Tune in as we discuss running a successful agency, stepping into your CEO role, building a business that doesn’t rely solely on you, and why we should all stop being so “anti-corporate.” We talk about how to effectively pitch corporations, why it’s easier than you think, and our experiences with hustle culture and burning out.
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode6
In today's episode, we’re talking about running a successful agency, stepping into your CEO role, and why we should stop being “anti-corporate.”
My guest is Donata White, the CEO of Coffee Date Media, a social media marketing and content production agency. Once a burnt-out attorney in New York City, she started her blog and YouTube channel in 2012 as a creative outlet -- never dreaming it would become so much more.
Now she leads a multi-six-figure business and team of 10, working with billion-dollar corporations and solo entrepreneurs alike. Her life did a full 180, and she left her draining job in the big city 4 years ago to run CDM full time from her 40-acre farm. Donata believes in combining solid strategy with a think-big mindset to create the life of your dreams.
Donata regularly works with billion-dollar corporations so we talk a lot about pitching and specifically pitching corporate clients (and why it’s easier than you think).
Topics Discussed:
Tune in as we discuss running a successful agency, stepping into your CEO role, building a business that doesn’t rely solely on you, and why we should all stop being so “anti-corporate.” We talk about how to effectively pitch corporations, why it’s easier than you think, and our experiences with hustle culture and burning out.
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode6
In today's episode, we’re talking about running a successful agency, stepping into your CEO role, and why we should stop being “anti-corporate.”
My guest is Donata White, the CEO of Coffee Date Media, a social media marketing and content production agency. Once a burnt-out attorney in New York City, she started her blog and YouTube channel in 2012 as a creative outlet -- never dreaming it would become so much more.
Now she leads a multi-six-figure business and team of 10, working with billion-dollar corporations and solo entrepreneurs alike. Her life did a full 180, and she left her draining job in the big city 4 years ago to run CDM full time from her 40-acre farm. Donata believes in combining solid strategy with a think-big mindset to create the life of your dreams.
Donata regularly works with billion-dollar corporations so we talk a lot about pitching and specifically pitching corporate clients (and why it’s easier than you think).
Topics Discussed:
Ep_6 - How to run a successful agency and serve corporate clients with Donata White
Jordan: All righty. On today's episode, we are talking about running a successful agency. We talk a lot about pitching and specifically pitching corporate clients. And we also dive into a lot of things around how to step into your CEO role and really build a business that's sustainable. So my interview is with Donata white.
She is the CEO of coffee, date media, a social media marketing and content production agency. She was once a burnt out attorney in New York city. What she's gonna tell you about? And she started her blog and YouTube channel in 2012, really just as a creative outlet. So we're gonna talk a little bit about her story.
We're gonna dive into how she works with billion dollar corporations, as well as solo entrepreneurs. And so I had a ton of fun with this, and I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation.
Welcome. Welcome everyone. And welcome. Donata I'm so excited that you're here. You I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course, this is gonna be fun. So as you know, this podcast is all about scaling. it's about behind the scenes, transparency, all the things. And so when I asked you about how you have scaled and what you wanna talk about, I actually laughed at your answer because the first thing you put was I stay pitching ,
Donata: let's talk about this.
It's like always be closing, but it's like, I stay pitching. Yes, constantly. Let's
Jordan: talk about it. Tell me what you mean by that.
Donata: So I think it might make a little bit more sense to kind of give you a little bit of my background. I used to be an attorney, so I was a practicing lawyer in New York city for five years, at a really huge law firm.
And as a result, I got very comfortable with C-suite executives, like in the cab. CFOs sort of deal. Right. so I've never had a problem reaching out to whoever, because I feel like I'm just used to that environment. So when I started my business, one of the things that I started doing was just digging around and sending pitches to all of these like larger businesses and finding the right person to get in contact with, because it just felt like a natural thing for me to do.
And that's something that we've continued to do and the results have been, Maybe not typical of what you would see for like an online business, what we're used to seeing on social media, but it's been awesome.
Jordan: Yeah. So let's give some even more context too, about what you do and who you serve, and maybe a timeline a little bit about, you know, you mentioned you were a lawyer, so what does that timeline look like?
And have you pivoted along the way at all?
Donata: Oh, absolutely great question. So, back in law school, I started law school in 2010. I feel like ancient on the internet, but I started law school in 2010. And after a couple years, I was kind of feeling a little bit of, you know, I was feeling creatively starved, let's say it that way because I was a journalism major in undergrad.
So I was used to just pumping out content all the time. And then when I got to law school, it was a very different environment and I was just feeling like I needed something to get my creative juices going. So I started a blog in a YouTube channel. It's just like beauty lifestyle stuff just to get something out there.
And then I started having the time of my life. I realized very early on that I would probably prefer to do that full time versus law, but I had already sunk two years. Mm-hmm plus several hundred thousand dollars into tuition at that point. So I was like, all right, let's continue doing the law thing, but I'll maintain the blog of the YouTube channel.
As long as I can eventually predictably. It got to the point where I couldn't do both anymore. So I had to make a decision whether or not I was gonna, you know, push to be a big city law partner at some point in my life, whether I was gonna go in house somewhere or whether we were gonna make the big shift and move back to our home state of North Carolina.
And I was gonna give the business a shot when we moved, spoiler alert, we moved . We moved back to North Carolina. you know, I kind of halfheartedly looked for law firm jobs, but I sat my husband down at one point and I was like, listen, I'm gonna regret it if I don't just go all in on this. So. By that point, people were sort of asking me, how do you create so much content?
How does your content look so good? How, do you have this schedule that you've maintained while being a full-time lawyer yet remaining consistent on social media and on video and with your blog? And so with that in mind, I opened up what is now visual content academy. It was a coaching program first and now it's a course and it kind of just went from there.
At this point, we have two brands under the LLC. the coffee date media, which is the company is the, the CDM brand is an agency. So we serve corporations and, you know, businesses that want done for you, social media options. So we do content production. You know, podcast editing, video photography, content writing.
We do social media management, and we're also putting together a couple cert certification programs for influencers and social media managers on that side. And then we have my brand, which is the denia white brand and after much encouragement for my clients, I have now switched or added on rather, business coaching because after four plus years full time at the agency, I feel.
