2018 – Breaking Through Business Breakpoints: A Guide for Service-Based Entrepreneurs with Kasey D’Amato

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:06With us right now, it's Casey D 'Amato. Casey, you're a speaker, you're an executive coach, and you are the president of Casey D 'Amato. Enterprises are CaseyD 'Amato.com. Casey, it's great to have you. So excited to have this conversation with you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here, Josh. In your words, I would love to hear a bit more about the work you do and who you serve. By the way, your website, caseydamato.com, to our friend that's listening right now, just click in the show notes and you'll find a direct link to Casey's website so you can follow along. You've got a great website.

1:43But Casey, in your words, I'd love to hear about the impact you have in the world. Yeah. So I'm a concierge business advisor and executive life coach. So what I do is I help support and nurture business owners who want to get to the next level with their business. You know, so that's growth, that's leadership, that's team building, that's, you know, time blocking in very efficient ways and simultaneously advance their personal life and lifestyle at the same time. Because, you know, I come from a background in medicine. And so I really believe in a holistic approach to the entrepreneur journey.

2:15And I've gone through my own journey like we all have as serial entrepreneurs, and you learn the hard way that it can be a lonely road. And so it's my mission and passion to impact particularly service-based entrepreneurs and business owners, small business owners who really want more from their business, maybe feel a little held back or a little alone or feel like it's going to negatively impact their personal life. And they grow their personal life as well as their business. And so I support people on that journey. Yeah, what is it typically that folks might feel like they're stalling out a little bit or maybe they're burnt out?

2:50What are some common patterns that you see that, you know, and again, and I'm thinking about to our friend that's listening, good news, you're not alone. Definitely not alone. You know, along my journey, I've had multiple different iterations in business, both my own businesses and helping grow other businesses. and most of the businesses that I've been a part of, I've been anywhere from startup to about 10 million in gross revenue. So that's really my sweet spot in the space that I know quite well. I have consulted for a billion dollar pharmaceutical company, but that's an outlier experience.

3:23Most of my experience is in this like zero to 10 million in completely different industries. And what I really notice is patterns. And I've studied these patterns in these red zones. And so I think of the business journey as a lifestyle, as a life cycle, like a developmental life cycle, like babies to toddlers, to elementary school, to high school, to young adults, and then growing up. And there's different hurdles at each stage of the life cycle, just like we see in children that can affect business owners. And it can stunt our growth as a business owner, stunt our business, stunt ourselves. And so depending on what stage you're at in business, you can be held back usually by your own mindset, but there are other skills that you can learn, whether it's about how to look at your metrics a little differently or how to build your team and lead your team a little differently.

4:10And there are different steps depending on where you are in business that you might not even realize you're holding yourself back. And especially if you're in the kind of, this is anywhere from zero to 10 million stage, you know, there's these break points, you know, every million or so that are very common for a lot of business owners and they don't even realize it. And they feel like they're just going through day to day, putting out the fires and just trying of survive the day with their business and, you know, balance some personal time, self-care and family, and maybe some hobbies and travel along the way.

4:40And it took me a very long time to navigate these different patterns, find the right balance. And it's really my mission and passion to pay it forward to others. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to think of like what, let's talk about this listening here. Casey, if we were to maybe give them a couple of things that they could start to think on? Maybe an exercise that they could grab a pen and some paper and just start jotting down what's in their head. What might be some things that you would encourage them to do that might help them get to some peace or clarity around who they are and who they are in the world, their impact in the world, that at least, again, might bring them back to a greater sense of fulfillment in their work?

5:30Yeah, no, that's a great question. So I always like to evaluate for myself and the clients that I work with in a concierge way, we're looking at everything in a timeline and we're looking at the balance of money, time, and fun. So say we're looking at a calendar and you can just pull up any calendar. This can be on your phone. This could be a Google calendar. It's what I use. It's simple. It's easy. And I look, I'm always looking at about 18 months into the future. And when I'm looking 18 months, I break down into 90 day segments. And I'm looking at, okay, what do I want in the next 90 days related to money, financial growth in the business?

6:05You know, am I increasing profitability? Am I looking to grow gross revenue? Am I thinking about launching something new? What is going to be promoted? What is something new and different in 90 day blocks over the next 18 months that's related to financial growth? And what metrics am I going to be looking at along the way to hit that, that bench point. So I always start everything with a calendar. So I'm looking at that from the money perspective. Then I'm looking at my time and energy and I'm looking at where is my time and energy going? Where has it been going? And what's 25 % of my time that I'm going to reduce activities and re, you know, reignite different areas or add on new areas of energy and focus that are something I've never done before.

