you or distinguish you from everyone else, that advertising produces only noise.

Identity comes before advertising.

And be careful: the logo does not simply come first. Nor does the name, taken on its own.

The complete identity comes first.

The name, symbol, language, colours, voice, behaviour, consistency and the way a project presents itself must become recognisable parts of the same story.

A beautiful logo without identity is only a beautiful drawing.

A name without direction is only a word.

Advertising without structure is only money moving quickly and disappearing.

Being recognisable means communicating the same personality at every point of contact.

Only then do people begin to remember, recognise and, above all, talk spontaneously about a project.

And when people begin talking about it without being paid to do so, then something is genuinely working.

Likes are not the result

Many revolutionary ideas that later became enormous companies were born before social media and before the technologies we now consider indispensable.

That should make us think.

Do not imagine that social media is the final result.

And do not imagine that ten thousand Likes automatically represent success.

Likes can be pleasant.

Hearts can be gratifying.

Views can create excitement.

But the result of a business is not called a Like.

It is called:

revenue, continuity, customers, work, reputation, growth and the ability to survive over time.

A project may receive thousands of reactions and produce nothing.

Another may be followed by only a few people but possess real customers, structure, credibility and concrete financial results.

A visible audience and real value are not always the same thing.

That is why we must learn to distinguish appearance from substance.

You can begin small and think big

You do not necessarily need to begin with enormous capital.

You can start with a small, local and apparently insignificant project.

But even a small activity must be approached seriously.

A café, restaurant, artisan, accommodation provider or village shop can build an identity far stronger than companies that spend enormous amounts without knowing what they want to communicate.

Thinking big does not mean pretending to be big.

It means building properly from the beginning, even while you are still small.

It means choosing every word, image, contact and promise to people with care.

It means not chasing only what is fashionable today, but building something that will still make sense tomorrow.

A culture that is still missing

In Italy, and in other countries as well, this culture is still underdeveloped.

We have other extraordinary qualities: creativity, history, craftsmanship, beauty, adaptability and practical intelligence.

But a genuine culture of identity, structure and continuity is often missing.

Advertising comes before the project.

Followers before customers.

The photograph before the content.

Appearing before being.

I believe we must reverse this order.

First, build something that deserves to be told.

Then find the best way to tell its story.

Practical marketing is not about convincing people that something is extraordinary.

It is about building something recognisable, credible and useful until people can understand its value for themselves.

We do not need secret formulas.

We need observation.

We need patience.

We need identity.

And above all, we need the courage to look beyond easy numbers, passing fashions and the illusion that a heart on a screen can replace a real project.

We build digital memory

For me, digital memory means above all putting order inside the mind.

During our lives we produce photographs, texts, logos, posters, documents, ideas, projects and thousands of other materials. Very often we assume they are safe because they are stored on a phone, a computer or a social platform.

In reality, they are often simply scattered.

On social media everything disappears very quickly. An image is published, receives a few reactions, is viewed for a few hours and then vanishes beneath hundreds of new pieces of content.

The file may still exist, but its story has already been forgotten.

Building digital memory means recovering that material, organising it, understanding it and explaining why it existed.

I do not want to preserve only beautiful photographs or successful projects. I also want to recover mistakes, forgotten campaigns, imperfect texts, unrealised ideas and everything that can help reconstruct a genuine path.

When I recover an old photograph, I am not recovering only an image.

I am recovering a person, an encounter, a decision, a moment in my life and, sometimes, a part of myself I had completely forgotten.

Digital memory is not about living in the past. It prevents the past from being erased and helps us understand what we can still build through everything we have learned.

What is not documented risks never having existed.

We observe the present and imagine the future

For a very long time I have observed territories with passion.

I began in 2010 with real experiences, projects and attempts that I will tell throughout this journey. Over the years, however, this interest expanded until it became genuine research.

I observed cities, towns, regions and extraordinary places. Above all, I observed tourism and realised that in some territories beauty is not what is missing.

What is missing is the image.

What is missing is an organised digital presence.