That was a, a smart, fun move for me. And it was something that was gonna serve my clients. So there we are. coaching in courses on the Donata white side and agency done for you. Certifications
Jordan: on the CDM side. I love it. I love it. And I, so I have a very similar model and that we have the agency and then we have what we now call the advisory, which is the, you know, coaching consulting.
Mm-hmm high level strategy, that type of fun stuff where I, I like to live. but I talk to a lot of agency owners. Like this is kind of like a new thing, and I feel like a lot of people are moving actually toward an agency model because there's so many people who need the done for you stuff. And there, I feel like there was this big, almost like a bubble in the, in the coaching industry.
And now a lot of people are getting back into. Service based stuff and, and finding a way to like really make that side of things scalable. So I love the agency model. I don't know about you, but I think it's a ton of
Donata: fun. I really like it. I also love having the coaching. I kind of did it in reverse. We did the agency first and then we switched back to, you know, coaching and courses and education products.
but I also love that there is more of an emphasis on people that have run businesses outside of business coaching. If that makes sense. Yeah. Like I was feeling kind of a little pyramid schemey for a while where we had coaches coaching coaches on coaching. versus versus people who had built businesses outside of that, and then they're transferring those skills onto their clients, which I, I mean, I love that.
Donata: That's the environment that we're shifting to now. Yeah,
Jordan: totally. And it's so funny that you mention that because that's like an little inside joke that my husband and I have because I've been in this space for a while and, and he will often be like, oh yeah, my coaches, coaches, coaches, coaches, coaches, coaches, coach, and I'm like, stop.
Okay,
Donata: stop on one hand. It's good because everybody's got, you know, if you believe in the importance of coaching, I feel like I'm, I'm always gonna have a coach because it's nice to have that to talk to, but. You know, I also wanna know that that coach has done some other things. Yes. This time from
Jordan: coaching.
Yes. Yes, yes. A thousand percent. I, I actually, I have this whole like series of, Instagram posts that I've put out about how I'm not a coach, because I'm not like I just don't resonate with that. I mean, obviously a lot of what I'm doing is, you know, air quotes, coaching mm-hmm , but I just have never resonated with that label.
And it's also like, for some people, I, they get kind of offended, like coaches that have gone through certification programs. I feel like, get like, they're like, wait a minute, how come everybody's just using this word? And like, I've gone to all this trouble to become like certified. And so I have never felt good using the word coach.
but I also have. Without language in my contract. So , you know, whatever.
Donata: Yeah. I think it, there is two sides to it, right? Because on one hand it's like, that's the, the word has gotten so muddled and what it means. And especially on social people, looking up business coaches could find all kinds of styles and philosophies and methodologies within that label.
But then it's like, what is somebody gonna look for? If they need your service, they're gonna look for a business coach. So from a marketing perspective, you absolutely have to be using the word. So it's just such a, a strange position to be in because I'm like you, I'm not, I, I don't do the woo thing. Like of course I believe in doing mindset work and all of that, but I'm not like a woo woo.
Get your vibes. Right. Kind of coach. I'm like, oh, what's the strategy. How can we make it easy for you to implement, kind of coach? And I feel like the word is just, you know, people could be looking for one or the other and you've gotta make sure that your messaging is clear to really get. kind of on board with what you, how you approach the, the service, you know?
Yeah.
Jordan: Yeah. And, and something that you said earlier about how, like you wanna work with someone who's actually done the thing. Right. Mm-hmm and it's kind of hard to tell social media is tricky, tricky little thing when it comes to that stuff in the internet in general. But, I think that's the other part that, that is really cool about people kind of straddling this line between done for you and then, you know, more the done with you or kind of the coaching stuff.
And, and why I think I've had a lot of success is because I did a similar thing as you. I started with the agency and was working in the business with, with several, you know, deep with several, female entrepreneurs. And it's like, okay, well, people need this strategy, but not everyone can afford 3, 4, 5 plus K a month for this type of work.
And, So going from like doing the thing in the weeds operations to then, okay. How can I help people do this on more of like a strategic front, more the coaching side? I think it's just it's I don't wanna say it's a more legitimate way, but for me it has, it has given me more confidence in what I am actually selling.
Right. Yes.
Donata: I was just about to say that having had, having built the agency to multiple six figures before shifting into business coaching, and even then there's like the massive imposter syndrome, right? Like, do I know enough about business to even be doing this, but that definitely gave me a lot more confidence to be like, you know, actually I do know what I'm doing.
yeah. Even in areas outside of, you know, social media marketing or content production agency work, like a lot of that, the principles transfer. I, but I will say that I don't work with product based entrepreneurs, because I don't know about product based businesses. I only work with coaches and service providers because that's where my that's my wheelhouse.
So, I think I'm just more comfortable staying in an area where I'm confident that I have the skills to actually help my clients. Instead of being like vibe the clients in get seven figures by like vibing. I don't, I don't even know the language that people are using anymore. Cause I see it. I'm just like totally shut it off.
Jordan: I I'm the same way. And I always, I always say it's, it's so hypocritical cuz I'm like, I'm not woo woo. But I find the Woow stuff super interesting. Like I've been getting into like human design and like numerology and I'm like, what? Like, I am a very like math person. I'm like analytical, I'm a total nerd.
but I find that it's a lot of fun and like helps me get out of that space to dabble in the woo woo stuff. I don't know about you, but I'm, I'm obviously not gonna be able to do that for my clients.
Donata: oh yeah. Well, I definitely think it's a fun way to kind of get to know yourself better. Not that any of these spring works have like the definitive answer of.
What you are and how you operate. But I think, you know, if you identify with your engram results or your Myers Briggs results or whatever, like it could help you kind of understand how you operate mm-hmm , which in turn helps make the strategy portion easier. Because if I know that I'm a very step by step person, which I am, you know, I'm gonna set myself up for success with systems like that in my business.
Versus if I know that I need that spontaneity in my business, I'm not gonna force myself into that box. Cause it's just gonna make me miserable. So, the Woohoo stuff is interesting and fun, but for me, it's ultimately just a way to like set up your structure so that it works for you instead of trying to force yourself into a box that
Jordan: doesn't really fit.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think. Oddly enough, it is, it actually provides a structure and framework mm-hmm when you, when people think woo, woo. You know, it feels very like flowy, like nothing really tangible, but for me it has been pretty tangible in that it, like you said, it allows me to like really put a name and a structure to certain ways that I like to operate.
