Many high-achieving women struggle with perfectionism and maintaining authentic leadership while building successful businesses. Without intentional alignment between personal values and professional goals, leaders can become disconnected from their teams and lose the very qualities that drive meaningful success. By embracing vulnerability and leading with intention, women can create more impactful businesses while staying true to themselves.

Bianca D’Alessio is the star of HBO Max’s acclaimed series Selling the Hamptons, the top-ranked real estate broker in both New York City and state, and the founder of one of the highest-producing brokerage teams in the U.S. She oversees a $10 billion international real estate portfolio and writes a weekly column in Money Magazine. Bianca is a frequent expert voice in Forbes, The New York Times, Fox Business, Medium, and The Real Deal. Her new book, Mastering Intentions, 10 Practices to Amplify Power and Lead with Lasting Impact, combines personal experiences with practical tools for authentic leadership.

In this episode, Bianca shares her transformation from a perfectionist leader to one who leads with vulnerability and authenticity. She discusses how aligning heart, body, mind, and soul creates more powerful intentions than traditional goal-setting, and reveals the daily practices that help silence the “brain bully” while building stronger, more innovative teams.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • How to define and develop intentions beyond simple goal-setting.
  • The importance of self-discovery and focusing on three key areas at a time.
  • How to overcome perfectionism and create cultures that embrace risk-taking.

“Leading with intention is about having an alignment between your heart, body, mind, and soul. How are you moving with force where you’re fully connected? That’s where you find your intention.”

– Bianca D’Alessio

Valuable Free Resource: 

  • Check out Bianca’s book “Mastering Intentions” for insights and strategies on amplifying power and leading with lasting impact.

Topics Covered:

01:39 – Understanding Bianca’s background: From leadership development with nonprofit work to discovering real estate through people skills

02:48 – Career transformation journey: Moving from helping women on college campuses to becoming a top real estate professional

05:48 – Book evolution and core message: How personal and professional experiences intertwine to create authentic leadership

07:04 – Defining intentions beyond goal-setting: The importance of heart, body, mind, and soul alignment for true power

10:19 – Leadership transformation through vulnerability: Breaking down perfectionism to create deeper team connections and organic business growth

13:54 – Team culture changes: How authenticity creates environments where communication, risk-taking, and creativity flourish

16:22 – Annual intention-setting practice: The process of identifying gaps and focusing on three key areas for meaningful change

20:02 – Self-care as competitive advantage: Why prioritizing physical and mental health is essential for sustainable business success

23:08 – Continuous growth and adaptation: The importance of staying current and relevant in rapidly changing business landscapes

Key Takeaways:

“Very scary to be vulnerable. But it is the most rewarding when you can just unleash yourself and take down that armor and step into it because I promise you will find your most power by leading with that authenticity and vulnerability.” – Bianca D’Alessio

“I have figured out now at this stage in my career how to focus my highest and best use… I’ve stepped back on a lot of the micromanaging and really focus on the bigger picture.” – Bianca D’Alessio

“How do you focus on three things at a time really fully and focus on those being your intentions? I used to be crazy about making lists of goals that were three pages long. That’s just not sustainable.” – Bianca D’Alessio

Ways to Connect with Bianca D’Alessio:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

(AI helped us put this together, so if you see any weird grammar or missed words—just know we nailed it during the actual chat.)

Bianca D’Alessio 00:00

Leading with intention is about having an alignment between your heart, body, mind, and soul. How are you moving with force where you’re fully connected? That’s where you find your intention. 

Sarah E. Brown 00:19

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor podcast for women, where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown.

My guest today is Bianca D’Alessio. She is the star of HBO Max’s acclaimed series Selling the Hamptons, the top-ranked real estate broker in both New York City and state, and the founder of one of the highest-producing brokerage teams in the U.S. She oversees a $10 billion international real estate portfolio and writes a weekly column in Money Magazine. Bianca is a frequent expert voice in Forbes, The New York Times, Fox Business, Medium, and The Real Deal. 