What is missing is a narrative capable of connecting places, people, businesses, culture, history and opportunity.

Many times I found only Facebook pages or Instagram profiles. I repeat: these tools are important too. They can describe the present, show images, create relationships and reach people quickly.

But something else exists.

A territory cannot entrust its entire identity to a sequence of photographs that, after a few days, will be buried beneath new content.

It needs structure.

It needs memory, continuity, research, depth and connections able to endure over time.

Everybody talks about the problems

For years I listened to accommodation providers and tourism businesses complain about the high costs connected with bookings and major platforms.

I heard about commissions, dependency, poor visibility and the difficulty of building a direct relationship with people.

But I rarely saw anyone study the phenomenon seriously and attempt to build an alternative.

In the same way, across many territories I repeatedly heard about the need to increase visitor flows, extend the season, support local businesses and attract new visitors.

I heard many speeches.

I saw conferences, slogans, photographs, promises and beautiful words.

But very often I did not see anyone begin to build.

Dear readers, I am built differently.

I cannot stop at talking about the problem.

I try to confront it.

I may make mistakes. I may lose money, time and energy. I may build something that does not achieve the result I imagined.

But I cannot surrender before I have even tried.

I would rather lose while trying than win a discussion in which nobody created anything.

I do not offer magic

Today I can offer many opportunities, especially to young people, to those seeking a new direction and to people with abilities they have never had the chance to use.

But I want to be clear.

They are not magic.

They are not formulas for becoming rich in a few days.

They are not promises designed to persuade someone.

They are digital infrastructures that require work.

They are names, ideas, territories, content, connections, tools and projects that must be developed seriously.

They can become opportunities only through work, training, collaboration, patience and the ability to build over time.

I can offer one part of the journey, but I cannot walk it in place of others.

I can point to a possibility, provide tools and share what I have learned.

Then we need curious, responsible people who are crazy enough to believe that something capable of travelling around the world can also begin in a small town in Southern Italy.

Today, a website is no longer enough

Once, it may have been enough to create a website, add a few pages, publish some photographs and wait for somebody to find it.

Today, that is no longer enough.

An isolated website risks becoming a beautiful house built in the desert, without roads, signs or connections with anything around it.

Today we need editorial ecosystems.

An editorial ecosystem is not simply a collection of pages.

It is a structure in which every piece of content has a purpose and every project can connect with other topics, territories, languages and audiences.

A city can connect with its province.

A province can enter the narrative of a region.

A region can speak to Italy, Europe and the rest of the world.

An accommodation business should not be only a commercial listing. It can become part of the story of a place, its culture, its experiences and the people who bring it to life.

A local business should not merely be found.

It should be understood, recognised and remembered.

This is the difference between simply being present and building a genuine identity.

Imagining the future means beginning today

The future is not built by waiting for somebody else to arrive and solve our problems.

It does not arrive through an announcement, a grant or a miraculous new platform.

The future begins when somebody decides to observe what is missing and tries to create it.

That is why I study territories, businesses, names, behaviour, tourism and new forms of collaboration.

That is why I continue building, even when the project appears too large for one person.

I do not yet know the final result.

And perhaps that is precisely what makes it beautiful.

I only know that I want to create tools capable of connecting territories and people, offering new possibilities to local businesses and giving space to those with ideas, skills and a willingness to learn.

I do not want merely to describe what the present shows us.

I want to observe what does not yet exist and ask myself:

Why do we not try to build it?

Some people will continue talking about the problems.

Others will wait for somebody else to act.

I prefer to begin.

Perhaps I will lose.

Perhaps I will fail again.

But at least, while others were describing what was missing, I will have tried to create something.

Total editorial independence

This magazine has complete editorial independence.

Here, the spotlight will not be reserved only for success. Success, if it arrives, will simply be the conclusion of a long series of chapters encountered along the way.

Before the result there are always work, doubt, wrong decisions, falls, new beginnings, the people we meet and all the obstacles nobody sees.

I have always been like this.

Even in the days of my extremely long Facebook posts, I told the story of my ventures, ideas and personal madness with self-criticism and courage.