Mm-hmm um, so I think that's kind of interesting, but anyway, this wasn't supposed to be about Woow stuff, even though we could definitely go. I
Donata: surprised we got there that quickly. Me too. We were like pitching corporate and now we're at Woow. That's so
Jordan: funny. So let's drive, let's take it all the way back to pitching and, I think it's really, I think it's really interesting.
And I wanna talk a little bit more about. Like the corporate, the large company side of things, because I don't see a ton of people talking about that. And it's something that is definitely a little foreign to me. I've always worked previous to owning my own businesses. I've always worked in like non-profits and things like that.
So like the corporate world is kind of a mystery to me. so I would love to know how you, how have you, I mean, you could, you, you, you were starting in that, in that like area of business, but how did you decide to kind of stay in that area of business when you started your own?
Donata: You know, it was honestly kind of tough because everything you hear about entrepreneurship, at least everything I was hearing at the time, you know, back, I, I consider myself an OG at this point, you know, I've been on social media for 10 years.
but everything you were kind of hearing when online entrepreneurship was kind of exploding as this new way of making a living, it was, you don't have to be corporate, corporate sucks. Corporate America's terrible. Leave your job. Nine to five is boo. Like it was the worst. but to me, what made sense, especially for a social media marketing agency was okay, who needs our services?
Donata: Where do we find a bunch of those people at once? Who's the decision maker for that group of people and like, who's got the deepest pockets, right? mm-hmm so one of the very first things we did was we became an approved vendor for a billion multi-billion dollar real estate brokerage, because who needs social media help real estate agents?
I mean, I love y'all. You need help with it. you know, who benefits from having them have this sort of support their brokerage or, and they do their business. Does who's the decision maker or somebody in their marketing department. And where do I find a bunch of 'em at a time, like at a massive company that serves real or, you know, has a bunch of real estate agents.
So to me, my thought process has always been okay, where do I find a bunch of people who need the thing that I have at one? Like, why am I gonna waste time building an audience, one person at a time when I can just go directly to the corporate source, which by the way, I think people get scared of corporate, but like, it's almost easier to pitch corporate because it's not that person's money.
Like they're not fighting you for every dollar because it's like, if it's gonna benefit the business and they're the decision maker, it's not like such an, they're not emotionally attached to that check or that transaction. It's like, is it gonna work? Is it what we need? do we have the budget for it? Okay.
Let's roll. So it's almost easier to pitch corporate because you're not dealing with somebody who's like, okay, if this doesn't work, like I'm gonna have to sell my house.
Jordan: you know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's such a good point. Cuz I agree. It does. It definitely feels more intimidating and it doesn't feel like there's as much information out there about how to navigate, like finding these right people.
And I know you talked about that when, when we were like, okay, what are we gonna talk about? It's finding that right person. And so how does, how does someone go about doing that? Because like when it's a small business, like you clearly know who you're marketing to and who you're trying to reach out to and the conversations and the language and all of that, but corporate feels totally different.
Donata: Corporate does feel totally different. And I will say that you have to have somewhat of a strong. presence on LinkedIn. Not that I have like a super consistent posting schedule or anything, but you know, my profile's updated. There is content up there. I make connections. I message people. and, and sometimes you don't get the right person right away.
But the way I reach out is like, Hey, if there's somebody else that is a better fit for this, do you mind passing the message along or giving me their contact information so I can talk to them directly? So it's not like you have to find the right person or your message disappears, right? If you find somebody you think is the decision maker or has some sort of connection to whatever it is, you're trying to make that relationship get, you know, get started.
They can always, they know their organization better than you do. They can always pass you along to the right person. It's not like they're gonna be like, Ew, you emailed me. No, thank you. Delete. They'll just send you over to whoever it is. That is the person to talk to. .
Jordan: Yeah. And so let's, I wanna differentiate between two things like, cuz I wanna know on the pitching side, cuz it sounds like this is cold pitching, right?
Like a lot of people are listening to this being like E how am I gonna do that? so I wanna know how you kind of started doing that when you first broke into this business. And then if that differs at all from what you do now, like, do you still do that?
Donata: So I will say that the very first time I did this was not totally cold.
I had a friend of mine. It does. I mean, listen, leverage your connections. People. If you have people who work at these companies have them make the introduction to the decision maker for you. so I had a friend who was a, a real estate agent at this brokerage who introduced me to the person on the marketing side.
That was the decision maker. So it wasn't totally cold, but I did have to ask her like, Hey, I've got this idea. Is this a good idea? Who do I talk to about it now? Cold pitching. I've just become desensitized to it. I don't know how like, I know it's intimidating at first, but I, I don't know that I have great advice on how to not make it scary because it just wasn't something that I ever considered not doing, because it was scary.
If that makes sense. Like I just mm-hmm I never let being afraid of sending the email, stop me from sending the email. One thing I did do, and I was hoping we would get to this is like if sending the email feels, felt like. Icky or scary to me, I would write it and then schedule it to go out later. like the following morning, I know so that I wasn't like being the one to hit the send button and I knew that person would receive it right away.
Like being able to forget that they actually would see the email kind of helped . So I would write it like 3:00 PM the day before, and then schedule it to go out in the morning so that I could kind of like, forget it ever happened. Oh, that's before I would get
Jordan: the reply little hack for everyone to separate yourself from
Donata: it, separate yourself from the send button kind of helps.
but also I think just my legal background kind of prevented me from thinking that was scary. and in a way I think because it's corporate too, it's like, you've gotta remember that the person on the receiving end is. Just like the corporate people you used to work with, maybe you're nine to five, right?
Donata: Like they're waiting for the weekend. They're not thinking about like how cringe you are for sending this email. They're thinking like, oh, did the dog Walker come today? Or, oh, I've gotta get back to so and so on this thing, or, oh gosh, it's only Thursday. I thought it was Friday. Like, they're, they're just like you, they're not scary people on the other side, they're, they're doing the same thing you used to do when you're nine to five, which is like, they've got a million things running through their head.
They're gonna see the samel they're gonna go. Oh, that's interesting. And they're either gonna set up a meeting with you or they're gonna pass you along to the right person. It's not like they're judging you or something for, for sending an email for sending a pitch. And I also think that I don't necessarily do the pitch in the email.
