If you learn how to live with intention, you can lead with purpose and manifest all of your goals in life. This is exactly what Bianca D’Alessio did, which led to her becoming the number one real estate broker in New York City. She joins J.R. Lowry to share all about her journey centered on authenticity, leading with lasting impact, and discovering gratitude even in her biggest failures. Bianca also talks about her new book, Mastering Intentions, wherein she breaks down daily practices to amplify your own power. Discover how to manage your narrative, be comfortable with vulnerability, and unlock resilience both in business and in life.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/bianca-dalessio

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How To Master Your Intentions And Lead With Purpose And Power, With Bianca D’Alessio

Star Of HBO’s Selling The Hamptons And Top NYC Real Estate Broker

My guest is Bianca D’Alessio, owner of New York’s number one luxury real estate firm and a star of the Max show, Selling the Hamptons. We’re going to be talking about how you can turn intentions into reality as that’s the focus of Bianca’s new book, Mastering Intentions. We’ll peek into the New York real estate market, Selling the Hamptons and more. It should be a fun conversation. Let’s get to it.

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Bianca, welcome. Thanks for joining me on the show.

Thanks for having me here. I’m so excited about our conversation.

Running One Of The Largest Residential Real Estate Teams In The US

I am as well. This is a bit of a different conversation that I normally have. I have not delved too often into the real estate world. We’ll get into that and we’re going to talk about your book as well. Before we do that, give us a quick background on you.

I am a licensed real estate broker based out of New York City. I’ve been in the real estate space for many years now and started my company a few years ago. About the same time, I was starting my business, which is real estate marketing, brokerage, and development. I was approached to be on the TV show, Selling the Hamptons on HBO. I got to play in the space of reality TV and selling real estate.

I now run one of the largest residential real estate teams in the United States and about 30 agents who work for me. I’m managing a $10 billion portfolio, where most of my business is working with real estate developers from site acquisition, building condo towers in New York City, and then helping do the marketing, sales and strategy. My team handles the individual sellouts of all of those units. I had the pleasure of expanding internationally a handful years ago. It’s been awesome to see the business grow and the people that were able to touch and impact by selling homes.

It’s pretty spectacular what you’ve done over the years. What was it that drew you to the industry in the first place?

I have always been interested in real estate because I come from a real estate family, but like any rebellious daughter, I wanted to start my business outside of real estate. I started the nonprofit space because I didn’t know where my first career iterations were going to take me. While I was traveling and doing leadership development with women, everyone’s like, “Get your real estate license. You’re so good with people. You’re going to be so good with sales.” I ended that nonprofit work and that’s what introduced me into the space. It wasn’t until a few years after being in the real estate world that I realized how much I loved new development specifically because it’s a different ball game than traditional brokerage.

Probably in another life I would have loved to be an architect. I love the design process. I’ve done software development. That’s a design process. I’ve done a ton of gardening work. The tough part is the creative or the dreaming part. There’s a lot of scut work to it too, which I’m sure you are very well versed in all of the details and tedious stuff that comes along with the big exciting idea of selling units in a brand-new building.

It’s like putting together a symphony, like all of the individual parts and how they stand on their own. When it all comes together and plays so beautifully. You get to perform it and put it on the market and see the final work. Which takes years and years in the making. It’s one of the most rewarding and incredible things.

When you think back to the early days, right before things took off for you. What were some of the key moments in the first year or two or three of your real estate journey?

My first sales were not great as it is for most salespeople. It was in that first year of hustling and grinding. I’m working seven days a week but not knowing exactly what I was doing, I realized the biggest gap that I had in my business was a confidence gap. That became a light bulb moment of, in order to become the best salesperson, I need to figure out who Bianca is and how she fits into the space and how she can best connect with people because I was never one of those people.

I was like, fake it till you make it. I hate that saying entirely. There’s something about that feels very inauthentic. Authentic people are the best salespeople. That became a very pivotal moment of pulling back and focusing on the educational component of how I learn the most and how I work on my confidence. A few years later as I was figuring out what excites me most about the industry, I realized that it didn’t need to be the traditional path because I loved the excitement of building projects, but it wasn’t the excitement of the flashy end product.

It was the strategy that went into why and how we build buildings the way that we do. How do we connect to the home with people’s aspirations and dreams for how they want to live, grow and build their family? How do you develop a marketing strategy and a marketing platform behind it to create that connection years before there’s even a product to see? That became another light bulb moment of, how do I focus on strategically positioning, understanding the landscape of what exists and the competitive environment we’re in?

