Amandina Altomare on Scaling Your Agency Team

Audrey Saccone: Amandina Altomare is a powerhouse female founder and thought leader paving the way for the new age in social media marketing. Her unique background in acting and PR makes her an incomparable storyteller. 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 denimwear brand Seven For All Mankind. Amandina launched Media A La Carte in May of 2020 and has now launched a brick-and-mortar, Studio A La Carte, and grown the company to a team of nine. With a community of over 22,000, 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, which I can attest to, Amandina and her company are coveted partners for brands in fashion, wellness, hospitality, and entertainment spaces. Amandina, welcome to the show.

Amandina Altomare: Oh, my God, I am so excited to be here, totally honored, and so pumped for the launch of this podcast. Thank you.

Audrey Saccone: We've only known each other for I think we're, like, just coming up on our one-year anniversary, but it feels like years. I feel like you've just always been in my life. And our mutual friend Maritza introduced us because she was like you know, you should meet Amandina. You both live in New York, you both love theater. Like, maybe you'll be friends. And she was you know, I think one of the reasons we've been friends and I think we both express this, is because you and I talk about our tough stuff together constantly. And I think nothing bonds entrepreneurs better than going through the thick of it together.

Amandina Altomare: Yes, amen. It is so funny to think we've been friends for a year now. One of the things that I have appreciated the most, and we were just chatting about this at dinner the other night is that some people who feel really comfortable sharing or just I think that's something that's so amazing about you is you're like, I will tell you my shit, or you will just be open about your stuff. And there are some entrepreneurs who, like, gates are closed, will only tell you the good stuff. And we chatted too, about how we were both raised like that, sort of like, don't only share the good things, people will think you're weak and it's just like, not getting you anywhere. So I think this podcast is amazing for that very reason and I'm so pumped.

Audrey Saccone: Well, thank you for teeing up my intro of the podcast. Because here on the Tough Stuff, we talk about all the things we don't hear on regular podcasts. And today we're going to talk about something we've both worked on together, in tandem, but separately, in our own businesses, which is scaling a team and maintaining our deliverable standards at the same time. Which, as any service provider knows is probably one of the most difficult transitions — when you're going from solo service provider, especially like, in our case, you have a lot of experience to hiring, training, and delegating to a team that doesn't have the same background as you. So tell me about your hiring journey.

Amandina Altomare: Oh, my God. Well, it's really funny because I'm actually in-person with my team today and I was like, you guys got to go. Like, I sent them with my credit card. I was like, go to Starbucks, because I'm going to be talking about some tough stuff that maybe you shouldn't be around for. So anyway, all right, so it has been hard with a capital H, dare I say it has been a bitch… to hire and scale to our standards, I think. And I'm working through that and learning as we go. But it definitely has been, I think, the hardest thing.Ya know, I'll bring it back. It's just been a really crazy year for us in terms of like, when your business is doing well, what you want is leads coming in, more business, right? And then what you find is that you don't have the people to support that. And about a year ago, we had our second hire… our first full-time account executive give her notice. And that was the first time I had dealt with someone who was really integral and important to our team leaving. It was absolute chaos, upheaval. I was working like 16-18 hours, days trying to cover. We were like, desperately trying to hire. I learned so many lessons along the way, especially about not just assuming that someone has the skills. Like, ya know, I think I would vibe with someone in a job interview. We'd have a second interview. I'd be like, great, they're amazing. They would send in work samples and I would review and my COO would review, then they would start and there would be such a disparity between what we saw in the interview and their work samples and in what they were executing for us. And not just a disparity in like they need training. Like it was a wrong-fit type of disparity. So now we have a lot more systems in place to combat that. But just for anyone listening to this, it can definitely be a learning curve. And it is not just you just know that so many entrepreneurs and founders go through this really difficult part of scaling and trying to find the right talent.

Audrey Saccone: Yes. And I think for us, especially, we're working with some clients with very high expectations who maybe have large audiences or are very visible and they need things done to a certain level that maybe our teams don't understand because they haven't done it before, which is totally reasonable. And I know for you, you've lost a client over that, which we all have. I have as well. And what was that conversation like with your client when they brought that to you and were unhappy?

