Power of Meditation in Achieving Life and Business Goals with Sunaina Sinha Haldea

Adrienne (00:02.108)
Hi everybody and welcome to the She Leads Podcast. This podcast and all of our episodes are brought to you by the She Leads Podcast Network, the network for women by women.

I'd like to welcome my next guest, Sunaina Sinha, the global head of private capital advisory for Raymond James. She's a regular guest on CNBC and has written for Fast Company on five habits to build mental strength. She's been a senior meditator for over 15 years, and she started that at the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey. So welcome to the She Leads podcast, Sunaina.

Sunaina Sinha (01:50.694)
Thank you so much, Adrienne, for having me here today.

Adrienne (01:53.24)
It is a pleasure. So I am so interested to hear all about how meditation has helped you both on your entrepreneurial journey and also as the head of private capital advisory for Raymond James. So why don't you take us back to the beginning because you have a great educational background and so many people I think can relate to going to school, wanting to graduate and get a great job and then our lives take a different path.

Sunaina Sinha (02:24.242)
Absolutely. I think that life finds you while you're chasing it, right? And that's one of my favorite sayings. So, went to some terrific schools for my undergrad, went to Stanford for my undergrad and my masters, both in engineering. Worked for a couple of years in the Bay Area and then went to Harvard for my MBA. Started working after Harvard Business School in the world of finance, where I continued to build out my skill set and about...

In 2011, started my first business, Sibyl Capital, which is a financial advisory business focused on advising private equity firms and their investors. Grew the business over 10 years and in 2021, Raymond James, which is a New York Stock Exchange listed Fortune 300 company came and acquired it. So terrific exit.

But beyond that, I sit on the boards of several other businesses that helped entrepreneurs scale their businesses successfully and sell them on, continue to serve as a non-exec director on the board of a publicly listed clean energy business in Germany, on several Stanford boards and so on. Through all of life's vagaries, which, by the way, include three children and two dogs, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, anybody who's been through the entrepreneurial journey, yourself included, knows exactly.

Adrienne (03:33.835)
Yes.

Sunaina Sinha (03:41.758)
all the toil that goes on behind the scenes to create anything. Um, one of the things that has really been my one and only secret weapon has been the ability to reset my mental game at the beginning, at the end of every single day, and I learned how to meditate in, uh, about 12, 13 years ago. And when I went to my first meditation course called Vipassana,

Adrienne (03:54.973)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (04:08.878)
VIP, SS, ANA, there's free courses offered all over the world, many centers in the United States and UK and Europe. And I found that it taught me in a very deep concerted bootcamp way how to meditate. And I was able to meditate daily after that. And Adrienne, what I would say is the superpower of meditation is as follows.

It allows you to control your thoughts and emotions, not to let your thoughts and emotions control you. One of the most frequently asked refrains that I get from lots of people, especially women is, Hey, I wake up at two in the morning and my mind is just racing. I can't control my mind. It's just off and I can't get it to quiet down and fall asleep again.

Adrienne (04:37.47)
Hmm.

Adrienne (04:40.828)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (04:55.866)
What meditation teaches you is exactly that. How do you control your mind as opposed to your mind running you? It's incredibly liberating and empowering to know that you get to make those decisions as to what you put in your mind and what you let your mind move later.

Adrienne (05:01.552)
Mm.

Adrienne (05:10.448)
I love this. There's so many things that I've been, I talked to so many different people about all of the things that we come upon in life. And I always ask, why were we not taught this in school? This is a tool that we can have in our toolbox from when we're young, because anybody can do it. It's supposed to be.

with ease, right? We're not supposed to be forcing this. And it, I think, could just help so many, just kids even, like that are going through middle school and all of the different emotions that come up that we don't even know where these thoughts are coming from. So I love meditation for all of the benefits. I wonder how we can sort of

Sunaina Sinha (05:56.85)
Yeah. You know.

Adrienne (06:05.148)
get that into our curriculum much earlier on.