In her book, which we’re going to be discussing today, Mastering Intentions: 10 Practices to Amplify Power and Lead with Lasting Impact, has just been released. Bianca, welcome.

Bianca D’Alessio 01:31

Thank you for having me on. I’m so excited to be here today.

Sarah E. Brown 01:34

Oh, it’s great. So, how did you get into the real estate business?

Bianca D’Alessio 01:39

So, I guess I’ll start right before I enter real estate. So out of college, I was one of those young women who didn’t know where to go, what to do, and where to start my career. So I took my dream job, which was leadership development with women. 

I got to travel full time across the United States, working for a nonprofit, going to college campuses and helping women step into themselves, understanding how they relate to other women. And it was during that time that I was figuring out what comes after this, that people said, you’re great with people. You are going to be good at sales. Get your real estate license. 

So, I did that. The beginning years were shaky as they are for most real estate professionals. But over the past decade that I’ve been in this industry, there’s been lots of twists and turns, and it’s been quite an exciting journey, especially in the last few years.

Sarah E. Brown 02:29

Well, so is the book related to your profession?

Bianca D’Alessio 02:34

So there are snippets and bits and pieces of the real estate world, but this is really a book about authenticity, vulnerability, and stepping into your power more than anything else. So I lean on a lot of my life experiences and those moments of hardship for how I have found, you know, resilience and confidence and the momentum to restart and rebuild. And I hope to give my readers practical tools and teachings for how they could do that for themselves. 

Sarah E. Brown 03:03

And how did you get into this topic? 

Bianca D’Alessio 03:05

That’s a great question. This started very much as a real estate book. As I was writing it, I felt like I was pigeonholing my audience a little bit because I feel like so much of what I’ve learned professionally has come from what I’ve developed from learning about myself personally. 

And I found just how intertwined all of those life experiences were. You know, when I had my truly my worst personal moments in life, how I found those rebounds professionally. And I just started seeing this interwoven path of it’s all intertwined. Life is all intertwined. We cannot silo our home life from our professional life. 

We become the strongest and the most powerful when we bring it all together and we understand our positioning of where we fit into all of those groups of people in our life and how we make them co-create together.

Sarah E. Brown 04:00

And how do you define an intention?

Bianca D’Alessio 04:02

Oh, gosh. I love this question because I think leading with intention is about having an alignment between your heart, body, mind and soul. You know, how are you moving with force where you’re fully connected? That’s where you find your intention. So a lot of people talk about intentions as goal setting or a metric. 

To me, it’s more about alignment and the definition of finding that alignment for where you’re fitting and how you’re moving yourself through your journey of life. Because there’s going to be lots of intentions and goals that we set out to have, but how are you making sure that you’re all moving together and understanding that process?

Sarah E. Brown 04:40

OK, so give me an example of or some examples of things that need to be in alignment.

Bianca D’Alessio 04:46

Oh, gosh. So, when you’re leading your team, a lot of what I like to talk about is, that was very hard for me. Originally, I was a perfectionist. And I was leading with imperfectionism because I thought I needed to have this stoic outlook to lead by having it all figured out. 

Well, what I figured out actually was I became a much stronger leader when I started leading with vulnerability and authenticity. And so I had to break down who I was. How did I define myself, my character for who am I in my relationships? Who am I in a professional sense? How do I understand that story and how do I talk about it? 

Once I recognized that I wanted to be a leader that led with authenticity and vulnerability, I had the intention of, I want to create teams that focus on this. I want my teams to understand that their personal life comes into the professional space and that we find alignment in our professional wins and successes. And how do we bring those home to our family? 

So that very much became my intention. And then I figured out all of the action items and steps of how am I incorporating this in the way that I’m talking to people, in the way that I’m bringing people together, in the way that they’re relating to one another, to make sure that that becomes at the forefront of what we’re working on together.

Sarah E. Brown 05:59

Ok. So, we’ll get to the how part in a minute, but I want to stick with the why part. So when you found that you were doing this and you were leading your teams with this alignment and this authenticity, what was different?

