Ilaria Colasanti is an Italian entrepreneur born and raised on the seaside of Rome. Growing up with traveling parents, she harnessed an international mindset that led to her living abroad in Australia and the UK. In this interview, Ilaria shares the raw and relatable realities of burnout in marketing, which she leveraged to become an entrepreneur. Her work and words capture the resilient mindset, inspiring her dedicated work and the future of Italian entrepreneurship.
Full Live Interview on Spotify
Where were you born and raised?
I was born and raised in Rome, Italy. I lived here until I finished university, but I don’t define myself as a city girl since I spent most of my childhood close to the beach. I love Rome and think it’s the most beautiful city in the world– I am proud of being born and raised here. I enjoyed the city later in my adulthood, I would say. I only moved closer to the city center when I started university and I think it was good that way.
What would you say were some of the influential forces in your upbringing?
I would say family is the first and biggest influence. I grew up in a family where both of my parents traveled a lot for work. My mom worked in an airport for her entire career, and my dad worked for the biggest Italian telecom company. My dad traveled a lot for conferences around the world and a lot in the United States. My parents really wanted my brother and me to grow up as international people. I am trying to transfer that mindset of encouraging leaving your comfort zone, like living in Italy, to explore and find your place in the world.
I think this is different from the usual Italian upbringing. A lot of my childhood friends never left the city or never left Italy, but they also are not interested in knowing what’s outside and what more the world has to offer. I have always been the friend that was always be living somewhere else, like in Australia or the UK.
Who would you say was your biggest role model in your upbringing?
My mom. Now that I am getting older, I understand that a lot of my traits and way of being, like at work, and my aspirations have been influenced by her spirit. She taught me through her way of living to work hard for yourself and not be afraid of any challenge. She also taught me to question myself which led to me changing from a full-time employee to self-employed, which was a big moment that took six months to get to that decision.
My mom was the very first to say to me, ‘What are you losing? Do you have a mortgage and kids?’ She did all of this to get me into the mindset of not being afraid in situations where I don’t need to be. I am an overthinker, so for the last six months, my mom helped me to decide to take that extra step for myself and think of the situation under a new light. She has been like that throughout my whole life– being supportive. Just looking at her journey from not just a life’s perspective, but also from a work perspective, is something I admire today.
Was there a particular catalyzing event or moment where you decided you needed to go into business for yourself?
Yeah, there was a moment. Again, because I am an overthinker, I thought about it for a long time. Eventually, I realized I needed to make a change because I got to a point in my life where I felt really lost. I was at a dark place of feeling completely lost and burnt out, which was not me because I have always been a child who wanted to do as much as I could to prove myself in any way. As soon as I finished university, I knew I wanted to experience the world. Within two days, I decided I wanted to move to Australia. I did all of the visa requirements, packed my suitcase, and left. I stayed there for almost a year, but I was still not ready to go back to Italy. I wanted to prove to myself that I could get a job somewhere else in Europe, so I moved to the UK after finding an internship there. I started my career in the UK and had the greatest experience of my life.
But I got to a point when I was in the UK that I was so tired, and I never stopped to think of what I wanted to do with my life. I realized that I was in a work situation where I was bullied, and the culture was very toxic. In that role, the CEO wasn’t a leader that I would follow, and with the coincidence of COVID happening, I was super afraid. I reached such a low point that even my closest friend that was living with me suggested that I take a break and go back home. With COVID happening and the world suffering, it made sense to go back. I quit the job and in a week, I packed my stuff and went back to Italy.
Those three months when I was unemployed felt like the world literally stopped. No one was working, and nothing was happening around me. I also wasn’t feeling the pressure of finding a new job; all I needed to do was work on myself. That experience was traumatizing, but it also helped me to understand that I didn’t want to feel that way any longer. Later last year, I got to a point where I was so tired that I didn’t find joy in my job and couldn’t see any career growth, so the idea of being self-employed seemed right. I wanted to do it at some point in my life, but I always got the thought in my head that I wasn’t ready or not senior enough to go into self-employment. Then I talked with people who believed in me and have been following me my whole life journey, who told me I could do it and should at least try, or else I will regret it. So then I did it and quit my job to become self-employed. I opened my small company in Italy, which is something you can do here. I have a few clients and am three months into my journey, and it’s going really well.