As well as positioning ourselves and understanding pipeline inventory for the future for how we tell and share something that’s different that will exist at X, Y, and Z later date. Those were a few key components then there were a lot of other light bulb moments from starting my business, to working with people, to managing people, to motivating salespeople that shift and transform my leadership journey along the way.

What were some of the key things that you learned about leadership in the course of growing from being an individual real estate agent to being the person running a business?

What I had to figure out on my own was that you get a lot of advice when you’re starting this business from other people. The reality is there is no road map and no one has it all figured out. Once I figured out what that meant for me, the most important thing is I’m not going to have all of the answers all of the time. I’m going to work to try with my team but to best position ourselves, to best set ourselves up for success and promising that we’ll never give up.

Also, learning this concept of failure and the stigma around failure is like, “That’s a bad thing.” I had to reshape my relationship with failure because I now look at failure as, if I am not failing it means I’m not leveling up and I’m not trying hard enough. The only time you stop experiencing failure in life is once you’ve gotten comfortable and stable. You’re just doing the same thing over and over again. That’s not who I want to be and that’s not how I want to leave my team.

I needed to change everyone’s relationship with, when we make mistakes, how we learn from them, how we dive deeper into them, and what each mistake and each failure teach us about not just our creative ability or logistical or operational excellence but us as people. The way that we’re connecting, the way that we’re experiencing our work and to take it one step further, how do people and my team have a relationship and a connection with the work that we do, but how it impacts their family. How do the things that we’re learning in the workplace shape who we are as partners, as parents, as children and as siblings. That’s where you start to create so much more connection with your people in the workplace with the work that they are doing.

What Separates Good Agents From The Bad

You talked earlier about motivating salespeople. I’ve had mixed experiences with realtors in my life. I’m sure most people have. What do you think separates the great agents? I’ve worked with some great agents, but what do you think separates them from the ones who are not as good?

People who are chasing a transaction and are very transactional are the worst agents. They are focus on the end goal of the experience of that specific transaction. Not the experience with the client. Being client forward, focusing on the relationship and the longevity is hands down one of the most important things for what value and what service do you give to a client. How are you not looking at it as one experience? Still in my career now, when a client is unhappy, I need to look at that as a representation of me for what I did. Did I not communicate something properly? How do I shift and change that now?

Many times, agents will throw their hands up like, “The deals done. It’s over and it doesn’t matter.” It’s the wrong attitude. How do you work with someone for life? This is a highly personal experience. Buying a home is very personal. Whether it is someone buying their dream home for their family or an investment property that’s going to bring them income. That will then shape their lifestyle and how they live, it’s personal.

We need to treat it with that same vein in that same regard. That becomes part of different agents’ experiences for how they start to make money and shape their career, because there will be ups and downs. If you lead with authenticity and you’re a client relationship first and you recognize the value proposition that you are bringing to that client. That’s what you need to lean into and not try to be someone that you’re not.

For almost everybody, it’s the biggest purchase they make. Unless you’re in the private jet or private Island crowd. It’s going to be the biggest purchase you make. You want to make sure you’re working with somebody that has your interest in mind.

It doesn’t matter being price agnostic. It does not matter if it’s a $3,000 a month rental or a $300,000 purchase or a $3 million deal or a $30 million deal. I treat every single client with the same level of attention, respect, communication, and responsiveness. That needs to be the mindset. It doesn’t matter where they are in the price scale. That is your brand of who you are as a person and as a professional.

We’re going to talk a little bit more about your book, personal setbacks and adversity that you’ve had to deal with in your life. Has the business just been up and up, or were their moments where you felt like you were pretty close to breaking?

I would say, on the sales side to the outside world, it has continued to be up and up. Despite there’s been some major seismic market adjustments and reactions where we’ve needed to recalibrate. Between January and March of 2020, I lost $40 million of inventory that was in contract. No way we’re moving forward. New York City was a ghost town.

It became a moment for me to re-pivot my business, “Let me move to the Hamptons. Let’s enter a new market and all of these other things.” Now with the way we’re seeing interest rates and the political environment in the US, it’s not the best real estate market. Where I have been able to reposition myself with diversification and growing my team in different asset classes and different markets and locations to hedge against that.

Holistically business, it’s continued to go up but there’s been a lot of times that we’ve needed to repivot. We needed to pivot and be agile. That’s, again, what’s shaped the leadership journey of, you can’t just be all in on one thing all of the time. The best leaders need to be able to move and shift and change as their business is telling them to.

