Why Creator Marketing Continues to Win

Justin Levinson (00:00)‍

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the agency side podcast. I'm your host Justin Levinson. Today's guest is Alessandro Bollari, co founder and CEO of the influencer marketing factory, a global influencer marketing agency helping brands connect with audiences to creator led campaigns on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Alessandro has a really interesting founder story. Originally from Milan, he moved to the US with just $1,500, bootstrapped the agency from the ground up and has grown it into a global team.

working with major brands across the creator economy. If you're interested in influencer marketing, the creator economy, paid media, AI, or what it really takes to build an agency from scratch, stick around because this one is packed with some great insights.

Hey Alessandro, great to you here today.

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Alessandro Bogliari (00:53)

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Justin. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (00:56)

man.

Well, you we always start the show the same way, which is just kind of getting your origin story. And I have done some research on you today and I know you have quite a unique story. So maybe you can tell us how you got involved in this industry.

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Alessandro Bogliari (01:10)

Absolutely. Also curious to see what you find online. Of course, all the time update things, but the internet is always interesting because you can really find things from you were like a teenager these days, right? And you can really follow along the journey. And I try to keep like, I do have a couple of pages now online just dedicated to my journey and what I do. That usually it's a bit helpful I think, because these days with AI, right? You can kind of get the information out there, but I noticed that it's better to present in a certain way. So I'm going to try to...

to go in the same way, right, when it comes to structure. But yeah, I'm originally from Italy, Milano. I lived in a few countries and cities before getting in New York City where I'm currently at. So I lived in Milano. Then I moved to Copenhagen in Denmark for my master's degree. After that, I did a couple of years in Miami Beach and then I moved to Manhattan. And I've been in the industry, ⁓ the influencer marketing industry in the creative economy for more than 10 years now.

I was in Copenhagen. I had to write a thesis, some master thesis about something. I was never a big academic person, meaning that I always loved working while studying. I started making my first website when I was like 11 years old. was no... Not even like, ⁓ how do you say, these days with AI, cloud code, can do so many things. Back in the day, was Notepad and HTML. I talk like a boomer right now, but that was it.

I was fascinated by that. I always been working and studying and for me, studying alone wasn't enough. When I was in Copenhagen, I had to write a thesis, my master thesis. What I did is that I was already been working in the industry. I was working for this website, informational website about the industry and I was like, why don't I write a thesis about these? I primarily focused on my master thesis was how much to pay influencers because back in the day, was this still

It's still a bit the Wild West, but back then it was truly Wild West. was no one knew how much to pay influencers. So I created an algorithm and a mini tool where you were able to put information of anyone on Instagram and getting a few information out and how much to pay them based on certain factors and so on. So basically for me was how do we professionalize this new industry that is definitely booming, right? But no one has any science, ⁓ nothing behind that can actually back up in of, again, scientifically speaking.

And so that's how I really got into the industry. I was like, this has a lot of opportunities. And then when I moved to Miami, I worked with some people, didn't go as planned. I was like, why? With my co-founder, we're like, why don't we do these ourselves? We built the Influencer Marketing Factory. There is a global Influencer Marketing Agency. And the idea was, let's get a couple of clients and let's chill on the beach. That was the dream.

COVID hit and it was a terrible moment for the world. But when it comes to social media, everyone was spending time there. So we were being one of the first offering TikTok and we bet on it and we kind of did the right betting. We started getting amazing clients coming in, Sony Music, Universal, Warner Music Group and many others that wanted to launch songs on TikTok. I can tell you bit more about that. like, okay, long story short, it's the typical, let's say immigrant story, right? Coming from a different country, you get to the US.

with all these opportunities and the idea was like really like let's make a small boutique agency and then it can explode it in the best way possible. So here we are.

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Justin Levinson (04:42)

Yeah, that's an incredible journey. I read somewhere that you started with $1,500 in your pocket when you came in. Is that true?

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Alessandro Bogliari (04:49)

That's true. That was all I had. There was no plan B. That means that you have no family. When I moved there, basically no friends and no connections. You are by yourself almost. I was with my co-founder, course, so working together, it's definitely helpful. Yeah, $1,500. I was doing other things on the side to...

pay my rent basically, so I was working still for some European clients that I had as a growth hacker. That's actually my background. So a growth hacker is someone that maybe these days you see a bit less, but there was a big period 10 years ago. So that is this figure, this role in a company or in an agency that use out of the box ideas to bring results and bring revenue, whatever. I was primarily working on B2B SaaS, so very specific.

