Pierce McCully Spotlight April 2025

What was it like to build a business from scratch in Italy?

It was incredibly interesting, definitely harder than it might have been for someone from the area, who might have been more familiar with local laws, local procedures, having had existing connections whether it was with construction teams or lawyers.

At the same time, though, starting from scratch meant that we dove into it with an open mind, which allowed us to adopt a business model that is slightly different than what is mostly used in Italy. I don’t think we would have been able to go with that model or think of it if we actually had not been foreigners coming into the area, with our “outsider” perspective and experiences.

We did not have a cousin or a friend who had a hotel and could help and give us advice, but there was a lot of sitting down and using Google to convert so many heavy documents regarding labor law, construction procedures and codes, hotel codes, etc and translate everything. We made the most out of the Covid times to learn everything from scratch, hour upon hour.

It was very interesting because at first, we knew everything as data, rather than the big picture. We just knew which puzzle pieces we had instead of knowing what the puzzle was.

Even going up to my accountant I told her “This is what I think we should do” and I was not able to tell her who else was doing something similar. There are a few places that are doing something similar, but I did it without any kind of template, whereas it’s very typical of this area to go off of a business model or an idea that already exists.

I figured out which were the puzzle pieces and how to rearrange them for our project. It was a much slower learning curve, but it lead to a result that is much more unique and that ultimately I believe it will be a much better business model.

________________________________________‍

How do you build a successful network of contacts in another country, from business partners to carpenters working with you on your projects?

In regards to business partners, this is a family endeavor, so this is done between me, my wife and my father. When it comes to local connections, though, it was not without growing pains as we did end up giving trust to the wrong people.

When we first came in, we connected with the people that we could, we had some very loose connections that we have made over the course of purchasing and visiting, but they were minimal.

The original team that we started with, we were incredibly unhappy with. We had some major issues because of the original project manager, which luckily were caught in time and avoided us a significantly higher cost.

The silver lining in this was that it required us to take a step back and re-evaluate after our experience of being in Italy and getting to know the land and some more local connections. We actually adjusted our business model after that to what I believe it’s now the better version.

Then, good people are connected to other good people. But in time we did identify who the good eggs were and by networking through them is how we found the great team we are working with now.‍

________________________________________

What advice would you give your old self when it comes to moving your entire life and family overseas?

If I could talk to myself right before I made the big move over to Italy and started to get work done, the strongest advice would be really focus upon the razor’s edge of when to be patient and when to put your foot down.

I always joke that I’m not American, I am a New yorker. I do think that there are different mentalities even across the US and I come from a community that it’s very aggressive, especially how my industry was. Admittedly, when I first came to Italy I was even too aggressive and it was a bit overwhelming for the people I was working with. Then I think I rubber-banded, meaning that I became almost too patient and observant rather than active enough. I want to say that it was really in the last 6 months to a year that my wife and I developed that strong balance between being patient and being assertive.

The toughest thing when you go into new cultures is figuring out how to have enough patience so that you have a comfortable and happy work environment with the people you work with, but also understanding when you need to be aggressive enough in order to get things accomplished.

You also have to learn what the currency is wherever you are going. Some places is favor, some places like here is strong morals and other places, like the US, is purely capitalistic. It’s such a tough a thing to learn the social values in every place you visit and/or you live in.

An example I always give dates back to when we first moved here. It was winter and the heating system was not working. In my work environment in NY if I had to call a plumber or electrician over the weekend I would pay three time their usual fare, including their drive. When I called our plumber in Italy on a Saturday, though, no matter what I offered, he said no, he was with his family and could not come over. But as soon as I told him that I was worried about our 7 months baby and that she was cold, he drove over immediately. He did the work and he refused my payment, “I came for you because you are a good dad and I came for your kid”. That moment was one of the reasons why he’s been with us since the very beginning.
‍‍

‍‍