It’s a metaphor for broader life. You’ve got to be adaptable. You’ve got to change given the circumstances and certainly the COVID. I’m not an expert to be very clear but the real estate markets have been dislocated in a lot of ways. COVID’s had ripple effects that have led the suburbs very hot and we’re still feeling that.

We went into a period where the cities were hallowed out. Some of the cities are trying to get themselves unhallowed out. I’m over in London, where it is completely turned around and the real estate prices in the core of the city are through the roof. It’s unbelievable how much they’ve gone up since the beginning of the year. All of these ripple effects from, in this case, the pandemic but also economics, interest rates, politics, all the things that happened. You have to continue to adapt.

That’s my marker but that’s any market. That’s any business. There’s always going to be disruptors with technology, rules and regulations, labor and all of these things. They’re always going to have disruptors in a business. It’s just how we respond to them and how we use and leverage them to think more creatively and outside the box.

Intention: There will always be disruptors in the world of business. What matters is how you respond to them and use them to think more creatively.

Writing The Book Mastering Intentions

Come back to real estate. I want to give you a chance to talk about your book, Mastering Intentions. Congratulations on getting that to market. What inspired you to write it?

Growing up, I was not so communicative. I didn’t know how to vocalize and verbalize what I was thinking so I started writing. Writing has always been a form of therapy and process for me. It was a few years ago that as my business was growing, I was like, “Now is my time to write a book.” The book started as a real estate sales book because I thought that was the story that I needed to tell as I was growing this team so rapidly.

It was very quickly that I realized when I was writing that the message was so much bigger than that. It wasn’t just how to become the best salesperson or how to sell real estate. It was how to become the best person, how to move and mold with the adversity and the resilience that you need to experience in life. That has been what has shaped me to become the best salesperson and leader. It’s been a long time in the running, but I’m so happy and excited about the final product, Mastering Intentions. It’s written as 10 Practices to Amplify Your Power and Lead with Lasting Impact. Every chapter has a unique and specific practice.

You could read the book in its entirety or you could say, “I want to focus on building confidence.” What is the chapter about confidence? Tell and teach me. It’s written as part memoir and part storytelling, but with very applicable practices and exercises for the reader to experience to be self-reflective in their own journey where they are in life and to help them identify what they need to use and take from it for where they want to go.

There’s a lot of great stories that you tell in the book, but was there a particular experience that shaped the book’s central message?

A lot changed for me when I was cast to be on the TV show. It was on HBO. Prior to then, the same way I was saying I used to write behind closed doors. I had been raised and taught to be this stoic, strong Italian woman where nothing was ever wrong, family first, and the way that you present yourself to the world. You had to be unbreakable all the time. That’s the message that I had in leadership and in life. It’s hurt relationships and hurt business, then the TV show came to be.

At that point in time, I was very scared to be on the show because I had a lot going on in my personal life. I was hesitant, but I knew that I was going to have this regret if I didn’t say yes. To take it one step further, I had this black cloud that was following me and I was afraid to be revealed. My producer at the time when we were just starting filming, said, “Bianca, is the time to tell your story. You could shape it the way that you want, or you could let everyone else write their own narrative.”

I didn’t exactly know how I was going to tell that. For the first time, this weight had been lifted off of me. I was like, “Maybe I can take control of my own narrative. I can share my story from my perspective, versus what everyone else thinks that it is.” I was also like, “What an incredible message that is,” because now I started practicing vulnerability and leading with vulnerability. All of a sudden, I started to see so many things change for me, the way that I was connecting with my employees, with my clients, and my family relationships started to change.

I didn’t have to be this strong exterior and feel like gooey on the inside trying to figure it out. I could lead with life as messy, life is confusing and life is hard. We’re all just figuring it out together. That became a much different message and that became a core tone throughout the book of vulnerability and authenticity and experiencing how you become more resilient in each person’s own life journey.

Mastering Intentions: 10 Practices To Amplify Your Power And Lead With Lasting Impact

Everybody goes through struggles. There’s a lot of pressure to show your perfect side. That’s true in the corporate world and I know that’s also true in the real estate world. It’s true when you’re on a TV show, but at the same time, it’s not reality. The point you made a minute ago about your producer saying to you. I remember reading this in the book, thinking, “This is an important thing that people need to understand.” Even if they’re not on a TV show and even if they don’t have a big social media following as you do.