6:51Because if I want a different result in 18 months that I need to be investing my time and energy in a different way. And then the third thing I look at is, is this journey fun? Is there a balance here with what I'm doing in my business? Is it energizing me and igniting me? Do I have balance in my personal life? I know you and I were just chatting about my lifestyle. I have two homes, I live between my summer home in Maine and my primary home in Florida. And so I've manifested this lifestyle that I wanted for a very long time and didn't think it was possible. And it wasn't necessarily a business transaction that allowed the lifestyle.

7:26The lifestyle was something that became important. So while I was focusing on different business metrics, different time metrics, I just made the decision. What is fun for me? Well, part of my fun was being near family for part of the year where I spend summers and, you know, having my primary home and balancing it all. So I'm always starting with that calendar and looking at the money part, the financial goals and the metrics and the 90 day blocks, the time and reallocating about 20 to 25 % of my time and new and different ways every 90 days, sometimes every six months. And then looking at what is fun in my business.

8:00Am I excited about this? Is it supercharging me? And is, am I living the lifestyle on a personal level that I want? And I don't need to wait to hit the goal in 18 months to, to change my lifestyle. There are things that I can change right now, um, and live the lifestyle now. So what are things that I'm doing right now today in this 90 days that are new in my lifestyle? So those are some things that I always recommend when you're thinking about how to take your business and life to the next level. I start with a calendar. I mean, it's an oldie and goodie. It's a simple tool that we all have, but not everybody is looking at it in that way.

8:34They're just putting on their appointments and their day-to-day action items, but they're not thinking about the next 12 to 18 months in 90-day blocks with their money, their time, and their fun. You know, I bet that oftentimes when you do this inventory with your client or your leader that you're working with, I suspect that a lot of us are maybe doing activity that falls outside of our zone of genius. Or we do activity that we don't particularly enjoy. Like it's maybe we feel like we have to do it because nobody else can do it. or also I would argue that if there's any activity that we have to do that maybe brushes up against our values.

9:24One thing that we encounter quite a bit, I do a lot of work as a fractional CRO, and a lot of times I'm working with founder-led companies, and they might be engaging in sales activity or lead generation tactics that they just don't particularly enjoy, and they treat it like a necessary evil. Well, that creates a lot of friction for that leader where, again, it's like they show up on Monday and to them, it's like, I may as well just have a job I don't enjoy because I don't enjoy these aspects of it. And I'm sorry for kind of pontificating a little bit too much here. Casey, for someone who you're starting to gather, they're just engaged in activity that's just not working for them, how would you help them through this?

10:13Particularly if they have some objections in saying, there is no one else that could possibly do this work. So many business owners, most of us feel that way when we start out, especially when you're like that zero to 2 million, that's like a really troublesome stage there that we feel like we have to do absolutely everything. And so there's a very clear break point at that 2 million, And I kind of call it that adolescent stage that it's critical to bring in some leadership to your team and some people that you can trust. Hopefully you have some SOPs in place for the processes and things that you've been doing and you've started to outline, even if it's simple, people get intimidated by the SOP development.

10:53I mean, you know, you help people in operations, but even if it's just a simple list of steps, you know, just start with something basic so that you can start to reassign this or reallocate to somebody who guess what might actually be better at it than you. And most of us are afraid of that step. We're afraid because we've gotten our business to a certain point, doing majority of the heavy lifting ourselves. And we've gotten support and we've maybe hired someone in sales or marketing, or we've got some operational assistance, but they're all people that are sort of helping us. They're not really taking the true lead in helping us build the business and take it to the next level.

11:31So particularly in that like two to$3 million range, business owners in that level, the critical breaking point is us ourselves and being afraid that nobody else can take the lead to help drive the business forward in a certain area, whether that is in marketing or in sales or in operations or in some of the finance. And now, of course, you're the founder and it's your business and it's your baby, right? I equate businesses to babies and life cycles all the time. So you're going to be the most passionate, but there are lots of very skilled people that have different experiences and have come from amazing businesses and they have had a different skillset.

12:11Maybe they have an operational skillset, or maybe they have a, you know, very strong social skillset. And maybe that's not who we are as a business owner. Maybe we're, you know, by nature, the service provider, or we're the visionary. And we've got to have that balance between the visionary, the operational person, and that the artist or the person that's delivering the service. We have to find that balance of leadership, particularly when we're getting some legs underneath us in that business. And we're, we're hitting that point in the, you know, low to mid seven figures. If we want to get to the next level, it's key to trust the process and build layers of management at that stage, or you will forever hold yourself back.

