Building Unbreakable Brands

Meghan Lynch (00:00):
On today's show, we will talk about how standing firm and your own values and identity can be a source of strength for your team and for the longevity of your business. Do you think they can learn anything from a kid?

Henry Lynch (00:17):
I know things better than you. I'm kind of an expert. Okay.

Meghan Lynch (00:24):
Welcome to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast where we talk to people who are growing businesses with a generational mindset. I'm Meghan Lynch. I'm an advisor to family businesses and founder of Six-Point, a brand strategy agency that helps generational brands honor their past while evolving for the future. And I will say I've been really excited about this conversation for several months. I'm here with the awesome Andrea Bordenca who owns a suite of businesses with a common thread of culture and belonging. And open and wise are two words that I use to describe every interaction and every conversation we've had. And so I know this one's, oh my gosh, wow. I know this one's going to be no different and is going to be just full of lots of good stuff. So welcome to the show, Andrea.

Andrea Bordenca (01:13):
Oh, it's awesome to be here. I've been looking forward to this too, when you sent the availability. I'm like, what's the fastest? I think this was the first available. So yeah, I'm really, really grateful and excited to be here too with you, Megan.

Meghan Lynch (01:26):
Thank you so much. And so I'd love to just start unpacking a little bit this idea of running a suite of businesses with a common thread of culture and belonging. So I'm wondering if you could just talk to us a little bit about the various businesses that you lead.

Andrea Bordenca (01:44):
Yes, sure. So the thread of that came to be from me getting a coaching certification back in 2010 when I started to coach adults, successful adults, like on paper, make a lot of money. They're high in their organization. A common theme that came up was from childhood and some either perfectionism or really trying to be a good student, people pleaser, those types of things. So there were parts of them that they needed to heal. And what I identified in myself as being in the coach's role was I started to do exploration around myself, and I recognized that growing up, I didn't feel like I belonged. I didn't feel like I had my own voice. And so that's why it's important to me that everything I do is very intentional and it's about helping people to feel and find their value and their grounding that is theirs. Not like losing footing because they're trying to lean on somebody else or trying to move away from somebody else or something else, but to actually feel comfortable, unapologetic and authentic in who they are because it's important for me to feel that way too.

Meghan Lynch (03:06):
I love that, and especially when you're talking about people who may be the founder of their business or may have stepped into a leadership role and they're trying to fill somebody else's shoes, that feeling of not being enough or not being grounded in who you are can be really unsettling, I would imagine.

Andrea Bordenca (03:28):
Yes. Especially that second generation owner. Part of me too that came in strong.

Meghan Lynch (03:35):
Yeah. So when you talk about these various businesses, what are the businesses that you're involved in?

Andrea Bordenca (03:45):
So I own a building that's in Hadley, Massachusetts, and it's called Venture Way Collaborative. The street it's on is called Venture Way. I add the collaborative, it's Venture Way Collaborative, LLC, because it's a space that I want people to feel connected to others. So we rent it. There are people that have rent like every day long-term rentals, and there's a community kitchen. So you'll often find people who are renting, hanging out in the kitchen, just chatting. We also rent it to people to use for retreats, offsites meetings, organizations, that types of thing. We also have yoga there, Tai Chi. So really it's a true collaborative community space. It's also where my other business DESCO that I own, that I'm the second generation owner of is headquartered. And what DESCO does that stands for, Diagnostic Equipment Service Corporation, desco is we service primarily healthcare technology. So it's the headquarters. We have a place for people to practice and to work on medical devices there. Most of our work is actually going to the hospital site.

(05:04):
So we are headquartered there. And so we've got Desco, Venture Way, Lead Yourself Youth is also something that I founded in 2016, which is all about bringing that sense of belonging through developing an internal compass. What does that mean? It's like nervous system regulation. How can we tune in and attune to our nervous system so we can be fully present, fully alive? That came from me working through addiction, alcoholism, depression. I had a whole host of stuff that I navigated into my young adult life and my kids were navigating some stuff too. So I founded this to work alongside my kids. Two of them are adults now to help them find their place, their voice, their value that's ongoing. We offer professional development to educators and parents, and we also work with students directly. And the last is generative consulting. So I bring all of the knowledge, all of the coaching, all of my leadership experience from the last 20-plus years, and I consult with other organizations.