Sunaina Sinha (06:09.762)
You know, I think that's exactly the point that I'm trying to work on in my personal life journey. So yesterday I had the privilege, um, by the invitation of the UK parliament to come in and speak about this on a policy level, because my big mantra in life is preventative mental health.

Adrienne (06:24.456)
Wow.

Adrienne (06:29.479)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (06:29.602)
Right? By the time we speak a lot about mental health as a society over the last five years, it's become part of our zeitgeist to acknowledge that mental health is health. So I'm very happy about that movement in our progression as a society. But we're always talking about it when things have gone round and you need a mental health professional because you feel anxious, you feel sad or depressed, something has really broken in your steady state psychology and you're seeking help for it.

Adrienne (06:40.477)
Yes.

Adrienne (06:57.054)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (06:57.55)
Nothing wrong with it. You should absolutely do that. We should have as employers, we should offer those tools and services to our employees as a society. We should have no stigmas about that. But isn't it so much better? And what we're not spending nearly enough time talking about, Adrienne, is exactly what you said. The preventative side of mental health. There are tools and techniques that are tried and tested for building the resilience reserves of the mind. Because hard times come.

Adrienne (07:06.662)
Yeah.

Adrienne (07:21.8)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (07:23.874)
for one and for all. They're coming for each and every one of us. It's not optional guys, it's happening. And the question is, how are we going to deal with it? Do we have the tools to deal with it? Do we have the reserves to take the knocks and continue to move through our lives? And if we don't build them gradually over the years,

Adrienne (07:27.508)
Hehehehe

Yeah.

Adrienne (07:38.395)
Mm.

Sunaina Sinha (07:44.238)
then it becomes all about remedial, fixing things and trying to get them back into balance. So to your point, I have three children. The only thing I've told them that is non-negotiable is that once a year, we will go to a meditation course together. And you know how it is, they started eight plus. It's again the courses of the Vipassana Meditations for children. Those courses are free all around the world. And you know, it's only for the weekend and Friday afternoon, the kids are digging their noses and the leg is up in the air.

Adrienne (07:49.096)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne (07:56.057)
Oh wow!

Sunaina Sinha (08:12.218)
By Sunday morning, these eight, nine, 10 year olds, they're sitting like little Buddhas. They can sit for the 20 minutes and they've learned how to quiet the mind. What a superpower. And as parents and as adults and as educationists, that's all we're there to do is to offer them the tool that hey guys, there is a way to quieten your mind. So that when the mind goes down these bad rabbit holes of self-despairment and so on, we can bring it back and here's how.

Adrienne (08:12.51)
Ha ha.

Adrienne (08:16.968)
Hahaha

Adrienne (08:21.977)
Yeah.

Adrienne (08:31.592)
Yeah.

Adrienne (08:38.309)
Hmm

Sunaina Sinha (08:38.422)
So you're speaking to the choir here and you're speaking to my heart when you say, Hey, shouldn't we be teaching this earlier and earlier? And shouldn't we all have it? And since I love the name of your podcast so much, she leads, I'll say it's especially important for women because as we enter our reproductive years, as we enter our forties and fifties, when things are happening all the time to us every day, there's some teenagers caring for elderly parents, getting more senior in our careers, so on and so forth.

Adrienne (08:53.041)
Mmm.

Adrienne (09:00.071)
Ugh.

Sunaina Sinha (09:07.538)
This is when we really need it. And that's the time when we least have the quote unquote time to dedicate ourselves to the practice. So learn it early is my big advice because it will serve you for, for those really tough moments when it's really hard to go out and learn something.

Adrienne (09:14.622)
Yes.

Adrienne (09:23.384)
Such good stuff. I mean, I just want to say preach. Oh my goodness. Can you talk a little bit? I mean, I know enough about transcendental meditation. I've actually gone through the class and I you know, I practice yoga regularly and we always do sort of some guided meditations and things like that all beautiful. Transcendental is the twice a day and it's the mantra that's you know that

Sunaina Sinha (09:48.54)
Yes.

Adrienne (09:49.856)
slows or gives the monkey mind something to focus on so you can kind of go deeper and heal your body. How is the Pasana meditation different?

Sunaina Sinha (09:53.425)
Yes.

