Turning Bold Ideas into Impact with Jessica Sato

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Jessica Sato a visionary business strategist, TEDx speaker, and advocate for purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Jessica helps founders and leaders turn their bold ideas into thriving, impact-focused businesses by aligning purpose with profit. With a rich background in international business, leadership development, and storytelling, she shares actionable insights on building an authentic brand, scaling with integrity, and leading with purpose. If you’re a coach, entrepreneur, or leader looking to amplify your influence and grow a business that truly matters, this conversation is a must-listen.

You can find her on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-sato/

https://jessicasato.com/ 

Transcript

Jessica Sato: 0:00

There are sort of two buckets that people work with me around. The first bucket is what I just refer to as big idea coaching, a program called the Big Idea Intensive. These are usually rooted in people who have some thought leadership, but they don't know how to package it in such a way that allows them to do something with intention. So we're really going back to basics and digging into what is it about their thought leadership? What is it about their unique perspective, their big idea that we need to tighten up and figure out how to articulate in a way that is coherent and cohesive.

Davis Nguyen: 0:36

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 Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda: 1:08

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Sewards Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Jess Sato, a business growth strategist and big idea coach who helps high-achieving female entrepreneurs rebuild their businesses with clarity, conviction, and strategy that truly aligns with who they've become. As the founder of Jessica Sato Consulting, Jess works with purpose-driven women who've outgrown their old brand business model and are ready to create something bolder, clearer, and deeply aligned. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Jess.

Jessica Sato: 1:46

Thank you, Regin. Glad to be here.

Rexhen Doda: 1:48

Thank you for coming, Jess. It's a pleasure for us. So I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into your coaching business. Now I know when it comes to Jessica Sato Consulting's been around for 13 years and a half. When it comes to the beginning of it, what inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business?

Jessica Sato: 2:09

You know, this is actually kind of funny because when I left corporate America, it sort of happened by accident. My leaving was not by accident, but what ultimately became my consulting and coaching practice happened a little bit by accident. So I left corporate life in 2010-ish. And I wasn't actually sure what I was going to do. I wasn't even really focused on being an entrepreneur. I wasn't focused on creating a practice or a business. In fact, at the time I had a random side hustle where I was doing cookies and cupcakes. Fast forward, the company that I had left, they reached back out and said, Hey, we need you to come back in as a consultant and coach. And so I needed to create an actual business in order to do that. I needed to be an illegal entity. And so I quickly scrambled to do that. And then for the next eight years, I would say I was running very much an expert-based business, but not really thinking like a business owner. It was like, oh, I'm more of a practitioner. And that kind of mirrored my experience in corporate life where I was doing coaching and consulting internally for a company. But it wasn't until 2017 where I really started to be more intentional and really started to make a different kind of shift. I was working in Ethiopia at the time, doing leadership development coaching. And through a whole series of events, I realized, oh wow, I am not actually running this business. And so fast forward another year or so, that's when I started to realize, oh, wait, if I'm going to really be able to help people and work with people who I believe need my skills and services and talent and expertise, I need to be much more intentional. And so I really shifted gears. I moved away from corporate work, started working with female entrepreneurs and really tapped back into my roots around mindset coaching and then ultimately moved kind of through combining several different phases of my life together into what I do now, which is business growth consulting, big idea coaching and consulting. You know, I guess at the core of all of that, I guess it's not a total surprise. Like I said, it started out unintentionally in terms of having a business doing that. But it always came back to how can I help people? How can I help a person who's struggling in whatever aspect of their career or their business where they might need additional insight, additional support, et cetera, that I can offer? And that's really kind of been the journey from sort of unintentional to fully intentional, from corporate to more small business and entrepreneur focus.

Rexhen Doda: 4:49

Interesting. And so if we were to define your ideal client profile, is it only women? So, like demographic-wise, is it only women? Is there is there a certain industry? Do they have some common goals? Imagine basically what we described also in the intro. We're talking about not just women, but actually they have their business and they're just like moving to a different stage. How would you describe in more detail what that ideal clan profile is? Because the reason why I'm asking you, well, we might have them listening as well. Usually in this podcast, we have two audiences. I didn't mention this earlier, but it's coaches and is also borrowed audience from all of the coaches that we had on the show before.