(06:16):
My sweet spot is working with women and non-binary leaders with their teams. The tendency for women and non-binary leaders is, and research has shown that women tend to be questioned more and feel like they need to prove more. So my focus is working with women and non-binary leaders to bring their team in to share the distribution of work, to be clear on boundaries, on self-care. What does it mean to work together as a team with one person, as the person who's orchestrating it rather than the person picking up the slack. So yeah, that's sort of the synthesis of all of the different parts of the businesses that I named.

Meghan Lynch (07:05):
That's amazing. I want to just dig a little bit deeper into this work with teams. I feel like that that's so important that we tend to live in a society that really puts forward this idea of this visionary entrepreneur who's kind of doing it on their own and there's not a whole lot of airtime for the people behind them or how they work with others. But I'm curious if you think that that concept of the solo entrepreneur is damaging to business leaders, or do you think that there is some truth there of the weight that some of these founders are carrying or these visionary leaders are carrying?

Andrea Bordenca (07:49):
I think it depends on the intention and the goal of each leader. I don't think there's a right or wrong or a best or worst way. I think of my husband as an example, he's an artist. He paints like eighties toys, very vibrant, does commissions, and he is the artist. He's the marketer, he sells it. He does the shows, and that works for him. So I think it depends. I think we get to a place from my own experience, when I ran Desco as a small business for many years, the structure that my dad had that I followed was everybody reported up to him. So I had everybody reporting up to me, and at the time, we had about 40 employees or 35 employees. That's too much. I remember him on the payphones when we'd be on vacation checking in. He wasn't fully able to step out of the business.

(08:45):
So I just adapted to that. And then I learned over time through different learnings and trainings that, oh, I can give myself permission to do it my way to do it differently, to learn what works and to also to choose my own path and to research that what feels good for me and what feels good for taking care of people. And I found that when I have other people on my team to share the work, that we can increase our capacity to get things done. So I was really a bottleneck in a lot of ways, and I can't give 30, 35 people individual attention to really leverage their voice and power. So it became very scarce, very survival mode. So I think that's the thing. Those are the things I would say to weigh is, is this generative for me? Am I feeling overwhelmed all the time or do I feel like I have space to create, to innovate, to really give time to the conversations?

(09:42):
Are others always saying, I'm always so busy? That was a common thing, Andrea, I don't want to bother you. You're so busy. And at first it was like, oh, that's great. Look it, I'm so important. And then after a while I'm like, wait, that's not what I want to hear. I don't want to hear that. I'm so busy I don't have time. Because my kids started saying that to me too. So that's when I realized I need to carve out the space. So I'm managing my capacity at work, so I have the time to actually be with each one of my kids and my husband.

Meghan Lynch (10:14):
Yeah, so what I hear you saying is that it's not so much about one perfect way to lead a team, but it's really kind of, again, going back to the individual and what they're holding and feeling and saying, I'm feeling spacious. I'm feeling grounded. I'm feeling strong. This works for me. Or paying attention to those feelings of overwhelm or busyness or whatever as signals that maybe something needs to change in your leadership style or your structure or your team.

Andrea Bordenca (10:51):
Yes, exactly.

Meghan Lynch (10:54):
Yeah, that's great. I love that. I'm curious, as you've developed yourself as a leader, has there been one major change that you feel like you've made in your style? I mean, you kind of mentioned there about recognizing that busyness wasn't going to work for you, but is there something that you put into place that was particularly helpful for you?

Andrea Bordenca (11:17):
Yes. The one thing that pops in that is so true for me, and this happens every time I reflect on it. When I came into leadership, I thought I had to be the expert. I thought I had to know all about technology, the mechanics of how medical devices worked. And when I learned that a leader is not the expert and that it's very common in organizations for people to get promoted because they're good performers, once they're in a manager supervisory leadership role, the skillset's completely different. So learning to let go of the need to be perfect, the need to be expert, and to be in this beginner's mind of how do I come into this not knowing with grace and ease, and also to ask people, get the right people in the room. I need someone who knows how to service a sterilizer. Please join this conversation with the customer.

