What If Your Family Plan Is The Growth Plan

We talk with Michael Caito about the unglamorous systems that actually scale companies, from writing goals down to building real accountability through managers. We also get candid about what it takes to integrate entrepreneurship with marriage, parenting, health, and a support network that holds up under pressure. 
• His early leap into entrepreneurship and building a food delivery business before modern tech 
• Why writing goals down and making them visible drives execution 
• The three-step cadence of accountability and regular check-ins 
• Why managers and team leaders predict company success 
• The CEO as the bottleneck and the mindset shift required to grow 
• How MAP Consulting’s tools and framework changed his leadership and company trajectory 
• Scaling through acquisitions and the Grubhub outcome 
• Why work life integration beats chasing “balance” 
• The bullseye model: self first, then marriage and family, then business 
• Parenting with routines, structure, and consistent cadences 
• Three essentials for entrepreneur parents: alignment, plan B, and your village 

Michael Caito TEDx  "It Takes a Village": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wALh23YHB_k

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

0:11

Hi everyone, welcome to the juggling entrepreneurship podcast. Today we have an awesome guest. His name is Michael Keato, um, CEO of MAP Consulting, former global chairman of Entrepreneurs Organization, and a leader who has spent decades helping business scale through accountability, leadership, and execution. After co-founding and growing up Restaurants on the Run into a multi-million dollar company, Michael went to acquire MAP, the same company that helped transform his own leadership journey. Michael, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. Thank you very much, Hima. I gave a little intro about your fabulous life. Do you want to add anything more? No, I I think that's it. Just I I've been an entrepreneur since I was, you know, in my in college. But um, you know, outside of all that, I also am a dad, been married 25 years, have three boys 17, 19, 21. So, you know, you're right, life is about juggling and putting all that together. And so, you know, my wife and I have had to balance that. So it's been fun though. Your journey looks extremely unique. Like you are an entrepreneur at a very young age. So how did you um actually start? Well, I, you know, listen, I grew up in Buffalo, New York. So

From Buffalo To First Breakthrough

1:38

for those of you listening, go bills. Um the and when I was 18, I decided it was time for a change. And I packed up all my clothes into garbage bags and threw them in my Camaro, 1979 Camaro, and drove cross-country to California, landed in Orange County, and a sure for a little bit, and then, you know, kind of got on my own, rented a room, and met my best friend, and you know, the rest is history. But while I was here, you know, you have to like if when you're living totally on your own, and we, you know, I wasn't getting any support from the family besides love and emotional support, but there was no financial support. So what, you know, we worked, you know, I worked and went to college. And uh, when I was in college, I'd like to say I was in year seven of my four-year degree. So that's a joke for those of you listening. Year seven of my four-year degree. I was like, Yeah, yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, and you're like, wait, I think I have that, right? And so, you know, I did something that I hadn't done before, which was uh write down my goals for

Writing Goals That Create Momentum

2:40

the next year. I did this when I was like, it was, I was 24. And one of the goals was find an idea for a business. And I don't know why. Um at that point in time, I was like, I want to, you know, I want to be an entrepreneur. Part of it was maybe the restaurant chain that I was working in and growing up in. They were entrepreneurs. My mother was an entrepreneur, but I really never thought of her as an entrepreneur until later in life when I looked back. But right at the right at that time, I was like, I want to start a business. And so I was in the frame of mind. And I tell my kids you are what you think about. So think big. And so I was starting to think differently. And then I wrote it down. And it's funny, like two months later, my brother and his best friend came to me and they were like, hey, we have this idea for a business, you know, this food delivery company. And uh, this is 1993. So think DoorDash. Right. And so in college in nine in 1993, before the internet, before mobile technology, we started a DoorDash type company with any of the, with, with none of the technology. So you ought to get it. So we got our starting entrepreneurship. You ought to do that. I say my my partner had the vision, vision. My job was to, you know, be the CEO. We all had specific jobs. I was the CEO. My one partner, Matt, was in charge of technology and marketing, and my other partner was in charge of you know, kind of uh sales and partner relationships. And so we all had our roles, and uh it worked really well. Awesome. You said one interesting thing, writing down the goals. And after you wrote down, you you got this opportunity. Um I think in this new tech era, you rarely see people writing down their goals. Right. So how how much do you think it's important? It's the number one thing, it's the number one success driver in any company. Okay. There's three steps that