Bianca D’Alessio 06:14

What was different was, instead of recruiting and selling, I was starting to attract. I found that I became, my brand and my business started becoming, I love to use the word sticky, where people wanted to know more. People became more curious and it became much more organic than what it had been prior. The connection started to become deeper. 

The engagement with the work and the relationships in our professional space became far more enhanced because there were no clear divisible lines of who we needed to be when we stepped in and out of the office. 

It all became, I am Bianca and this is who I am. I am, you know, this person on my team. This is how I show up in every aspect of my life. I don’t need to have this duality that used to exist before.

Sarah E. Brown 07:05

Mm-hmm. I know that duality well from my own career. Okay. And what did your team experience differently?

Bianca D’Alessio 07:12

I know I think it’s always a work in progress and it’s a journey for everything. And that’s what leadership is. It’s understanding because not everyone is always as comfortable with stepping into this and being vulnerable. 

But what my team found with me, I would say from a leadership perspective, is that we became an environment where, you know, communication and transparency, and the ability to ask for help became much more prevalent when I stopped with the perfectionism attitude. 

Another thing that really changed was, when we changed our mindset to this, embrace failure and learn from it, and use everyone else in the team to understand it, it created people taking far more risks and being far more excited to jump outside of the box. 

And I’m an entrepreneur, and I found it very hard to teach entrepreneurship. But what you can teach is people to take more risks and to be more creative. And I think this created a culture and an excitement for that.

Sarah E. Brown 08:13

Okay, so I think we’ve covered the area of why the intentions are so powerful. So how do you go about developing that yourself? Well, let’s start with how do I become aware of what needs to be aligned?

Bianca D’Alessio 08:29

So, I have this practice that I do every year of figuring out at the beginning of the year where I feel that something is lacking or missing in my life and becoming very, very focused on the process of manifestation, which is a whole other topic. 

First of all, it’s the process of self-discovery. What do I feel there are gaps in my life and how am I not showing up for others? I focus a lot of my work on the inward aspect of who am I and then once we figure out and break down How do I stand in the universe? How do I stand in all these spaces? How do I stand in these relationships that I have that I like to call companions in my book? 

Then once you have that figured out, how does that relate and how does that impact all of these other organic situations that you’re in? and being focused on three at a time. You know, you can’t fix… I used to be crazy about making lists of goals that were three pages long. That’s just not sustainable. How do you focus on three things at a time really fully and focus on those being your intentions?

Sarah E. Brown 09:35

Can you give me an example?

Advertisement 09:42

Hi, this is Sarah Brown again, the host of the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. I hope you are enjoying this episode and gaining some tips and inspiration on how you can be happier, more successful, and experience less stress at work. If you would like to learn more about how you can take control of your career and do it your way, visit sarahebrown.com. 

There you will be able to download a free chapter from my book, ‘Let Your Personality Be Your Career Guide.’ It contains information and exercises on how you can identify your unique interests, strengths, and needs, and translate that into career goals that are just right for you. Now, back to this informative episode.

Bianca D’Alessio 10:37

Yeah. So when I started my business, I was in the weeds, as most business owners are, like stop prioritizing my health, stop prioritizing my family, just had something to prove, had something to grow, and I was all in. And then, you know, a year and a half later, I looked at myself in the mirror one day and I was like, wow, I’m scared because I’m not sleeping. 

I’m not taking care of myself. I need to realign myself here. And that’s really where this practice came from. And I said, what is the root of this? I was lacking inspiration. So bogged down in the weeds of the business, showing up and showing out. I wouldn’t call it burnout, but I would say I was uninspired. 

So I said, I need to focus this next 12 months on where do I find inspiration from? And that was the word. I wrote the word on my wall, inspiration. And so, you know, I didn’t know where that’s where I started. I said, I love to travel. I haven’t traveled since I started my company. Let’s go on a trip. What does that look like now? And what am I going to do on that trip? 

Where do I find inspiration from when I’m traveling from the place, the people that I went by myself, the people that I met, the food that I ate, the way I was looking at the world and how I was looking at it to relate to the business that I was doing. That was one bucket. Another bucket was the people I was surrounding myself with. I was in my business and looking downward as to the operations, but now I needed a place to look upward. 