(12:17):
I need someone who knows our accounting software. Please come into this conversation. So it's orchestrating as a leader versus being the expert. I actually studied, I'm an English, I was an English literature major and college, I would study the book on Ohm's Law, all these things that I never did in high school because it just wasn't what I cared about and what I wasn't good at it either. And I was really trying to be the smartest person in the room and these people. And that's so insulting because I have people that work within the organization who have been doing this for years and years, and here I am coming in pretending like I know something when clearly I didn't. So I'd say that's the number one thing is beginner's mind, letting go, not being the expert, but being willing to say, I don't know. And it's so much easier for me to say, I don't know, and also, can you help me with this?

(13:11):
Can you help me with this was something that when I first started to say that I would turn red, my eyes would water, my heartbeat would go, because I'd just been trained my whole life to not ask for help, to toughen up, figure it out. And I pride myself on that resilience and that independence. And I think that's a great attribute. And of course there's a shadow side to that as well, and I embrace that. I include that with it, but the shadow side doesn't have to drive the whole being that I am. So letting go.

Meghan Lynch (13:45):
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I can totally see how that would be freeing for you as a leader once you get over that piece. But I'm also curious, what effect did that have on your team when all of a sudden you're saying, I don't know, and they have a leader who was trying to be the expert and is now coming to them asking for their advice, their guidance.

Andrea Bordenca (14:13):
In my case, it was a really good transition to make because there were a lot of breakdowns. There were a lot of upset employees. People quit. There was a lot of turnover. Someone said to me, Andrea, we're not monkeys. So what I was doing was I would look at our schedule and I'd say, oh, okay. Hey Peter, you live in Connecticut. We have a call in New York. I need you to go from Connecticut to New York, and oh, there's another call in Vermont. Write up, go through the throughway. Go to 91, you've got it. And then the next morning, there's a call in Massachusetts, so I just need you to fill the schedule. And I did that only thinking of the customer, how do we deliver to the customer all about customers? And so this one employee who had been working with us for many years said, we're not monkeys.

(15:07):
I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, we have lives. I have a family. I want to be home at night. You're making me travel all over the place. I come home, I'm exhausted. So I wasn't thinking at all about people's wellbeing. So that one comment that one day helped me realize, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that this was the impact I was making. And other people were too afraid to say anything. So they were just leaving or they wouldn't listen to me. They wouldn't take my call when I would call. Didn't get it. What's wrong with them? Why aren't they answering the call from the boss? And so that helped me to look at it differently. I asked different questions after that point, help me. I see that I'm trying to accommodate the customer. We all have this goal in mind. How do we make this a place where you have job security and we're also taking care of the customer and help me see what I'm missing because I know there's a different way to make this work and I only see what I see, so please help me.

(16:03):
So that's when people started to trust and to enter into the conversation, come to me proactively. Because before I wouldn't let them, I would say, Nope, this is what we're doing. You got to do what I say. And then it changed to, oh, that's not what a leader is. I just didn't know I was ignorant. I was naive. I was trying to assert myself as the daughter of the founder, as a woman in a male dominated industry, all good intentions, and then all of a sudden hell's breaking loose because I didn't know how to navigate it. So the feedback part is what allowed people to trust me and to know that I was going to be receptive to what they said because I wasn't the expert and I was admitting that I'm not the expert in this. Help me see a different possibility here.

Meghan Lynch (16:51):
You're listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast all about brand stewardship and crafting an enduring legacy. I'm here with my guest, Andrea Borka, CEO of DESCO Medical Services, a generational family business in our next segment to help us better understand her story. As a second generation leader, I'm going to enlist the help of my eight-year-old son Henry. So welcome Henry.

Henry Lynch (17:16):
Hi, Andrea. I have a few questions for you about, for what it's like to take over a business from your parents.

Andrea Bordenca (17:24):
That's a great question. Thank you. Well, it was very messy at first. The circumstances were not great. This wasn't a planned succession. There was some illness, and my father was not able to run the company anymore. So when I did step in after many family conversations, it was really challenging for me not to confuse daughter, parent with employee boss. And as things unraveled and or evolved, I'll say I became my mother's boss. So she decided she was going to work there, and it was very helpful to have her there. She played the role as a dispatcher. She was a liaison with our customers. She's a great people person. And so as my mother's boss, there were times when I would feel like that teenager or that little girl part of me would come out and I'd be like, oh, mom, I can't believe you did that.