I introduce myself and say, we've got this great idea. I think it would be really beneficial for you because it does this, this and this. Do you have time for a meeting? So my goal with the initial correspondence is not to have them make a decision on whether or not they wanna work with us it's to get them on the call.
Jordan: Right. Yeah. And I mean, so I think people forget about that a little bit, because like, yes, cold pitching is different than like nurturing your audience. But if you wouldn't just send an email out being like, Hey, I'm selling this thing, do you wanna buy it like to your warm audience? Well, you definitely wouldn't do that with a cold audience, right?
No,
Donata: no, no, no. Yeah. A a lot of times the, what I start out with is, Hey, I'm Donata I'm the CEO of coffee, date media. We're a content production and social media marketing agency out in North Carolina. We have this great thing that we've been working on and we really wanted to offer it to you first, because reason why they're the ideal.
Company to work with us on this. We think it'll be really, really great because reason why it's a benefit to them. Do you have time on X date in the afternoon or in the morning to hop on a quick call? So that's, that's one thing that I think is really helpful too, is ending the initial email with the time and date to hop on a call.
Do you have time on Monday afternoon to hop on a quick call about this? because then it's not like, do I wanna have a call with this person or not? It's do I have time on Monday or not? Yeah. And then they can propose a different time. It's almost like leading them a little bit to actually get on the phone with you.
and if you're familiar with sales calls, I mean, at that point it's just a sales call, like you would do in your online service based business, like where you're nurturing an audience on social media. It's just like a regular sales call at that point, but you're selling something that's maybe a little bit more exciting for corporate audience.
Donata: Mm-hmm, , it's just reformat a little bit, so,
Jordan: yeah. And, and just to circle back to one thing, The worst thing that's gonna happen is this, person's just gonna delete your email. right. That's
Donata: right. And you're never gonna know because you scheduled it to send later. So you'll never, ,
Jordan: you're gonna forget that you even send it, forget it anyway.
So funny. So, so is this, is this a strategy that you still use and if so, like how do you approach that? Like, are you pitching, like how many people are you pitching? How are you finding these people?
Donata: So it is a strategy that we use. we are primarily leveraging again, leveraging connections we already have.
So if we've got a client that works in such and such industry and they know somebody at such and such company, I'll ask for the introduction, I think that that's the easiest way to kind of, get started using a strategy. Like this is just use the people, you know, already know. Figure out if they have connections with any companies that you would like your company to partner with and then use them for the introduction, it's usually a little bit easier to get in and start a conversation with people who already have a mutual, somebody that, you know, so primarily we're doing that.
Another thing that we do is we set up a job alert on LinkedIn for social media marketing. None of us are looking for a job, but we can tell who's hiring . Mm. And so what we'll do is we'll take a look at the job listings. We'll see if we're interested in working with the company, and then we'll find the contact information for the person from the listing.
And we'll send them a quick email. Hey, I saw your, sorry, your job post here. LinkedIn, is this something that you would consider hiring an outside vendor for? We think we can fulfill these needs. We read that, you know, we, it looks like you're looking for this, this and this. Those are things we offer.
Would you considering hire, would you consider hiring an outside vendor for this? And that's been really successful as well, because it's like, they're already looking for the thing that you offer. They just need to decide whether an outside vendor is something they really can consider. So, that kind of takes the edge off the scariness as well, because you know, they're already looking for you.
you can just kind of throw your, throw your name in the, in the hat. so those are kind of like the easier ways. Occasionally I'll just get a spark of bravery and just say, I wanna work with such and such and I'll send an email off. and like I said, at this point, I'm desensitized if you do enough of these, you like, don't think it's a big deal anymore.
but yes, it is something we still do. And those are kind of the primary ways that we kind of get an in before we send the initial email. But cold pitching is a thing too. Yeah. Like
Jordan: people get it all the time. Yeah. I, I think that, that alert when people post jobs is so genius and I would never have thought of that.
And so like for service providers, it, it makes so much sense because, A lot of times, you're probably like educated on the, educating them on the fact that they can even do this as an option. Like they don't have to hire someone in house. Exactly. And I have found that like similar in what we offer, people who need us are actually often looking for an O BM because they think they need an O BM.
But what they really need is something more comprehensive and more robust. Like they need strategy, they need copywriting, they need marketing help. They need tech, they need all of these things and you just can't get that from one person. Unless you find some kind of unicorn person, it it's. Rare to be able to find that in an employee, right.
Or especially in a contractor. And so it's a lot of like reeducating people on, oh, you think you need an BM? Oh, you think you need a coach? Well, here's what you actually need. and so I did something similar when I was first getting started and got one of my, one of my very first clients this way, as I saw in a Facebook group, someone was posting saying, Hey, I'm looking for an OBM.
Here are all the things that I need help with. And I was like, actually how have you thought about this? Did you know that this is a thing? So, I think that's really smart in identifying what are some of those, like, like taking this advice and like broadening it out to a lot of different industries and niches is what are you offering and what are some of like the adjacent things that people are looking for that actually you would be a better fit for
Donata: them.
Exactly. And I think in a lot of industries, especially new things, like. What you're saying, people think they need an OBM. They actually need a, especially with social media marketing guys, if you are in social media marketing, people think they need one thing and they absolutely need 10 other things. Yeah.
Or they think that one person can do 200 things. So if you do run a social media marketing agency, you'll see these job postings and they're wild. They're like, we need you to run 10 different platforms and analytics and be a videographer and edit this and edit that. And you're like, you need a team of people.
You don't need one person. Also. You're not gonna get them for like $30,000 a year or whatever it's you're offering. But at an, at an agency, you know, we can be a little bit more budget friendly and have access to the specialized experts that you need. So it's almost. That education is such a key part of getting those contracts because they think they need one person who can do it all for no money.
Mm-hmm whereas what they need is like, you know, maybe a little pay, a little bit of a premium for these absolute experts that can do all the things, but you work with one team.
Jordan: Exactly. Exactly. I love that we have the same business model. Cause everything that you're saying like yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep.