Amandina Altomare: Oh, my gosh. I think a good learning lesson as a founder and something that I'm proud of in handling a situation like that is I'm not going to dump it on the team member. Right. It is my business. I am responsible for that. That can also be a really hard pill to swallow, right? Because you're like, I did absolutely everything in my power to make this good. You can't touch everything. You can't watch everything. Mistakes are going to happen on your team. And it's funny, I was just watching Suits last night. I'm like, on this Suits kick. I know, it's so old. Everyone's like, oh, it's funny.

Audrey Saccone: It’s so good though.

Amandina Altomare: It's so good. Anyway, and there's a line about taking the fall for your team because that's your job. Like, when you've gotten to a certain level. And it really resonated with me because I'm going to have the conversation with that team member about and there's a line there, too, because it's like, do you tell the team member directly that this loss is directly because of them, or are you continuing to make efforts to walk forward? And my COO and I have very different opinions on that. She's like, let them fall, let them fail, they'll learn. And I'm like, no, because it reflects back on the business. So there's a lot to unpack there. But I think in that particular situation where we lost a client because of a mistake that a team member made, I was like, you own up to it, you take responsibility, you do everything you can to make the client happy or make it right so you can part amicably, and then you examine the repercussions. It's like, at the time, too, it would have hurt us more to let go of that team member, right? Then we're hiring again. It's like so we're continuing to sort of train and rebuild and try to give them the idea of what that consequence is. Because I think especially in the younger generation, not to go on about this and sound like a boomer, but with the younger generation, they don't quite understand that their mistake impacts especially at a smaller company, impacts their salary. I think that we're used to thinking of these large conglomerate corporations where it's like, oh, well, one mistake… With the pandemic and the boom of, I think, startup, smaller businesses, your impact on a company can directly reflect back onto your job, your salary, your sustainability there, which I think the younger generation doesn't have a grasp on yet. So just trying to strike a balance of communicating that, while not, like, absolutely scaring the hell out of them, I think is a really interesting line to walk.

Audrey Saccone: I mean, I think when you're in your early 20s, you have no idea. I remember when I worked my first job, and I worked at a nonprofit, and one of the interesting things about nonprofits is they have to publish their financial statements. So I knew, and they're always, like, a year or two behind, but we all had full visibility into how much money the company had, and I'm like, I'm sorry. This is a $6 million organization. We have 30 employees, and I make $42,000 a year. This math is not mathing to me, because I'm like, what else are you doing with that money? You should just be giving it to me. We can hire more people. Not fully understanding how expensive it is to run a business and all the other line items that go into it. Ya know, not understanding how what I was doing could be positively or negatively impacting the business because it wasn't my responsibility. So you have no idea.

Amandina Altomare: 100%. It's so funny when you're on the other side and you look back at those opportunities or your jobs in the beginning, and now you're like, oh, I've had so many moments this past year where I'm like, oh, that's why my old boss did that. You know what I mean? You learn. You're on the other side, and you can't learn that until you're at the helm. Like, you just can't. It's from experience. But it is a doozy when you do learn, and you wish you could tell the younger generation sometimes, like, you guys just get it together. You have to learn and fail yourself, and then you learn.

Audrey Saccone: Yeah. So you had this experience, you had this conversation with the client, you talked to the team. Time has passed. How has that affected how you delegate, what you delegate? Any lingering fears or anxieties that are coming up now, now that you've had this? I don't want to speak for you, but I know for me, my biggest fear is I never want to be fired. Nobody wants to be fired. And with clients, you have a lot of people you can get fired from at any given [moment]. It's so much worse than having a job. How do you marry all of that together?

Amandina Altomare: That is the sentence of the day. When you have clients there's a lot of ways you can get fired, as opposed to when you just have a job. That is so accurate. Yeah, I have PTSD from not no, I mean no, let's be honest. Once you get to a certain point when you've had lots of clients and you've had varying degrees of people coming and going and things working out great, things not working out. You get a thick skin and you're a little bit immune to it. But I will say it has shifted my perspective on hiring. And I think that I have been pretty understanding with our team in the past. I am an empath all the way. I am like, I get why you did that. I understand. I want you to succeed so badly. But there's also a line. When you are the business owner, you cannot let emotional decisions impact what is right for the business. I'm saying to myself, I'm telling myself over and over.