(18:35):
And then sometimes I would feel like she was really embracing the mother in certain meetings and things. So my mom and I, after several months of this, just navigating this messiness and trying to figure this out, we're trying to figure it out, roles, trying to figure out the business, and then how we're presenting in front of other people. We decided, or we agreed that we are going to be very intentional about the roles we're playing and when. So, hey, in this conversation, I am your boss in this conversation. I am your daughter. And sometimes the two things would overlap. So we got very practiced at taking a pause to say, Ooh, I noticed that the daughter part of me came out. Let's come back. We're having this conversation. And I found that being clear on the role and the conversation is something that's carried through with other employees who have built friendships at DESCO.

(19:38):
So if you've got a friend and all of a sudden that friend is your boss, then it's a conversation around how are we going to play in this? How are we going to play as friends? And also how are we going to play as colleagues and with this hierarchy? What does that look like? And let's just make sure we have conversations about how we're coordinated together separate from coordination. So there's that intentional, deliberate conversation about the complexity of being human. So it's gotten easier. My mom and my dad don't work at the company anymore. It's been about, gosh, three, five times a blur before Covid since my mom stepped out. And it was beautiful when she retired. And we have, I would say that being in the work relationship at first could have created a lot of rifts in our relationship. It actually ended up making us really stronger, closer, understand each other very differently because we saw the different dimensions of each other that working together. If we didn't have that opportunity, we wouldn't have seen those dimensions of each other. So we have a real respect and appreciation for the different dimensions that we were able to see.

Meghan Lynch (20:52):
That's great. I think Henry has one more question for you. Go ahead, Henry.

Henry Lynch (20:56):
How's the company different now from when your parents started it?

Andrea Bordenca (21:02):
Beautiful question. So one of the ways it's different is the structure, the org structure I had mentioned earlier that everybody used to report up to my dad and I adopted that same structure. Now we have a leadership team. I'm happy to say that it's happy to say it's mostly women. Because we're a male-dominated industry, we span three generations on the leadership team. We have more of an intention to have a variety of age, gender expansion. We have different bodies of culture that work at Dsco, making a real intention commitment to let people know about the healthcare technology management fields in middle schools and high schools because they're predicting that by 2035, 60% of the workforce now are older, mostly, mostly men are going to be phasing out. So we really want to bring more vitality. It's an awesome industry. It's got its challenges and it's very hands on, and it's very rewarding and stimulating. So we want people to know that this exists so they have an opportunity to check it out. So those types of things, I would say are the main things and how it's different from when my parents or my dad ran it.

Henry Lynch (22:27):
Have you ever had a bully in your company?

Andrea Bordenca (22:31):
Oh boy. Yes, I have. I wonder if they would say the same thing about me. So early on when we were making the transition, there was a lot of pushback about me, about my style. I did come in strong, meaning I really wanted to, I think there was some fear that I had and I had a lot of doubts. So I wasn't very flexible in a lot of ways. And the areas that I really had my values and commitment were clear to me. And non-negotiable didn't always align with people. So there was a shift in how I saw the business going, how we would communicate with customers, how we'd coordinate with each other. And there was a certain level of conversations, and I want to say, just to put it this way, my father was very conflict-averse, so he would avoid having difficult conversations.

(23:54):
So instead of letting people go when maybe they should have been let go, he would relocate them. And I learned coming in that the morale and the level of engagement was low. It was low, and we were losing money and losing people. So I had certain standards that I would put into place. And again, sometimes I could have done it a little bit more gracefully, and I was very clear on my principles. So there were people that told me that it wasn't going to work out, that people were going to leave. And there was one woman who looked at me directly while she was on the phone with someone saying, yeah, this isn't going to last long. She doesn't know what she's doing. And she hung up the phone. And so I looked at her and I said, okay, you can give me your keys and your credit card now.