That's what we do. I mean, we don't do social media, so we should probably talk after this. I know we should talk. That's the thing that I totally stay away from. And I experimented with it actually really early on when we started the business and it just, it was too much, like you said, like I already have a team for everything that we need to do around operations and marketing and social media is its own beast.
And so trying to add that on top, it's like, we just don't, we, we didn't have the bandwidth to do it and do it really well. it totally stressed me out. So I was like, Nope, we're not doing that anymore.
Donata: I love this idea of having, and this is something that I also find that people don't think about when it comes to service based businesses that operate remotely or like digital online businesses is like having a partner agency that does the things that you don't do.
Cuz we, we have somebody that we work with. We've been working with them for years. That does. Web development, web design, SEO at paid advertising, all kinds of stuff that we do not do. And vice versa. And when a client comes to either one of us and needs what the other one does. It's like working with one company, we've worked it out to where on the client side, it's like working with one team, but on our side, it's like we can stay in our lane and also have the benefit of offering a OneStop shop to our clients by working with another company that offers what we don't.
Jordan: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. You're getting my wheels turning. I need to like set this up because. This, this comes up over and over and over again, because as full service as we are, like I said, we don't do social media. We don't do ads. That's one thing that I'm like, we're not touching that. and then like, we don't do some things like logo design.
And so I always recommend people to go to the person who's done my logo and my branding and all of that. And so it makes sense to have kind of this little ecosystem of service providers that is like, here's everything you could possibly need. And like, these people have been vetted both like internally, of course, we've vetted everyone on our team, but now we've vetted these other agencies and service providers that you can work with, like such a no brainer.
Thanks. We're gonna do this.
Donata: yeah, we should, we should actually do this together, but, taking that even one step further, like we combine billing and we combine like communication and processes. Like we have, E cross we've cross pollinated, our email addresses at this point. So like I have. We have an email address that we use at their URL.
They have one that we use at our URL. Wow. So it's like, it's, it's really like offering one company, but we're technically two separate entities. So it's, it's a really nice, like OneStop option for the client that they love. And it's like, Hey, can you do SEO? Yep. We can, Hey, we need to do a website. Can you do that?
Yep. We can. And it's like, they never have to go anywhere else. And it builds this such, such a deep trust in relationship. And that actually feeds into keeping your clients so long term, because why would they go anywhere else and just have to start all over finding vendors for all of these things when they can just stick with you and have everything taken care of.
And they know they can trust you. They've worked with the same team for years. It's almost like having a, them being able to build their own marketing department, but external to the company, like not having to hire people and worry about benefits and HR and all of that. But they've got this whole external marketing department that's like operating that they've gotten used to.
Yeah. It's like, it's beautiful. It
Jordan: is. Okay. All. I we're gonna way go down this rabbit hole as soon as we get off this call. Cause I wanna talk more about this. but I just wanna, I wanna say one more thing about that and, and that is like the beauty of really understanding your audience and what they need.
Because when I think about the type of clients that we have, that's what they're looking for. Like, they're not they're coming to us because they don't want to have to find other people. And I've done that where I've, I've gone and like done the research for them on here are some options for people who could do your Facebook ads.
Here are the pros and cons. Here's like the prices because they don't wanna do any of that. And so, you know, you, you, you wanna tailor your services to what your clients actually need. And like, for me, my clients are too busy to do all of that stuff. Like they don't want to bring people on and manage them and do the onboarding.
So we do a lot of that for our clients. If they do need something outside of what we offer, like we even help them do the onboarding of those people. because they don't have the time. That's what we're for. You know exactly.
Donata: I love that. Yeah. And I love that we're having this conversation too, because I feel like I don't hear enough people talking about businesses like this or models like this or systems like this, you know, and maybe it's just the environment that I'm in as a business coach on, you know, on my own little corner of Instagram where it's just like, this is what I offer and that's it.
If you don't like it, you're not an ideal client go somewhere else. Whereas it's like, okay, how do we build this? Like you said, ecosystem that can actually serve our clients no matter. Particular little nitty gritty needs they have.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. There's so much messaging out there around niche, down, niche, down niche down.
And like, for me, that's been the opposite of what's made us really successful. I mean, yes, of course we have niche down in, in other ways like behind the scenes of, you know, we like to ideally work with people who use Kajabi. Like we have all of these weird little preferences for the types of clients that we like to serve.
We like to serve female coaches, agency owners, service providers, but we haven't niche down to offering like one particular thing. We offer a lot of different things and that's what makes us unique, you know? Right. And so I think that gets, that gets lost in the, in the, messaging around, you have to pick a niche and you have to only do this and only do this and only this and get further specialized.
Donata: Right. And I, and I always thought of nicheing a little bit differently. I never thought of it as like, this is the demographic that I serve. And this is the thing that I offer. It's almost. Who is the person and what problem or problems are they having that we can solve for them? So it's almost like I started with the problem and then thought, okay, how can we make this?
How can we solve this problem? And how can we solve the problem that they don't even know they have yet? Mm-hmm, not just, I serve moms wanting to lose the lost 10 pounds of baby weight or whatever, you know, whatever they tell people to do. in like a coaching industry looking, you know, we looked at it like, okay, people need help with social media.
They think they need a social media manager. Okay. We've got that. But what they really need is good content production. Okay. We've got that too. And then we've added on all these pieces, because thinking ahead of where your client is, they're not the expert on the thing you are. Mm-hmm , you know, what they need better than they do, because they only think they need one little subsection of it.
And like you said, I think that's what has made us successful is that we do offer like a full service problem solving solution. Yeah. Instead of just like one thing that might solve one little piece of the puzzle.
Jordan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This is why I've been so obsessed with agencies lately. I just think they're so fun.
And so if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I've been thinking about doing an agency, do it. It's amazing. Highly recommend . Yep. And we're
Donata: I'm, you know, if you're, especially, if you're into social media marketing, we have something coming for you that, oh, I would love to help help everybody with I'm.
I'm obsessed with building businesses like this, because like I said, I think it's not that I don't wanna say this wrong or in a way that's offensive, but like it's so legitimate. It feels so big business energy to me to like, have an agency that's got all these people and all these professionals and like, oh yeah, we can do that.
Oh yeah. We can pitch billion. Dollar brokerage is no big deal. Like it just feels so. I don't know, like, it feels so badass to have a business. That just it is it yeah. To like, yeah, yeah. We can play with the big boys. Like I'm over here pitching whoever, just cuz I can because we offer a solution that would be beneficial to them.