Audrey Saccone: Every day.

Amandina Altomare: You cannot let your emotions dictate what decisions make for the business. But it really has, I think, looping back around. I realized that we have kept this person who I knew maybe wasn't a good fit. And the consequence so really, although it was this team member's fault, was it my fault for keeping that person around? Like, you really have to ask yourself those tough questions, I think, because ultimately, it is everything that the team does, you are really responsible. That's a bold statement, but it really has made me examine making decisions with the longevity of the business, the health of the business in mind. And sometimes that means letting go of a team member or making some really tough decisions that affect other people deeply. And that is so hard, but ultimately necessary. And I know that we've talked about this and you've gone through some similar tough decisions, but it is like, what's the other consequence? hat the business is hurt because you don't do it.

Audrey Saccone: I worked for a company a while ago, and they had to make some pretty serious cuts to the business at the time. And when they did it, they said, listen, we've got two options. We can keep everybody, but we can keep everybody for two months, or we can keep the rest of you for at least six months and cover health insurance for everyone we're laying off for at least six months and give them a little bit of severance. So while nobody wants to be laid off, nobody wants to be let go. And the company's survived and is doing well now, but you have to make those hard decisions as a CEO, whether it's financial, whether it's because of what somebody's doing is impacting the overall health of the business. And it's business. It is what it is.

Amandina Altomare: It is what it is. I think it's interesting when you've been let go or laid off before. I was also laid off where the company was bought out and they did, like, a complete restructure. And it's interesting because I'm like, am I resisting doing that? It's good that I know, right? Because I think the alternative is I'm a cold, hard, heartless bitch, just making decisions with no empathy or thought about the people. We don't want that either. But at the same time, when you know what it feels like it's harder to execute because you're like, God, I have been there. I know what it feels like to have just that fear of what's next. If your North Star is like, the health of the business, the growth of your business, what the end goals are. And you know that deeply, it is not easier but clearer what decisions need to be made.

Audrey Saccone: I totally agree. Totally agree. So in a lot of ways, you kind of alluded to this. So social media is a young person's game, as sometimes we like to say. And for anyone listening who doesn't know the two of us, we both live in New York City. It's very expensive here. I think something you've had a lot of experience with is that people in their 20s right now have a very high bar in expectation of what working in New York City is like. I don't know if they just watched a lot of Gossip Girl and a lot of Friends and are like, this is what everybody lives like. Which, by the way, it is not. And we sound like crotchety old millennials, and we're like, oh, back in my day, well, I shared an apartment with three strangers, which is like the millennial Manhattanites version of like, I walked uphill barefoot with 3 miles to go to school. But it's a challenge to balance when I know both of us want to hire at a certain level, we want to pay at a certain level, but we're also both operating bootstrap startups with only so much cash that's available to spend. So how have you been navigating that? What other things are you doing to attract talent?

