Brand Designer at a Buenos Aires design studio: cold Instagram pitch turned into a contract turned into a job

An Instagram DM became a freelance project, and the freelance project became a full-time role three months later. I wouldn't have predicted any of those steps. I'd been working as a freelance brand designer in Buenos Aires for two years. The work was inconsistent. Some months were fine. Some weren't. I'd been thinking about going back to a studio environment for the routine and the team, but most of the studios I wanted to work at were either based in São Paulo or paying in pesos at rates I couldn't make work. One Buenos Aires design studio was different. They were small, six people, and they paid in USD via Deel because most of their clients were US-based. They had a public Instagram where they posted their work for a specific recurring client, a US-based health tech company. I'd been following them for about a year. I had a thought. What if the studio would be open to a small spec project? I picked their main public client and rebuilt three concept variations of how I'd reposition the brand. I was honest with myself about it: this was speculative, the studio almost certainly hadn't asked for my opinion, and I was just going to send it as a portfolio piece, not a job application. I DMed the founder. The message was three ↓