So why, you know, it's, it's good for them that I'm contacting them. Yeah. So why would I be
Jordan: nervous? You know? Yeah. Going back to the beginning of this conversation around vibes, like talk about a vibe change. I mean, running a business as a solo entrepreneur, which I've I've done, is very different than when I started this business.
And I knew that I wanted to do an agency model and within like 30 days had a team of like a dozen contractors. Mm-hmm I mean, that is, that's a serious CEO vibe right there to be like, oh yeah, I have a team of 12. And that has enabled me to show up in ways that are. Very different mm-hmm than I would have if I was like, bootstrapping, well, I mean, I am bootstrapping, but, bootstrapping just myself, right?
I mean, it's right. It's just, it's different vibes. It
Donata: absolutely is. But I love it. It's like, you know, when you, when you tell people you have a team of 10, our team is 10, 10 official then plus our partner agency, which is however many people. But when you say like, oh yeah, my team's 10 people. It's like a whole different reaction.
Yeah. I like, I had a client be like, do you have a team? Like, yes, we have 10. And it was just like, oh, okay. Like you're legit. . Yeah, exactly. It just feels really good to be able to be like, yeah, no, we've got the muscle behind what it is we're offering. So yes, different vibes, but it also comes with a do set of like challenges, right.
Because like, oh yeah. I mean we've had to implement, I don't know what project management tool you use, but we use monday.com. We love it because like I've had to set up all these automations to like, make sure our projects are running on time, because there's no way I can hold all that in my brain. It's not like being a solar printer where it's like, I can write it down to my planner.
Mm-hmm it gets done. It's like, I've gotta make sure that everybody knows what their job is when the deadline is I've gotta automate when that deadline switches, you know, like if you finish the task for the month and you hit done it, like flips it to the next month and resets the date and resets the task.
So I don't ever have to think about redoing deadlines. I've set it all up at, you know, to be systematized, but like. having to do that and having to lead a team is totally different from being like client facing. It's almost like your, your team is your clients a little
Jordan: bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a very different approach to building a business.
And I hear cuz a lot of my clients are coaches mm-hmm . and you know, they're like, I just wanna do the coaching and get out of everything else. Like I don't wanna, it's almost like they don't really wanna run a business. Like they want someone else to run the business mm-hmm and they wanna do the coaching and that's very different than, than what I love about running a business.
And there's obviously nothing wrong with that. but for me, the running of the business, the hiring, the managing the team, the like doing all of this stuff is the fun part. Like that's I got, I just gave myself goosebumps. Okay. so I love that stuff and it it's just, it's different. It's totally different.
Yeah. And I can see at some point, you know, Five years, 10 years down the line, I'm running a business where I'm not client facing at all, because that's more of like a traditional CEO, right? Yeah. Or a COO, which is what I do for my clients. And so it's totally different. Mm-hmm like, I want a big business and I want a big team and all of that.
Mm-hmm and it does present very different, unique challenges and opportunities for growth. Yes. And I think it's been a ton of fun, and this is why I've been, you know, you mentioned you've got something specifically for social media agency owners. I've been working a lot more with just like any type of agency owner in helping them do a lot of that project management.
Like, let's get your SOP set up. Like, I, I already have this, like, I can tell you how to build a team very quickly. I can tell you how to do that when you don't have a ton of cash on hand, right. At the beginning of your business, mm-hmm , but you need expertise and you need like a lot of diverse expertise right off the bat.
And so it is really, it's really fun. Um, mm-hmm but you have to be a certain type of business owner and leader, and like really invest time in learning how to do that well, in order for it to work.
Donata: Absolutely. And I think there's. Another mindset shift too. I mean, aside from like the shift from service provider to CEO, which I'm embarrassed to say took me a long time because I didn't even realize there was a difference.
Yeah. I thought it was just like, I'm tack on people to help me like save time. No, like building a team and having the team operate is a totally different set of skills than like you're using as a soul trainer, just yeah. Off the bat. And it's amazing. It's so much fun, like Jordan said, but is it different?
It took me embarrassingly long time to make that shift. Once I was in it, I was like, okay, there's even a step beyond this, which is, I love running this business. I love like making the moves. I'm kind of a little bit in a, what I love about it is a little bit different from what you love about it. I love the, okay, how can we build a product that can serve 50,000 people, a million people?
I'm the big like vision person. So that's why we're setting up these cert programs and like these big products and working with companies to put those products in with their people and whatnot. But the other shift that I'm have now made and have made, have kind of centered my new mastermind around is this shift from your business is not the end all be all.
It's like the, the engine that serves your long term legacy. So it's almost like using your business to fund other investments to fund the lifestyle that you're looking for to, I don't know, just kind of set up the freedom and flow and space and monetary needs that you have versus like the business being the thing.
Does that make sense? I know that's that was a little woo, but like, no, the shift from the CEO being one part of what, this is the bus, the ownership of the business. Being like the business functioning as an asset, rather than just as an income generator, if that makes sense.
Jordan: Right. Or, or the thing that you spend your time on, have you read mm-hmm I'm sure you've read the four hour work week.
Have you read it recently?
Donata: I have not. I think I may have started it and not completed it. I listen, don't hold me responsible for anything I started doing while I was a lawyer, because I don't
Jordan: it's true. This book is quite old. if, if anyone doesn't know, I have like what I would call a healthy obsession with Tim Ferris.
My husband knows about this. It's totally fine. Okay. I actually moved to Austin and I was obsessed with the fact of like trying to run into him, which I didn't run into him. I met my husband and I got married and I had kids. And like, now you . But, but I, I have read the four hour work week many, many years ago, and I'm actually rereading it right now.
And it it's a totally different experience to, to reread it where I am in business. And he talks about your business, really being your muse. I, in the context of how he talks about building something, Specifically to generate income, not to be this thing that you like spend your time on. Like, you're not, if you're reading the four hour work week, you're wanting to build a business that is just going to, support your lifestyle and bring in a certain amount of income based on what you actually wanna be doing.
So it's more about like dollar per hour than it is building a business that you know, is going to be, your legacy or something that you love to work in every day. And so it kind of made me think about that a little bit, but it sounds like you may also be talking about the legacy side of things too.