12:48Yeah. Casey, tell me a bit about who you've worked with and what that engagement typically looks like? So to our friend that's listening and they're thinking, I'm enjoying this. I wonder what coaching looks like or hiring Casey to speak at our organization, like what that might look like. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I've had clients reference me to every, but everything from a fractional business partner to some, one of my clients calls me mama Casey, because she says I over, I just look out for her every best interest in every way. So, So, you know, I work with my clients primarily in a concierge style, meaning one-on-one.

13:24So I'm very involved in everything from their business model. Is their model healthy? Meaning, can we scale this model in a way that is not going to kill you as the business owner? You know, is this positioned in a way that we can build layers of team? Do we have enough profitability here? Is this business model structured in a way for growth? So we're looking at that and we're also developing the key metrics. And so, you know, everybody talks about KPIs and some people that don't like numbers are intimidated by that process. And I break it down very simply to what are we looking at as far as gross revenue goals?

13:58How many clients or customers or patients that are talking about medical services are we looking to attract in each 90 day period? And how are we looking at kind of the growth funnel? I have like a six step growth funnel that I'm looking at for different types of awareness activities, trust building, conversion and retention so that we're building out the model in a very healthy way. Now, simultaneously, I'm also working with my clients talking about what are they doing for their self-care? Have they worked out today? Did they call their mother or their kids and checked in on them recently? How many hours of sleep are they getting?

14:32No. And how are they feeling? What new hobbies are they doing? What are they reading that's not business related? so that we're always top of mind, both growing the business in a strategic way, building the team. I oftentimes work with my clients, hiring new team members and helping train them and developing new SOPs and helping support them in the new systems as we're layering that management team and that buffer level. And it's scary for a lot of business owners. So how to build out that management team and how's that communication going to work with everybody? And simultaneously, how are we advancing your life?

15:02Are you feeling good? Are you feeling strong and healthy? Is your family getting enough support for you? Are you coaching baseball? Are you involved in your kids or with your aging parents, whichever generation you're in? And are you able to be there for your family and your loved ones? Are you a good spouse and significant other? Is it your significant other's birthday coming up? What are you going to do special? Are you taking a trip? I encourage myself and my community that I work with to travel. Because when we travel and we go to different cultures, especially where people speak other languages, our brain is stimulated.

15:36We're learning something new. We're learning a few phrases in French or Spanish, and we're getting creative. We're opening our mind up that we can learn new things and do new things. And so that's a big part of what I encourage with my clients. So I work very hands-on concierge. Typically, I only work with about 10 clients at a time. I am launching a small group incubator program that's going to be starting soon, which will be 15 people. And I'll be helping a cohort develop their leadership, really take their business and their life from where it is now to what they imagine it to be. But it could really be that way so much sooner than people realize.

16:11We just start putting some of these steps in place and we start literally manifesting the things they want. The second home, why not do it this year? Why are we waiting till next year? Let's put some steps in place. Let's get a real estate agent and let's start looking and let's start running some numbers. So we're doing all of that at the same time. Casey D 'Amato, your website is caseydamato.com. To our friend that's listening, what would you recommend they do next? Where do they go? Where do they click on? How do they reach out? How do they connect? Yeah, I would love for you to connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn.

16:43You can always send me a DM as well as on my website at caseydamato.com. Just like you're saying, you can connect with me there, shoot me an email. We can chat with a free strategy session and sit down and talk about your business and life, where you feel stuck. I'm happy to provide some insight and perspective from my journey that can help you along your journey. Again, I've worked in many different industries and grown businesses in different industries. So I'm happy to share and provide my insight and thoughts. And if it makes sense to work together, great. And if not, I'm happy to share. It's my mission and passion to pay it forward.

17:16That's what I want to do for the rest of my life is help other people build the life of their dreams. Yeah, Casey D 'Amato. Again, the CEO of CaseyD 'Amato.com, speaker, executive coach. It has been great to have you, Casey. Yes, would highly recommend engaging and connecting with you on LinkedIn and Instagram. And of course, directly at your website, CaseyD 'Amato.com. Just click in the show notes. You'll find that direct link to that website. Thank you, Casey. Yeah, thanks for having me, Josh.

17:52Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

18:33I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

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