The Three-Step Accountability Habit

4:42

you have to do. Number one, you gotta you gotta set the goal. Number two, you gotta write it down. And number three, you have to have a way to to let me say it this way. So writing it down, when I say writing it down, it's gotta be visible. Okay. So however visible means for you, but you gotta set the goal, you gotta make it visible, okay, not only to yourself, but to others. And then you have to have a regular check-in to make sure that you're on track for the goal. So it's pretty simple. Okay. It's that's the single greatest thing that I found that is that's the single greatest driver of performance in a company, which means that you as an individual may not know how to do that, but you better make sure if you're a CEO that your managers understand what accountability means and how to drive performance of their people. And it's a very underskilled position in business right now. A lot of managers get promoted, leaders get promoted, but they don't know how to drive performance of their people. They may know how to drive performance of themselves, but if they can't drive the performance of their their people, the company will never get to the scale that you're looking to get it to. That's a very, very interesting point. And this is not the first time I'm hearing just from you, but uh from a few other entrepreneurs where you're talking about managers and leaders who got promoted. Um, maybe they are great individual contributors, but when they come to that position, they need to learn the art of people management and performance management. How did you read? What are some tips that you can give to the people?

Why Managers Make Or Break Growth

6:25

Um, well, listen, I just to build on what you said, Gallup wrote a book, and the subtitle of the book is called It's the Manager. And the subtitle of the book is called That Managers and Team Leaders is a single greatest predictor of future success of a company. Okay. Managers and team leaders are the future, are the are the single greatest predictor of future success of the company. So we have to make sure that not only, not only that our managers have a they have the tool set to know how to accelerate performance, but then they have to have the framework of how to actually manage their people. There's two sides to it. One is there's there's there's six things managers need to get right. Okay. And then there's a framework of accountability that wraps around it. You have to get that right. That's what we did. We understand, we understood that in order to have an organization that was performing in scaling, we needed to have those two things, a framework of accountability for our managers to work within. And then they needed the tools to be able to work within that framework. When you put those two things together, you get performance. You, if you have one and not the other, you're not gonna, you're not gonna get the level of accelerated performance that you are looking for as a CEO. But it starts with the CEO. We're the bottleneck. It starts with us saying, like, I was the bottleneck. I can get to that story later, but like I needed help. So it starts with us realizing that we need to put that everything, you know, big change initiatives like that to start with the CEO or the founder. That is awesome. Do you want to dig in um the concept that you have just talked about? Digging, starting from the CEO. And also one important thing that you have mentioned is I have written in the book. Is this the book that you were mentioning that would be coming out, or is this the book that I have already been released? This is the book that I'm writing right now, which is taking, you know. Let me get let

The CEO Bottleneck Wake-Up Call

8:22

me back up a little bit. Sure. To kind of give you context on why I do what I do right now. You know, when I was when we were building that company restaurants on the run early, you know, I I was an entrepreneur. My partners and I were entrepreneurs. And as you know, entrepreneurs can put a company on their back and they can carry that company up to a certain point. Because people want to be around some entrepreneurs. They want to be around leaders, they want something exciting and passionate that they that they go to work every day to do. Um, so that when they come home from work, they're still energized. So entrepreneurs can do that. Well, eventually, as you're growing your business, it gets beyond the skill set of you as an entrepreneur. And or as us as entrepreneurs. And we had an we had a mentor who uh looked at me one day and said, Hey, Michael, if this was a publicly traded company, we would fire you as the CEO. He knew that while I was equipped as an entrepreneur to get to a business to hear, yeah, he saw that we were onto something. You know, the food delivery, you know, there was nobody doing it. And so he knew that we were potentially on a rocket ship, but he knew that I needed help. And when he told me that, I was like, well, okay. I went and talked to my peer groups. I'm in IPO and EO, different CEO founder groups. And uh, one of them referred me to this company called MAP, MAP Consulting. And I went to this three-day workshop that they do, which still goes on every single month, two classes of CEOs and executives and middle managers and entrepreneurs. And I went to this workshop and it was a two and a half day deep dive on me, you know, my challenges, my strengths, how it related to my business, what people, how people saw me, what I didn't know about myself. But really, it gave me these tools that I mentioned earlier. It gave me the tools I needed to be a great, you know, manager or leader, and it gave me the framework to operate within. And when we put those two things together and I took it back to my business, that's where everything changed. You know, I went back to the company, I hired a coach to help me coach my executive team, and then all my managers started going through the workshop. And so that is how we grew the business. And eventually, Grubhub came knocking after we had bought 10 companies around the country and expanded