Sunaina Sinha (09:59.906)
Yeah. So before I tell you what I'm fast in meditation, I'll tell you the following. All modalities of meditation are good. Start with something, start with anything. So, you know, I started with my first meditation course was when I was 12 years old. I tell my parents, it was the greatest gift they ever gave me was to take me to that course. Because even after those two days, I forgot all about meditation for the next 10 years. When things got tough in my twenties,

Adrienne (10:06.244)
Yes.

Adrienne (10:22.915)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (10:25.806)
I was like, well, there was that one weekend when I learned how to quiet my mind. What was that? Let me go back to that. So I think it was sound meditation, you know, great, but it helped me had it to, just to bring the volume of the mind down. And then I actually did a couple of years of transcendental meditation.

Adrienne (10:30.638)
Hmm.

Adrienne (10:35.781)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (10:43.566)
And that was great. It taught me how to take the temperature and the volume of the mind down a little bit further. Vipassana meditation kind of is the purest way. It was the Buddha's meditation technique that the Buddha practiced. And it's a very purest way of meditating. Now the Vipassana meditation courses are about a week long, 10 days long to be exact. In your first course, it's like a meditation boot camp, which allows you to do two different...

types of meditation, one to quieten the mind and the other to purify the mind. It's a technique that shows you how to focus on bodily sensations in an equanimous and deeply aware state such that whatever comes up you let it pass. The way I describe it Adrienne is we all carry baggage. Say we go into these courses carrying a hundred tons right. If we walk out on the last day at 99

Adrienne (11:32.02)
Mm-hmm.

Sunaina Sinha (11:38.682)
That's one ton of space, clear space. It's a lot of entropy. There's no vacuums. Energy takes the place of energy. And that's the word of the fundamental laws of physics. Good energy comes and takes the place of all the baggage, all the clearance you did of any fear or any trauma you were holding onto. It just teaches you how to clear at a very deep level. And it's incredible because once you learn to do it the first time, it's like riding a bike or swimming.

Adrienne (11:46.333)
Hmm.

Adrienne (11:56.168)
Hmm

Sunaina Sinha (12:05.582)
you'll always remember, you'll be able to do it every single day. And I started maybe meditating five, 10 minutes a day. And then that became longer and longer. And now I meditate come what may, kids travel, work. It doesn't matter for an hour every day. And it's been life changing.

Adrienne (12:20.656)
Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I'm very interested and I definitely would, I'm gonna put a link to just some information because that sounds amazing. So can you talk a little bit about, I know life gets chaotic, especially with kids and growing your career and wanting to be that archetypal woman that does it all, right? But we know that is

impossible. But when did you, when in your journey, did you start meditating? Was that at the beginning of starting your business? Was that sort of when you sold it? Like, give me a little bit of the timing when that happened and how that helped to, you know, ground you so that you could make these incredibly strategic decisions. I mean, you know,

Sunaina Sinha (13:04.857)
Yeah.

Adrienne (13:17.864)
Hardly any women get past the million dollar mark, let alone sell their companies to a company like Raymond James. So can you talk about the intersection of meditation and all of these successful choices that you made?

Sunaina Sinha (13:32.718)
Yeah. So, you know, the starting my business in 2011 went hand in hand with my first Vipassana meditation course, which was also in 2011. It's incredible how the journey sort of commingled because being an entrepreneur, but especially being a female entrepreneur in finance is incredibly hard. You take a lot of notes, rare, hard, brutal, I might add, you name it, you name it. I've heard it, been called it. And it's

Adrienne (13:49.268)
Mm. Rare, too.

Adrienne (13:55.746)
Yeah, brutal.

Sunaina Sinha (14:01.11)
It's not for the faint of heart. And so it's just the universe bought me meditation in a deep way at a time when I needed it most within the early innings of starting my business. And I've now since 2011, every single year without fail, I've gone to a Vipassana meditation course. I go every year for the full.

Adrienne (14:16.619)
Hmm

Sunaina Sinha (14:25.738)
eight or ten days depending on the course I'm taking and I meditate daily. And what's happened is that year on year as the complexity of my life increased in 2011, I had no children.

Adrienne (14:26.952)
Wow.

Sunaina Sinha (14:37.754)
was dating a guy, but I was not married. And the business was brand new. So I eat one or two clients. I'd fast forward to 2021 when Raymond James came to buy the business. We were in three offices around the world, selling ourselves to a Fortune 300. And the complexity of the business went through the roof. I was sitting on several boards outside of my day job. I had three children. I was regular on CNBC and BBC.

Adrienne (14:52.605)
Mm.

Sunaina Sinha (15:07.77)
and being invited to all these great speaking gigs and so on. But what it meant was life had a ton that it was throwing at me. The volume was like drinking from a fire hose. And to your point, my favorite saying that I learned when I was very young, I was actually a college student, when a professor of mine at Stanford said to me, you can have it all, just not at the same time.

Adrienne (15:19.057)
Yeah.

Adrienne (15:31.31)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (15:31.534)
And so what meditation taught me was the ability to let it go, let whatever it was go, the things I had done, the things I had not gotten a chance to do, the guilt, the pressure, the failures and the successes. And so as the years progressed, my meditation became deeper and deeper. It became far more regular.

Adrienne (15:46.822)
Hmm

Sunaina Sinha (15:54.014)
And there was a one-to-one correlation with the regularity of the meditation and the experience of that day. How powerful it is, Adrienne, for you, but for any of your listeners to know that nothing externally needs to change for us to have a very different experience of our day. We control how we live that day, how we experience that day, whether we're happy or not, whether we're fulfilled or not.

Adrienne (16:10.749)
Hmm

Sunaina Sinha (16:19.05)
And just to know that outcome was always in my control, that it was not up to a client, whether they were hiring me or not, or paying me or not, or whether my boss was happy with me or not, or an employee is staying or leaving, none of that matter or a child for that matter was guilt tripping me for missing a school play. It didn't matter. It just mattered what I choose to experience. And the meditation taught me that was that peace and equanimity. I could return to that every single day.

Adrienne (16:37.756)
Hmm.

Adrienne (16:48.724)
Okay, there's so much about everything that you just said that is so powerful. Starting from without fail every year, you go away by yourself for 10 days. That says to me that you have an incredible relationship with a deep amount of respect, which is that just warms my heart. It also says to me that you

Sunaina Sinha (17:03.153)
Yes.

Adrienne (17:16.384)
know how to set boundaries and stick to them. And that inspires me so much. And it also, the meditation and not sort of being drawn into the highs or the lows as a woman gives us a superpower because we're conditioned to react and respond to other others.

Sunaina Sinha (17:37.711)
Yes.

Adrienne (17:45.984)
over and above ourselves. And it seems to me what you've just described takes it back so that we take our power back so that we are not focused on what people think about us, say about us, treat us, right? It puts us into this very solid space of, it doesn't matter what's going on around me, I am the only one that I need to answer to.

Sunaina Sinha (18:12.038)
That's right. And I think meditation has always come down to what I call the sine curve, right, which is the ups and downs of life. If you think about perhaps before you start meditating, you have really big ups and really low lows, meditation will bring that curve down. So it's nowhere near as peaky and trophy. And you decide...

Adrienne (18:25.554)
Yeah.

Adrienne (18:31.004)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (18:33.482)
how wide that time curve is. Let me put it a different way, probably more approachable. Before you started meditating, if something happened with somebody, work or personal, they would have made you angry or upset or anxious for four hours. And now, because if you have a meditation practice, it's three hours and 45 minutes. That's 15 minutes of liberation you brought yourself.

Adrienne (18:46.962)
Yeah.

Adrienne (18:54.588)
Yeah, 15 minutes of liberation.

Sunaina Sinha (18:57.674)
15 will become 20, will become 25, it'll become an hour, it'll become hours of your life that you'll get back. Same thing with intensity. If you would have gotten 8 out of 10 anxious or upset and now you're getting 6 out of 10, wow, that's a big difference in the severity of your feelings. And then incrementally, it's not an overnight, nothing in life. One of the things I think is important to notice is nothing comes overnight. I have been meditating, as you said, for nearly 15 years. And I do it.

Adrienne (19:04.859)
Yeah.

Adrienne (19:10.494)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (19:26.55)
Every day, I've done it every day for more than seven, eight years now. So everything in life comes with perseverance and incremental changes. The brain is the largest, heaviest organ in the body. Look at the amount of time we spent, Adrienne, as a society, making ourselves look more beautiful and stronger. We brush our teeth to keep the teeth healthy. We work out to keep the body healthy. We take a shower to clean the body. And we do our hair, we do our makeup. What do we do for the mind?

Adrienne (19:30.44)
Mm.

Adrienne (19:54.79)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (19:55.558)
What do we do for this organ that controls our entire experience of our existence? Not very much. So whatever modality anyone picks, just pick it and do it every single day because it'll pay off for you when it comes down to when the rubber meets the road, then you're getting hit with things left and right because it happens to us all.

Adrienne (20:01.654)
Mm. No.

Adrienne (20:15.204)
It's so smart to look at it like that because I think that is accessible to so many people. You know, you take care of your body, you work out, you know, your heart, there's a lot of focus on keeping your heart healthy, but your brain is the thing that is controlling, you know, your heart. So it's, you know, exercising your brain and training it to think in a way that...

provides us with a beautiful experience of life rather than always being challenged, always being anxious. It's so funny, it reminds me, I'm glad my son doesn't listen to my podcast, but it reminds me of my younger son. And he gets triggered by a lot of things and he'll say things like, you make me so mad. Like you, dad said this and it made me. And I try to say to him,

Sunaina Sinha (20:54.406)
Thank you.

Sunaina Sinha (21:04.4)
See you later.

Adrienne (21:10.992)
It's the way that you are perceiving what's happening, which is triggering you, and it's up to you. You're allowing this to steal your joy. And he is not there, I think, maturity-wise yet, and I know he will be, because he's a great kid, young man, excuse me. But it's funny, I see the, like, you make me mad is...

exactly what meditation, I guess, resolves, if that's the sort of right word for that. Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (21:44.444)
Yes.

Sunaina Sinha (21:47.822)
Absolutely. It's gotten to the point where if something happens untoward in my life, because it happens to us all, my husband will ask me, how many? Do you know what he means by that? He's like, how many sittings of meditation till you clear it? I'll be like, well, if it's really bothering me, I'll say three. Otherwise I'll be like, ah, I just need one. I'll go, I'll go get it in to this afternoon. And then I'll get up and it'll be gone because A, I've cleared it, but B, I've realized I'm in the driver's seat.

Adrienne (21:56.765)
I don't know.

Adrienne (22:08.826)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (22:16.026)
The meditation just brings me back to center. Like, okay, I'm back. You know, the wise relational adult in me is back in the driver's seat and I can move on.

Adrienne (22:18.855)
Yeah.

Adrienne (22:25.244)
Yes. Oh, so good. So I would also like just for the people out there to also just in a very practical way, you know, how did meditation, like maybe even give a scenario, how did meditation help you to make those strategic decisions that, you know, brought you success? Because you were saying you, you know, you...

Sunaina Sinha (22:48.963)
Yes.

Adrienne (22:50.424)
you heard it all, I'm sure people told you, you can't do it, you're doing it wrong, all of the things, right? How, and I understand that it allowed you to make smart decisions, but can you maybe give an example? Because so many women out there, you know, yes, we can start meditating, but we are so, gosh, there's just a barrage of information that comes at us too. Like you need to market like this, you need to do this, you need to be on social media.

Sunaina Sinha (22:56.793)
Yes.

Adrienne (23:20.092)
be like looking like a movie star. There's so much. How, I don't even know what I'm necessarily asking, but maybe can you give an example of a time where you either had to make a really tough decision or something was coming at you and you were able to use meditation to make a decision that you wouldn't have made otherwise.