But I learned a lot. So I was working as a growth hacker and as a marketing consultant for a few European companies. And so now basically I am also building this company. so you're waking up at four in the morning, you work eight hours ⁓ for Europe, and then you take a little break and then you start working for the US on the company. And you go for like 18 hours a day.

No weekends, you don't go partying, you don't do nothing. You lock in and you put everything in and you put all the last money that you have. I don't come from necessarily a super rich family and when it comes to me, it's funny when they say family and friends, runs and little money and I met these other companies, are like sort of competitors in this space. say like, yeah, we...

raised a little money from your family and friends, like three million. I was like, what are your friends and family? I meet them? Mine asked me back $20 on Venmo. The thing is that you get to a situation where you're really by yourself, so you have no connection or nothing. That's last money that you have in your pockets and every cent counts. It's like, listen, I'm going to use this money to create the company, the LLC.

Make a website so I already knew how to make websites so I didn't need a developer, I didn't know a graphic designer. Actually, my background is in graphic design and art direction. And I started making websites, WordPress stuff since I was very, very young. Macco Fander instead, she came from corporate. She knew how to sell and she knew how to...

you know, working at proper company because for me, only work in startups all my life or by myself. I never worked corporate, I'd single day in my life. I don't know what does it mean working nine to five and being on a salary. And so we combine these forces together, but it's like, especially at the beginning, every dollar counted. again, you know, no friends, no family, no PE, no VC, no nothing.

We boosted up from day one and it has been quite profitable since the beginning. Yeah, it was a challenge, I'm not going to lie, but I was excited at the same time.

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Justin Levinson (07:54)

Love it. So when it was you and your co-founder, it just started as obviously the two of you in New York City.

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Alessandro Bogliari (08:02)

My Yenny

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Justin Levinson (08:04)

Miami,

I'm sorry. Miami. How did you start to scale? when did you, know, who, was sort of like the first hire that you, you felt you guys needed?

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Alessandro Bogliari (08:12)

The first hires, so we're a couple of actually hires that we did, strategically speaking. One was on the financial side. So many people don't think about all that. People think about operations, but when you create a company, especially like me, you're an immigrant, you just moved to a new country, you don't know all the rules, you don't know the law, you let alone all the specifics about LLC with an S-corp, with a C-corp. And when I moved, I was on an O-1 visa.

So O1 Visa is for external liabilities and gives you certain things, but up until you don't have a green card, you cannot do certain things with your code. So it's complicated. And so one of the first things we did, we hired a CPA firm helping us with collecting receipts, paying out influencers, collecting W9, all those things that they are very specific type of tasks. we were like, we don't want to...

create any problem here, right? Or doing something that it's not 100 % legal or not because maybe you want, but because you don't know sometimes, right? And like I learned about W8 and W9 during the first year, like all the 1099, all those types of things. I was like, what is this? I didn't even know that to collect them, like no, anything above $600. You work with a lot of influencers. We're talking about a thousand, now thousand, maybe back in the day, like a few hundreds, and you're paying all these entities.

So good luck if you don't have a system or if you have professional opinion with that. So on the financial side, accounting, all that, we got a little firm and then after a while, we kind of like, know, become bigger than that. So we changed the approach, but that was one. And then of course, in terms of operation, right? Like some company managers, the beginning, my co-founder and I, we were doing everything. When you build a company, you have so many hats on your head and you are...

You are the marketing person, the salesperson, the developer, the assistant, the campaign manager, right? You do everything by yourself. And as soon you do a little bit of money, then we hired maybe not at the beginning, you cannot hire the best quality. I'm not going to lie. You hire maybe some friends that they are looking for a job. You know more or less what to expect, but they are not professionals, meaning that they don't come necessarily from the industry or maybe they are just graduated and they are looking for a little bridge like

job before getting into something else. And so that's what we did. We hired what we could. I'm not going to lie. We were not there to be able to offer a six digit contract from the get go, but that's how you learn. And so at the beginning, you have to try to make the best out of the situation, but you need to start not necessarily delegating, but having someone helping you out, for instance, with operations. If you want to continue growing, you have to do marketing, you have to sell new projects.

