Title: Bianca D’Alessio: Building a Life and Business That Lasts
Guest: Bianca D’Alessio
Peter: Today my guest is Bianca D’Alessio. Not sure if you know this, but she’s the star of HBO Max’s Acclaim 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 us. She oversees $10 billion in real estate portfolio, and she’s got other things to tell us.
Bianca, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Bianca: Thank you so much for having me on today. I am really excited to be here. I am the founder and CEO of the Master’s Division, one of the top producing real estate marketing and brokerage teams in the United States. I have been on the show selling the Hamptons, and recently I could add author of Mastering Intentions to my resume, which is super exciting.
I’ve had the fortunate pleasure of overseeing $10 billion in real estate transactions and pipeline portfolio projects. Where I work [00:01:00] with developers from site acquisition, I help them build a design and construct condo towers. My team handles the marketing, sales, and storytelling for all of those buildings as we sell each of the units.
So it’s a very exciting journey and I’m excited to be talking to you about all things marketing and beyond today.
Peter: Excellent. So you have the new book. You mentioned Mastering Intentions, 10 Practices to Amplify Power and Lead with Lasting Impact. I’d like to dive into the book and find out more about that.
I do have a couple questions just about being on TV and the reality side of things as well. I’m fascinated with reality shows, but especially this because I love real estate. Love the aspirational. Uh mm-hmm. Lifestyle show that anybody can feel like they’re part, part of the high life, so to speak. Uh, tell us a little bit about the show.
How long have you been [00:02:00] on there?
Bianca: Yes. I was on it for two seasons. We’re still waiting to hear back. Hopefully for a season three, the World of Reality tv. Never something I had aspired or was on my bingo card to do. I was approached and I was absolutely terrified to say yes because I felt like I was gonna be naked in front of the whole world and air my dirty laundry out to everyone just as I was this really pivotal point of trying to rebuild and recreate my life.
But there was something in that moment that made me feel like I would have this tremendous regret if I said no. So I said. Let’s roll the dice and see where it goes. And I’m so happy that I said yes to the opportunity.
Peter: So the book that you came out with, um, how long did that take you to write? What was that process like?
I. So
Bianca: I started writing when I was very young and I started writing because I wasn’t a strong communicator in vocalizing my feelings or my thoughts [00:03:00] and so much going on in my head that the only way to get it out was to put it on paper. I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to write something and share something.
I loved the art of storytelling and I used it as a medium to process my thoughts and feelings. But when the show came out. It felt like the biggest thing I had gotten from the show. It was great in a business sense, but it really transformed who I was as a person, as a leader, as a business owner. Because prior to that, going to business school and starting my first company, I thought I needed to be this stoic, strong woman who had it all figured out and was perfect all of the time.
Right? That’s what society wants you to believe, that everything is great and everything’s good, and you just keep chugging through no matter what. Burning in the background. It forced me to confront a lot of the ugly truth about my life and about my story, and embrace vulnerability in a way that I never had before.
[00:04:00] I thought that a lot of these missteps and mistakes were these failures that define me because of the show and having the ability to take ownership over my story, I found a way to reinvent myself in that process by reclaiming my power, by rebuilding my confidence. By using these struggles and setbacks, these pivotal moments to define my character and made me the person I am today.
It was through that that I said, gosh, what an incredible medium for me and a lesson that I learned and a platform that I have been blessed to be to have. That became the moment where I knew that I needed to not just write my notes in my notes app on my iPhone, but actually put pen to paper and get it out there.
It’s been in the process for about three years now.
Peter: Who did you write the book for?
Bianca: So I wrote the book for the young entrepreneur, the woman or man who’s at this transitionary period in their life, not exactly knowing how to shape all of their past [00:05:00] experience, maybe being confused with where they are and how to define their purpose.
Who’s at this influx point, either personally or professionally, or who lacks clarity for what the next steps look like? The book is more of, uh, a practice and workshops for how to dissect all of your life experiences, all of your relationships, and to provide some clarity, so anyone who’s looking to seek that self-help.
The twist to it is that this journey and this process of self-help is not an individual solo mission. It’s about the companions that you bring along with you. Mm-hmm. And how you build this, like introduce this concept of teamship, of how do you co-create life together and how do you have people join you in this process of discovery and expansion and challenging your mindset.