So I started seeking inspiration from other CEOs, putting myself in rooms with them to hear about their business challenges, because we often say, Gosh, I’m bogged down and I don’t know if what I’m doing is right or wrong or is this the path everyone goes on? Is this what other people are experiencing? 

And once I was in those rooms, I started feeling that and listening to the way they problem solved and the way that they were experiencing those challenges and overcame, it changed that. And then I started finding hobbies. Right? Okay, where else am I going to have fun? I started dancing. 

And then by the end of the year, I started saying, wow, I went from having nothing outside of work to feeling more well-rounded, feeling more inspired by the activities I was doing. And that’s just one example of how that’s played out.

Sarah E. Brown 12:49

Mm. Ok. So you talk about daily actions in your book and aligning them. Can you say more about that?

Bianca D’Alessio 12:57

Yes. So when I was very young, I started this practice of speaking to myself in the mirror to truly be my own hype woman. That got me through a lot of dark days when I struggled with mental health when I was younger. And it’s still a practice I do now. You know, I am strong. I am brave. I’ve got this. 

But it’s taken it one step further from just speaking to myself in the mirror to how do I coach myself through? difficult meetings that I’m stepping into or a challenging situation. How do I constantly be my own hype woman? 

One of the things I talk about in the book is this brain bully that lives in the back of our head that’s saying, you know, you’re not good enough or you shouldn’t be in this room or you’re failing at this or you don’t deserve this. How do you silence that? That practice has helped me very retroactively silence that when I know it starts creeping up. How do I say, I’m ready for this. You’ve got this. Keep going.

Sarah E. Brown 13:52

Ok. And so, you talk about 10 practices in your book. Can you give us a sampling of what the 10 are?

Bianca D’Alessio 13:59

Oh, absolutely. I talk about harnessing your inner confidence. I talk about the power of manifestation. I talk about having a winner’s mindset. How you have to, you know, to me, mindset is so crucial and so important for all of this. I talk about this concept of teamship, that while, you know, the process starts with looking inward. 

But then, after you look inward, how do you bring that to all of your other relationships? How do you bring people along on this journey with you? Because it’s not enough to be self-reflective. We need, you know, our partners and our kids and our friends to be on this path with us. And so, yeah, those are a few of the practices.

Sarah E. Brown 14:40

OK, that helps me understand the gamut. But you also talk about a concept called future casting. What is that?

Bianca D’Alessio 14:49

So future casting is the idea and the understanding that there will be seismic events that happen in your life in the future. You know, whether it be getting married, having a kid, losing a parent, both highs and both lows. How do you prepare yourself professionally to set yourself up for if and when those things and those events happen? Job promotions, job losses. 

I think so much we feel this anxiety for the future of what happens when this happens or how do I set myself up? Well, how do you reclaim that power? How do you say, I know that this is going to happen, or how do I not have regret about the way that we are acting? 

This concept of future casting, I know that ultimately one of my parents will get sick and they will no longer be here. How do I make sure that I don’t have regret today and I’m not putting the wrong energy in the wrong bucket at the wrong time to make sure that if and when that day happens, I’m prepared for the best that I can be.

Sarah E. Brown 15:51

Ok. All right. That I understand. All right. So you’ve got a very successful real estate business that you’re running. Where does the HBO Max show fit into all of that? And how did you get into it and why?

Bianca D’Alessio 16:07

Yeah, that’s a great question. So it was coming out of the pandemic. My business had always been very New York City heavy and focused, but all of my clients, like many others, started picking up from New York City and going to the Hamptons. 

And that’s when I said, well, I’m either not going to do business this year or I’m going to innovate and change and I’m going to learn a new market and I’m going to move with them. So I did. So I started doing more business in the Hamptons. At that period of time, this show came to be. 