If you're too busy on the operation, meaning that you have to be on client call, coordinated work with the influencers, then they have no time anymore to sell or to do marketing. So again, together with the financial side, we start hiring campaign managers so that you can remove some of the operation from your plate and focus in on the growth of the company. And that's what we did then, you start with one and then two. And as soon as start going and you start getting like bigger clients, now it's bigger budgets. That means that you can start.

hiring people that may become either from the industry or people that if they are not from the industry, but they have a proper background. And now you're hiring people that know how to work on certain infrastructures and so on. But yeah, when it comes to organic growth, both stuff like ours, you have to do it in a certain way and it's normal to commit mistakes and hire the wrong people and fire too slow and so on and so on.

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Justin Levinson (11:45)

Yeah, and how many people are in the company altogether now? Thanks for tuning in, folks. This episode is brought to you by Coming Up Creative, a relationship first boutique.

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Alessandro Bogliari (12:23)

We are

54, so ⁓ we are hiring and firing and it's typical for companies like this size. We have people in the US, Latin America, some people in Europe as well. That also helps when it comes to international clients and so on. can get into that a bit later, but this is the size. We're still totally bootstrapped to this day.

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Justin Levinson (12:45)

Yeah. ⁓ I'm interested just to learn in basic terms for our viewers. Maybe you can tell us what you guys are doing over there at the influencer marketing factory.

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Alessandro Bogliari (12:53)

So our core business, right? It's been an influencer marketing agency and work on the influencer marketing campaigns. Now, what I want to say is that, and I will tell you in a second, what do I mean by influencer marketing campaign management, but now we're also becoming more of a creative economy agency, right? So the creative economy, imagine that like influencer marketing, it's a bubble inside the bigger bubble of the creative economy. Because the creative economy can have many more actors and many more roles.

And part of that is influencer marketing. When we started, influencer marketing was this new thing and the creative economy was not existent. It was maybe called the gig economy, it whatever, was something different. But now it's much more prevalent and we are expanding in this sense. to make it very, very simple to understand, a client, a brand come to us and they say, listen, we have a new app. We have a new flavor of these apps.

beverage, we have a new sneakers for our collection, whatever, and they need influencers to promote the product. And so we do everything. It's an end-to-end solution, meaning that we come out with all this couple of projects, all the creative ideas, all the things that we could do, right? And what would be the narrative behind the campaign. Then we identify the right influencers based on our own databases, connections with the agency all over the world and historical data. Then we take care of all the operations, like all the agreements, pricing negotiation.

media rights inclusion, all of that. Then we run the campaign. We make sure that we can track everything that the people are actually posting. It's very manual type of work. Even if you do have our infrastructure internally, we can get a bit more on why as an industry it's time consuming sometimes. And then you finalize it, you on a call with the... You debrief, you have all our reporting tools with all the metrics that you care about and then we debrief with the client.

And we tell them what worked, what didn't work and so on. And in addition to that, other important things that we do for the past, let's say two years or so, we implemented also paid media amplification. So anything that works well, let's say, you are on TikTok, we mostly do TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, right? And let's say that a campaign is going already well, but the client wants to amplify and not only amplify the reach, but also actually

having direct ROI of the campaign, then they do pay the media amplification. So let's say that we are running something on TikTok. Let's say we have 10 influencers making one video each just to make it very simple as an example. So we have 10 videos. We will take the best videos that are already performing well and then we would add pay the media amplification. So you add $1,000 or whatever it is the budget for the paid media. And now you can add a link. The link brings you to an Amazon page, it brings you to an app to download whatever and with the proper tracking system in place, now you can attribute not only...

ROI, but also exactly which influencers brought what. So now next time, out of those 10 influencers, you can identify the top three and you can hire those top three again, maybe to become ambassadors of that brand for the year to come. So that's our core. Last thing, we also do talent representation. So we represent a mighty group of influencers around 20-ish primarily in the US and we help them with brand deals. But that is like a smaller part.

core business and the brand are our clients. They come to us and we do everything for them, again, end to end. We are, of course, US-centric when it comes to majority of campaigns, but we do also have clients in Korea, in other parts of Asia. We have clients in Europe. We did work with Latin America. ⁓ It's also interesting because you learn about different cultures.

Social media, Social media is what I saw all time and then creative economies are people's businesses. Also talking with other people outside the US, it's interesting to see what trends are going on, what's happening in terms of payments, this and that. The global aspect helps you also to understand what else is going on at the same time.