You can tell your own story or somebody else can tell it for you. If you’re not managing the narrative of who you are, what you’re about and what your why is and all of those things, people will fill in the blanks. They may feel it in a way that you like and they may feel it in a way that you don’t like. You have a lot better chance of getting them to understand who you are if you tell them. That’s the thing that a lot of people don’t understand. Even people who are working away in the corporate world.

They don’t understand when they don’t get the promotion they want or aren’t picked for some new job at another company. There may be this narrative around them that they have managed and they’ve missed an opportunity for it. They look at the world and go, “The world’s not fair.” The world isn’t fair, but you can make it a little bit more fair for you by managing your own story.

We all have our own story to tell. We are all a sum of all of our experiences, all of our major wins and successes and all of the pain points. It has shaped us to become the exact incredible unique human being that we are now. There’s power in that. With everything professionally and personally. It’s figuring out how each person can articulate their own story and sum up all of those experiences to connect with people differently to get the promotion, to better connect with their colleague at work or their boss. There’s so much power and storytelling.

Finding Gratitude In Your Lowest Points

You have your own background and you bring this up in the book. I’m sure it came out on the TV show. Your father went to prison and that was a very difficult thing. You went from having a loving family environment to, “One of my parents is going to go to jail.”

That was the Black cloud that I was talking about a few minutes ago that was looming over me. In my mid-twenties, my father was convicted of financial fraud. I had grown up my whole life with my father being a hero figure. In my mind, I had grown up in a well-off family and literally overnight had lost everything. I was starting to grow my business at that point in time. Every dollar I’d ever made I invested into his business and into his projects. Everything that I had worked for was wiped out. My whole family also invested and everything that had worked for me was wiped out.

To take it one step further, that was the financial component, the emotional and the psychological component. A feeling completely out of control. Everything unraveled. Not knowing how to reframe and reshape this person that my father now was in my mind while also trying to protect him and protect my family. The confusion of protecting him and what that would look like to the outside world but then also knowing I needed to do that for my grandparents and my siblings. It was a very confusing time.

I look back on it now and I’m so grateful for that experience because it has changed so much for me. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked toward something. You could lose everything overnight. The biggest gift that you could ever have in your whole life is your health and the people that you love. Never taking that for granted.

One step further, the business that you lead and the reputation you put out to the world. You are your brand. You are your business. People want to work with you because of the reputation that you bring to the table. All of those things have shaped who I am so much that I don’t know if I would have gotten those lessons if that didn’t happen. There’s a chapter in the book about gratitude. That is the gratitude that I express for that experience, because it has had a major impact on me.

No one would wish that upon themselves, and I’m sorry you had to go through that, but your point is quite valid. There’s a lot to be said for being battle tested. Whether it’s on the sports field or in the corporate boardroom or wherever. Having some failure is an important part of growth. Dealing with adversity and proving to yourself you can get through it. The next time it happened, you’re like, “I’ve been here before. I can deal with this.”

It became the track record. It becomes the proven experience for how and why you can and you will.

How To Live In Alignment And With Intention

Talk a little bit about intention. How do you define intention and the way that you wanted to weave that into the central part of the book?

Intentionality. We always say, “Did you set your intention? What is your intention?” To me, intentionality is this mind and body connection of living in alignment. It’s not just one goal. There’s so many people that I talked to that like their goals, their trajectory to live with intention is to create the alignment within yourself of the way that you’re moving in the world and the goals that you’re setting out. The way that you’re living through them, the people you’re surrounding them with is a much more holistic approach for life.

Why did this book become such a core message in the book for me? It’s looking at all of life’s stepping stones, obstacles, experience and interactions. This is all what is shaping the intention for how I show up now. The way that I’m paving, creating. communicating and expressing, how, why and where I am and what has given me that power. Again, as I said, we all have that. It’s a matter of going back. I’m a firm believer because life moves so fast that we don’t have time to process how we have been shaped by these experiences.

The book goes back to day one like, who you are, what family environment you were brought up in, and what core values you were raised with. That is why you align with them now or why you align with something different because something has shaped you along the way to tell you that that wasn’t right. Looking backwards in order to look forward and then recognizing it is all within your power and your control to shape it at any single point in time. Whenever you want to change course, that is within your power.

Do you want to give us the three intentions that are central to the book?