I have never been afraid to talk about what did not work.

To tell only the victories is to tell an incomplete story. I also want to tell the story of the mistakes, contradictions and everything that happens before arriving — perhaps — at a result.

I say perhaps because no result is guaranteed.

But the attempt does depend on us.

I have never conformed

I have always wanted to be different.

I have never enjoyed copying others, and easy things have never attracted me.

I consider myself an anarchist in the way I think.

This does not mean I do not respect rules. I respect them, but I also possess my own rules, my own visions and my own way of observing life.

I do not automatically accept a road merely because everyone else is travelling along it.

During my journey I have often chosen difficult, twisted and problematic paths. Sometimes I chose them consciously. At other times, they chose me.

But to climb high — assuming we ever succeed — obstacles must inevitably be overcome.

Mountains are not climbed on perfectly flat roads.

I am forty-five and I am still a dreamer.

And I am happy about that.

Dreaming helped me move through depression, which has been part of several seasons of my life.

When you continue to imagine something, even during the hardest moments you can still see a direction. You may not yet know how to reach it, but at least you know that somewhere exists towards which you can continue walking.

That is why, in my vision, problems are never merely problems.

Problems are opportunities we have not yet understood.

I am not a master

I do not consider myself a master.

There are certainly men and women far better prepared than I am, even in the disciplines I study every day.

I have no difficulty admitting that.

There will always be somebody who knows more, possesses more experience or has studied a specific subject far more deeply.

But being a leader — yes.

That I cannot and will not hide.

Being a leader does not mean knowing everything.

It means not stepping back when problems arrive, accepting responsibility, making decisions when necessary and having the courage to admit a mistake.

A real leader listens.

A leader listens to ideas, criticism, proposals and even people who disagree.

Because a good idea does not become less good merely because it was not born in the leader’s mind.

I do not want to be the boss

I do not want to build a company in which I am simply the boss.

Companies are made of men and women.

They are made of experience, ability, character, energy, ideas and differences.

I want the best.

But not necessarily the people who are already the best in the subject.

Above all, I want the best souls.

People who commit themselves.

Reliable people.

People who look first at the objective and then also at the financial result.

Money is important. No activity can survive without financial results.

But when money is the only reason somebody participates in a project, that person disappears at the first difficulty.

To build something great, we need people who also believe in the journey.

I did not choose whoever paid the most

During my experience on English construction sites, I never automatically chose the place that paid me the most.

I always preferred the place where I felt better.

The place where I could express my potential, double my energy, make a genuine contribution and try to become number one instead of remaining just another number.

I am not interested in occupying a comfortable chair merely because somebody offers more money.

I would rather collect rubbish, clean toilets or perform the hardest work, provided I am in an environment with courtesy, respect and mental wellbeing.

Those are my first rules.

I do not choose an experience only on price.

I choose it on value.

To use my slightly insane numbers: if somebody offered me five billion a day in an environment with respect and cooperation, and somebody else offered fifty billion a day in a toxic environment, I would choose the five billion.

Perhaps with a little pain.

But I would choose the five.

ONLY GOD IS MY BOSS

ONLY GOD IS MY BOSS is exactly about this.

It is about not wanting masters and, at the same time, not wanting to become anybody else’s master.

It may be a strange vision of life, but it is a vision in which you try to guide your own direction.

In life there are bosses who, with my usual delicacy, I describe as pathetic, well-connected halfwits.

They possess a title, but no leadership.

They demand respect without knowing how to respect others.

They demand results without understanding the work required to achieve them.

They do not listen and never admit a mistake.

Then there are those I call Double Bosses.

They are people who do not need to remind you constantly of their role.

They lead by example.

They know how to listen, understand the work, respect people and obtain apparently impossible results without destroying those who work with them.

Those are the leaders I choose.

And the level of Double Boss is not awarded by a title written on a door.

I decide it by observing the person, their behaviour and the way they treat others.

Respect makes the impossible possible

I do not work well for people who create unnecessary stress or demand impossible things while treating me like an object.