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Justin Levinson (16:47)

Yeah, that's really cool. that having a global team really can give you insights to in which, you know, others might not have to, to that specific area. That is super cool. And it's also interesting. So, so it's the content that performed, starts to perform well once organically. That's when paid sort of comes in. that how it works? the, so that it's paid. It's not initially planned to be paid or sometimes is that initially planned?

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Alessandro Bogliari (17:12)

be

paid? So it's a good question. Actually, I'd say that almost 90 % of clients these days of our clients are asking us to include paid media from the get go. they already are going to allocate it like compared to three years ago or so, or two years ago where the allocation of budget for paid media was maybe like, know, a smaller percentage. Now they already not only tell us that we want to invest.

in paid media, but also the allocation, it's kind of doubled compared to last year. Like what we're making now in terms of paid media amplification budgets only, it's already like compared to last year, year to date, it's more than doubled. And so we already have that, right? When it comes to our brief, we know that, okay, you know, we, and we also have separate them, right? Of course, we have a campaign management team that is on the organic side, and then we have another team that is for paid media amplification only.

Because they are two completely different marketing approaches. Organically speaking, you have other metrics and it's more about organizing the work with the influencers and the back and forth in the communication and negotiate the pricing. It's extremely people business focused, right? Like you have to speak with other people and so on. While paid media, you have the content and it's all about optimization, right? It's not the same as from programmatic approach.

The only difference is that now instead of having in-studio slash super polished type of content or display ads, and now you have this organic content that is made, it's native for social media that can be boosted. And now when you compare it against a super polished video on social media, we know the one from the influencer works best. And that's why you want to have both these days.

Organic only might be a bit of a challenge. There is a lot of competition happening. You might not reach the numbers that you are hoping for. And also you cannot attribute any ROI. You can, you can, you know, you can do the organic and say, hey, you know, linking by, or if you do an Instagram story, you can add a link there. So yes, it can always attribute back. It's an extra click, right? It's asking people to do an extra action. And we know that these days we are all doom scrolling, right? On social media. So anytime that you ask to do an extra action.

At the end of the funnel, right? You might lose a lot of people. So if you are able to simplify it and add a link, a clickable link directly on the video that brings you to the page, then of course it's golden because now you remove an extra click and at the end of the day in the funnel, can have in five times more the conversions compared to the organic video only.

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Justin Levinson (19:49)

super cool. Are you going, do you specialize in this in like a certain demographic or like you are you targeting like Gen Z or Millennials or is it pretty much open?

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Alessandro Bogliari (20:00)

mean, of course, Gen Z and millennials, right, for the nature of social media, it's a bit easier. And the brands that come to us, usually they want to talk to this type of audience.

work with maybe like other generations. It's just that I think that those brands are still, I don't want to say on traditional media, but they might have a bit of a more difficult time to understand that a trend that works well for Gen Z doesn't work for millennials, let alone for Gen X or boomers. And so I think that right now the majority is there. also compared to when we started the company eight years ago, Almost eight years ago, Gen Z were not really a thing, but now they are. And initially it was all about millennials and now Gen Z. And then

Then we'll start thinking like, what about Gen Alpha? Because they are the one now growing. Think about also like all those industries that before, earlier, they didn't care about social media. I'm thinking about banking, insurance, health insurance, like all these, but now they care because the generation that now you're selling to, so anyone that is 23, 25 or in their 30s, they start wanting to do a retirement plan. They want to start thinking about do I invest the money? That's now your client. And where is your client?

is on social media, is not looking on TV, watching TV and so on. Even what is interesting, even more traditional businesses are funneling, even if they are not understanding fully, they know that if you are not on social media these days, they are losing so much. And so again, we are being seen like insurance companies or even like pharmaceutical, you know, B2B companies that now they want to talk and having...

doctors talking about their products and so on. It changes a lot and it is constantly evolving in a very fast way.

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Justin Levinson (21:50)

Yeah, what is your role in the company now?