Sunaina Sinha (23:44.306)
Oh, so many. Let me put it this way. One of the things that meditation taught me first and foremost is how to play the long game. In a society in which we over amplify short-term gains and dopamine hits and things that give satisfaction at the very micro level now, it is really hard, especially when you're in the entrepreneurial journey to think about what is right for you.

Adrienne (23:52.602)
Mm.

Adrienne (24:01.265)
Yes.

Sunaina Sinha (24:13.194)
and for your company and your employees and stakeholders, three years, five years, 10 years from now. And it's called founder's fatigue. Every founder goes through it where they just get exhausted because the journey is hard. It's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure. And it provides you with the staying power through it. So for example,

Adrienne (24:19.482)
Mmm.

Adrienne (24:25.821)
Yeah.

Adrienne (24:29.49)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (24:34.134)
Do I part ways with a client or not? Is that might be good for me today? Do I take on this client or not? Ooh, they're giving me a lot of money today, but is that the right decision for my business long-term? Yes or no. Do I keep an employee or do I not? Do I sell my business to Raymond James or do I not? It's easy to go for the short-term hit. It's harder to go for the long-term values.

Adrienne (24:44.982)
Hmm.

Adrienne (24:56.051)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (25:00.114)
that really are driving your strategy and become your North Star. Your North Star becomes very clear. I'll give you a very clear example of this. I've been approached by other investment banks to acquire my business on and off through the years. It was easy to say no. Most of the entrepreneurs would be like, so-and-so investment bank is coming to buy my business. Let me quickly figure out if there's a deal to be done and take the quick hit. The answer was no because for me, one of the prized

Adrienne (25:06.022)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (25:29.226)
assets that I had in my business was the culture we had created. It's a hundred percent female led. It's more than two thirds women and minorities. We became the change we wish to see in the industry. So for me to put the business in the right home was more important than just selling. And it was because of the meditation that I had that clarity of vision and purpose.

Adrienne (25:40.953)
Love it.

Adrienne (25:46.065)
Mmm.

Adrienne (25:52.04)
Hmm

Sunaina Sinha (25:52.294)
And when Raymond James came knocking, I saw that they valued culture as much as I did, even more so because they had made a fortune 300. They'd done it ungrown and scaled with culture in mind. And even though I should have, you know, I was told, listen, you, you could get a better offer or a higher offer with another so-and-so investment bank. I chose not to go there because that wasn't what I was solving for. The values with which you live your life become very clear as to what you're going to put.

Adrienne (26:15.505)
Hmm.

Sunaina Sinha (26:21.238)
on top of the stack when it comes to your decision making.

Adrienne (26:24.068)
Mm. So good. It allows you to say no, which is so powerful, because it's so easy to say yes to the things that exactly what you said are going to give you that short-term satisfaction. I love that you built a company and a culture that is focused on human beings versus profits only.

and it's incredible. And can you talk a little bit just, this is a little off to the side, but can you talk a little bit, so you were acquired and you are continuing to work at the company that acquired you. I just want to share what that's like because hopefully there are people that are listening in the audience that will be in that situation. And that's a decision to make, right? Do you...

Sunaina Sinha (27:07.857)
Thank you.

Adrienne (27:20.952)
continue on with the company that acquires you or do you go off and do something else? And I'm sure there's a time frame there. So can you talk a little bit about that if you're comfortable?

Sunaina Sinha (27:27.772)
Yes.

Absolutely. It was always part of the deal with Raymond James that I would stay and continue to run and grow the business under their umbrella. And so I, I've always been clear that I signed a deal and I'm going to live up to it, so there's something powerful about giving you a word and playing it out. Even though I, you know, constantly the grass always looks greener on the other side, right? I could go off and do this. I could go off and do that. And my, one of the things I would tell my kids and I tell

Adrienne (27:52.)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (27:58.294)
many of the people who work for me is the grass is only green where you water it guys. It's not green anywhere else wherever you water it and I know we've invested a lot in the relationships at Raven James. They're wonderful people with a very supportive culture and I've enjoyed growing the business here but it hasn't been easy going from being my own boss for 10 years to now having a boss and that only works if the boss I now have.

Adrienne (28:02.63)
Yeah.