In that environment, even if you pay me three times as much, I cannot give my best.

But when somebody respects me, listens to me and recognises the value of my work, I will gladly attempt the impossible.

I do nothing merely from obligation.

I can face enormous sacrifice when I understand the meaning of what we are building.

Respect multiplies energy.

Bullying destroys it.

I apply this philosophy to the people who help me develop my projects too.

I do not want silent collaborators who execute every order.

I want people able to think, propose, discuss and even tell me:

“Carmelo, I think you are wrong this time.”

A real leader is not afraid of a sentence like that.

A real leader listens.

Then the leader may decide differently, because somebody must accept final responsibility. But a decision made after listening is worth far more than an order issued only to demonstrate who is in charge.

We cannot reach another galaxy alone

To reach a planet belonging to another galaxy, inside another universe, we cannot travel alone.

We need a team.

We need Team.

A leader can indicate a direction and accept responsibility for decisions. But without capable, sincere and motivated people, even the greatest vision remains only a sentence.

A leader is not somebody who walks in front expecting everybody to follow in silence.

A leader is somebody who helps people understand why the journey is worth making together.

A leader listens.

A leader learns.

A leader admits mistakes.

A Halfwit Boss, on the other hand, is never wrong.

At least according to him.

That is why I am not looking for bosses and I do not want to become one.

I am looking for Double Bosses, leaders, travelling companions and people capable of building together.

People who are not afraid of effort, difficulty and apparently crazy ideas.

People who know how to laugh, but also how to accept responsibility.

People who understand that nobody conquers the world alone.

ONLY GOD IS MY BOSS does not mean rejecting every form of guidance. It means consciously choosing who deserves to be followed, without ever surrendering your dignity, your freedom or your ability to think.

I do not want to command anybody.

I want to build with people who do not need to be commanded.

Because great projects are not born from blind obedience.

They are born from respect, trust, collaboration and the strength of many people who decide to look in the same direction.

The door to what comes next

This website is an entrance to other major projects still under construction, which I began working on seriously again in March.

When I returned to England in November 2024, after a one-year pause in Italy, I did not know exactly what would happen.

Fortunately, on English construction sites I met extraordinary people and managers.

I would say 98%.

Practically almost 100%.

I believe they also met a man capable of accepting serious responsibility. At least I think so, considering that they kept me working for a long time and, in one particular case, even paid me my famous billions.

It was an experience I will never forget.

I am talking about the Tech Edge West project at Harwell Campus, one of the places where I worked most intensely and where I am still working now.

I hope I remain there.

But I cannot guarantee that.

Life has taught me never to consider anything final. You work well, give everything, respect people and then accept the direction in which the journey decides to carry you.

From construction sites to digital assets

With the money earned through work, I invested in exceptionally valuable digital assets.

In 2022 I had lost almost six hundred of them.

Yes, I know.

I am a crazy man from Salento.

But I did not simply recover them.

I reclaimed more than one thousand.

It was a personal revolution.

Perhaps it was also revenge against circumstances and against those who had helped make me lose them.

But the best revenge is not destroying somebody.

It is rebuilding what you lost and making it even greater than before.

What had been approximately six hundred jewels became more than one thousand Digital Diamonds.

I do not see them as objects to keep locked in a safe. I see them as tools through which projects can be built, territories connected, opportunities created and work generated.

From the Queen Elizabeth Project to Solo Regine

Back in 2022, I already called this vision:

The Queen Elizabeth Project.

Today, sadly, Queen Elizabeth is no longer with us.

For that reason, I decided to call it:

Solo Regine — Queens Only

Solo Regine does not simply mean beautiful girls.

A Queen is not merely a woman to be observed.

She is a woman with intelligence, character, sensitivity, strength, vision and the ability to listen.

Solo Regine represents an immense but possible challenge.

A vast ecosystem capable of supporting territories, businesses, tourism operators, editorial ideas and people interested in building something new.

During my long solitary journeys through the network — almost a form of digital self-exile — I observed apparently absurd online activities capable of generating markets worth millions and, in some cases, even billions.