And they were looking to cast a strong female lead character, and they approached me to be on the show. And I was terrified and hesitant because I had a lot of things going on in my personal life that I felt, wow, is now really the right time to be completely naked on TV and air all of my dirty laundry to the world? I haven’t even come to terms with it myself. 

And then, you know, someone said to me, my producer said to me, you know, now’s your time to write your own story. It’s going to be very scary, but you could let the world tell your story or you could take back control and power and do it yourself. And so with that, I said yes. And it was an incredible, incredible opportunity. 

And truly, I mean, from a business side, it was great. But personally, from being able to share my story and come to terms with that level of vulnerability and then see the impact that it had on other people. It completely changed my career.

Sarah E. Brown 17:35

Is the show still running?

Bianca D’Alessio 17:36

It is still running. So we are in season. Well, we finished season two. Season two is out and we are waiting to hear back from season three. So hopefully we’ll be back for more.

Sarah E. Brown 17:45

Wow. Well, so I just have to ask you where you find the time or how you think about the various aspects of your life and this alignment concept to be running a multibillion-dollar enterprise, to be the star of a show that’s got to take a lot of time and energy, and to be writing all of these columns and to go and do these things that you were telling us that you did, like the traveling and the dancing and all of that. How do you prioritize your time to do that?

Bianca D’Alessio 18:17

Oh, that’s a great question. Well, first, I have to say I have an incredible team, and I’m very, very proud of the team that I’ve built. And I think you can’t do it all alone. I have found ways. I would say I’m hyper organized and very good at time blocking, and I swear by my time blocking. But at the end of the day…

Sarah E. Brown 18:34

I swear by it, too.

Bianca D’Alessio 18:35

Good. Once you’re locked into a good time, like you’ll never look back. But I think it’s really I have figured out now at this stage in my career how to focus my highest and best use, which is very hard as someone who’s a little bit, had been a little bit of a control freak to let go of the reins on certain things. 

I’ve stepped back on a lot of the micromanaging and really focus on the bigger picture and allow and entrust my team to run the other areas where they need to. So obviously no one else could be on the show but me. So, that is me. 

No one else could be on the podcast but me. But from a real estate operations perspective, from my social media and marketing, I have really great departments and team leads who help me and agents who help with all of that.

Sarah E. Brown 19:20

Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Well, that makes a lot of sense. The other thing that is very time-consuming, because I do a lot of time coaching people who are writing books, is writing a book. Why did you want to write this book?

Bianca D’Alessio 19:36

Gosh, when I was younger, I started writing as a way to cope with not being able to talk about what was happening in my mind. I didn’t have the communication skills at that point in time, so I always knew I wanted to write and I enjoyed writing. 

And I knew that I wanted to put something down and document it forever. I just didn’t know what format that would exist. And it started to morph after the show and after my business was changing from the show. Like I said, it started as a real estate book. But then I just felt like the message needed to be bigger than that. 

I started public speaking a handful of years ago and the stories that would connect most with people, when I was talking about like really going through the difficult moments in life and had nothing to do with like the big real estate wins, people truly didn’t care that much about that. 

They’re like, oh, great, that’s how you sell. But how did you get through that worst, terrible moment? And how’d you overcome that? And how did you stand strong? And so, I started saying, I think that’s what’s resonating more. So I started writing it down. 

And when I think about the time block, that had to come on the weekends and the mornings before the workday started. But it’s so rewarding to actually see the physical copy and to hold it and to be here. I hope the response from the readers is just as exciting.

Sarah E. Brown 21:00

Well, as a way to wrap up, what would you say to your prospective readers about what the core message of the book is?

Bianca D’Alessio 21:07

Yeah, it’s very, very scary to be vulnerable. But it is the most rewarding when you can just unleash yourself and take down that armor and step into it because I promise you will find your most power by leading with that authenticity and vulnerability.

Sarah E. Brown 21:26

Well, Bianca, thank you for being with me today. And for those of you listening, I highly recommend the book Mastering Intentions, 10 Practices to Amplify Power and Lead with Lasting Impact by Bianca D’Alessio. 

Sarah E. Brown 21:41

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes, and learn more about our podcast guests. Read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown