Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Leela Sinha, Founder of The Intensives Institute, located in Berkeley, CA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

My business is coaching and consulting with intense leaders (including but not limited to folks who are autistic or ADHD) and their organizations to improve team dynamics, reduce friction, and build well-shared leadership. We also offer education about intensives in classes, podcasts, and more.

Tell us about yourself.

Like so many people, I got started by accident. I was already coaching in 2014, but then a back injury, a BlueTooth keyboard, and too much time to think. I got curious about "to muchness" and why all the coolest people I knew were like that. The work grew out of my conversations on Facebook--it was really a product of social media communities in a way that could not have happened 25 years ago.

The next thing I knew, I had a book (You're Not Too Much: intensive lives in an expansive world), a personality framework, and a completely revamped business model. I have always known that there were other people like me, other people who work like hell and rest like the dead, other people whose eyes light up when they get excited, and then they can talk for hours, but only about stuff they like people who skip the small talk entirely, people whose feelings are BIG and whose dreams are bigger.

Once I was able to describe us (intensives) as a group and describe people who are not like that as a group (expensive), I realized how much unnecessary struggle we have. I want everyone to know how we function and what we're brilliant at, so we can work together, and I want us all--intensives and expansive alike--to respect and appreciate each other. That's what I'm doing--there's enough suffering and struggle in the world already. We need more pleasure in everything--including at work.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

To date, my biggest accomplishment--or at least the one that I'm proudest of--is developing the SIEF (Sinha Intensive/Expansive Framework), giving intensives a way to talk about who we are, what we need, and what we have to offer.

And my most recent major accomplishment is opening the membership at the Intensives Institute so that intensives have a place to find each other, connect, and support one another even when folks don't need coaching or consulting. It's a place for excitement and connection and ease, all together.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

As an intensive--and I know I'm not alone--it's follow through and consistency on long-term or complex projects. Intensives tend to focus on what's directly in front of us. I live and die by my electronic systems, and I support a lot of my clients in setting up systems that work for them. We have phasic work cycles, but the expansive world likes things to be predictable.

Helping people know what to expect and then providing it is one of the great trust-builders, but business is not inherently predictable, and intensiveness makes that even more true. Building a business that works with who we are, supporting our teams in working with us, and creating systems/using tools that make that possible has made a world of difference. My tech stack is ridiculous, but it makes my business possible.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. It's all about relationships. Especially now, your relationship with your audience, with your colleagues in your industry, and with the world you move in will be the foundation of your work. That relationship will help you know who you serve, what they need, and ideally, how to communicate with and for them.
  2. Keep people and media in your world who have no idea how your work operates. Read poetry. Follow people from different social locations than yours. Include difference. But also--make sure you have some places where you can take off all the explaining and all the bridge building, where they just love you and know you, where everything, for a moment, can be familiar.
  3. Do good, use strategy. My podcast, PowerPivot, explores the connection between power, ethics, leadership, and community. I create it because we need to hold both strategic decisions (who can I serve, and how what is the financial model for this, what does the world need, and how can I do those work together?) and compassionate decisions (how can I be kinder? how can I reduce suffering? how can I increase healing?) at the same time. My background in faith communities and nonprofit work deeply informs the ways in which I both love and critique power, money, and the ways that groups of people behave. Just look at the best and worst of what social media has done. People get stalked people get killed.

People also literally save other people's lives, keep people housed, help them find medical support, and revolutions have rested on the shoulders of people sharing things across the internet. Doing as little as possible of the first and as much as possible of the second is our job as humans anyway, but especially when we are leaders when we are known, and when people look up to us and follow us, we need to be strategic about our choices so that we cause as little harm and do as much good as possible.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://intensivesinstitute.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intensivesinstitute/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeelaSinha
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leela-sinha-b0750011/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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