It’s for that person who is looking to take that to the next level and bring people along on the journey with them.
Peter: That’s amazing. So [00:06:00] there were a few concepts in the book that really resonated with me. The first one was this idea of intentions. The name of the book is Mastering Intentions, but this whole idea of intentions and how you formulated this.
Or discovered this intentions versus smart goals was with you. Your goals have to be smart, specific, measurable, attainable. Yes. You know? And so tell us a little bit about intention versus goals in terms of living your life, how you applied it in the book.
Bianca: I have always been someone who is very goal oriented and from a young age, I was constantly writing my New Year’s resolutions or what I wanted to achieve by a certain birthday.
We asked, we are preached with smart goals, put the number to it, make it attainable, make it measurable. And I kept finding myself with, I wanted to lose [00:07:00] X amount of weight. I wanted to see X amount of new countries. I wanna make a certain dollar amount that at the end of the year it was filled with anxiety.
I was filled with frustration that I hadn’t hit that specific number. Now, sometimes I had, but most of the time I was always very ambitious. I wasn’t hitting the number. I was getting bogged down of not being good enough, not being smart enough, not having enough time, this regret, and thanks of, why couldn’t I do it?
Or how do I get to that next threshold? But what I was losing in that process was. The actual growth of who I was becoming as a person, what had I learned from trying to achieve that? How had my mindset morphed? What new friends did I make? Or who did I shake off? And how were my relationships shifting by the person I was becoming?
I was being so narrow minded on trying to achieve the goal, but what were the, all of the other things changing in my world and in my sphere to morph me into the person so I could [00:08:00] reach. That next threshold, next bracket of goals. I needed to shift the way I was goal setting for myself to not focus on the number, but who is the person I need to become, order to achieve that, the things that I want to have in life to feel more fulfilled, to not be bogged down by a number, but instead to feel complete and whole.
Or in the process of becoming and working towards that. It was about 18 months into starting the company that I have now, the master’s division. That I felt incredibly, my business was soaring. In that first 18 months, we’d been ranked as the number one team in New York, New York City, and state number 14 in the nation.
The numbers were great, the agents were great, but I felt isolated. I felt alone. I felt my health was at the worst that it ever had been. I was completely uninspired. I was doing all the things on paper that made it look great. I was achieving all the goals. But I felt hollow and unfulfilled. So I said, okay, I’m gonna scrap that instead of trying to hit [00:09:00] a benchmark in sales.
What do I need to feel? I wanna feel liberated. I wanna feel inspired. I wanna feel more disciplined in my life. And I came up with this idea of focusing on these three intentions every single year for what area in my life was lacking. What did I feel I was not paying enough attention to? What if I focus on, I knew it would have a cascading effect.
On all of the other things, if I was more inspired, I would be a better professional. I would be a better sister. I would be a better family member. I’d be a better boss if I felt more liberated. I would be more creative in my thinking. I would be more willing to take risks. If I was more disciplined in my approach, I would start to have the routines and the practices in order to hit those next benchmarks.
So I focus on the feeling rather than what I wanted the result to be. And that completely morphed and changed everything I was doing. I started deciding I will work with this client, or I will not work with this client. ’cause it aligns with those [00:10:00] values. It aligns with those intentions. Instead of being upset by losing business, or I’m losing money, or I’m saying no to an opportunity, it was, this doesn’t align with the person I want to become.
By saying no to this, it will create more space for something that is more in alignment with the life that I’m trying to lead. That was really where that concept came from. It’s been a few years now, and it’s been, every year I change those three things that I’m focusing on, and it’s been, it’s completely shifted my mindset.
Peter: Wow, that’s amazing. So another concept I picked up in your book was this concept of teamship. Mm-hmm. And I’d like you to share a little bit about what Teamship means to you and how we can apply that.
Bianca: Yeah. So. As I think about our life, we’re not living life on this solo journey. The people that are in our friends, our colleagues, our significant other, our children [00:11:00] shape our attitude.
They shape our actions. They motivate us, inspire us, or pull us down. Instead of thinking about these relationships and calling it the word relationships, I call them our companions because I want it to be all encompassing. In that first year of business, I started realizing you can’t just check your family life at the door.