Recently, you published a post talking about how you started to hate making content and walked through a process of reframing that mindset. Can you talk about that process?
Like I said, I have always been interested in learning more and so I became a marketing generalist. This is a title that a lot of people look at in a bad way since it is not a specialist in anything particular. I don’t consider myself a total 100% social media manager, but that is the beauty of it. I decided I wanted to go into content because I could be more creative and wanted to drop all analytical tasks and roles like CRM, for example. Looking at a database is not inspirational, but then I changed from a content specialist to a manager and this was the point where I told myself I was doing content in a way I didn’t like.
I knew I wanted to build my branding and talk about topics that interest me, but at the end of the day, I was so tired. Especially with content, you need to be creative and so these creative blocks would happen. When you get to these moments, it’s really important to take a moment for yourself to scan all of your experiences to look at what you’re good at. It’s difficult for people not to feel good enough, like imposter syndrome, which is always at its peak for me.
So it is important to ask yourself the right questions. Look at your process and the feedback you received, and realize you did that, those are your results, and you did a great job. You have to give yourself a pep talk to realize the achievements you have brought to the table and carry that confidence into whatever you’re doing. It is good for growth to even acknowledge a mistake that you made, so there is always a learning curve that requires the practice of asking yourself the right questions to realize your strengths.
What is your philosophy with marketing that you bring to the table with your business?
My biggest philosophy is to apply creativity. Creativity is not just being good at painting or drawing, but a flexible approach that could be building a brand or creating a content calendar with an approach that has no limits to your imagination–there are no limits to creating. Especially when we work with content, we look at other people’s content and see what is working or not working and get stuck constantly looking up to other people’s creations that we don’t create anything original. This is a necessary exercise, to still look at other people’s work, but then finding your own style and voice which requires being adaptable and flexible enough to generate something out of that inspiration.
Creativity is one, but two is data. Data is big in marketing at any level, and it’s very important to be able to analyze data because it gives you a route to follow or not follow when things are going right or wrong. I have always worked in a way that is heavily data-driven and am very thankful for my operations experience. Before going into marketing, I was an operations manager and account manager, which helped shape my mindset into a more data-driven approach to my work. It is not really a philosophy as much as it is a skill that you need to have, but if you’re not naturally drawn to it, you have to train yourself in it.
Finally, I ask a lot of questions. Again, I take this for granted because I don’t want to look dumb or make it look like I don’t understand. But by asking a lot of questions, you can truly understand what your client wants to achieve and their expectations. You don’t ever need to be afraid of asking questions; it’s the biggest hack in my experience.
What advice can you give to marketers to be successful in the future?
AI is the biggest thing– we cannot deny it. There’s so much you can get out of AI, and I am not talking about generating content. In my case, I use it a lot for proofreading and brainstorming ideas. Mastering AI is a big thing, but you need to know the basics. If you can leverage it for sophisticated projects, it’s a great ally to have. Having a mechanism to generate revenue outside of organic content can be really helpful.
AI is also a great project manager, especially since this is a skill no one really teaches you to do. If you find yourself or someone in a role of project management, these tools help you get into the right mindset. I think being able to manage different tasks is a skill that some people have naturally, or are not good at naturally. But especially if you’re a creative and don’t like things in order, you need to learn how to be more systematic, which AI can help you do to thrive in any role in marketing or managing social media projects.
What is the general message you wish to leave with the world?
In a world where it is easy to feel hopeless, being confident in the power that you have within you to change your life is the biggest advice that I can give to anyone– it is the strongest superpower that you can have.