Adrienne (28:18.644)
Oh yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (28:23.806)
is all of these things A supportive and B enabling. And my boss, Jim Bunn, who runs, is the president of Global Equities Investment Banking at Raymond-Jibs is all of those things and more. So again, I would not have sold the business to Raymond-Jibs had it not been for the fit between me and him because that relationship is incredibly important, especially when I was very aware that I was going through a pretty big transition in and of myself from being the sole decision maker.

Adrienne (28:50.099)
Yeah.

Sunaina Sinha (28:50.17)
to now having a huge conglomerate who owns this. Luckily, again, when you have incentives, alignment of values, and most importantly, a collaborative culture fit with the people around you, you can work things out. We don't agree on everything. I come at things from a very different place as many of my colleagues do. But we agree very respectfully, we agree to disagree. And we also know that when we make decisions, we may not have the perfect information, but we do the best we can and we move forward.

Adrienne (28:53.628)
Yeah.

Adrienne (29:13.647)
Hmm.

Adrienne (29:19.901)
Mmm.

Sunaina Sinha (29:19.918)
And that's all one can ask for. Right? If I know that my colleagues have, they're coming from a good place with, with the best interests of the business and me at heart, no one's out to get me. Nobody's out to, to get anybody in life. Right. With very few exceptions. So if you're coming at it from a place of, I would say empathy, people ask me to describe our culture all the time. I, the phrase I use is it's empathetic leadership. So.

Adrienne (29:31.028)
That's right.

Sunaina Sinha (29:44.862)
I'm, you obviously, I'm a woman, my COO is a woman. We've always been female led. And the way we've come at all management decisions is from a place of empathy. And that doesn't mean we don't make tough decisions. We make tough decisions all the time. People are not right for us. After a certain period of time, they might not be right for us. As we're making hiring decisions, we have to make tough calls every single day. We do it from a place of kindness and empathy. I like to tell my team, if you have kindness on one end of a spectrum,

Adrienne (29:53.764)
Yeah. Right.

Sunaina Sinha (30:12.958)
and call it assertiveness, aggression on the other. Be kindly assertive and assertively kind. There's no choice. It's all the same thing. Do it with the empathy for the human being on the other side of the table. I think in many corporate cultures, you become all about numbers, and you lose that empathetic leadership trait, which I think is super important in today's generation.

Adrienne (30:19.149)
Mm, yeah.

Adrienne (30:34.724)
I totally agree with you. And I think it's the reason why so many women get burnt out to corporate culture, because there's only so much of that you can take. And it's why so many women turn toward entrepreneurship. But it becomes a challenge for women, because we were kind of taught and we've grown up in the corporate world. And then the way that things are done in corporate doesn't necessarily translate into entrepreneurship. And that's sort of where the struggle is.

I just love this whole entire conversation because it really inspires me. I have this really good friend, Paulina Lopez, and she's always talking about the power pause. So it's, you know, whatever information is coming at you, just kind of like take that power pause. And meditation and everything that you've been talking about allows you to take that power pause, but to even go.

Sunaina Sinha (31:23.332)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne (31:31.752)
deeper and align yourself with your values and figure out, you know, what is the next right step for you? What are the things that are meaningful to you? How do you want to live your life? And so this conversation and everything about it and you have been super inspiring. So how can people, you know, if they're just looking to connect with you, if they're looking to, you know,

just have you share your expertise, how can they get in touch with you?

Sunaina Sinha (32:05.514)
LinkedIn is the best place. One of my other big hacks. I spend very little time on many types of social media, but I am on LinkedIn. So just search for me Sunaina Sinha or Sunaina Raymond James, and I'll come right up and please feel free to connect. I love to talk about all things leadership, culture, meditation, wellness. So definitely get in touch.

Adrienne (32:26.216)
Well, you are the perfect guest for the She Leads podcast. So thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise and your wisdom and just your incredibly kind nature. I really enjoyed our conversation today.

Sunaina Sinha (32:39.61)
Thank you so much for having me, Adrienne. I enjoyed it too.

Adrienne (32:42.312)
Thank you.