MASSIMILIANO TASSONE
Entrepreneur | Tassone Massimiliano Building Company - C. S.A.S
MASSIMILIANO TASSONE's story - Entrepreneur | Tassone Massimiliano Building Company - C. S.A.S
I joined Private Community eleven months ago, almost by chance. I'd seen some content on Facebook, it had piqued my curiosity, and I asked a friend who was already part of the Community for more information. His answer was: "It's not for you." For a while I took that at face value and let it go. And yet that curiosity stayed there, simmering under the surface.
Some time later, another member invited me to a meeting. I decided to go. I went in as a guest, without any particular expectations, but that evening struck me: the atmosphere, the people, the kind of discussion. I had the feeling there was something in there worth exploring further.
I run a construction business that I've been building for over thirty years. For thirty years I was a closed-off entrepreneur: no partners, no real partnerships, no wish to share decisions. I was convinced that the only way to make things work was to keep everything under my own control. I didn't want advice, and I didn't want anyone judging what I did.
Private Community began pushing me out of that cage, slowly at first, then more and more decisively. The first real shift in perspective came with the Mindset path, followed by the Skillset Booster. There I brought a lot of things together: I gained speed in decision-making, greater clarity in reading situations, and the ability to work through opportunities together with others, instead of shutting myself in my office to think them over alone. I started asking myself not just what I want, but also who I want to do it with.
At the same time I started reading "Who's in Your ROOM?". That book helped me picture my life and my relationships in a very concrete way: a room where you consciously choose who to let in, who to leave in a corner and who to keep out. I began asking myself: who does me good? Who weighs me down? Who do I really want to share my time and my projects with? That exercise had a strong impact on how I select people, collaborations and opportunities.
In Community I discovered something I now consider fundamental: entrepreneurs' problems, in the end, are all alike, regardless of sector or company size. In meetings I often hear questions about employees, partners, staff, sales, time management. I could be the one asking them, but someone else asks instead. I put myself in their shoes, listen to the answers they get, take notes. If an answer is worth it, I take it home and apply it. This way, I leave every meeting with far more solutions than I'd have come up with on my own.
Over time I started to clearly sense the "before" and the "after". Before, I felt like I was in a dark room with the curtains drawn. Today I feel like I'm in a bright loft, with the windows thrown wide open.
For years I built a black-and-white puzzle, with every piece grey: hard to fit in the right place, all identical, with no overall picture. Now that puzzle has only a few coloured pieces missing, and I know exactly where to put them. Everything is clearer, easier to read, simpler to connect.
This new awareness has translated into some very concrete choices. Over the last few months:
I've taken over a property company together with two other partners;
I'm considering joining another company with one of those partners;
I've opened myself up to new markets abroad, to the point of getting a passport and planning a trip to see for myself what opportunities exist in construction outside Italy;
a long-standing associate, who runs a crane hire business, was about to close down: I offered to take over his company;
another entrepreneur I work with had to close his business: there too, I chose to put myself forward to take it on, rather than watch it close down passively.
These are choices that take courage and vision. At one time I wouldn't even have considered going into partnership with anyone. Today, if a project interests me, I'm the first to ask to come on board.
This openness doesn't mean improvising, quite the opposite. It means selecting better: people, projects, Mission. When I weigh up a collaboration, I look not only at my own Mission, but at the other person's or company's too. I look for coherence, shared values, alignment. That's something I never used to do, simply because the question never arose: my world ended at the boundaries of my construction business.
Today, on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite: my construction business is the heart of my work, but around it there's now a whole system of relationships, companies and shared projects. And that system has grown thanks to Community.
Today I also serve as President of my Community. It's a role I feel as both a responsibility and an opportunity: to create a setting where other entrepreneurs can go through the kind of journey I went through, moving from being closed-off to collaborating, from solitude to sharing, from fear of being judged to a genuine desire to compare notes with others.
When I think back to being told "It's not for you", I smile. Private Community, in fact, is exactly the right place for me. The opportunities were there all along. The point is that before, I couldn't see them. Now I can.