Amandina Altomare: So one thing that is my biggest… I'll start with my biggest pet peeve in the negotiating process when we're hiring is when someone quotes the cost of living for a reason why they should have an increase in pay. And I'll tell you, like, yes, I get it, New York is expensive. No one is questioning that. But I think as a business owner, you would be much better off negotiating in a way that is like, here is how I'm going to bring a positive ROI to your business, and that's why I deserve more money. It's not my responsibility for how you live your life. I'm supposed to pay for your, I don't know, gallivanting on the weekends and, like, living in a nice one-bedroom. I don't know. It's not my responsibility. What is my responsibility is to pay you fairly for what you are going to bring to my company, to this company. And so I think that negotiating tactic, I've just experienced it a lot, and I don't know where it's coming from. And I'm not saying that we don't have a responsibility as a company to be paying people fairly for where we are. It's just that as a negotiation tactic, it feels really expectational and really entitled, whereas it's like you are choosing to live here. You have choices. I think the negotiation tactic itself really irks me and maybe someone listening is going to be like, that's crass and callous. I disagree. But listen, I would pay more if you were like, this is how much I'm going to impact your business positively. I would pay way more than if you're telling me that you deserve more because you live in New York City. And I also think coming from a place of like, you and I both quoted like 42K as a starting salary in New York City. Literally, we've both lived I lived in like a one-bedroom with three people in my know, two years in New York City. I think the idea that it's impossible to live under X amount just angers me. But anyway, moving on from that, how do we attract better talent now? I think we've really, really nailed our job descriptions now, whereas before it was like, relatively generic or relatively open, now there's no question what we are looking for in our job description. I think there's a lot of personality from our company and also some things like “eat, sleeps and breathes trending reels”...we're specific and if you're not vibing with what the job description says, it means that you're not right for the company. So I would say looking at really working on your job descriptions and we have upped our salary, you know what I mean? And I think as a founder of a small company, you view everything that you're paying out to as like it affects your bottom line, it affects what you're earning. And sometimes that can be really hard to stomach you're like, oh my God, I've been killing myself for the last three years, like, I deserve to be making for my salary to be increasing because I'm working so hard. And so it's hard to almost take a step back from that. If increasing hiring salary might affect your salary. But trying to think of the big picture, like, knowing that that investment is going to come back to you in the long run because you can't scale without good people, good talent. And that is going to take an investment. So sort of taking a step back and thinking about it from that perspective has been helpful to me. And then really nailing your process for hiring too. Like, I think now we do work assignments. We do a prescreen work assignments in a second interview as well as references, not assuming that what you're getting in the interview is what you're going to get when you hire. So being so thorough, I have learned is super important. Oh my gosh, I could go on and on, but I will share something that happened recently that was like, oof… even sharing this makes me a little bit nervous because I'm like, are people going to judge this and think that and be like, yeah, you are horrible. So our starting salary for our recent social media management hire started at 50K. Started, okay, started. It like, required a degree and maybe one year of experience, right? But it’s hybrid in New York City. We had multiple comments on our recent Instagram post that was like, this is poverty just really tearing us down. And for me as a founder, that really upset me because I was like, you do not know how hard I have worked to even be able to offer a salary starting at 50K. You know what I mean? Just, again, the expectation or assumption, it just made me so angry. But it was also like, I accepted, okay, we're getting to a level where people are going to criticize and critique what we do, and I'm going to have to get used to that. And people are always going to have opinions, people are always going to have feedback on things. And I think we ended up hiring someone for that position at a higher level than what the starting was, right? And I think we ended at a fair number. But it's really fascinating just the different opinions that people have, especially when it comes to money, right? It's so triggering for some people, and it's what we live on, so it's important. But if you're going through the hiring process, you will experience lots of things around salary, money. And people in the post and comments were like, I wonder how much the CEO is making comparative to what salaries you're offering. I'm like, you just want to scream… like you have no idea how expensive it is to run a business, all of these things. So I have gotten a very thick skin, I think, when it comes to that. But by thick skin, I mean I cried definitely at some of those comments. I was like, really? Now I have a thick skin.

Audrey Saccone: Yeah, I think there's a scrappiness too, that has to come with working at a startup as well. That kind of goes into the salary thing as well. Something you and I had also talked about was when we first moved to New York, we both have backgrounds in performing and moved here with a lot of our friends who were performers and were trying to survive on very little money. And so we were used to getting creative. And that's also the type of employee we want. And I'm not saying that as a reason to underpay somebody or lowball them. But going back to what you said about getting just as creative about what value they're offering and understanding that a starting salary is a starting salary as a starting point for negotiation, it doesn't necessarily mean it's where you have to end in terms of that base salary. And we have private businesses. We have other ways we can compensate our team members, whether that's through bonuses, other perks. Ya know, I know you're in person — taking them out to lunch every once in a while. There's other things that we do that make up for it. And yes, do we want to get that base salary up one day? Absolutely. But we have to do it at a rate that makes sense for the health of the business.

Amandina Altomare: 100%, I think, too, when you're first looking for a job and as an employer, too, when you're hiring and you're looking for someone who's the right fit, asking questions like, tell me about a time when you worked hard. I give it no context. I give it no… at your last job. I want to know what that means to you, because at a startup, you're probably going to work hard. It's not a place where you're just going to chill, smoke your cigarette, and have two things to do in your day and then watch Netflix. No, you're going to have to pull your weight when it's a small team. And if you're not into that, that is fine. That is cool. You do, you go work in-house and live your life. But I think really getting to the crux of someone's work ethic and what value they're going to bring is hard to do because people will say, oh, yeah, I'm cool with that. I'm cool with having a lot on my plate. But that's why I really like the work hard question because and I learned that from, I think from a podcast or reading something. I wish I could cite who I got it from because it's not original and I won't take credit, but it's fascinating people's answers, right? It tells a lot, I think, because some people will be like, oh, I really put a lot of my creative energy into this project, and then someone else will be like, I worked two full-time jobs. And you're like, that's it. You know what I mean? It's just crazy. The variety that you can get from asking a sort of an open-ended but well-rounded question. And I love that one.

