“I’ve got €500 left. Then I shut for good.”

It was a morning in March 2015, one of those wet days that sit between winter and spring. Back then I was running a few projects of my own, and I was finishing a deck to send to potential investors.

I was a dreamy kid with ambitions of becoming the next Steve Jobs. I liked being around other people who wanted to build something and who, like me, spent their days looking at the future.

I was lost in my own head when the phone rang. The number wasn’t in my contacts. Something in the voice on the other end told me it was worse than she was letting on, and we arranged to meet at half past five that same afternoon.

«Hi Simone, my name’s Paola. Francesco gave me your number, he said you work with computers. I have a shop and I need a hand with the internet side of things. I don’t understand much about all this, to be honest.»

The address was out on the edge of town, on a busy road. I got out of the car into pouring rain, and it was starting to get dark. I looked up and the first thing I saw was a sign with a few neon letters flickering on and off. Then I realised the sign was hers.

I stood under my umbrella for a minute and looked at the windows. Three mannequins, lit by three small spotlights from above. Rain had splashed up the bottom of the glass, which made the accessories on display even harder to see.

This isn’t good, I thought.

Paola came out to meet me, warm and polite, but her eyes were tired and hiding something else. She talked me through the shop and put the products in my hands so I could feel the quality. She’d built the place with sweat and sacrifice, and until 2012 it had worked: she and her son lived decently off it. Then the crisis. Then she told me the rest.

«The truth is I’ve got €500 left. It covers me until the end of next month. Then I close for good.»

A slap in the face would have hurt less. I spent my days thinking about the future and flying cars, and in three seconds I was back on planet Earth. That was the real world. I didn’t sleep that night: every day that passed was one day less of life for Paola’s shop.

Two days later I was back in the shop. I sat down and started by being straight with her: no guarantees, no false hope.

Something like a hopeful smile came over her face while I talked. Half of me relaxed. The other half froze: if this didn’t go the way I’d planned, I’d be carrying the weight of it on my twenty-five-year-old shoulders. And this wasn’t a startup, where failure is priced in from day one. Here a mother and her son would be ruined.

I opened the stockroom door, picked up a skirt and said, “Paola, your money is in here.”

The plan: her €500 would pay for a Facebook campaign pushing a selection of accessories and clothes at a fixed price. Not a clearance sale — a short promotion, so it read as a shop doing well, not one going under. Twenty days to build the site, then a twenty-day campaign aimed at women aged 25 to 35 who liked the brands she stocked, within 20 km of the shop.

I asked something of her too: get the LEDs in the sign fixed, sort out the lighting inside, put a coat of white on the walls, and stay open every Saturday and the second Sunday of the month. I was blunt about it, maybe too blunt. She said, “You’re right.” Two days later her brother-in-law had fixed the sign, replaced the bulbs and painted the walls.

«Paola, maybe I’m the crazy one here, but if this works it’s half a miracle. I’m not going to sell you false hope. But if this is the last card, we play it. Now. I have a plan.»

For the first few weeks I ran my own projects and Paola’s site at the same time. I was wrecked, sleeping three hours a night, but I’d given her my word — and if there’s one thing my father taught me, it’s that you keep your word.

The site was finished ahead of schedule and we launched the campaign.

Day one: a few scattered likes. Too early to tell whether the strategy was working, but I believed in it.

Day two: a few more likes, four shares, two phone calls — one booking a visit to the shop, one asking for information. Budget spent so far: €12.90.

Day three: fifteen shares, and women were starting to tag their friends under the post. Paola called me, and her voice was lighter: she already had several appointments for the weekend.

Day five, Saturday evening, eight o’clock. The phone rang. It was Paola, locking up for the night. While she talked I opened the campaign dashboard: 52 shares, and as many women tagging their friends under the post.

«Sorry for calling at this hour, I just wanted to tell you how it went. I’m locking up now. The place was mobbed, my sister had to come in and help me. We made eleven sales today!»

Over the next few years the shop came back to life: a full refit, an extension to the building, new projects and more work together.

Thinking about it still gives me chills. Paola trusted me, and I — helped along by the recklessness of being young — got her out of it.

But beyond the money, something clicked for both of us. Paola realised she could have used the internet much sooner. I grew up a lot, and I saw how much the internet matters to small businesses — and how much of that potential in Italy is still going unused.

I wake up every morning hoping for one thing: that a business gets in touch before it gets to where Paola was.

That’s why I do this work, alongside people who see it the same way, and why I keep writing about it — so business owners and freelancers find out what being easy to find online is worth before they’re the ones counting what’s left in the till.