Career Coaching Secrets

Building Generational Wealth Through Entrepreneurship: Denise DeTommaso's Approach

• Davis Nguyen

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Denise DeTommaso, a Career Ownership Coach, shares her journey from biopharmaceuticals to helping clients find purpose-driven entrepreneurship. She works with diverse individuals, from young professionals to those seeking generational wealth or transitioning careers, to explore various business models. Denise emphasizes the importance of readiness, financial stability, and a willingness to learn for aspiring entrepreneurs. She discusses her investments in LinkedIn strategies, virtual assistants, and AI software to scale her business, aiming for a referral-based client acquisition model. Her advice to other coaches: refine your message, invest in resources, embrace automation, and connect with peers.

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Denise Detommaso:

People that are later in life, maybe they, you know, they're early to mid-50s and they realize that there's something else out there that they've just never done. But I have family people that I work with who want to create familial, you know, family generational wealth, and they're looking for investments that they can utilize to grow their family. We look for things like that, too.

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. Before Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or just building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Series podcast. I'm your host, Regine, and today's guest is Denise de Tomaso. Denise is a career ownership coach, a speaker, an author, and a CEO with a powerful mission to help professionals take control of their futures by owning their careers through purpose-driven entrepreneurship. With an MA and MBA, Denise brings a unique blend of academic rigor and real-world to the world of career coaching through her work at the Entrepreneurs Source, one of the largest career ownership coaching organizations in North America. She's helped countless professionals explore self-sufficiency, build multiple income streams, and discover alternatives to the traditional job market. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Denise.

Denise Detommaso:

Thank you. Thank you, Reggie, for inviting me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today and to share and to learn from you as well.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you for coming and taking your time. So, Denise, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a coach and start your coaching business.

Denise Detommaso:

Yes. Well, you know, what really inspired me was that when I was rethinking my own career, having been in the biopharmaceutical industry for many years, I working with drug manufacturing, drug development, et cetera, and leading teams and doing all kinds of work in that area, I realized that what I loved most was helping other people succeed. And so I also had a lot of experience in business and had seen lots and lots of business models, both fail and grow. And so I felt like I had the knowledge and the understanding of what could work for somebody and that I have that opportunity to share. As I was going on my own journey, I actually was working with a coach who is my coach. And he led me to understand a lot about number of business models that I could consider as I looked at wanting to do something on my own for versus working for another corporation. And I fell in love with many, many ideas and business models. I wanted to be in senior care. I wanted to work with seniors. I felt I could be helpful there. I thought about working in the travel industry. I could be helpful there because I do a lot of traveling and love it. I also had considered looking at doing some work on the B2B side, cost savings and working with companies to streamline their expenses. I felt like I could be helpful there. But coming back to one thing for me, and that was being international. And so my children live in Europe and I live in the US. My grandchildren are in Europe. I had lived in Europe. And so that's my second home. And I didn't want to be in a place where I had to, I wanted to help people, but I wanted to be able to help people and have my office be my backpack. And so I asked my coach to help me understand how he became a coach. And he said, well, I can't tell you, but I can introduce you to somebody that can, because it would be a conflict of interest. So he introduced me to someone at the Entrepreneur Source who I then worked with to understand the business model. review the financials and actually validate with different owners around the country and actually around the world who work with them. And I felt that it was just the right thing for me because I decided that it was time. And that's how I ended up here.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And when you say your children and grandchildren are in Europe, where in Europe are they?

Denise Detommaso:

I have a son in Munich, Germany, and I have a daughter in a town called Ravensburg, Germany. I am hopefully close to getting my second passport in Italy. The laws keep changing, but it's been well under away for some time so um and so that would put me in a position to to be you know dual national um spend more time in another country which i really love speaking that wonderful language and great not too far from germany

Rexhen Doda:

yeah not too far from germany and um so right now it's been a year and a half uh that you've started your coaching business how does that experience look like with with your own business how the journey looked like for for the last one year and a half

Denise Detommaso:

oh i love it i love what i do every day i have learned a tremendous We are very fortunate in our business. I get to do every day. And I've also met tremendous amount of businesses and business models. We work with 30 different industries around the world. Anything from training to senior care to home services to B2B business options where people are doing signage or helping with cost management or, gosh, there's a limit. The range of businesses that we look at are unbelievably fascinating and digging into the business model, learning how they've grown their businesses and why they work so well has been absolutely rewarding for me also. I can take that knowledge then and share it with someone else who's looking to make a change in their life and does not know how to find these things, how to about them, how to compare and contrast and make a decision that makes sense for them.

Rexhen Doda:

And so you're working through the entrepreneur source with your own business under it. Are all of your clients currently coming through the entrepreneur source or Are there also clients that come to you directly?

