We recently connected with Amandina ALTOMARE and have shared our conversation below.

Amandina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

In 2020, I was freelancing at $20 an hour. Now in 2024, I own two businesses in NYC, have a team of 10, and our goal for this year is $1 million in annual revenue.

It’s amazing how much can change in 4 years. But this success was a labor of love, the result of 60-80 weeks, and lots of sleepless nights spent questioning the best path forward. If I had to break it down, I’d pinpoint 3 key factors that helped me scale my businesses to where they are today.

1. Financial awareness
You can’t hire someone if you don’t know how much you can pay them. You can’t beat your revenue from the month before if you don’t know how much you brought in. Staying on top of your finances at every point in your journey is so vital! I used to be someone who would avoid looking at my expenses. But being on top of our bookkeeping every month is incredibly empowering and has really allowed us to scale more quickly because we know exactly how much we can spend to hire a new team member or invest in a new initiative. It may not be the sexiest answer, but it’s for sure the most impactful.

2. Focus on what you’re best at, delegate everything else
You can’t scale if you’re constantly doing every little task your business demands. BUT- it can be scary to let go! My best advice is identifying what you’re truly best at EARLY in your journey and delegate before you feel ready. I hired our first contractor about 3 months into my business. Crazy right? Wouldn’t I want to be collecting that paycheck for myself? How could I possibly have enough work to outsource something that early? Well I weighed the cost and benefits. I knew that yes, I COULD write our blogs and email newsletter. BUT- my time was probably better spent actually doing the client work that was needed at the time. So if I could delegate that part, I could free up my own time for more revenue driving activities that would bring in way more money than the hourly I was spending for someone else to do that. It’s the age old adage: work smarter, not harder.

3. Let your founding values be your north star
I got to a point probably two years into my business where I was like- wait- what am I doing this all for again? I was working SO many hours, I was burnt out, exhausted, stressed, and sort of … miserable. When I first started my business it was supposed to be about time, money, and location freedom! And by year 2 I felt like I had lost that. I think this is pretty common among entrepreneurs. So I went back to my initial ‘why;. What was really the vision for my life and this business and what could I do to get back there? I hired another team member with more experience at a higher rate than I ever had before which allowed me to take more off of my plate. Seems like a simple choice, but at the time I was so convinced that was out of budget. We set a goal to bring in X amount of more revenue to afford it and guess what- we hit it! Consistently coming back to the ‘why’ has really helped us to scale with intention and purpose instead of scaling for the sake of scaling or for the sake of hitting some nebulous number for the sake of bragging rights.

Scaling my businesses has been the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Amandina Altomare is a powerhouse female founder and thought leader paving the way for a new age in social media marketing. Her unique background in acting and PR make her an incomparable storyteller; she specializes in crafting the stories of brands through video and static content to reach their target audience online. Amandina’s talent for social media and digital marketing was cultivated during her time in fashion PR when she represented acclaimed designers like Christian Siriano and denim wear brand 7 For All Mankind.

Amandina launched Media A La Carte in May of 2020 and has grown it to a community of over 25k and launched a sister brand Studio A La Carte: a content creation studio in Manhattan. The company has helped over 150+ businesses and individuals grow their online presence since its inception. With a passion for KPIs and an insatiable New York work ethic, Amandina and her company are coveted partners for brands in the fashion, wellness, hospitality, and entertainment spaces.

Connect and follow me @iam_amandina, @media.alacarte and @studio.alacarte

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

I think diversifying our revenue has been one of the most successful parts of building our brand. I don’t believe there is anything that is truly “passive revenue” and feel like that is a lie that is sold online. BUT, I do think there are strategies that allow you to have multiple income streams that prevent you from relying too heavily on one product or service and can keep your business (and cash flow) running smoothly.

We did this by understanding our different target audiences and how we could create different tiered offers to serve them. We also wanted to create more MRR (monthly recurring revenue) that wasn’t tied to high ticket retainer clients so we created a subscription model, If I were to break this down a bit more- first, understand what your star product or service is. What is your capacity? How much will that bring in per month?

Then from there, unpack if there are any untapped markets or services you could offer that would be a lighter lift but still have high profit margins.

So for example, our star service is our social media management. But this is a service that is directly tied to how much man-power we have on our team. We can only take on so many clients. So we introduced an Audit & Strategy one-off. This serves a different audience, is more of a one-time offer instead of monthly retainer, and was a high profit margin with a low lift. Finally, we wanted to have a low ticket offer to service that audience that couldn’t afford our other two services and we decided to create a subscription we could scale. This means the same amount of work but you can continue to increase revenue by adding people into the subscription. Boom. 3 tiers of diversified revenue to serve different audiences with different price points and ensure we’re not relying to heavily on just one area of our business.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have had a very non-linear career trajectory. At 31, I have had SO many different jobs and I truly believe they have all led me to where I am today. If you feel like you’re discouraged because you haven’t found that one thing you’re truly good at or you watch your friends get promoted up the corporate ladder but you’re on your 3rd job pivot- it is OK!!! Listen to this.

I graduated in 2014 with a degree in musical theater thinking I was going to have a career as an actress. After spending 1 year of auditioning in New York, I was dying for a pivot where my hard work would pay off. I found an internship at a jewelry PR agency off of Craigslist (yes, Craigslist!!) and spent several years from there moving up in fashion PR. I produced Christian Siriano’s show in NY fashion week and liasoned with editors at Vogue and Cosmopolitan! BUT, I knew deep down PR wasn’t for me. I loved the writing and brand building that came with PR but I loathed the need to beg editors to feature my clients in their publications. I also was super unhappy with where I was working at the time. I felt my work was under valued, I didn’t like the work culture, and I knew I needed a change. So I took a leap of faith and left to go BACK to acting and start freelancing in social media.

During that time I also got my real estate license and started flipping houses with my dad. Yep! Literally add it to the list. When I finally started my business, I really wasn’t sure if it was going to be another job on my growing list of pivots. But guess what? It was IT. THE thing I knew quickly was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I started at 27. It’s never too late to start.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mediaalacarte.com
• Instagram: @media.alacarte
• Linkedin: Media A La Carte NYC
• Other: @iam_amandina @studio.alacarte

Image Credits
@oursandfriends Rasheed Alquan