Tools And Frameworks From MAP

10:48

our footprint. You know, we were looking for capital in the market, Grubhub saw us, they made us a great offer and they took all of our people. We had five or six hundred, and uh, some of them are still there today. That is a true leadership story. That is a true leadership story, and I'm so glad that you shared it because it makes so much practical. Um, it tells, I think, two dimensions of it. One, nobody knows everything at the beginning. They learn, they adapt. We know nothing. They are open to learn, they're open to adapt and they grow. And thank you for sharing that honor story with us. Absolutely. That's that's what entrepreneurism is. I mean, entrepreneurs that make it, hey, listen, you've got some that like they're headstrong on certain things. A lot of entrepreneurs are headstrong. We all are. Let's face it, we're starting a business, we have a vision. You know, but the best entrepreneurs are open to learning and making mistakes and falling down and letting their people fall down, and then learning and getting coaching and mentoring. It's but um the there's there's way more in that story for another day, just you know, basically the the journey of having to navigate the internet being launched and then mobile technology. So all that happened while we were building the business. So we had to make the adaptations to the business model and then eventually sell it. But um, after I took a little bit of time off, okay, you know, I would always work with entrepreneurs and talk about, well, hey, they say, well, how do you build your business? And I would talk about, I would talk about these things all the time, you know, the things that we're talking about today. And I was just saying, you need to go to the map workshop to learn this stuff. So after saying that for a couple of years, I circled back to Matt, the company, and I said, and that's it was a 55-year-old business. And I go, what's your plans for the next 55 years? And they're like, we're thinking about that right now. And I'm like, think no more. And we put a deal together and we bought the company, and now we're figuring out how we can scale the business to help more companies around the world, you know, do what Matt did for us. So we're having a ball doing it. And so that's how it all came together. So

Scaling Nationwide And The Grubhub Exit

12:58

I'm the guy that was a client that bought the company. So first though, you're a serial entrepreneur. And I mean, sorta, like I mean, I started one business and we played around in other businesses, but um, I'm applying all the entrepreneurial learnings to this company, even though I purchased it. Yeah. So yeah. And it's very, very unique to see. I think it tells a lot about you as a person and a leader. Thank you. Um, and a visionary that's a company that taught you something at the start of your entrepreneurship journey. You went back and you believe so much that those principles work. You actually bought the company and you're expanding it. So yeah, and that's that's good. And now we're hiring, constantly hiring um new consultants. We're gonna be hiring more consultants in different parts of the country. And I'm doing the book right now that is a simple version of what we teach, you know, so that people can get exposed to these simple concepts of driving performance in a company. And uh we'll see where it goes from there. So pretty excited about it. Yeah, we'd love to know more about your book. And uh definitely be in contact and do let us know when your book is coming out so that we can let all our audience know about it. Love it. It's great. We have a uh I I actually actually have a a uh in the next probably 45 days, I'm gonna have like a field guide version of the book. So while the book is in more detail, I'm gonna have a like a little bit of a streamlined version of it since the book won't be out till you know next year that we can use with our clients when we're speaking and so on and so forth. So I'll have to let you know when that starts. Yeah. Definitely, we would be so excited. And I'm pretty sure most of our audience are entrepreneurs who are looking for some guidance. So we'll definitely share your map company info. Yeah, we'll do that. Also, the uh the guide that you will be publishing. So let's hop into your other integrated

Buying MAP And Building The Book

15:01

dimension of your life, which is family. And do tell us how did you juggle being a serial entrepreneur

Family Alignment Over Work Life Balance

15:09

and having a beautiful family with three girls? Okay, well, number one, I was lucky, you know, because I'm on two fronts. I found the greatest wife, that's number one. But at the same, but but about the same time, you know, we started our business in college. Like we weren't married, we didn't have kids, we didn't have financial restrictions. I mean, we were waiting we started our business during the day and worked for tips at night in a restaurant. So, like we didn't need a lot, so we were just so locked in on the business. That was our one thing that we did. So that's why I always tell college kids when I speak to them, I'm like, start your business now. Start it in college, you've got nothing to lose, you've got access to professors for knowledge, you've got access to capital, and you've got access to employees. You know, who do you think worked for us? The people we worked with in restaurants. So I tell people to do that. So knowing that we started it, but then we all got married, we all started having kids. And you know, I think the trick to me, the number one thing is you have to have I needed to have really good alignment in my household. Meaning, my wife knew that we were a company that we were an entrepreneur family, you know, and she was gonna raise, she wanted to raise the children, she could have gotten a job, but she wanted to raise the children, and she knew that I was an entrepreneur. And as soon as we got really good alignment on what that meant, I might be working seven days a week. I might not be home till late at night. Um, that's the first step. You have to have that. Once you have that, then I think you can work around the edges and everything else, and you can figure out how it integrates. There's no such thing as balance, there's integration. You know, when you're an entrepreneur, you're passionate about what you do. And hopefully you're updating your spouse on at least the good stuff from work, not so much the bad and the ugly. You don't need to stress her out that much. But at least in my case. So once you get good alignment and your communication lines are open and you're and you're regularly communicating, maybe even having a five-minute meeting in the morning about the day, maybe having a weekly huddle to like talk about family business. The communication is the number one thing. And then from there, it's like, how does it all fit together? Because it doesn't fit all the time. It doesn't fit all the time. Yeah. I mean, let's be serious here. There's no such thing as perfect. Like there's going to be weeks that I'm there's a crisis and I have to be more available, you know. So um, but again, it started with good communication, good alignment. And then I had to make sure, or we had to make sure, that she had the support network as our family grew. We needed to make sure she had what she needed in the house so that we were able to live our lives. And, you know, it wasn't like she I get home and she's like, here's the kit, type of thing. So I guess that's the long way to say we prioritized our marriage above everything else. So and we're still married 25 years later. That's great. And I think that is very practical, and the line that stick to me is we prioritize our marriage or anything else. And that is that is that tells the whole story. So thank you for sharing your practical knowledge of it. Listen, I'm I'm I'm very vocal with entrepreneurs