Your family is your motivation for why you go to work. It is why you either want to leave work or you don’t want to leave work at the end of the day, and it all lives in the same stratosphere. You have to create a place where it all exists together. And so this concept of teamship is focusing on how all of these people co-create life with us, and how do you take ownership over that process of creating the life where you are happy and fulfilled in all of these relationships.
Where this started to shift for me, I was thinking back on my childhood, my friendships and how life had changed when I started my business, and how these dynamics [00:12:00] shifted and changed and I was thinking about there’s so much of the time, there’s this pressure on why won’t other people change, or why won’t they do this?
Or why aren’t they showing up for me? The impetus is on others. But the reality is we can’t control others because they are living their own life with their own motivation, with their own demons that are in the back of their head that they’re trying to cope with. Instead, trying to figure out how do you adjust yourself for all of these other players, all of these other companions in your life.
So you reset expectations. Better communicate so you’re in better alignment. And so that’s where this concept of Te Teamship comes in. It’s how do we pull all of these people in? How do we readjust ourselves so we could be a better partner, a better colleague, a better friend, to all of these companions in our life?
And you take the pressure off of them and put the onus on yourself so you experience the self-growth and then pull them along in that journey with you.
Peter: Got it. [00:13:00] The book is organized into 10 practices. Obviously you want to learn all the 10, you’re gonna have to get the book right. Yeah. I would like to focus on a few, uh, of the practices.
The one that really resonated with me is lead with authenticity. Mm-hmm. But I was struck by the two stories of authenticity you shared. In some respects, both ended well. Some people might say one didn’t end well, but honestly it really did. I was just wondering if you could relate that to in the bigger context of leading with authenticity, what that means to you, and then maybe relate those stories.
Bianca: Totally. I think this goes back to where I was starting earlier of needing to put on this brave, stoic face where things really changed for me. I would say I’d always been a pretty authentic person, but I wasn’t open. People asked me, I was happy to share. What I started realizing is. How [00:14:00] I better started connecting with people.
We all have our own story. Most people are scared to share that story ’cause we’re afraid of how someone will connect with it. It wasn’t until I started realizing the power in my story. Isn’t powerful because of the story. It’s powerful. Because of that, I’m willing to share it with other people and then the connection that I am able to make with them.
And that’s where that authentic leadership and that compassion and that empathy all comes in for how you build stronger relationships, you know? And a lot of that, the show. Gave to me so much. Lean into the vulnerability, tell the story. For some, it’s not going to be for everyone. Some people will not like your story.
They won’t agree with it, and they won’t understand it. Mm-hmm. You know what? Those aren’t your people, and that’s okay. I want to be around people who want to share. They’re not always gonna be comfortable, but they want to share their story or they want to lean into that, or they wanna [00:15:00] figure out what that means.
So authenticity is figuring out. The process of self-discovery is ever evolving and changing. There isn’t an end point because we’re constantly shifting and morphing as humans, as life circumstance happens to us and as we grow. But leaning into what is that process of becoming? How is that shaping me?
How is it impact who I’m connecting with other people and, and sharing that, you know, whether it be on a personal level. I found it first through. Social media building community. Then I started one-on-one. I realized these connections became so much stronger. I realized my business became so much deeper when people just weren’t looking at me as someone who was going to sell their home, but someone who actually cared about the outcome for their family, and that’s very authentic.
I care about that very much because I know what that’s like to have that ripped away from me. And I know what that feels like of that God, when your money is outta your control or you don’t [00:16:00] feel like you have power anymore, helping someone reclaim that power because they know they have someone in their corner.
We all just want people in our corner. We just don’t know exactly where they exist all the time. And the only way to find them is by starting to embrace that authenticity, that vulnerability to build those deeper connections.
Peter: Yep. That’s awesome. Um, one of your other intentions is gratitude. I just heard, I don’t know if you follow Arnold Schwartzenegger at all.
He has something called the pump Club, so mm-hmm. And his lessons for life with Arnold, and they were talking about gratitude. What you mentioned is exactly what they were talking about, which is the regular practices. Um, let’s talk a little bit about how gratitude has impacted you, and maybe the one that I’m thinking of is the gratitude letter.
Bianca: So, to me, it’s easy when life happens to have this, woe is me. [00:17:00] Why did this happen to me?
Peter: Yeah.
Bianca: And I felt that very much. I felt that at many points in time during my life when I was younger, I struggled with depression pretty bad. Why can’t I get out of this? Why? Aren’t I happy? Why don’t I feel connected to people as I got older?
