Starting a business in Australia is not always easy, especially when English is not your first language.
Spaniard Manuel Garcia de Diego arrived in Australia on a student visa three years ago with hopes to progress professionally.
Although he was fluent in English, he tells SBS Spanish that his strong accent was an obstacle in achieving his goal of succeeding in the world of advertising.
Despite the odds, he and his business partner used their entrepreneurial skills to build OnMove, one of Sydney’s fastest-growing and most successful mobile street advertising start-ups.
OnMove has successfully adapted one of the oldest forms of advertising: they hire people to walk through busy streets while wearing billboards on backpacks.
OnMove workers promoting businesses using billboards strapped to their backs. Source: OnMove
“Carving our own pathway was the most difficult part,” Garcia de Diego says.
“Sydney is multicultural but volatile, and keeping our team together has been tough."
The business provides advertising space for a number of well-known brands including Anytime Fitness, F45, Vision Personal Training, Plus Fitness, and Jetts, among others, and has tripled since the company was founded in 2016.
Highlights:
- Even when migrants speak fluent English, strong foreign accents can sometimes be an obstacle in the way of business progression.
- According to migrant Manuel Garcia de Diego, creating a company is an easy step, the difficult part is to develop it.
- The Spaniard created OnMove, a company that has become a leader in street advertising in Sydney.
A strong Spanish accent
Garcia de Diego says creating his start-up business was easy, as the process was all completed online.
The hardest part for him was to overcome the "great language barrier" of being able to successfully communicate in English, as many of his potential clients did not take the time to listen to his proposals at first.
“We began to detect - especially during cold calls - a certain rejection. They didn't give us the time needed to be able to connect with them,” he says.
“Little by little we began to recognise it was because we have a strong accent, even though we speak English well.
"We realised this was a handicap.”
The obstacle forced him and his business partner to develop a different communication strategy in order to attract new clients and have the opportunity to present their ideas.
His trick was to open communication channels online, which allowed them to expand and seeking clients personally.
"We avoided, as much as possible, phone calls and communicated by email at the beginning," he explains.
The next step was then to seek a face-to-face meeting, as “image is important too”.
Making the first move
Three years ago, Garcia de Diego and his partner decided to buy the mobile billboards even before they had officially started their business.
They had spoken to a man who owned a business in Greece, who had encouraged them to “jump in, buy them, and you'll use them when you get the chance”.
For Garcia de Diego, “It was a step, a way to show oneself that you have already started”.
But the pair stored the billboards under their beds for a year before they started using them.
Since they took the plunge, the two entrepreneurs have been unstoppable. The pandemic has only grown their start-up as more companies compete for advertising space.
In 2021, Garcia de Diego hopes to be able to change his student visa for a business visa and self-sponsor, which would allow him to remain in the country.
He now has his sights set on moving into the marketing world.