(24:45):
And she looked at me like I had two heads, and I said, if you're going to tell me that people are going to leave and you're not on board with me, it's not going to work. And she was very vocal about all along saying that it wasn't going to work. And I was like, okay. And I took that as a challenge to say, what do I need to do to get her respect, to get her to like me, to get her to see where I'm going? And we got to a point where I'm like, you know what? I don't think this is working. So there was a part of me that knew that that particular relationship wasn't going to work. I let it go to the extreme where there was a lot of toxicity. And to that point where she was willing to look at me in the eyes while she was on the phone to basically say I was a failed leader, felt very much to me, like I was being bullied and it did not feel good.

(25:36):
So I said, this is where I need to really put the line in the sand because there's already been some damage breach of trust. I don't see this is going to work. That was a whole level of, I'd say, insubordination that I'd ever experienced. So that's the first one that comes to mind. I will say I've had to let go of friends over the years too, not because of being bullied, but just because we didn't have the same values. We weren't in alignment. They were difficult conversations. And I always operated from this place of what's the best for this person and what's the best for Desco and how do I operate? And sometimes those things can feel like they're at odds. And once I start to sit with it and trust where I'm going and I know there are people aligned with me, then it makes those conversations a little bit easier. And I have found that when those people leave F Desco, they're actually flourishing and thriving in other places because they found a place that's better suited for them.

Meghan Lynch (26:41):
I feel like that's so often true. And I think your example is such a great reminder too, that leaders can get bullied too. I think sometimes we don't think of that, and I think it's a good reminder that toxicity and relationship affects everyone. It doesn't matter what your position, you're still vulnerable to that toxicity people. Yeah, people. Exactly. All people. So thank you, Henry, so much for your questions. It was great to have the voice of the next generation with a next generation leader. And so really appreciate that you are listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast all about brand stewardship and crafting an enduring legacy. I'm here with my guest, Andrea Borka, CEO of Desco, and owner of a suite of businesses with a common thread of culture and belonging. Andrea, as we finish up our conversation, I was hoping we could look forward into the future and just talk a little bit about what leadership is going to need to look like in the coming decades. And is there a skill or something that stands out to you as being absolutely critical for leaders to understand and get good at for the next 20, 30, 30 years?

Andrea Bordenca (28:05):
Yes, absolutely. The skill of presence, the skill of at tuning into our bodies are nervous systems and paying attention to the bodies and nervous systems of others. We are social animals. It can be overwhelming, uncertain with all the technology advances we've got AI and all the questions and opportunities around that, and there's always a question of what is going to threaten my organization? And there's also way more room for what are the opportunities so we can get hung up on the threats and then we can go, our nervous system can go into survival mode where we've got the sympathetic branch of our nervous system keeping us jacked up and vigilant. And so the opportunity for us as leaders is to pay attention to the ebbs and the flows of our bodies, of our nervous systems and really adopting those practices of even if it is like 30 seconds of taking deep breaths to tap into the parasympathetic branch of our nervous system, because that allows our bodies to self-regulate.

(29:25):
And so if there's something that we're reacting to all the time or things that we're reacting to all the time, we can get caught up in it. We can get sick and we can lose sight of how we're connecting other people and inviting them in. So I'd say from now to the future, no matter what happens outside of us, we have total control of ourselves. We can manage how we're responding, how we're reacting through these little practices of just paying attention to our thoughts, our breathing, and how we're showing up in different relationships with different people.

Meghan Lynch (30:04):
Yeah, somebody told me once about your breath as being kind of like a hack to your system that I had never really thought about it before, that you can't control your heart rate, you can't control that your palms are sweating, but the one thing you can control is your breathing and that your breathing will then control the rest. So it kind of gives you a way to hack into some of those things that sometimes feel like they're taking control of us. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, oh my gosh. I mean, I hear about breathing and stuff like that, but just putting it in those words was like, Ooh, I have to start using that more often. And ever since then, I started really trying to think about it as a lever of control that I have over my own body, over my own response, how I show up. And that was huge for me.

Andrea Bordenca (30:56):
And can I share one thing around that real quick?

Meghan Lynch (30:59):
Absolutely.