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Alessandro Bogliari (21:52)

The fans buy that every day is different. I don't know if this is the typical role of a CEO and co-founder, but in my case personally, if I had to look at two main groups, actually three main groups of what I do is this. I do marketing and I'm still sort of the face of the company because I'm the person that, again, my background as a growth hacker, I know a lot about SEO, a lot on landing pages and how do you get...

visible with no money, right? That has always been for me a challenge. It's easy if you invest a million dollars in Google Ads. When you have no money, right, especially at the beginning to invest, you have to come with out of the box ideas, right? And I love that. How do you do marketing and how do you connect with the right type of people in the networking space and so on and the relationship with journalists and reporters? We do a lot of reports every year. We just went out one...

a couple of days ago about the brandy also to see the behind the scenes and everything. whenever we work on this report, they go all around the world with our data. And so that also helps us, right? Like continue being the sort of authority in this space. So all the marketing side, love doing that. People help me out, of course, in the company, but I supervise everything that is marketing related. Then there is one that is a bit less tangible, let's say, as a thing, but it's crucial. There is a long-term vision.

Not only on the company, but looking at what is next in the industry. Right? So back in the day, I bet on TikTok because I was a big fan of Vine. And back in the day, Vine was a thing, then it was discontinued. Then when I found out about TikTok, was like, this might be the next big thing. So now all the time I'm looking, okay, what is happening in China with live stream shopping? What is happening in these other countries for that? And you want to be all the time a debt agency owner that is...

You know, it's looking for what is next. If not, you become one of these denos or agencies that kind of sit right back and they become comfortable. And we do have some competitors that are listen, they are great companies, but the bigger they became, the less innovative, right? You are. And clients after a while, they want to have the right partner with them. know, they want to be sure that. So I always want to look at, okay, what is next? What else is happening out there?

How can we adapt so that we are always that fresher type of like, you know, outlook on what is happening in the industry and what we can offer to the clients that is different from competitors. And the last part, the last bit on these is developing. Especially these days with clock code and all the AI, right? So I was the one also doing a lot of infrastructure work and coding mostly because I love doing that. Again, I...

Part of my studies in my master's degree, I also like I studied Java and a few other things and Python and so on. And I always loved the idea of coding and creating systems. So I do have a team that they only do data, right? And then infrastructure, but I'm now rebuilding a lot of things myself because I love to have my hands dirty in the work of day-to-day operations. So I don't work on the operation, but I want to enable the operation to go faster, to commit less errors.

So I love the idea of infrastructures, right? How things talk to each other. How do you create automations? How can you help your team to minimize human error? Right? And so a lot of those things that do them. again, I think that my role is a bit different from the typical CEO type of things, because I do love, again, the long-term, but at the same time, I also love to, okay, what is the new AI feature that we can implement in? And I want to be that person so that when I talk with my company managers, I do have still a...

direct relationship, right? Where instead of coming up with an idea that no one in the business will use, I want to learn from them and understanding what can I build that is actually useful for you, know? And to finish all this, say, I think that also what sometimes SaaS businesses make as a mistake. They are great developers, but they are not business people. They are not operational people. So they come out with functions, features, and whatever that no one cares about. And now you have a...

thousand features that no one uses. So my philosophy all the time is I prefer to know from the bottom up, right? Then the opposite, because if you're trying to force a way to work with your team, that doesn't make sense. Now is a disservice for everyone. I spend time to build something that no one will use and they will still go back to bad habits. While if he said, I learned exactly how you're currently working, what do you need from me? And how can we build this together? Now the team will use.

something that is actually helpful and is designed on their needs and not something just because as CEO of the company wanted to push and everyone like, now you're doing this way because I want it this way. That doesn't make sense to me.

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Justin Levinson (26:39)

Yeah. How how is AI affecting your industry?

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Alessandro Bogliari (26:44)

To be honest, I think that the more AI there is out there, the more clients and brands need us. Let's divide AI into two main things. AI-generated content and AI as a helpful tool on your day-to-day operation. AI-generated content, AI-generated influencers, no one wants them. There is so much backfire when...

Brands are using AI generated content online. Everyone is like this AI slop, know, number one. Number two still on AI generated stuff. Why would you follow an AI generated influencer? That doesn't make sense. We did this research also about, they were called virtual influencer. This was many years ago before all the AI thingy. If I follow Justin, right, that is my favorite influencers in the music industry, right? And every week I have a review of the latest guitar, right? And everything.

Fantastic. I follow Justin because he's great at guitar and I follow him because of that. And every week I learn something. If he's telling me that this is the brand to buy, I will buy from Justin because since he was five years old, he has been playing guitar. I trust Justin. Okay. If now instead I have iJustin that is AI generated, that it doesn't exist. I'm not even talking about your avatar because that is another story. If you cannot replicate yourself, it's very borderline legally speaking about is it you? Is it not you? What is the IP? Whatever.