In the book, it’s written with three different intentions. The first is activation, so looking backwards. The second is amplifying. It’s how you take it to the next level for you. The last part is leading with intention. It’s how you get the people around you to band with you. Many books that I read and so many self-help books focus on who I am and they forget how to bring other people along on the journey. That’s the last part of that book. It’s how you make sure that the people you are co-creating life with, you’re bringing along on the journey with you.

If you have this plan to move forward with intention and work on yourself but you’re not bringing your spouse with you. You’re going to keep moving and they’re going to stay stagnant. Something is going to change along the way. The same with your kids and your professional space. It’s figuring how you bring those people along, help them through the process and work through that journey together.

Bianca’s Most Powerful Daily Practices

There’s ultimately ten practices in the book. There’s a bunch of exercises. What’s maybe 1 or 2 or 3 are your favorites? What do you particularly apply in your life that’s made a difference for you?

In my daily practices, self-talk is one of the most important things. I do it every single day to start my day. I do it multiple times throughout the day. I believe that our brain and our mind is the biggest controlling force. It will set us free or hold us back 100%. The way that you talk about yourself and to yourself, no one’s going to be a bigger cheerleader for you than you. You need to talk positively to yourself. Most people talk negatively. You got to reframe. You have to shape that.

Gratitude is super important for how you are reframing the experiences that happen to you and being grateful for what they are teaching you. It doesn’t mean that everything is always going to be positive. Similarly to what we were just talking about before. When this all first happened with my father, I was very much in the lowest me. “Why did this happen?” “This wasn’t my life.” “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.” “Why my family?” “Why?” All these questions are like, “The universe did this to me.” It took years.

I don’t want to minimize it by any means. It took years for me to realize, “I am grateful that happened. This is why and this is how it has shaped me.” Again, so much of this is reclaiming that control over your narrative. I would say those are the two biggest things but I’m a very avid manifester. I believe in the practice of manifestation. If you haven’t gotten the sense from this conversation yet, controlling your destiny and your power is crucial.

We all have the power to do that. That is what manifestation does for me. It’s putting myself in the acting as if, who am I going to be when that happens to me because it will happen. I don’t know when but that thing that I’m seeking in the future will happen. I will become that person. That’s been very important, being prepared for when it happens.

I was at a birthday party. It was a Friday night and it was somebody’s 40th birthday. They happened to have it over here in London. A bunch of people loosely connected around the table. The birthday woman said, “I want to ask everybody. What are you going to manifest?” That was like literally a moment. I was like, “You are a millennial. I am a Gen X. That is not ever a question I would ask at a birthday party.” Everybody around the table had answered that question that night and it was interesting what people said.

I love that. I’m taking that at my next birthday party.

How did you feel after you did that?

It’s still a little weird for me.

Manifesting is not for everyone but there is no doubt that when you bring something to the forefront of your mind and you’re thinking about it. You start to see opportunities differently just because of where it’s sitting in your brain capacity. When you start to focus on something, bring energy and attention to something, you’ll start to realize things like, “This could be the conduit for how that happens or this may be the connection that I need or the person I needed to talk to.” You start to date conversations in relationships a little bit differently.

What do you want your readers to take away from the book? Especially somebody who’s beginning their career Journey or somebody who’s an entrepreneur like you?

The most important thing is to recognize you have the power to do whatever you want in your life. It doesn’t matter what setbacks you’ve experienced or what hardship. That’s part of your story and there’s a beauty and an authenticity to that. Lean into that and recognize you can shape it, use it and write your own narrative and change your story at any point in time.

Selling The Hamptons And The Reality Of Reality TV

That’s very important. It comes back to managing the narrative point that we were talking about a little bit early in the conversation. I would be remiss if we did not spend some time talking about Selling the Hamptons, so we’re going to talk about that. I would like to come back to the real estate market of personal care, but let’s talk about reality. How did that opportunity come about for you? Why do you think that they cast you?

The show came to be at that very weird transitionary moment where I had moved my business from New York City to the Hamptons. They had fully cast the show. I was the last person to be cast on it, which the world of reality TV casting is a whole other conversation.

There are four of you, right?

There are five of us on season one and seven of us on season two. They were very specific in who they were looking for in this team environment of wanting to cast a strong female lead who had this leadership experience and had this great book of business. I was very fortunate that I had such a robust book of business at that point in time. It was funny because again, you go through these parts of your leadership journey. I had to struggle with this imposter syndrome of like, “Me, a leader? That’s what you want me to be on the show?” I may have been that in real life, but now to all of a sudden be that on TV. It was a very surreal experience, but it was an incredible opportunity.

