The pandemic has given a strong acceleration to the budgets that each of us has made in relation to private and professional life: a phenomenon, do not ask me why, has especially concerned the generation of millennials (but I, who am part of generation X, I got it in full). Many young people seem to have overcome various concerns about their professional future and the difficulties of adapting to new working methods by embracing a new innovative contemporary concept: the YOLO economy.
What is the YOLO economy?
YOLO, an acronym that stands for “You only live once”: it is the awareness that has crossed the lives of people and organizations like a transversal wave. It is upsetting the mode, processes, logistics and even the size of the workspaces. That said, it's easy to understand what the big pillar of the YOLO economy is: making bold decisions and not being afraid to take risks. Those who have embraced this vision will probably leave their current job to launch their own business "tailored" to suit their own space and time.
Today I am interviewing the “dean” of the YOLO economy: one who in Italy was among the first to be part of it, long before the pandemic itself. I'm talking about Angelo Laudati, a digital entrepreneur born in 1984 (full millennial). In 2016 Angelo changed his working life by resigning from the multinational he worked for and starting a career on his own, founding Bitmetric, an agency that more YOLO can't.
What would you call a working group born in 2018 which today has 9 units, all scattered remotely between Italy and Brazil?
Overcoming the corporate system
This is one of the passages that most struck me in Angelo's story. "Life as an employee for 6 years in a multinational probably," he says, "made me kind of focus on the fact that some things, in traditional companies, can be overcome."
What Angelo has in mind (and which this year has grown by + 300%) is a new concept of company. A YOLO company, of course. It certainly pursues profit like traditional ones, but tries to make a utopia viable: that of "happy growth". Working only with customers who can really help, and aiming at the business satisfaction of each employee.
Is it still a company?
It cannot be considered a traditional company because I have no employees, they do not have holidays, and they do not have to ask for a day off. They can get it when they feel like it. They could work just one day a month, and if the goal is met, I would be fine with it. The classic employee has had his day. Employees work by the hour, we at goals: employees work sitting at their desks, we don't.
I confess that I did not ask (guiltily) where the guys from Bitmetrica work, but if they were Finnish I would have an idea. In any case, even a YOLO company needs a pinch of physicality: "It is certainly not easy to organize this type of work," says Angelo, "and that is why, in order not to lose the sense of" community ", we will see you at least 2 times a month all in person, to be able to feel part of a whole. "
Bitmetrica, a (former) unicorn who teaches school
Sometimes life is ahead of its time. The "tear" that Angelo made in 2016 is the result of evaluations that many are making only now, 5 years later: and 5 years are a nice advantage. This explains the result obtained first by “single” (Google Top Performance Agency) and then with its reality born in 2018. However it was not ambition: it was necessity.
It was probably the freedom to work wherever you want, in complete contrast to the "control" that traditional companies have, where the employee works sitting at a desk and the boss has to control him. This obviously does not mean that we do not work for objectives and we do not have a fast pace but certainly freedom distinguishes us. We have a collaborator in Brazil, one in Italy who has a son, despite being very young. Working with us, she manages to live with her son without necessarily having to see him only after 18pm.
Is the YOLO economy here to stay?
Inevitable to end up in my field, that of the future. We all know the "epochal" passages of the last two years: what we do not know exactly is how many of them will remain over time. Is the YOLO goal of “happy growth” achievable or will it be pushed back under the carpet when the economy starts to claim its trappings again? I realize that asking someone who has made this change in unsuspecting times is like showing up covered in scallops in a lion's cage.
The goal is to work because you feel like it, and not because you have to. The goal of "happy growth" continues to remain a mantra: I do not aim to make a huge turnover, but I aim at the quality of my life and that of my collaborators. If a customer is very stressful to manage, not very polite or unmanageable, we will never work together, regardless of the amount, because it would be counterproductive for everyone.
How do you see the future of Bitmetrica?
We will probably be more people to manage all customers with an even more precise organization in order to allow everyone to work in a structured and serious way, but giving space to everyone's life.
Does turnover rhymes with happiness? That is: does the YOLO economy have a future? We will find out only by living (and not just by working).