The market of words, names and digital identities is still little understood in Italy and many other countries.

I encountered this world almost by accident because of a mistake I made in 2012.

That mistake began a research journey that I shared with only a very small number of human beings.

A mistake can destroy you.

Or it can open a door to a discipline you would never otherwise have discovered.

The real Double Boss

The real Double Boss in this story, however, is my mother.

I officially award that title to her.

Despite the distance, every evening she followed me from in front of a computer, listening to ideas, names, projects, difficulties, revolutions, defeats and sudden discoveries.

If nobody makes her a Saint after putting up with me for all this time, I swear I will try to have her elected a Saint personally.

My mother now understands more rules of communication than many young people who spend hours on social media chasing Likes or even watching my own Stories.

And notice this:

You come into my Stories. I do not go into yours.

Not because I am better.

Simply because I use my free time mainly to read, research, document, preserve and build.

Stories are my entertainment.

The real work happens elsewhere.

To be authentic, you must work, tell stories, document, preserve and build.

Appearing is not enough.

You must leave something capable of continuing to exist after the last twenty-four-hour Story has disappeared.

Great companies were not all born in skyscrapers

For many years, some of the highest-revenue companies on the planet have operated mainly online.

Facebook, Instagram and many other platforms are obvious examples.

The problem is that enormous numbers of people use these giant machines every day without truly understanding how they work.

I do not claim to know everything.

But I have studied enough to understand their fundamental logic and recognise the possibilities that exist beyond ordinary daily use.

I have explained this to some of my Queens too.

Many great companies were not born inside luxurious offices in skyscrapers.

They were born in small rooms, garages, on broken tables, through inexpensive computers and thanks to people considered mad by those looking in from outside.

Then they reached the world.

That is why we should not imagine that a great project can begin only where money, structures and power already exist.

It can begin in Salento.

It can begin in Oxfordshire.

It can begin on a construction site.

It can begin in a room, with a £450 computer and a person who, after ten hours of physical work, decides not to sleep and continues studying.

If you have reached this point

At the beginning, I warned you:

You will never manage to read it all anyway.

If you have genuinely reached this point, write to us.

Tell us that you accepted the challenge.

Tell us who you are, what you can do and what kind of future you would like to try to build.

We do not need perfect people.

We need real people.

People able to learn, collaborate, laugh, commit themselves and accept responsibility.

The future also depends on us.

The world can be changed too, but not by endlessly waiting for other people to change it.

Do not blindly trust those who promise change without building anything.

Too much of politics survives on promises, personal interests and systems designed to protect themselves.

The real revolution begins when people stop waiting and decide to collaborate.

I am not talking about a revolution against somebody.

I am talking about a revolution against immobility, resignation, the absence of growth and the idea that everything must remain exactly as it is.

I belong to the category of the Crazy Ones

I am warning you.

I belong to the category of the Crazy Ones.

And I am proud of it.

But I am also a very serious person, even inside my comedy.

Even when I talk about women, I do so with respect.

Women, for me, are extraterrestrial beings, just like me.

They know how to listen, observe and understand far more than they are often given credit for.

I happily leave the easy roads to the ordinary, the conformists and the well-connected.

I prefer the climbs.

I may fail again.

I may lose everything again.

And I would always be ready to return to collecting rubbish, cleaning toilets, moving materials and doing any job considered humble.

I am not ashamed of work.

I would be ashamed only if I had never tried.

I tried to reach the stars.

And when, one day, my own time comes to leave this planet, I will be able to die happy knowing that I at least tried to move closer to them.

The people who come to know me should not remember me as a normal person.

They should remember me as a madman.

One who tried.

One who lost.

One who began again.

One who looked at a problem and saw a possibility.

Now it is up to you

I will continue along my independent path, whatever direction it takes me in.

I will continue travelling, working, studying, telling stories and building on this fucking beautiful Planet Earth.

Because Earth is also a Queen.

An immense, fragile, contradictory Queen still waiting to be discovered.

Now it is up to you.

I have told you one part of the journey.

We still have to build the rest.