Hi! I'm Andrea Domínguez

I help entrepreneurs increase the profits generated by their product and service offerings through strategic product development and marketing messaging.

My mission is to provide advice and support to entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who want to build a business selling their own products and/or services, regardless of whether they are already seasoned professionals who are trying to grow their business to the next level, or still aspiring business owners, trying to start the right way.

Have you’ve ever asked yourself for example:

  • What should me next product or service be?
  • Who should I be trying to sell to? How?
  • How should I position myself, and/or my products and services?
  • How can I create product and/or service offerings that my target clients want to buy at a price that is profitable for my business?
  • How do I increase what people are willing to pay for my products and/or services?
  • What marketing messages should I be using to grab the attention of my target customers, and get them to buy from me?
  • How do I create a plan to figure out any or all the previous, and how do I implement it?

If you have, you are in the right place. 

I believe I may be able to help you.

Why do I say that? 

Because I have a unique background that includes business planning, market research, and strategic marketing, all of which come in handy when trying to successfully create and sell a product or service, or optimize a portfolio.

You see… it took me a long time to get here.


My business journey started back in 2003, when I finished my degree in Business Administration at the Portuguese Catholic University. 

In case you're wondering, I was born and raised in Lisbon. I have a Spanish father though, hence the Spanish name. 

And if you're also wondering, English is my 3rd language. By the way, sorry in advance for any weird things I may say; I try my best, but I’m not a native speaker. I lived my entire life in either Portugal or Spain.

Anyway, after graduating, I started my career in finance. Since I’m decent with numbers and love spreadsheets (is that a weird thing to say?), it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

So, I started in business analysis, then went on to financial auditing (at EY), and then business planning and analysis (at Siemens).

I quickly found out that auditing was not for me. I hated every second of it. It turns out that I’m not great at caring about rules, or about whether people are following them. I need a bit more creativity in my life. But it wasn't all bad. I sure learnt how to design a business process properly.

Business planning and analysis though... that was a different story. I absolutely loved it. I thought I had found the thing that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I also knew that...


I wanted to do an MBA at some point.


So in 2007 I applied to IESE Business School's Full Time MBA, got accepted, and off to Barcelona I went.

Did you notice the year? Well... I graduated in 2009, during the peak of the financial crisis, and there I was... looking for a job in finance. Competing with all the people with decades of experience who had just been laid off by banks. If there ever was bad timing...

So, I did what a lot of recent MBA graduates do:


I went into consulting 😅


Pricing and marketing consulting, to be more precise (at Simon-Kucher). 

Ironically, marketing was the one thing I had never been interested in at any point until then. Not enough numbers, I thought. Anyone with a bit of common sense could do it, I thought. But during the job interviews I was told about the quantitative analyses that sometimes went into it, and I was intrigued.

Also, a gal has got to eat... and the salary was better than what I could get in finance at the time. So, marketing and pricing strategy it was.

And I have to be honest, I did get a chance to work in many interesting areas, such as:

  • Designing and conducting market research studies (or overseeing agencies that fielded them), analysing the data, and combining results with my own industry-specific knowledge to among other things:
  • Assess market potential for early-stage products, identify market segments to target, and develop optimal positioning strategies.
  • Develop global pricing and market access strategies, usually for new drugs.
  • Map purchasing stakeholders and their relevance in the purchasing process, and optimize and select value messages to prioritize when engaging with each target audience, in order to build a solid value story for the product, considering message importance and credibility as perceived by each target audience.
  • Helping to set up organizations to focus on effective and efficient product development, by:
  • Designing key pricing and market access processes required for successful product development, launch, and lifecycle management, specifying governance rules, required steps, deliverables, and responsibilities of all the departments involved. 
  • Designing cross-functional and cross-geographic communication flows to achieve efficient coordination of teams involved in product development, lifecycle management, and market access and pricing.
  • Strategically defining what to outsource, and what to keep in-house.
  • Designing a framework to help clients design and negotiate innovative pricing schemes.

At the end of the day, I got to work with over half of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, and several drugs that either were at the time, or went on to become blockbusters.


But after 5 years of doing this full time, I started to feel overworked, underappreciated, in the wrong place (as I worked in Madrid, and wanted to go back to Lisbon), and that I was trying to climb a ladder that was leaning against the wrong wall (I was completely fed up with pharma for too many reasons to list here).

So...

I decided to start a business, quit my job, and move back home. 


And that’s exactly what I did. I had always wanted to start a business.

I started an online store. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that into it. And I didn’t give it much thought. It was a pretext to leave my job. I just wanted to start something. Anything. Have something to do while I figured out what I really wanted, and preferably learn something along the way. Which is precisely what happened.

When I finally took the trouble of making a strategic assessment of my store, I decided to close it. I had learnt a very important thing: I don’t like to sell other people’s products. I wasn’t a fan of some of my suppliers’ (lack of) strategy, nor to have my business impacted by  ideas that I don’t agree with. 

The problem is, that I like to be able to modify an offering, its pricing, positioning, and value messages, depending on market feedback and portfolio strategy. Retail is definitely not my cup of tea.

Besides, it didn’t allow me to make the most out of what I’m best at: market research for product development and strategic planning. Yes, there’s some, of course, like in any business, but it’s nowhere near comparable to what you can do when you’re developing a product (especially a digital one), or a service offering.

To make matters worse, I was finding it more enjoyable to do freelance work for my old employer than to work on my own business. I really had not seen that one coming. 

And that’s how after a bit of a long detour, I ended up almost where I started: helping businesses creating, marketing, and managing profitable offerings. 

The difference is that I no longer work with huge pharma companies. Small businesses are so much more flexible and rewarding to work with! I just hope my ladder is leaning against the right wall now…

So… how can I help you? 


To begin, you can take a look at my blog posts. I’m not a great writer (I’m a pretty bad one, actually), but I do try to post valuable information that anyone developing their own products/services may find helpful.

Most of my blog posts are turned into YouTube videos (not my forte either, sorry), so if you prefer, you can follow me on YouTube.

You can also download some of the resources that are available to my email subscribers, which usually help with a very specific task or goal, such as:

In case you’re trying to build a coaching business, and are having difficulties selecting your target niche, or are finding it hard to charge premium prices, you can check out my courses here:

And lastly, if you want individualized support, you can work with me 1-on-1.

I hope you find my website useful, and that it helps you increase your business’ success even if only by a little bit 😀

Wishing you a great day!

Andrea



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