My father, and you’ll read this in my book, he was incarcerated. Why did my family lose all our money? Why was this my story? Why did my dad go to prison? Why do I have to go visit all the time? Why is this happening to me? And then. It wasn’t until much later I started to realize, and I look back on that experience of, wow, I am so grateful that I experienced that mental hardship when I was younger because it has made me so much stronger today, and I know that my mind has the power to be so much stronger because I have gotten out of that.
Because I had been at my darkest, deepest, lowest moments where I didn’t know if I wanted to keep going on, but I did. [00:18:00] Today, no matter what happens, I can relate back to that experience and be grateful that it happened because I know I will survive. I know I will be stronger. I know I will persevere because of that.
The same with my father’s incarceration. Why am I so grateful for that? Because it helped me build a business outta integrity and values out of a strong foundation. When a failed bar business partnership happened, my whole portfolio was stripped from me and I said, wow, that was the next decade of my life that was mapped out.
Wow. How lucky am I to realize that a bad partnership was so much bigger than I had thought? A person you choose to go into business with or decide to marry and build a life with. Is everything. How grateful I am that I had that experience, this practice of gratitude, of learning these lessons at the exact point in time when you did.
They’re there to teach you something. They’re there to shape you, to mold you. They’re making you a so much of a stronger person. [00:19:00] That’s where this gratitude comes from and this gratitude letter of writing, writing out these experiences, being thankful for what you have, reaching out to someone and thanking them for how they have shifted and changed.
Your perspective or your perception of life or a situation, most people don’t take the time to really dig into. My parents’. Divorce was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Like it made my life really, really hard when I was younger. Mm-hmm. I am so fortunate that I know how bad it could be. If you go into a partnership with someone that isn’t right for you, I wanna write them a letter to thank them for that and give them credit.
My mom being a strong, independent woman, and what that gave to me, my father showing me when he started building the business in the beginning, what that taught me and leaning into those experiences, not just looking at them narrow mindedly or single focus, but. Forming the whole picture, the good, the bad, the ugly, what it taught you, and [00:20:00] giving credit where it’s due.
Peter: That’s awesome. So one of the things I took away from the book really was it’s not a lot of quick fixes. I feel like you emphasize this, a roadmap for lifelong growth. I personally identify with. Sticking out in the long run, this business like 13 years ago. One of the things I’ve learned along the way is that, um, continuing to move forward and upward, I don’t necessarily feel I have to double every year, right, or next or whatever.
Uh, the latest entrepreneurs are telling me what I need to do. If you stick at it long enough, you turn around and you look back, you’re like, wow. Have come a long ways. Sure, of course. Your success has been pretty spectacular in terms of your growth of your agency in that. That’s, uh, thank you. But I think
Bianca: that’s so relevant, especially [00:21:00] right now.
A lot of the team that I have and the people I mentor, it’s a much younger generation in their young twenties, and looking for this, is we live on our phones looking for this instant gratification. Everything’s glorified. Everything looks amazing. People live on social media, highlight reels, but that’s not the reality.
Overnight successes take 10 years, sometimes 20 years to make. And it wasn’t just showing up, it was showing up every single day and putting in the work and putting in the action. It’s the, the compounding interest that you experience over time with that forward momentum and progress, you may not always be on the right path.
You may not be always around the right people. But you just keep moving because eventually you will find your way to the right path and the right people. You need the right mindset to recognize opportunities and say yes. But anything that happens in sin or overnight, it’s not sustainable, right? This long-term concept of success and growth, that’s how you build a stable [00:22:00] foundation.
So if you wanna create something that’s unshakeable the same way in business. Is for yourself. You can’t just work on your health for one month and then expect that you’re gonna be healthy. Yeah, it’s a lifelong commitment of this compounding impact over time.
Peter: Yeah, that’s great. If people want to follow you and get in touch or find out more about you and your organization and what you are doing, what are the best ways to to get in touch with you?
Bianca: Definitely on Instagram, because you’ll hear from me far too often. You could find the book on Amazon for mastering intentions, and you could reach me on my website@biancadalessio.com.
Peter: Great. This has been great. I am just so happy to have you on the show today and to hear more about the book.
Bianca: Thank you so much for having me on.
This is awesome.