Jessica Sato: 5:27

Absolutely.

Rexhen Doda: 5:28

So yeah.

Jessica Sato: 5:29

So I would say the people I primarily work with are women. I would say 99% of the time I'm working exclusively with women. These are all women who have been in business, I would say, five to 10 years, running service-based businesses, knowledge-based businesses, and are at the phase where they know how to generate revenue. They are generating revenue, they're profitably running, but have hit that space where they're looking at their business and they're thinking, I built this thing by design and I don't love it anymore. And usually where that is rooted is really starting to dig into questions about legacy and impact. So, you know, for a lot of people, we start out with a big idea, a big mission. We kind of go all in in that. And then over time, it's not that we lose sight of it, but we kind of get behind the eight ball here where we're just focused on building the business, generating revenue, meeting our clients' needs. And there comes a point where, yep, you've done that. And now you're at a place where you have more flexibility to think about what comes next. And I'm not necessarily talking about scaling the business per se, although for some people that is part of this conversation. It's more about what am I building in the world? What is it meant to do? Is it meant to last? What is the impact that I'm actually trying to make? I do find that a lot of the women I work with have a strong social impact orientation. So I like to just kind of loosely say these are women who are really trying to create a kinder, more just, equitable world. And so the work that they do, the causes that they support are moving them in that direction. So that 1% male component of the business, these are people who are sort of the same, similar values, similar focus, but are really trying to create some shifts in their business. And so funny enough, I began my career in aerospace. So it's not like I have a problem working with men, but I just found that from personal vision, personal mission, my focus has really been largely around women. So for the occasional aligned male, it's possible. Yeah.

Rexhen Doda: 7:35

And so for all these women listening, what is a typical engagement they would have with you? Is there a certain program of a certain length that they go through? What's it like to work with Jess?

Jessica Sato: 7:46

Yeah, great question. So there's sort of two buckets that people work with me around. The first bucket is what I just refer to as big idea coaching, a program called the Big Idea Intensive. These are usually rooted in people who have some thought leadership, but they don't know how to package it in such a way that allows them to do something with intention. So we're really going back to basics and digging into what is it about their thought leadership, what is it about their unique perspective, their big idea that we need to tighten up and figure out how to articulate in a way that is coherent and cohesive. One of the reasons that came about is because I was doing a ton of TEDx speaker coaching. And as you may know, the heart of TEDx is big ideas. And what I found is that the vast majority of my clients, while they had aspirations for TEDx, TEDx wasn't always a great stage for them. And so we really still needed to go through that same process of really refining and fine-tuning what their core perspective was and how that showed up in their business from a business visibility perspective, from an amplification of message perspective and pushing them into thought leader spaces, identifying what stages, et cetera. So that's sort of one bucket, people who are really trying to tighten up their thought leadership and bring it to a place where they can actually do something with it. And those people I'm typically typically working with them for about three to six months. On the other hand, there is the business growth strategy side. These two pieces are actually connected, but sometimes those people are coming to me from a place of, okay, I know what I'm trying to say, I know what my message is, but something in my strategy isn't working. And so that's when we're getting into the nitty-gritty of the business, really examining what are the sort of the pieces, the gears, the engine, and all of that is in place. Where do we need to fine-tune that and reframe what that strategy actually looks like from a marketing perspective, an offer perspective, and from a visibility perspective? And I would say people in that space are typically with me for you know six to 12 months. So it sort of depends on the entry point and what the need is, but definitely they're in two buckets big idea work and business growth strategy.

Rexhen Doda: 9:57

Okay, so the big idea work is all coaching, but the business strategy, is it, would you say consulting in this case?

Jessica Sato: 10:04

I would say it's kind of a combination. Like if I'm totally candid and I go back to the pure definition of what coaching is, I would say that's never been my style outright. It's always been a combination of coaching and consulting for me. And I think from a business strategy side, that makes sense. You know, I totally believe that answers are within us, but having that external person who can hear, can see patterns that maybe you can't see, that's really the benefit. So I think in both cases, that sort of coaching consulting model works really well because we're looking at what are the things beneath the surface, what are the patterns, what are the trends that we're noticing that you don't notice. And at the same time, what do we do about that? So there's sort of those two pieces that fit together really well for me.

Rexhen Doda: 10:52

Cool. And so the second one is six to 12 months. The first one, uh, the big idea coach is three to six months. Mostly 99%, like you said, is women. There's also that 1% as well, which is men. And right now, if we were to look into the future for the next one to three years with your coaching and strategy business, do you have any like specific business goals or goals that you're working towards?

Jessica Sato: 11:18

Yeah. So I would say those two things that we just talked about big idea work, business strategy, those are the core of my business. But one of the things that has been sort of growing inside me for the last couple of years and that I've just put in place the foundations for is a business growth retreat or really looking at legacy-oriented work to Egypt. And that really started, I mean, I grew up there, I studied abroad there. And so I've always had a heart for Egypt, but I didn't want it to just be some regular retreat where we're going and we're, you know, locked in a room. I really wanted to create an environment where we were anchored into the ancient pieces of the country and really using that as the backdrop for this question of what are we building in our businesses? Is it meant to last? And that's pretty profound when you think about the fact that Egypt's ancient spaces are, you know, three to five thousand years old. And sort of in line with the larger work that I do around female entrepreneurship, using your voice, we're also engaging with Egyptian female entrepreneurs. So there's sort of a global sisterhood component where we're bringing Western entrepreneurs together with Egyptian women entrepreneurs and really thinking about how do we lift each other up? How do we build something? And like I said, this idea has been sort of sitting on the back burner for the last couple of years. And I literally just about a week ago got back from Egypt for 18 days and doing the groundwork for this larger vision I have. So the retreat is a piece of that, but there's a much bigger vision around how do we create this global sisterhood? How do we create an environment where we are uplifting and amplifying the voices of women through media, through business, through a whole variety of things. And that will go into place, just the very beginnings of that will go into place in 2026. And then we're building towards something much bigger over the next three to five years.

Rexhen Doda: 13:14

Interesting. And I haven't been to Egypt before, but I'm pretty sure there's a community there as well, which is focused in this area, especially women. When you're thinking about this, in a way, as you mentioned, retreat, but not really just a retreat in a sense that it's being anchored to that ancient history of Egypt and them being positioned as what they're working towards off in terms of like their goals. Is this gonna be like something you're thinking like twice a year, three times a year, just like gather a group and just go to Egypt? Or is this like an ongoing thing you want to stay there and then have them come?

Jessica Sato: 13:49

Oh, that's a great question. So funny enough, I would say up until like maybe a couple weeks ago, I'd be like, Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna be moving to Egypt. And you know, who knows? I'm married, I have kids in high school, like we're not moving anytime soon. But like I said, I did grow up there, I studied abroad there, and so it's not completely off the table to move there at some point. But I would say in the next probably three to five years is really around getting this engine going. So this is a completely different revenue stream in the business. I think in 2026, it's going to be one retreat, but then I could see an opportunity where maybe twice a year we're taking different groups there for about two weeks at a time. So there's still a lot of pieces that are shaping. And I think as coaches, it's easy to kind of get bogged down in the details and the big goals, but I'm really trying to allow this to evolve with some degree of strategy, some degree of vision, but letting it evolve naturally. You know, some parts of the world just really lend themselves better to letting the pace of life work its way through. And Egypt happens to be one of those places. So there is a vision, there is a plan in place, and we will see how it continues to evolve over the next couple of years.

Rexhen Doda: 14:56

Cool. And taking a step back and just like looking at also the two big pieces that are already running in the business. So the big idea, coaching, and the business growth strategy side of it, in terms of like these two programs, are you also focusing on like growing them as well? How are you thinking about them in terms of like goals for the ones that you have currently?

Jessica Sato: 15:18

Yeah, great question. So it's interesting, you know, when you have something that's new and shiny, it's easy to get distracted. And to be honest, that is a huge part of the tension I have been navigating this year, which is, you know, like I just want to focus all my time and attention on this one beautiful, shiny new thing. But as you know, you know, when you're running a coaching practice, that's one piece of the system. And so I've had to really stay grounded in my core offers. And again, not even get distracted by other shiny new little things that, you know, are constantly popping up as entrepreneurs were constantly ideating, right? So for me, I have used these as my two anchor points. Keep focusing, keep promoting, keep marketing, big idea work, you know, focusing and promoting business growth strategy work, and then working this other piece of the business, this Egypt side of the business in in moderation. In fact, I was talking to one of my coaches and she was like, How do I navigate this tension of like really wanting to focus all my time and energy over here right now? And she said, Okay, you have to run this core business, which is obvious. That's where the bulk of the revenue generation comes from. And at the same time, I do need to make progress on this other thing. And so we got to a thing where one task a week, one focus thing a week or a day, depending on where we are in the cycle, keeps me focused on that, but also allows me to do the bulk of my work. So don't lose momentum in the core revenue generating pieces of the business, but I also am still making progress.

Rexhen Doda: 16:42

In your business right now, what are kind of like the main bottlenecks or challenges that you're going through as you think about growth, either within the two offers or like business operations could be anywhere really? What are kind of like the main bottlenecks or challenges that you're facing?

Jessica Sato: 16:57

Yeah, great question. So it's interesting, you know. If you would have asked me this maybe earlier in the year, I might have said, you know, team and making sure I had the right team in place. I have that now, and that's working really well to allow me to focus on the things only I can focus on and offload the rest. What I'm seeing right now, and I see this with a lot of the people in the community I'm in, is just volatility of the ecosystem and slower buying cycles. So I don't know if that's a bottleneck in the traditional sense, but it's definitely a slowing down. So there's more intentional nurturing that's required in order to move people from a place where they're curious, they're interested, they see the value, and then moving into that kind of conversion space. I have felt that in my own business. I've seen that in businesses of clients and peers. Is that an actual bottleneck? I don't know if I would define it that way, but I would say that's definitely the most pressing issue right now, which is how do we modify marketing and strategies in order to shorten that buying cycle again, right? This is not like, you know, back in 2020, 2021, where it was like the heyday and everybody was just like buying, buying, buying, you know, when uncertainty exists in the market, right? That shifts buying behavior. And so navigating that and being responsive and proactive, I think has been really interesting and challenging to meet people where they are.

Rexhen Doda: 18:21

There is definitely a slowdown. You're actually the second person to bring this up today in our podcast. So it's definitely maybe within the last year that has been an issue. I don't know if it's like an issue with the current administration in the United States or if this is like an international thing, but definitely the buying has slowed down and the customer journey just tends to get longer when that happens. I totally agree with you for the coaches who want to scale their coaching business. In your case, I don't know if you use scaling a lot as or like if you think about scaling a lot, but obviously, if you're constantly thinking about expanding in your offers in a way that also would mean scaling. For the coaches who want to scale their coaching business because they're driven by impact, is there any advice you'd like to give to these coaches? And this is my final question.

Jessica Sato: 19:09

Yeah, no, this is a really great question because I find that a lot of the women that I'm working with, they're navigating several tension points. One is that balance between purpose and profit. Like, how do I stay deeply rooted in my purpose, in the profit, in the purpose of the business, the mission of the business, the impact of the business, and make money, right? These are a lot of, you know, beautiful, heart-centered type people who they just really want to help people. So navigating that tension and building offers that allow them the expansion or the scale that will allow them to actually create more impact. And again, it kind of all is circled up together. So, what I really try to encourage people to think about is when you are in that sort of tension-y space of needing to increase your prices or change the business model itself, there's a lot of opportunity to couple that with impact. And when you think about if I'm able to serve more people or if I'm able to generate more revenue, it opens the door for me to be able to create more impact. So it's really trying to shift that mindset around, well, I just want to help people. I don't, it's not about the money to, okay, but money actually is a tool that helps you create more impact. So, how can we be really strategic? How can we stay aligned in your core values and your mission and build a system around you that allows you to scale with intention and to be really smart about your own time and energy, but also about what you're creating in the world. To me, there's a space that's very individualized here that gets us back into conversations about what are you trying to create in the world and how can we do that the most with the least amount of impact to you, with the most amount of revenue and the most amount of impact. So there's some strategy in there of like really looking at all the different pieces of the business and figuring out where we can pull the levers in order to actually create more impact in the world.

Rexhen Doda: 21:04

Interesting. So basically, scaling from your perspective would mean less of impact in yourself, so less time with more impact. And basically at that reaching out to more people without having to, like in your case, put all your hours in it. In your coaching business right now, is it all you? Is it like when it comes to the coaching, is it all you that's doing the coaching, or do you have also coaches?

Jessica Sato: 21:26

No, I don't have other coaches that are working underneath me. I have a team that helps support from a customer perspective, from a client experience perspective, but the core of the work is me. And I do that largely one-on-one because that's the way I prefer to work. I have had groups in the past earlier, I wrapped up a group earlier this year that was really focused on, you know, how do we grow businesses with intention and impact? And I want to go back to something you said because these businesses, they're scaling just like any other kind of business, but there's a more purposeful angle behind it. So it's not just scale for scale's sake. I think there's a dangerous or false narrative about let's just grow our coaching businesses and scale, scale, scale. I am not a fan of that. I have done that and I never found it to be in alignment with my own core values. So for me, it's like, how do we balance these pieces of being intentional in our design, purposeful in the revenue that we're generating, and really focused on what is the impact or the implications of the work that we're doing from an ethics perspective, from a sustainability perspective, and building around that. So it's not like, hey, don't scale, you know, in order to make more money. We need to make money. Money is a tool that allows us to do that. It's a very intentional growth process as opposed to some of what I hear in the larger space, which is just grow, grow, grow. And then, you know, you got a bunch of other issues that you're dealing with. So to me, this is about intentional growth and being very mindful about the path that we're taking as leaders, experts, thought leaders, et cetera, in the space.

Rexhen Doda: 22:57

Jessica, I also wanted to ask you like, how does it like the first consultation session with you look like for all of the women that are listening to this right now? What does it look like? What do you guys go over with?

Jessica Sato: 23:07

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I find that the bulk of people who are coming my way are battling this tension of having too many ideas, right? Like this is not surprising. Entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas. And especially if you're running a service-based business that's rooted in your own expertise or knowledge, most of us have depth and breadth. And I find that a lot of times people are minimizing their expertise. Or if they're not minimizing their expertise outright, they're devaluing, like assuming everybody knows the thing that they know, or they just have too many ideas. And so a lot of what we're doing actually on that consultation is digging into like what is the core of their problem? Because the approach that we take in terms of how we're coaching and, you know, what we're actually talking about, the strategies that we employ are rooted in what is the core problem. So I think, you know, really getting people to examine what do they think is the problem? Is it that they're just flooded with ideas? They don't know how to pick the one thing or don't know how to consolidate that into one core perspective or idea that they can use in their business? Or is it that they're struggling more along the lines of, I have this thing that I'm really good at, but I just feel like everybody already knows it. So there, that to me is a slightly different problem than I have this really unique perspective. How do I actually use it? Those are two different problems. And the approach we take is important to discern what those things are. So I think when people are coming and they're feeling sort of in that space of too many ideas, not sure if their idea really matters, how do I employ that in the business? Doing a little bit of work to kind of get beneath the surface and figure out like, what is my what is the real problem here? Not talking about mechanics. We're talking about, you know, what's that core problem that we're actually trying to address so that you can increase your thought leadership, you can position yourself differently in the marketplace, you can rethink your visibility strategy, you can, you know, reexamine how your business model might need to look, right? There's there's just a lot of angles that we can take. So really trying to be clear about what you think the actual problem is and then bringing that to the conversation, I think is really important.

Rexhen Doda: 25:15

Thank you. And thank you so much for coming to our podcast today. For anyone who wants to connect with you or find you, they can go into LinkedIn, look up Jess Sato. They'll be able to find your LinkedIn profile. They can also go, I believe, into the website, which if I'm not mistaken, it should be jessicasato.com.

Jessica Sato: 25:36

Correct.

Rexhen Doda: 25:36

All correct. We'll put that in the description for people to find it. But thank you. Thank you so much, Jess.

Jessica Sato: 25:42

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Davis Nguyen: 25:44

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.