As you said earlier, it’s a little bit hard to pass up those opportunities when they come by because they can be such a huge boost to your profile and, in your case, business. You have to make sure that the show is being run in good faith, which not all reality shows are. What else have you learned from being in a reality TV show?

I pull it back to real estate, the art of production, the way that we showcase homes and the way we walk a buyer through a space. I had always done that like, “Here’s my property tour. This is how I’m representing it.” Now, how do I take that further into the way that I am storytelling my properties, my client’s journey?” I find this, too. I’m so in the weeds with what I do that I know everything about it but I now need to talk to an audience who knows nothing about the product.

How do you shape that sales experience? How do you bring a building or an apartment or a house to life through the audience? What do they want to see? Not necessarily always the nitty-gritty, a little bit of drama and the glitz and the glam. The actual production aspect and component of the show was fascinating. It was a huge benefit to my real estate business.

It’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about the fact that they help you become a better real estate agent and tell the story about them because that’s what they’re doing on the show.

A tour that would take an hour in real time. How do you truncate that down to 30 seconds or a minute to make sure you’re capturing all the selling points where you’re keeping the audience engaged? You’re looking at the metrics like super cool analytics and data that I had never thought about before.

I’m sure it also helps you in terms of, to your point, distilling down and getting the sound bite out there. Also, make sure that you lead with the sound bite or get it in there very early, so that they get the core message even if they aren’t listening for the full hour or whatever time it is. What else would surprise people about the production that happens behind the scenes?

Reality TV really is reality. We were not given a script. I had so much of it. It relies on the casting and the personalities. I can’t say I was fully prepared for that because I wouldn’t describe myself as being an overly dramatic person but the drama does make good TV. The well-roundedness of how we all came together was interesting.

The most fascinating thing that I didn’t know is that every two minutes of television time is four hours of filming. It was an insane amount of production and filming and nine cameras at a time from every single angle. It’s super impressive for how it all comes together and what the season ends up looking like at the end. By the way, I didn’t get any sneak peak. I saw it for the first time when it was on TV.

You talked about how important being authentic is to you. You also just mentioned makes for good TV. How do you balance that authenticity with the entertainment side when you’re in a show like that?

It was like dancing a fine line but what I realized and what I came out of it from and of all of the things I went down and I was best at and maybe not as best at. I am an incredible real estate broker and I love leading with authenticity. In reality TV, I probably was not as dramatic as what the TV wanted me to see, but that was core to my brand. I was very happy and I’m still very proud of that. I made that distinction early on like, I’m not a naturally dramatic person or someone who fights with people. I’m not going to do it on camera just for good TV or ratings.

Where I’m going to focus myself on is the professional business and the professional nature of bringing drama through expensive homes. My clients who inherently have dramatic stories and I’m sharing their stories of what it takes to build a business to who owns a $40 million house in the Hamptons. That’s the story and the drama I want to be around. That was where I found my comfortable place of being on reality TV.

How did being on the show affect your business or the way that your clients look at you?

What it did phenomenally is create a position for me in the market, of branding myself as not the expert that I was before I was on the show, but now having this platform, this exposure and this reach. Again, a lot of this is leveraging these different opportunities for what they can become. I have a column in Money Magazine, my TV appearances and how I speak to data and analytics and trends.

I’m positioning myself as a market expert in the data because that’s what I love to do. The TV shows are a great exposure because it’s a lot of people. How have I now used that to fit into a space in a vertical in my business, where I fit and sit very comfortably. Speaking, talking, coaching and training is my business and my brand.

Working With Developers In Real Estate

Come back to the real estate business if you will. How much of what you do is single family? How much of its multi-unit buildings or commercials?

Zero commercials. Ninety percent of my business is working with developers. Building buildings and then selling the individual condo units. Freestanding single-family homes are probably 2% because I’m in a vertical city. The remainder is working with buyers and sellers on an individual basis. The overwhelming majority of these development projects. I’ve worked on 80 development projects in New York City, Brooklyn, Queens, and the greater New York City Market. It’s been an incredible volume of business and a robust portfolio of all different assets and property types but all in the condo market.

When you come into these projects, you’ve got architects, the construction firm, and the real estate developer that’s financing this. How early do you get involved? How much is it shaping the marketing of how you’re going to position this building and the units? That’s shaping what the architect and what the developer is thinking. I’m just curious.