Denise Detommaso:

I have clients that come in in many different ways. Conferences and trade shows, webinars, podcasts, and also virtual seminars. I do a lot with LinkedIn. We do a lot with social media. The company is very supportive that way and they are really helpful with us. We use a lot of LinkedIn recruiter. I also have some fantastic AI software that I recently invested in that has really helped me reach out to people and let them know that we're here and we can do for them. That's been a real eye-opener. And I've done some marketing through a marketing group out of the UK that I'm currently working with. It's also helping me to find, target, and get to the right folks. Fortunately, we can work with people anywhere in North America, in Canada, or even in some cases internationally. So it gives us that opportunity to give a large reach and a large potential client base.

Rexhen Doda:

Is there a specific demographic or industry that you're generally working with?

Denise Detommaso:

No, not really. I tend to work with people that have the concept of entrepreneurship. They like the idea. They may not have yet ventured foot into any type of an entrepreneurial environment. Many are doing entrepreneurial things at work every day. But I have their young just coming out of college too who have decided that from day one, they want to find the business to run and manage that they can use to grow their careers as a career versus a traditional corporate role or something like that too. So it really depends on the client But we work with a lot of people who are going through changes. Maybe they've been outsourced or, you know, they've lost their job because of changes, corporate restructure. Some people that are later in life, maybe they, you know, they're early to mid-50s and they realize that there's something else out there that they've just never done. It's common. But I have family people that I work with who want to create familial, you know, family generational wealth. And they're looking for investments that they can utilize to grow their family. We look for things like that, too, for people. Lots of ways someone can go. Secondary sources of income. Semi-absentee types of situations where someone keeps their corporate job while they run a business. And then as that's growing and gaining, they may decide to transition full-time over, out, and out of that role. So it can be any range of things. Lots of military too. Ex-military. People come out years in the military who realize that they're having a hard time fitting into traditional corporate life. They've been out specific roles for a very, very long time. Not finding great work or you know, not finding good work and look at entrepreneurship because they like a system

Rexhen Doda:

yeah and and what do you do like how is the future of your coaching business do you have any goals that you're currently working with um for the next three years

Denise Detommaso:

i do i do you know the biggest struggle i think a lot of coaches have is getting the right people to be talking to right there's millions of people out there and in order for someone to become an entrepreneur there are certain criteria you know number one has you have to desire or you at least have to have the desire to learn what that means and what your options are. And you have to be fearful because learning should make you feel less fearful, right? So we want people to learn about different businesses. And in that learning process, get so much knowledge that the fear is reduced. You're always going to be afraid if you're trying to do something for the first time. So they have to be willing. Generally, they need to be in a stable mindset. In other words, they can't be feeling fear. My gosh, I can't pay my bills, right? I just lost my job. I don't have a penny saved. You know, those people I'm going to say, get a job. While you're getting that job, you can look at things you can do later on in life, right? Understand what your options are. This is not the right time. They generally need to have some equity, some financial stability of some kind or a source of income or a source of investment that they can make. Because anytime someone starts a business, it requires money. investment of some type. And you're either buying business in a box where a lot of these things are already done for you, like the entrepreneur source does for us, or you're creating them from scratch. Well, either way, you're going to spend money. So you got to have something that you can put into in order to get that. So getting those people who are willing to learn, who understand that the way they're going to manage their fear is through education and are open to that, are willing to take some time, to go through that process because learning about businesses takes time. You're looking at two or three hours a week of time that you're investing in addition to whatever else is going on in your life, potentially. Have some financial wherewithal and or are expecting to have it at some point, or maybe they have a family and friend who's going to help them and are excited and passionate about taking responsibility for something versus feeling like they need someone else to do it for them, right? It's finding those people that can be the biggest challenge.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And so in a year and a half, has there been any investment that you've done in your own coaching business that you feel that actually has helped you with your growth with either investments on yourself or investments in the actual business that you feel like actually has been very valuable? Is there any investment that you'd like to share?

Denise Detommaso:

Yes, there have been. First and foremost, I invested a lot of my time creating good search criteria for use in LinkedIn. We use LinkedIn Recruiter. And if you don't have the right message, and the right search criteria, you can spend a lot of waste time. So I spent time doing that, refining that, talking to a lot of other coaches to figure out what works, what doesn't work. I have a virtual assistant who I worked with. She had been working with some other coaches, so she was able to help me with that as well. And that in itself helped quite a bit initially. Secondly, I have now started investing in some additional marketing outside of what our business does for us. where I can expand my reach, going in different directions, using the web, obviously, that source, spreading my wings into places that I would not have thought of, like TikTok or Instagram or things like that, you know, my generation. God forbid I would have to create one of those things myself. I'm not an expert and I'm not prepared to be one, although if I led marketing teams, I usually hired a consultant, right? So I went ahead and did some of that too. I just recently started doing that. I have some referrals. sources that I've identified, because one of the things that we are is a referral network. We have 250 partners that we can refer to, but I've also found gaps in our referral network where I've found other referral partners that I can actually take candidates to, to help them find the right place for them, find a job, et cetera. That's been a great investment in my time. I'm constantly looking for those. And sometimes they just happen to come along, like someone like you. We met in LinkedIn. Then I just recently invested in some AI software which I think is going to be a game changer for a lot of people. And I've just started playing with it. It is astounding me. And I think it could be great help for a lot of coaches. I'm still working on figuring out the refinements and how to use that software. But I think that I'm going to be telling a lot of coaches about that. Cool.