Donata: Well, I almost think like the business is not the necessarily the legacy. It can be part of it. what maybe an example would help me kind of illustrate this better because this is kind of an amorphous idea, but it's like a lot of the way business is being taught on social media is okay. You can just.
Grow and scale a business with whatever expertise you have, you can just coach people and then you'll make money. And that's it. What happens when you wanna retire though? Like your business has to die now because you haven't set up any structure that doesn't involve you doesn't involve you being in the business every day, involves you being able to sell any sort of asset that you have created that the business owns.
It's like, if you are just coaching, that's amazing. I mean, people have million dollar multimillion dollar coaching businesses, but if you don't have anything in the business, that's an actual asset. If you ever wanna stop working or work less, your income takes a dip and it's gone. Like the business is gone if you wanna retire.
Whereas the way I like to teach business is I eventually wanna be able to spend zero hours and the business keeps running. Mm-hmm like, I would love to not have to do anything. not that I wouldn't because I love what I do, but. I was telling a group of my friends the other day, like I could work five hours a week and my life would remain the exact same right now.
I, now I spend the other, however many hours, I wanna work, trying to grow and scale, but I also think the word scaling is misused a lot. Mm-hmm and I, I know that you have a, a really tight handle on what it actually means, but like scaling doesn't mean, oh, I'm gonna grow my revenue stream by spending more time scaling means how can I increase my impact and increase the revenue without spending more time?
Jordan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I have two more books. I'm gonna mention. Yeah, I wanna sound like I'm like a voracious reader. I'm not, especially now that I have two kids under two, I don't read at all. Um but I, I like to listen to audio books. And so I find time to, you know, get a, a little bit in here and there.
But when I started this business, which actually my one year business anniversary is today at the anniversary. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You deserve a cupcake? maybe I'll go get one. So when I started my business, A book, another book that I reread was called built to sell. Have you heard of this business?
I have not. Okay. You gotta read this because, okay. It is everything that you just described and it's all about building your business with the intention to be able to sell it at one point. And that doesn't mean you have to sell it. Right. But it means that you build a very specific type of business that can operate without you, if it needs to.
The other, the other book is called clockwork, which I think I mentioned on every single podcast episode. So I'm sorry everybody that you're listening to me talk about this book again, but it is so, so critical. because , it does force you to think about how you're actually spending your time in the business.
And it has this concept of, I think it, they call it like operation vacation where they they're trying to get you throughout the book to a point where you can take like a four week vacation from your business. Mm-hmm and it's still function fully. I love that. Right? So these two books absolutely critical.
Also read the four hour work week just because I loved Tim Ferris. but those two, I think, were particularly important in me reading right before and right as I was starting my business. And then also within the first few months, because. I was planning to go on maternity leave. So like, I, I was forced to build this business in a way that was gonna be able to operate without me.
And thank goodness, because when I think back to my other businesses, I've run where I was, you know, staying up till 4:00 AM, like building my landing pages and like tweaking the copy and like doing all of these things like that is not sustainable for most people.
Donata: No, it's not. And I, and I don't have any children, but I have, you know, I had also had my own reasons for being able to, for needing to build a business like that.
I am, I get migraines. So on any given day, I could just be out. Like I could just not have the capacity of work that day. So I needed to build something that had processes and intellectual property and assets in place that meant that I wasn't the only one doing things. Yeah. And we're, you know, we're still working on getting it to the point where I don't need to do anything, but we've got a Delta where I only need to do fiveish hours a week, which is great.
but I think if you build a business, that's so reliant on your time input, you're eventually gonna get to a point where you're like, I, I can't grow this anymore. You either can't grow it anymore. Or you can't take a step back from it without your income taking a hit. Yeah. Neither of which are great positions to be in.
Jordan: Yeah. And it's, it's a really bizarre transition because again, I have owned businesses where I was overworked and burnt out and like working, I don't know, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hour weeks, like sometimes like just insane amount of work where your health does start to suffer. Mm-hmm and this business is very different and I have no idea how much I work per week.
And I, I think people, oftentimes. Talk about that as if it's like this perfect world where like I'm gonna work 20 hours a week, every single week. That's not how business works. Like sometimes I don't work pretty much, like at all other weeks, like right now I'm launching a podcast and I'm doing eight podcast interviews this week and I still have other things that I'm working on.
And so, yeah, I maybe I maybe will work 30, 40, 40 hours a week this week, but it doesn't feel like work to me. And I also know that the amount that I work is going to flux up and down. But what, what I think is interesting because I do like to live in like the big picture vision area of my business and like mapping out new products and new structures for how we're gonna serve our clients and all of that.
But it starts to feel. It start, I start to kind of feel guilty sometimes when I think about that shift from how much I was serving clients at the beginning to now not really serving clients as much. And I'm like, oh, does this make me like a bad person? Like, did you experience that transition at all? Oh,
Donata: absolutely.
Like, no. When I first started, obviously I was the service provider, so I was the one doing the sales calls. I was saying, you're gonna work with me. We're gonna work together. And then having somebody, just bringing the first person on brought that shift and that feeling, which is like, oh, I said I was gonna be doing the work mm-hmm and now somebody else is gonna be doing the work.
But I think what helped is realizing that. if I had to do everything, the quality would suffer dramatically. like I have subject matter experts in every little thing that our clients need and they can do it better than I can. A lot of times now there are things that I'm the person that needs to do. You know, we still have, I still need to look at a lot of the sales copy because like, I'm just the sales copy person, cuz I was a journalism, you know, I was a journalist back in the day.
So like I'm the long form copy person. we don't do a ton of that anymore. Thank goodness. But until we get somebody that I feel like is, you know, hitting home runs in that area, that's, that's what I'm doing. But that just means that that's my little subject that I'm the expert on and everybody else can do everything else.
If I tried to do it all, it wouldn't be as good mm-hmm . And knowing that your clients are getting served better because you are not the one doing it. You know, it's a little bit of a ego hit. Like I started this business. I should be the best at everything but you'll have to be the best at everything.
