After school, I started working as a ventilation fitter at a company called Tommy Ströms Luft, with small offices in Årsta, Stockholm. There I learned everything about air, and we laid ventilation ducts in schools and companies all over Stockholm. I never thought it would ever come in handy as wrong as I was, with air you can do a lot. It would come in handy when I would work with esports events later in life.
A few years later I lost motivation as a construction worker. I started working at McDonald’s on Norrlandsgatan in the city center, a popular workplace for young people. I quickly got a job as a cashier there. Gaining insight into how the company ran its business and focusing on customer service as a fast food chain was interesting to me, and I am very service-minded, so it was fun there and then.
In my spare time I arranged club events in shady premises and industrial areas where no one was disturbed by the loud music. We promoted our events by printing posters and sending SMS, which was common at the time. We organized some of the biggest events at the time and took care of everything from electrical installations to sound, lighting and decor. We booked artists and focused on all the details that elevated the experience for our themes. This was a business that we ran as individuals back then, and the hours of operation were unclear and permits were not as important to us as they are today. Although planning took place during the day, the productions were at night, and not forget that every event was also a financial risk where everything could go wrong and when that happens, you lose everything. So a day job was kind of a plan B, regardless of how entrepreneurial minded you were, plan B’s are always good to have.
But I wanted a more stimulating job on my daytime, so I applied for a job as a courier at the copying company ABA Kopiering, which was located on Oxtorgsgatan. There I learned all the street names in Stockholm’s inner city and the fantastic alleys in Gamla Stan, suddenly I knew also all the venues in town. It was actually fun work, constantly moving, which was very stimulating for a guy with ADHD, although I didn’t know it at the time. In the office I quickly became a favorite among the architects who wanted their drawings delivered quickly. I wound my way through the streets as fast as possible, and sometimes they would even call into the office and ask for me specifically. But we also supplied posters to EMA Telstar, which is now called Live Nation, and it was always fun to visit their office with the walls adorned with posters of various world artists. It meant a lot to me because we put on events on the weekends, and the job at ABA allowed me to print posters for our events at low cost, sometimes even for free.
Marketing was a big part of our own business, and something I had been interested in since I was a child. I remember how fascinated I was by the commercials on TV when I was on holiday abroad, because TV commercials had not come to Sweden yet. Before our own events, we learned all the tricks of the trade with the channels available at the time: print, SMS and the various dubious communities that emerged when the internet became available. I wanted to study at the Berghs School of Communication, which was then called RMI Berghs and had its premises at the top of the München Bryggeri, the most beautiful building along Norr Mälarstrand in Stockholm, overlooking Riddarfjärden with all the boats tied along the promenade. But of course the studies cost money and I decided to finance it myself. Working as a courier wasn’t going to help me fulfill my ambitions, so I started looking for a new job again, one that paid better of course.
Back in 1996, on the corner of Regeringsgatan and Hamngatan there was a JobbExpo office, a new type of employment agency where you could sit and call in peace and quiet. During one of my breaks I decided to sit there, and it didn’t take more than ten minutes before I saw an ad from a company in Täby looking for a party fixer, and I immediately called the company Collin & Client. I managed to arrange an interview and met the amazing Cathrine Rudberg Collin. She had started the company during her years as a receptionist at the consulting company Enator, where she was the spider in the web and was responsible for booking travel, arranging conferences and events for clients. That was the task she started the company around.
During the interview she asked about my salary requirements, and I replied, “Free! Try me for a couple of months and we can discuss salary after that.” I knew what she was looking for I had already been doing for years, and I was really looking forward to getting to work. The company had a turnover of SEK 800,000 per year when I entered. Already in the first month I relieved her of both sales and production, and in the following month new customers came in. Even so, I insisted on working for free for the third month as well. During that month, we terminated employees who would not answer the phone and arranged a job interview with sales project managers. 30 people came to the meeting and three got the job.
So much had probably not happened at the company since it was started, so when the fourth month came and it was time to negotiate my salary, I suggested: “Pay me in shares and we can increase instead.” We went to the accountant to value the company. After only half a year, I had managed to finance my education at Berghs through the company. During the first year, I decided that we would introduce a new business concept that combined events and marketing. We wanted to become the advertising agency’s event agency.
A year later, we had a turnover of 6 million and moved the office from Täby to Skeppargatan in the city, which was closer to my home and gave me the opportunity to work even more. Among our clients were OM Gruppen, Dagens Industri, Posten, Baker McKenzie, Telia and around twenty advertising agencies in our rooster. Sweden’s first eventmarketing agency were born!