Rexhen Doda:

In the very near future. Well, looking forward to it then. Yes, yes. What would you say is the biggest challenge that you have faced or are still facing further growing your coaching business?

Denise Detommaso:

You know, I love to build my business into a referral business. That's my goal, right? I'd like it to be that I'm not having to find clients. They find me through referrals, you know, through my marketing efforts and not me having to find them. That would be the game changer for me. That will turn everything upside down the other way. That would make my time spent, you know, much more valuable for myself, but also provide more value to people that are already there. You know, they're, hey, we're ready. We really want some help. Because I find when somebody's already there and they're ready to move, that I can find them so many options, help them understand which ones might not be good value for them, right? And pick and choose based on their goals, things that they can look at versus having them try to go in the dark and figure it out on their own. So that would be a game changer. That's my goal is to go from seeking seekers to having seekers seek me.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And it's starting to

Denise Detommaso:

turn a little bit. It's starting to turn, but it's not where I want it to be.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. What do you mean?

Denise Detommaso:

Well, you know, I originally went to a show, which was a real game changer for me. But I don't know if it was so much the show. And I started a webinar series. And I found that there are people that are interested. But now they're starting to tell their friends. You know, it's like, okay, you need to talk with Denise. You have to talk to Denise. You need to talk to Denise. And, you know, that's what it takes, right? It takes that people recommending other people. why they should talk with us, why they should talk with me, how I made a difference in their life by being their coach and what it meant to them. And then those stories being shared. Also, I want to start having those stories be shared as a part of my marketing efforts. Let those people tell their own stories. To, to, to, I can talk with and help find their next venture in life.

Rexhen Doda:

We also put a lot of emphasis in the testimonials of the client that were successful to speak about you because a lot of people are going to resonate in a way with their, like a video, they'll resonate with their stories and they have been through and the solution that they have gotten through the needs, for example. So yeah, there's a lot of power in those testimonials. So yeah, cool. Well,

Denise Detommaso:

everybody loves a great story and you know, I use mine all the time. I tell people my story all the time because everybody goes through that part in their life where they're just banging their head against the wall and you know how do you stop doing that do something really positive to help yourself right so and you know my goal is to have my clients telling their stories and having them you know in in their way they're comfortable of course in helping um so that people i talk to seeing the stories know what we can do know what the power of this type of exploration can bring to their life.

Rexhen Doda:

And this has been great so far. Is there any final advice you'd like to give to other coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Denise Detommaso:

Yes, I think there is. I would say that the beginning is going to be hard, no matter what, if you're early in your career, early in the coaching phase. And understanding and refining your message is hard work. And also, Finding the right resources to help with that, absolutely critical. We're fortunate in our business that we have tremendous resources, but sometimes it's almost too many. And I've had to narrow it down and I have to focus more on the messaging. And I, you know, I finally realized I can't do everything myself, right? I will have to spend some money in addition to what I've already spent when I purchased my business, but it's also accelerating growth. So it's, there's a point where you just have to let it go and just Go for it. And then, you know, talking to other coaches, sharing ideas. I think there's a wonderful way to do that. Looking at different sources and resources like this new AI tool that I just started using. I'm just excited about sharing that with other coaches. I think it can be very helpful. Finding ways to use automation, if we can, would be really important to make our time spent with clients the most valuable part of our day.

Rexhen Doda:

And to be as efficient as we can.

Denise Detommaso:

To be as efficient as we can, because you can waste a lot of time just talking to the wrong people.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And also with stuff or like email follow ups and things like that.

Denise Detommaso:

Exactly. Exactly. And there's virtual assistants out there. I mean, there's no reason not to use them who do fantastic work.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Denise. It's been lovely having you on the podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you or find you, they can always go to your LinkedIn. Denise Tomaso, you'll find her there. And is there any other way? Obviously, there's also a website, if I'm not mistaken.

Denise Detommaso:

I do. I have a website. I have... Well, there's a number of ways. On my LinkedIn profile, there's a make an appointment tab. You click on it, make an appointment. I think that's how we found each other. I do have a website and I can give that to you. And it's pretty simple, but it's ddetomaso. So it's d-d-e-t-o-2-m-a-s-o.esourcecoach.com. There, someone can also schedule an appointment with me directly. Those two are probably the easiest ways to reach me as well. My email can always someone can, as is a link to my calendar and to my website. So those things are there. And you'll find me on Instagram and Facebook. most time. And I also post webinar events in Eventbrite. Usually I do a weekly webinar on Wednesdays, either at noon central time or one o'clock central time, where we talk about finding the right opportunities and the kind of work that we can do to help somebody get there.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Denise.

Denise Detommaso:

Yes, thank you. It was really great talking to you.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.