Jon Younger, Agile Talent Collaborative, Forbes Contributor, 'Godfather' of the Freelance Revolution

Leaders, Jon is the OG of the freelance economy. He by far has the widest pulse on what’s happening, and combines a genuine heart to make the space better with a discipline to include the full spectrum of our industry.

This is Jon’s second time in our leader portal. Like fine wine, Jon only gets better the more you hear him :)

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Some of our favorite quotes:

What are the key challenges Jon’s solving for?

• I love the notion of acquisition versus access. Acquisition, implying ownership access, meaning, being able to take advantage of having having it on tap, I think you're absolutely right.

• And I would add one other piece, and that is, I've been a CHRO, I've been a head of talent, I've been a head of organization development. I've worked for great companies. In my earlier part of my life, Tony in HR, nobody ever taught us how to architect the workforce. You know, it's like the big bank, suddenly, the universe is here.

• And I know how to negotiate within it. But I have no idea how to create a Big Bang. And think of all of the HR people that have learned to do a fabulous job of improving or administering or, or supplementing or aiding a workforce, but never had to figure out how to architect one from scratch. And if you don't know how to architect the workforce from scratch, you don't know how to create a flexible and blended one you don't trust it. And so what you default to is, if we own all these folks, quote unquote, somehow we'll be safer, the risk will be reduced.

• And we of course know, since the average tenure is less than two years, you're renting them anyway.

• Nicholas, what I loved about what you said, is that if you befriend procurement instead of hate procurement, they will help you because they can tell the difference between being loved and hated. Befriending procurement and helping them to understand the difference between cost and value actually helps. And then figuring out how to put stuff in the organization in a way that procurement doesn't have to, you know, sort of react badly to.

• All of us face a fundamental demand. And that and that is we're trying to convince a global industry, that they've got to change in their most fundamental assumption, and that is that if they don't own the people, they can't be successful. And that I believe, is the most important thing that we can do.

• It's education at multiple levels. It's education, in terms of freelancers, because we've got to help those folks. Freelance, one of the things we learned from our global survey, Matt is, is that freelancers are every kind of optimistic, except when it comes to marketing and networking, because they hate it.

• And so we've got to help these folks to figure out that they're not only doing important work that changes the way, the way that we live the way we operate. But they are running a bodega on the corner of Lafayette Avenue, and Carlton Street in Brooklyn. And they've got to do all of the things that that Bodega where I buy my bottled water from does. And until we educate them around the specifics of building their business, and benefiting from the association with the platform, but the platform doesn't sell their business they do, the platform makes the match.

• We've got to invest in HR education, HR hrs reward system is the love of the manager. And we got to understand that that we're not, we're not contributing to the love of the manager with freelancers because they don't count.

• We've got a supply issue. Right now full time freelancers are only somewhere between a third and a quarter total freelancers, we're not going to escape, we're not going to get to escape velocity at the enterprise level. And until we do that, we don't have an industry.

• I want to see us understand a fundamental data point. And that is that all of the business of all of the freelance platforms, agencies, marketplaces represent less than 5% of total staffing spend globally. So who's our competition? It's not each other. Our competition is history. And that's our challenge.

business of all of the freelance platforms, agencies, marketplaces represent less than 5% of total staffing spend globally

So who's our competition? It's not each other. Our competition is history.

•  I'll tell you folks, we got to help governments figure out how to tax us because if we can't figure out how to how to help governments tax us, they will shut us down.

• Right now what's happening in the UK with IR35 has nothing to do with policy towards employment, it has everything to do with how do we tax you. Because we know historically, that companies send tax rolls to government, and that forms the basis for being taxed. And now I'm in Argentina, but I'm doing work in Austin, Texas. And they're not tracking me and they are pissed as hell.

How can the freelance economy create opportunity for everyone?

• I want to plug another group, and that's working moms and working dads. And it's not just working moms. It's working moms and working dads. And one of the things that that we are able to do through this wonderful invention of a new way of working in the technology that supports it is work providing an opportunity for people at all levels of the economic ladder, top to bottom, it to create more meaningful relationships with their family and to support their family in ways that that you know, don't destroy their family.

• If I may put it in those to dramatic terms, you know, my, my, if my kids were to were to honestly answer the question, was I away too much when they were growing up? Their answer would be, of course you were. And one of the things that I am quite certain of because of that belief is that neither of them want jobs or will accept jobs that require a tremendous amount of travel. They don't want to be that far away from their kids.