Andrea Bordenca (31:00):
I have a history of social anxiety, making eye contact with someone speaking in front of a room. I would go right again, the body, the nervous system would say, what are you doing? Get out of here. So my heart rate would increase. I would gulp all those things. What I started to do, and I know that public speaking, and I know that being able to be into that place of what is my authenticity and where can I be unapologetic, can be sometimes difficult to negotiate when we're in the face of something. So one thing, a practice that I did that I will share, do your own iteration of it, of course, because it was so activating for my system to ask a question or to speak publicly, I started to go to little town hall events or little group things at the gym, and I would go there with a commitment to myself to ask a question, even if I didn't have a question, just to speak up in front of the whole room.

(32:05):
So what I noticed is that when I was about to ask the question, my heart rate would already start to do its thing. It's just like when you're going around a room and you're like, oh no, I know I'm going to have to speak. Oh, that type of thing. My heartbeat would go and my throat would do the gulpie thing. I would feel the redness flushness come on, and I would ask the question. Anyway. When I first started doing this, I didn't remember the answer because my system was so overwhelmed and I was so nervous. But my commitment was to observe myself, to engage in it just to overcome this fear of public speaking. I did this for several months. Any opportunity I could go to an event, ask a question, and then I started to hear the answer to the question. And then people started to come up to me to say, thank you for asking that question.

(32:54):
I didn't know how to ask it, or I felt stupid about it. Thank you for making it. Okay. So then I'm like, oh, there's like, alright, a lot of people have this. And so I got to a point where I was so comfortable asking the stupid quote questions that now I ask questions fine, and I can speak in front of a room as large as 500. That's the most I've ever spoken in front of, probably more. But I can speak in front of a large room of people now because I did this experimentation of noticing how uncomfortable my body, my nervous system was because it's something I hadn't practiced, started to practice in between that I would breathe. So I had a home base to come back to. In those moments, I would breathe, took some time for my body to really calm down. But the more I did it and the more I practiced breathing in between, the more able and I was able to be proficient in groups speaking up, even if my question didn't make sense or whatever, I didn't turn red heartbeat, all that stuff, was able to stay at a level where I didn't overwhelm my system.

(33:59):
So there's different ways we can practice if we say, oh, I could never do that. I could never do that. If you're really, and the reason why I want to do that is because I want to bring my learning forward to other people because I think we all have a story to share. I know we all have value and we can get in our own way and stay really small by saying, I can't do that. And it's like, if we get the help that we need, get the coaching, do the practices, if it makes sense with where we want to go in the future, then there's nothing that needs to stop you. We're always our own worst enemies when it comes to doubt. So I'm just encouraging people that if there's fear there, that you can actually manage how you're intervening in it through just observing yourself in certain situations.

Meghan Lynch (34:42):
And I love how you picked out something that was taking all of the risk out of really making it doable. Just go to the event, just ask one question, just get to the other side, and that it kind of breaks it down to a manageable piece that then you can kind of stack those wins. And now you can speak in front of a room. And so I think sometimes we forget, we go automatically to the, I can never speak on stage, and it stops there as opposed to like, well, what's one thing I could do in this moment?

Andrea Bordenca (35:13):
Exactly

Meghan Lynch (35:15):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. The other tip I got at one point was also when you have those moments, or even sometimes I find it when I'm in somebody else, I'm with somebody else who's in a really heightened emotional state, is to kind of visualize it as a wave. Because I think sometimes can feel like it's just going to keep going. There's never going to be any end to this. But I feel like if I can get myself out of my own head or my own feelings or my reaction to this other person and start trying to visualize it cresting and know that it's going to come down on the other side, it allows me to kind of stay present while this person has their emotional whatever, watch it crest and then say, okay, on the other side of this, even if I have to wait a minute, we're going to have a lot more or meaningful productive conversation interaction, but I just have to let this wave go by and then do our work in the lull in between. And that to me was a really helpful little tidbit when, especially again, trying to be a leader, trying to give people space for emotions and yet not let them rule an interaction. Totally. Yeah.