It's like almost a little bit of a relief. Like I don't have to be the one that's the best at everything. Yeah. and my clients actually get better service because I'm not trying to do everything. And it may take a while to kind of like settle into that. But once it lands, I think that that was really the big help for me, which is like, I'm not a bad person because my clients are actually getting better service.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I just, like, I was talking about this on another podcast interview I did recently. And it was like, again, like I feel guilty that I'm spending probably, I would say like 90% of my time nowadays, like really working on my business, which is what I should be doing. Right. Like that should be my role.
Right. But it does, like, it comes with this kind of weird guilt, I think. Fortunately, I've come around to it because. The more that I do it. And the more that I'm seeing my success, I'm like, oh, actually this is an asset for my clients. This is an asset that I am bringing to them because I have this experience on how I'm doing all of this, that I can help them do the same thing.
Right. So like that's obviously a unique thing, because of the industry that we're in and that we help other businesses grow their business, but. It does definitely feel weird. And I think, especially because it doesn't feel like work to me, like that type of stuff, I don't know about you, but like the, the big picture visioning thing, like getting to be the idea person doesn't feel like work.
Donata: No, it doesn't. And I think that maybe just a product of, you know, we're getting the philosophy here, but like that may be just a product of our culture. Like our work hard money is hard to make. Yeah. And you need to work really hard for your money. It's a big shift to realize, like, I can actually do something that doesn't feel like work and grow my income and have a team that's well paid and have clients that are happy.
Like having it all is a very weird feeling. Right. And so I think that may just be product of how we're taught to operate within our economy. but I think once you shift to, especially an agency model, like what we have, it's like, you've gotta get used to being able to have it all mm-hmm
Jordan: yeah. Let's blame hustle culture.
Like we can just blame everything on hustle, culture. It's it's everything,
Donata: blame hustle culture. Although I'm not anti hustles. I feel like, like you said, when you're launching a big project, like there's a little bit of hustle involved when you're building something new, there's a little bit of hustle involved, but then you can ease back a little bit.
It's not gotta be hustle all the time. I think I've been very intentional about not burning myself out because I was there for so long, like at the law firm. And I did have a lot of guilt around it, but. Not being able to operate. This is so, so if, listen, if I can't say this on your podcast, cut it out. But like I called the 25 year old version of me, that was like a first year attorney, like crack Donata because she could somehow just work 80 to a hundred hours a week, every week, all the time and not die.
If I tried to do that, now you would find me on the floor in my house, just passed out for days at a time. Like not being able to operate like that anymore has kind of kept me from going there. And, you know, there was some guilt surrounded initially, but like, I'm not good to anybody if I'm passed out on the floor of my house.
So
Jordan: no, so no. Yeah, I, I was the same way and I don't know how I did it. And honestly, like, it wasn't even good for me then. Right. It, it, it was bad for me then. And it would, not even be possible for me now. , you know, it's like not even a, an option, but, like you said, I mean, everyone's, everyone's got their own reasons, whether it's their health or their family, or just their hobbies or whatever your reason is for not wanting to like hustle all the time.
Like, we've all got different reasons. it's just easier to ignore those reasons when you're like a single 20 something year old,
Donata: you know, right, right. I also think another thing that helped me kind of get over that was realizing that what I brought to the table was not necessarily my hours, but rather the idea is what I was bringing to the table.
Mm-hmm because, you know, like you said, the visioning doesn't feel like work, but as amazingly talented as my team is, none of them is the person that is pushing us in the long term direction. That's my job. Yeah. My job is the person that's like to be the person that's like. Let's take what we're already doing, reformat it a little bit.
And then we could pitch it to this company over here and it could serve however, a hundred thousand people or whatever. Like that's not their job to do that. That's my job to do that. What I bring to the table is the system is the vision is the structure is the ability to bring the client and the service provider together.
It's not necessarily that I need to be at my desk all the time working in order to be the team player that I need to be yeah. To lead, to lead the company, you know?
Jordan: Yes, yes. A thousand percent. And this is why I saw you writing. You're gonna read clockwork, because it talks about this concept of the queen B role.
So you will learn all about it when you read the book. It's so good, but you are the queen B obviously. Um, well this was super fun. We, we went in a totally different direction than I thought we were going to. I mean, we're gonna have to this, this, episode's gonna have to be called something about agencies, I think, because we spent so much time there and we're obviously both loving this agency model.
I know. but we'll put all the information in the show notes about how people can find you. Is there anything else you wanna mention around, around pitching around, just scaling in general that you think our listeners need to know?
Donata: I think my big thing that I've been kind of leaning into lately is like, let's stop being anti corporate.
Let's learn how to keep the culture of our own businesses feeling late and fun. And you don't have to have a business that feels corporate to get corporate dollars in your business. a, a factoid and I don't wanna take too long here, but a factoid that I read was that the small business administration in the, you know, sort of marketing consulting space considers a small business to be anything under 16 million a year.
So we're over here talking about hundred thousand multi six figure businesses in the grand scheme of business. That's absolutely microscopic there's a lot of playground within the small business realm for us as CEOs to, to play with. And I think that being anti corporate America is kind of keeping us on the very, very low end of the scale.
And I think especially as women, we need to kind of step into the ability to create a culture in our business. That feels fun. That doesn't feel like our stuffy corporate job, but also be able to kind of like play with the big boys a little bit, because there's a lot of room there even within small business to just like grow and grow and grow and feel like, get this big badass feeling than we were talking about this whole episode, you know?
Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I'm gonna keep us going here and keep us on, but, I think there's. Kind of this like forced expectation that if you are a solo entrepreneur and you're just starting out, or if you, you know, have a fairly new, small business. And I now in quotes, knowing that that could go all the way up to 16 million, let's say that you've got like a six figure business.
Most of those types of businesses that I am am seen in this space are really all trying to serve like this similar client base, which is other businesses that are trying to scale to six figures or like mom entrepreneurs, or like solo entrepreneurs, like what a teeny tiny like pool of people. And no one thinks about serving this, this larger audience of corporate or a small business making 5 million or a small business making 10 million.
What a great thing to kind of like, just open our eyes up to the possibility of that. I love it. Absolutely.
Donata: And you know, if this episode has done nothing, but. Say like, Hey, there's more out there. There's, it's bigger than you think than I think I've done my job yeah. For the day.
Jordan: Perfect way to end. Love it.
Well, thank you so much. This was so much fun. I appreciate you being here.
Donata: I had a great, great time. Thank you for having me and I hope to be back soon.