Earlier in my career, I got involved in a lot of projects that were takeovers. Projects that have been on the market with other brokers that lost enthusiasm and stopped selling then we came in and repositioned. The most successful projects that I get involved with are from day one. Before a developer even buys a site, because again I focus on the relationship, not on the transaction. If a site does not work for my client, we pass.

If the numbers don’t work, we passed. Once we’ve identified these are the margins and this site will be profitable. Who are we building this for? Who is our key demographic? Are they growing families? Are they young couples? Are they downsizers who were looking for ease and convenience? It’s understanding from day one who is our target buyer and that demographic informs every decision about how we build and design buildings from the floor plans, the layouts, the finishes and the amenities. That helps us with the storytelling.

The earlier we get involved, the more successful the project because we know exactly who the buyer is that we’re building it for. We are making every decision with that buyer in mind. Every piece of marketing is in alignment with that. When we come to the market, there are no surprises. We know exactly who we’re selling the building to and who we’re speaking to. That amplifies the conversion tremendously.

Intention: The earlier a real estate agent gets involved, the more successful the project is.

I would imagine having that coherence. People reading or watching this episode would think about places where they’ve been, where they look at and say, “You’re trying to sell a million-dollar condos in a market where nothing sells for more than $600,000 or you’re trying to sell low end units in a high-end area.” You’ve got things that don’t fit or out of keeping with the demographics in some other shape or fashion. We’ve all seen those situations. You look at them going. Those things are not going to sell.

Fortunately, my projects are not those but they do exist out there.

You point about having it all hang together is so important.

Creating alignment through the whole process.

Focusing On Historical Data And Pipeline Information

How do you approach the metrics? You’ve talked about data and analytics at multiple points in the conversation. You’ve talked about the numbers having to work. What are the things that you really zero in on that help you decide whether a project is going to be successful or not? Whether you’re executing against that success once you get the go button.

In the development space, there’s two big things that I’m looking at. It’s, what’s the historical data and what is this telling us, what projects have been on the market, how have they performed and what’s performed best. Not holistically, but how are we breaking down. What specific floor plan, how that outperform all their floor plans in the building. What about it shifted and changed? Was it that it sold faster or sold for more money? Why did you do so well? Was it because of the amenities? Was it because of the finishes? Was it because of the actual room dimensions or the closet space?

We get that granular on historical data. Now, we look at what is the current landscape now, how are things currently performing, and are they experiencing similar trends. The next very vital piece of information is, what is the pipeline information telling us. If we’re looking at a piece of land now in New York, we’re not looking at a building for 2 years to 3 years to 4 years. What is the historical information telling us? what is slated to be built? What are they building? How are they using that historical data to inform that? How do we make sure that we step into the market where we are following what has worked?

We differentiated enough from what is going to be on the market in the future. If the future people are building the same product that already worked and we’re competing with them directly. How are we going to outperform them? We need to be slightly different, have an edge and have that intention from day one of knowing exactly who our buyer is. Also, making sure that is how we’re different from the guy next door.

What are you seeing in the market now? 2025 buildings that are going to come on the market in 3 or 4 years out. What are the trends?

What’s very important is flexible spaces, utility spaces. In the US, we have an affordability crisis. There is no doubt about that. Construction is going to keep getting more expensive. People need to be thinking about for new builds. How do you have more longevity as people are working up to be able to enter the market? We see rates starting to come back down. In 2025, if you ask me, I would say stop thinking about buying your forever home. Buy your now home and then add to it over time because you simply couldn’t afford it.

With where we are, it’s supply and demand. For builders who are coming into the market. We need to be thinking about larger, more flexible spaces where people could have more longevity in their home and then creating a community around where we are for, what our family looks like in this space and what the conveniences and the amenities are. That’s very important.

I think about my kids. I’ve got one owner and two renters. The owners were in a townhouse for a long time and they just moved to a single-family home throughout a New Jersey. Roughly speaking, New Jersey is crazy. Five years after the pandemic, the houses on the market for X and they sell for 1.3 times X because the pricing is purposely designed to create bidding wars. There’s not a lot of inventory, and it’s gotten even worse in 2025 just with interest rates rising. Everybody’s afraid to move. Nobody can move out of there now home and into their forever home. It’s got to make the market a little bit tougher for you because it’s less on.

It makes it tough, honestly, because we still sell. It’s the conversations of like the difference of like, wants, needs and compromise. I’m a very optimistic and a very positive person. I believe in the real estate market, but I’m also a realist about what we are seeing in the economy and how you best set up your family for financial stability and growth while not compromising on everything else. There’s a trade-off to all of these decisions.