The Bullseye Model For Founders

18:43

when I say, listen, it's like a bullseye. At the center of the bullseye is you. So you better be taking care of yourself. And to me, it starts with physically. Other people say it starts with emotions, mental, whatever. To me, yeah, if I feel good, I'm better. I'm in a better headspace. So make sure you're healthy. The next ring of that is your family, your marriage and your family, probably your marriage, then your family. And for that is the business. And so if you're the stronger you are at your core, the stronger you're gonna be with your family, the stronger you're gonna be with your business. If you neglect you or your marriage and family, and you just say, I'm just gonna go all business, you're gonna start, there'll be cracks and you'll start crumbling. You know, maybe you're overweight, maybe you're not healthy, maybe you have a heart attack, maybe you're going through a divorce, maybe you don't really know your kids. And it just makes you can't run a business that way. I mean, I know it happens, don't get me wrong, but it it's like if you want a full life, you've gotta work from the inside out, and you'll be that much better, I promise you, that much better of a CEO if you feel healthy and you have a healthy relationship with your spouse. Great. Let's talk about parenting. Um, how did you chuggle the parenting and entrepreneurship? And I know

Parenting With Routines And Structure

19:59

we are short of time, but any any suggestions for parents um who wants to chuggle both entrepreneurship and parenthood? What is important, what they need to work on? You know, it's for me it was discipline, and I don't mean like like um consequences. What I meant, of course, there are consequences, but there's got to be routines in the house. You know, it starts with early, when they go to bed, when they wake up, when they do homework, you know, when is family dinner, which we were horrible at family dinners um with three boys playing sports. But it starts there. Like, what are the routines you have in your business? What's the business? What are the routines and the structure you have in your house? Not that much different than a business. You know, in a business that's about structure and routines and you know, leading from the front, it's the same thing, you know, what knowing that your kids are watching you, but the consistency and the discipline of routines and structure in the house to me is the most important thing. And like I said, the best example I can give is when you have a baby, most women or most families try to get that baby sleeping through the night as quick as possible. And, you know, that's a certain structure and a process they have to put in place. But the goal is, hey, can we get this baby sleeping 12 hours within 12 weeks? And it starts there. It starts right there in my mind, in our experience. And then continuing to put the structure and cadences and the disciplines in place in your in your home. Right. I know we are uptime, but um any last suggestions to parents who want to become entrepreneurs? Any three tips before we wrap up our call? Three tips.

Plan B Thinking And Finding Your Village

21:50

Uh for parents that want to be entrepreneurs, well. So the first thing is like everybody's gotta be on the same page that this is what we're gonna do. Primarily the the spouses, but I mean if the children are over older, that's gotta be a part of it too. So number one is we're on the same page, we have alignment. Um that's the most important thing. Uh the number two is probably starting to think about the contingency contingency plans around if things don't go exactly as planned, financially, um, time-wise, business, anything. Like, what if things don't go right? Like what what's our plan B? And then, of course, who are the people that you're surrounding yourself with? Who's your village? I did a TED talk, Dex talk called It's a Village. You can search it on YouTube, just go to YouTube and search It's a Village, Michael Cato. And I talk about this. I talk about in times of crisis, you know, what's what's who's the village around you? You know, I'd like to, so those are kind of the three things, you know, we're on, we've got to be on the same page. We got to have a plan B. And who's our village? Who are the people around us, like-minded people? And in my TEDx talk, I talked about that when we were in business, and it was like, you know, I had to find my village personally, business, and family. Like who's the people that are gonna help us? So those would be the points I'd give. So uh thanks again, Michael, for uh being our guest at the

Final Thanks And Wrap-Up

23:33

uh Juggling Entrepreneurship Podcast. Thanks for sharing a wise tips, which are very practical. And I applaud for that. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Michael Kater, everyone. Thank you.