But if instead of Justin, is like, again, know, this I Justin, that is not you, right? It's just like something that you generated. Why would I trust this person that never had a guitar in their hands? Do they know about music? they grow up with music in their childhood? All that, it's non-existent. If you don't have a soul, if you don't have, you're not a human being and therefore what is the narrative? So all that, no one cares. Believe me, like.

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Justin Levinson (28:29)

Yeah.

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Alessandro Bogliari (28:39)

It's such a bots worth thing when it comes to AI influencers, no one likes them. No one wants to see them. So there is a big part of that. And then secondly, about using AI. Using AI for operations, I think it's great. I say all the time also to my employees and everything, like, of course you use them with critical thinking. Not just because you put an input and you get an output and then you just send the email, like check, does it make sense? Is it good quality? But there are so many things that you can automate. They can use AI, right?

clean up things and how should I respond to this email in a more polite way. All that is great and it doesn't replace you, but it helps you on a day to day operation. Now to answer your question like how things are changing, going back to what I was saying, because of this reason, clients, need people even more than before, than ever. Because now you want to be sure that you're not doing an AI slap work. You want to be sure that behind an operation of influencer marketing, is a

someone that is thinking about the concept, someone that is negotiating the pricing with, you know, and you know, all these, the, the, the sort of narrative, right? And this even before AI, again, I've been in this for like 12 years or so, and I used all the platform out there. And the, the initial idea was with this platform, you can do everything. You can identify the right influencer. can ⁓ reach out to them. You can do all the, all the CRM, all the management.

The principle of it and the idea is fantastic. The reality of things is that you cannot do influencer marketing with a click of a button. There is so much, again, human component. have to talk with people about the creative concept. have to do back and forth about the negotiation. not everything is in one platform. Sometimes you might have to send an email to an influencer. Sometimes you are texting by DM on Instagram. Sometimes it's going to be by SMS.

Sometimes you have to call them and be like, why are you not posting these? So the idea of everything in one place, it's again, in theory works, but practically speaking, no. So the AI thing, it helps absolutely. It cannot replace you. And the idea that tomorrow you can do a campaign totally with AI, maybe you can, yes, but the results, the input, the output, the ideas, the overall management, it will be like non-existent, like substandard.

Big fan of AI myself, every day I learn new things and I ask our people to use it in a smart way though. know, with you critical thinking, like is this output correct? Yes. If not, I will still have to do some edits myself, you know, and you cannot trust it completely because it's still hallucinating and sometimes it gives you things that didn't make sense and so on and so on. But absolutely big, big lover. But again, how do you implement it in your day to day without doing a sloppy job? Because again,

Clients pay us for quality job and now if you give everything to AI, they will be like, why have I paid you these days?

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Justin Levinson (31:36)

Well, I'm sorry to say that I am an AI generated podcast host and

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Alessandro Bogliari (31:41)

I'm going to the other side and I'll be right back.

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Justin Levinson (31:44)

very human version, but yeah, that is good to know because, know, yeah, sometimes it can feel, ⁓ it's just so much slop out there and it's nice to know that that stuff isn't performing that well and that real humans with real stories and experiences are still scoring well. So that's cool. Maybe we can get into a little bit. I always like to sort of end the podcast with what the guest likes to do outside of the industry. Do you have any hobbies or things that you enjoy?

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Alessandro Bogliari (32:11)

I do have too many hobbies I think, but that's what keeps me active, what keeps me curious. And I say this to anyone listening today. I want to say this. Having your company, having your job, it's important, but it's not everything. And I'm saying this especially to everyone in the US because that's a cultural shock that I noticed coming from Italy. Okay. And I'm a bit different than the...

Typical startup Italian that, know, with the idea that, okay, you do your thing and then you go to the beach all day and it's, you know, that is a nice way to live. But for me, I always had the entrepreneurial mindset, right? So for me, it's a bit more about like, working and bring results and everything. And while again, you you might have this idea of Italy and other countries in Europe where we don't really work, right? And partially it might be true sometimes we do take a lot of vacation, yada, yada, yada. With that said now, when I moved to the US, right, I noticed that a lot of people, find themselves by their job. And with other job...

There's nothing, nothing left. And that to me was a bit sad to realize, you know, like, especially here in the city, when you meet people, the first question is, what do you do for a living? Where do you live? They try to identify who you are based on your career. And that to me is such a missed opportunity to meet the person in front of you outside of work, because maybe you're doing a job that you don't even like just to pay your rent.