Andrea Bordenca (36:42):
And that's why being a part of the Women's President Organization, WPO and different, what are the different networks of help that we can be a part of so we can find resourcing through other people. So we're not alone as leaders. And I don't ascribe to the, it's only at the top. It's like, okay, we can or subscribe to. We can choose that story in that narrative and stay there. Or we can say, how do I learn and be with other people and bring other people in different ways? And it might be this conversation that we have at a networking meeting about how do you navigate this? How do you navigate this? Let's work to empower and lift each other up so we can do this together. Because there's a lot of great work that we can do in so many possibilities. And sometimes we stay stuck because we feel like we need to figure it out and we don't have to do it by ourselves.

Meghan Lynch (37:36):
Exactly. And I think that that kind of wraps back into one of your earlier points was that that was kind of when you stepped forward as a leader was when you stopped trying to be that expert. And I feel like not only can we do that among employees team, but we can also do that when we're with other business leaders is posture or try to be the expert. But what I find is those moments of meaning, connection, the times when I feel the least alone is when I can say, I'm not the expert. I don't have all the answers or be with somebody when they're saying that and just kind of go towards 'em. And it's that vulnerability is such a powerful connecting force,

Andrea Bordenca (38:30):
And it's freeing. It's like, oh, you can let that go. And it's like, I don't have to carry this anymore. This is nice.

Meghan Lynch (38:37):
Yeah. It's like this very thing that we were most afraid of actually becomes the biggest gift in that moment. Totally. Yeah. So great. Just as we wrap up, I'm curious if there's anything that you are interested in or learning about right now, reading about that you want to share?

Andrea Bordenca (38:56):
Yes. I actually, I have this right next to me here. It's The Creative Act, A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.

Meghan Lynch (39:03):
Oh,

Andrea Bordenca (39:04):
Oh boy. This book, I mean, he's basically saying that anyone in any role, like life is creativity. You're creating something. So the beginner's mind, stepping into the unknown, finding inspiration, he talks about different ways to do it, that's so accessible. I sat down, I'm halfway through it just in one sitting. It's a very easy read, and it's all about what we've been talking about. How do we start to trust and develop our own internal compass authentically, unapologetically, and also how do we engage with others and just find inspiration and the little things day to day, if we give attention to it, we can take certain things for granted, but how do we start to see when we look out the window, like, oh, the trees, finding those little bits of inspiration to put us in a totally different mindset. This, I think, is that hack to that nervous system, not only just about nervous system regulation, access to spirit, something bigger than us that unites us all from that expansive place. Those are the types of things I've been in this question around spirituality, leadership, how my body can act as an anchor for other people to step in more fully. So anything that anyone has recommendations on to allow me to steepen that learning, please send it my way. This is the book that I would recommend that I've been finding just hard to put down. That's why it's right next to me now.

Meghan Lynch (40:34):
That's great. We'll put that in show notes for listeners in case they want to check it out. And speaking of sending you book recommendations, if people want to get in touch with you, connect with you, learn more about your coaching and consulting work, how would they get in touch with you?

Andrea Bordenca (40:53):
I'm on LinkedIn, Andrea Bordenca. I'm also andreabordenca.com. It has all of the things. On Instagram, @AndreaBordenca, so yeah, just look me up on the Internets and you shall find me.

Meghan Lynch (41:09):
All right. All things Andrea Bordenca. Well, Andrea, this has been such a great conversation. As I said, I've been really looking forward to it, and I can't thank you enough for sharing your perspectives, your experiences, all your wisdom, and I look forward to our next chat, which I'm sure will be soon. So thank you so much.

Andrea Bordenca (41:29):
Thank you. Thank you, Henry.

Meghan Lynch (41:30):
So much amazing wisdom from Andrea Bordenca. The theme that really resonated with me is this idea of the beginner's mind. If we're going to be leaders of a generational business, we need to be constantly growing and nurturing ourselves. So I hope as you reflect on this conversation, maybe you might pull one practice or idea that you could put to use in your own leadership. Maybe you'll start practicing saying, I don't know, more often like Andrea did. Or maybe you'll start to tackle your fear of public speaking by starting small and speaking up at small meetings. Or maybe you'll simply pay attention to your own body and presence as you go throughout your day. The one thing we have to do is to put on our own oxygen mask first in order to be the leaders that our team, our business, and our families need. I'm Meghan Lynch, and thank you so much for listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast for leaders with a generational mindset. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review.

Henry Lynch (42:45):
Thank you for listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, or BUB, as we like to call it.