Audrey Saccone: I love that. I'm going to steal that for my next interview. Okay, so one final story to end. You hired your husband and you fired him. Tell me the story. What was the experience, and why did you decide that working together wasn't the right fit?

Amandina Altomare: Oh, my God. I'm definitely not going to tell him about this podcast. But in the beginning, I was like, I saw a future where we were working together. We had the freedom to travel or work from anywhere or we were both just, like, equally invested in this thing. And my husband's an actor, and so at the time, it was like pandemic. He was back working in the restaurant, and so it was like, hey, take a leap. Come work for me. We weren't even at the point yet where we could really afford to hire him. But it was like, we'll figure it out. Let's just do it. Like, I'll find the clients and we'll have... And so it created a really toxic environment because we were not his dream. This was my dream, and I was really, like, forcing it on him. And he had something else that was his first acting, his career… that was his priority. And so he was video editing for us, and so it ended up being like his work was just a little bit under our standards, and it was late, and it just started to and it was bleeding into our whole life, you know what I mean? Then we'd sit at dinner and I'd be like, why wasn't that Reel done today? It was just getting to be really, really, really toxic. I think it's also interesting just exploring the balance between femininity/masculinity balance in traditional marriage and all of that stuff. And this really threw things into such a disparity working together where I really felt like our marriage suffered for a while. And so the final straw was he did something wrong one day. Like, he didn't turn in a video on time or something like that. There was a spelling error that went up on a book client [post]... I'm not sure. And it was, like, clearly his fault, right? And so we were, like, having a company meeting about it. We were having a company meeting that was like, here are our standards. They need to be met. And he didn't show up to the meeting. God bless his soul. Love you, Luke. I was like, that's can't and part of it, too, is like, your team needs to respect you. What is my team going to think if I'm just like, oh, it's my husband, so it's fine? No, absolutely not. So basically, it was like, you're done, you're done. And that was also really hard because then transitioning back out of that was super difficult on our relationship, too, because I carried resentment from, why couldn't you make this work? I gave you a place here and you screwed it up. I had a lot of resentment about it, and it took like a year, I think, for us to rebalance things to get back on track. And I think he had resentment, too, like on lots of things. Maybe I forced him into it, even though I thought I was doing the right thing or I was his boss for a while. That really wrecked things. And so some people, I think, can do it, but I think ultimately, it's like I had to make a decision, too. I did kind of put my business first, in a sense, but I also put my relationship first because it wasn't working, and it was, like, time to separate those things out. So I think there's lots to unpack about just, like, being a successful woman in a marriage. Like, we're in this weird place in 2023 where women… I saw meme the other day. It's like we were raised with these traditional values throughout our life, but also told that we can be successful and do anything. So it's like we're doing all the housework and paying all the bills. It's just like so imbalanced and, oh my God. So my husband and I have really been working through a lot of that. I've been in therapy to work through that, which I would highly recommend, but it's always going to be like relearning things that you were taught. And I say to anyone who is working with their spouse, like full support, it can be done, but also, if it's not working, know that it's okay to change course and it will probably be healthy for you in the long run.

Audrey Saccone: Yes, plenty of people don't work with their spouses and are just fine. Whatever way you need.

Amandina Altomare: Amen.

Audrey Saccone: Before we sign off, where can people find you?

Amandina Altomare: You can follow us on Instagram at @media.alacarte, and hit our website at www.mediaalacarte.com. And I think Instagram would be the best way to connect and learn from us.

Audrey Saccone: All right, well, thank you so much, Amandina, for your time and for sharing your invaluable insights here on the Tough Stuff. Listeners, don't forget to share your thoughts on this episode on our latest post at Tough Stuff pod and hit that subscribe button to always get the latest episodes in your favorite podcast app. I'll see you next time.