Those conversations are a lot different now than they were before the pandemic. Before the pandemic, it was looking at real estate as a 3-to-5-year hold and maybe a 7-year hold. Now with where prices are and what people need to do in order to get into the market. There is not that same assurance that they will be able to transact or trade up in the next few years. They need to be comfortable on what that growth plan looks like in this space and how it works for a family.

Bianca’s Favorite Travel Destinations

Switching gears, you were a passionate traveler. What have been your favorite places to travel? What’s still on a visit list?

I lived in New Zealand for a few months. That is one of the most unique and cool and interesting places for natural landscapes if you like nature.

It is.

Have you been?

Yes.

Where in New Zealand where you?

Top to bottom. On a crazy two-week trip.

It’s so different from the mountains to the river to hiking to kayaking and the fjords. It’s such a cool place. I love New Zealand. Where do I want to go next? I want to do more of Central and South America. I went to Argentina a few years ago. I hiked Machu Picchu, and I feel like I’ve done so much of Europe and Asia. Central and South America are next on my list for more explorations.

I would like to see more of Africa while I’m living North of it, because it’s obviously easier to get there from living in London than it would be from the States. When I come back to the US, at some point, I will do more of Central and South America. I’ve only been to Ecuador. That’s the only place in South America. There’s lots still to see. Sometimes, it gets me in trouble because I had a hiking accident in Kyrgyzstan, and broke an upper arm. It’s part of the adventure. It’s life sometimes. It doesn’t go so well for you.

We still take them anyway.

Bianca’s Plans To Build More Communities

What else is ahead for you, Biance? What are the things that have you excited? What do you want out of your business? What are you going to manifest in the next few years?

My real estate business is going to continue to grow, but I’m looking to build more community as I’ve entered the next transition of my career phase. It’s like, how do we amplify? How do we build more people around us like-minded individuals? I’m doing a lot of speaking. I’m manifesting more speaking and more corporate training and programs to build that community. That’s the next exciting part of the journey and chapter for me. I’m heavily focusing on building my ecosystem around that.

It sounds like you’ve got a lot going on. Certainly, over the years, you’ve built a good business platform and social media platform that gives you the ability to create that community that you’re describing.

It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Any last advice or lessons you want to leave our audience with?

No. I appreciate you having me on and having this opportunity. I want to let everyone know, no matter where you are at any point in time in your career. I feel like so often, we have these hero badges on where we don’t feel comfortable starting with vulnerability or authenticity because it’s scary. Know that everyone else is scared, too. It’s a practice. You need to learn a skill set. Everyone is going through something and you’re not alone. It does get better. You have people around you who care. You have to be your biggest cheerleader because there’s great stuff ahead.

Lots of great lessons there. Thank you for that and for doing the show with me. It was great to meet you

Thank you for having me. This is awesome.

You take care.

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Thanks to Biance for joining me to discuss her new book, Mastering Intentions, her work in the New York real estate market and her role as a reality TV star as well as her thoughts on leadership and entrepreneurship. As a reminder, this episode is brought to you by PathWise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career, join the PathWise Community. You can also sign up on our website for our newsletter. Follow us on social media at LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks.

Important Links

• Bianca D’Alessio on Instagram
• Bianca D’Alessio on Facebook
• Mastering Intentions: 10 Practices to Amplify Your Power and Lead with Lasting Impact
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram
• PathWise on TikTok

About Bianca D’Alessio

Bianca D’Alessio is the star of HBO Max’s acclaimed series Selling The Hamptons. Recognized as the top real estate broker in both New York City and state, Bianca founded and directs one of the top real estate brokerage teams in the United States, and she manages a $10 billion international real estate portfolio.

Having rebuilt her career through adversity, Bianca attributes her success to the art of mastering intention. She emphasizes the vital synergy between personal branding and business culture, advocating for the transformative power of manifestation, mindset control, and resilience in achieving exceptional success across all facets of life.

Bianca now shares her journey and insights in Mastering Intentions:10 Practices to Amplify Power and Lead with Lasting Impact, where she delves into practical strategies and life-changing principles that empower individuals to unlock their full potential and thrive in today’s competitive landscape.

Bianca is an alumna of Babson College. She is regularly featured on Forbes, Fox, Medium, the New York Times, Inman, and The Real Deal. She is often interviewed by Fox Business News, CNN, Bloomberg, Mansion Global, and Forbes, and she has a weekly real estate column in Money Magazine.