Yeah. Sometimes you might be in between jobs. Sometimes it's, you know, and that's, that's not everything and it shouldn't be everything. So all this blubbing to say, the time to have something that is outside your work that make you happy. That gives you that curiosity also, right? Like for me, one of the most important things in life is being curious because you can learn about hard skills. know, if you want to learn how to code, go on YouTube. There are so many courses for free.

If you want to learn how to do whatever, you know, in your job, you can do it, but that soft skills and that mentality demands that are like being curious as to come from you. No one can teach you. The moment you are curious is the moment where you start learning about new things, about yourself, about others, about other cultures. And that will also give you more ideas for your job as well. If you are like in a box that you're only looking at your screen all day, you will never add anything that is outside of the box. Right. And so for myself, I do a lot of things. I do love cooking. It's a great way for me not to be in front of computer.

I love creating something that comes from ingredients and becomes food. I love doing that and being Italian is part of my DNA. grew up with that with my grandmother teaching me how to make fresh pasta and all that type of things. And then I keep myself very active. I go to the gym six, seven. That becomes very important for me. Building the company, I kind of lost the track of my health and I get to a position where the company was doing well, I was not doing well. And so one day I was like...

Again, company and work is not everything. Your health comes first. Since I've gone to the gym, I've been doing martial arts for many years. So boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, all these types of things. I keep myself active. I do love playing any type of sports out there. So if you invite me to, know, pickleball or volleyball or whatever, I'm there. I'm going to do that. I'm going to play. Now I listen to a bunch of music and I play both the piano and drums. So last year I started playing the drums.

Behind me, I do have a keyboard. I used to play the piano when I was a kid, mostly classical music and jazz. In the past year, I started drums. It's always been a dream of mine. I finally bought an electric kit. Back in the day, my parents, when I was way younger, never bought me one, so now I'm an adult. I'm using my money and I got my drums finally. That is a great way to distress, to play your favorite bands now, the instruments. I have a bunch of other things. I love arts and a lot of things.

So this keeps me alive, it keeps me motivated. And again, if you remove me, like if tomorrow I'm not anymore the CEO and co-founder of the Influencers Marketing Factory, I am Alessandro that loves cooking, loves playing sports, I love going out with friends. I love stand-up comedy. I'm lucky enough to be in Manhattan where you have a lot of stand-up comedians coming in the city. So, you know, all these, it's important because again, you don't want to be your job entirely. You want to have your own personality. And if tomorrow I change company, if tomorrow I whatever, whatever.

It's me and I don't get lost into the, am I without my job? And again, too many people that I met in the US, unfortunately, these where if you get fired, I know people that went into such great depression because of that, because they were like, I don't know who I am because all my job was my life and now I don't have a hobby. I don't have friends to meet, yada, yada, yada.

Try to, the word balance when it comes to entrepreneurship is very difficult. So you will never have a balanced life that is unfortunately like a dream that it's impossible to think of. But having something is not just your work in your life. It's crucial for your mental health, for your physical health. So for anyone listening, again, if you had that idea, do it. Go out there and follow your passions and things because you need both.

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Justin Levinson (37:12)

I love that messaging. My father-in-law would be so stoked that we're having a conversation today. He is absolutely obsessed with Italy. He loves foreign cars and he repairs like vintage foreign cars like, like Alfa Romeo's and like Fiat's. loves these cars. He loves Formula One. Every time we talk to somebody from Italy, he just like devours them. he's going to be stoked to take a listen to this podcast.

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Alessandro Bogliari (37:36)

Absolutely. we have, know, again, Italy is a great country. again, maybe for businesses, maybe vice, might not be the best, but we have so many other things. Like we the fashion, we have the food, we have the cars, you know, and I think that, yeah, sometimes if we're like a bit better in business, be great, but I don't know, maybe it be Italy. I don't know. We are so creative that sometimes we don't really follow the rules about the typical, you know, business models and everything. And maybe we are good.

because we are unique in that way. We don't follow the rules and because of that, you get such a different type of outcome. So I don't know these days what is wrong, what is right. I just think that everything is different and each different way can be the good one.

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Justin Levinson (38:16)

Awesome Alessandro. Well, it was so great to have a conversation with you today. I really appreciate you being on.

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Alessandro Bogliari (38:20)

Absolutely. Thank you so much, All right, man. Thank you. Bye.