Conversations in the Dark with Erica Vander Sande

Episode SummaryErica has been growing The Mina Company alongside raising her daughters for so long that she sometimes forgets the baby years are behind her. In this episode, she works through a list of motherhood questions pulled together by her team, covering what has changed now that her girls are 11 and 7, and what that looks like inside a business built around family.She talks openly about the rush of after school emotions, the late night conversations her oldest wants to have, and how hard it is to meet a younger and older child where each of them actually is. She also shares how her kids shape the way she leads, why she no longer carries mom guilt the way she used to, and how her team keeps work moving when life with kids gets in the way.What We CoverParenting a preteen and a seven year old. What got easier, what got harder, and why Erica is loving this stage far more than the baby and toddler years.The 9:00 PM talks. Why her oldest opens up at bedtime, and how Erica gets ready to show up for those conversations even when she is exhausted.Two ages, two sets of needs. How a very responsible older child can quietly raise the expectations on the younger one, and what Erica is doing to catch it.Missing her mom. How often Erica wishes she could call her mom for parenting advice, and how her close friends fill part of that space.What her kids see in two entrepreneur parents. The ideas, honesty, and self reflection she hopes they absorb, plus a funny moment when her daughter said she works too much.When a kid wakes up at 6:00 AM. How a team that cross trains and flexes with family life keeps the business running without Erica.A culture built by a working mom. Why every call is recorded and why leaving early for a sport or pickup is simply normal at Mina.Mom guilt, then and now. How Erica went from a people pleasing 26 year old to a mom who asks for time, takes retreats, and refills her own cup.What her kids taught her about leadership. Finding her voice, gut checking decisions, trusting her team, and doing what is best for today.Connect with EricaBusiness inquiries: The Mina CompanyPersonal connection and coaching: Erica Vander SandeShow Notes KeywordsConversations in the Dark podcast, Erica Vander Sande, motherhood and entrepreneurship, parenting a preteen, mom guilt, working mom culture, women led business, raising strong girls, flexible team culture, The Mina CompanySubscribe and ReviewIf this episode felt like a conversation with a friend, leave a review or share it with another mom who is doing it all. New episodes of Conversations in the Dark are on the way. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Conversations in the Dark, Episode 7: Creating the Mission and VisionErica Vander Sande on rewriting The Mina Company's vision, mission, and purpose, and building a business around the life you actually want.Episode SummaryWhen was the last time you looked at your business's vision, mission, and purpose? Erica realized it had been about four years since The Mina Company's were written, and after everything that has changed in her life and business since, it was time for a refresh.She opens with the Theodore Roosevelt "man in the arena" quote that hangs in her hallway, adapted for women, and explains why daring greatly sits at the core of who she is. From there, she walks through the new vision, mission, and purpose she wrote for Mina, how each one differs from the others, and how she is bringing them to life with her team through real, everyday decisions like turning off ads that aren't working and never billing for work that wasn't done.Erica also shares how her business was designed around her life from day one, including being at school pickup at 3:00, and encourages listeners to find their own guiding light by paying attention to what makes them jealous or a little sweaty with possibility.What We CoverWhy revisit your vision, mission, and purpose. Erica explains what changed after four years of growth and why she wanted to stand behind her words again.The arena quote. Why Roosevelt's words, adapted for women, hang in her hallway and shape how she leads.Vision, mission, and purpose, explained simply. The world you are working toward, how you get there, and how you deliver it day to day.Mina's new statements. The full thinking behind Erica's choices, including the line about acting in a client's best interest even when it costs the agency.Making values real. Concrete examples, like not working with competing clients, honest reporting, and keeping the human element as AI changes everything else.Designing a business around your life. How Erica built Mina to support school pickup, time freedom, and a team that can run without her.Finding your own. A simple starting point: notice what triggers your jealousy or inspires you, write it down, and build from there.Connect with EricaBusiness inquiries: The Mina CompanyPersonal connection and coaching: Erica Vander SandeShow Notes KeywordsConversations in the Dark podcast, Erica Vander Sande, vision mission and purpose, business values, daring greatly, women in business, marketing agency leadership, intuitive strategy, building a business around your life, The Mina CompanySubscribe and ReviewIf this episode inspired you to revisit your own guiding light, leave a review or share it with a fellow business owner. New episodes of Conversations in the Dark are on the way. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Conversations in the Dark, Episode 6: The Season of Letting GoErica Vander Sande on pivoting with AI, handing worry over to God, and learning when to step in and when to stay stepped out.Episode SummaryErica opens this episode with a picture that has been on her heart: a giant, roaring river carving through the landscape, and everyone she knows being carried along by the rapids. Clients, team members, her kids, her husband, her friends. It feels like we are all being asked to let go of something at the same time.For Erica, a big part of that is AI. After seven and a half years of running The Mina Company, she is modernizing how her agency works almost daily, which means some services, processes, and even some revenue may need to go. She loves the challenge, but she is honest about the unsteadiness it brings, and about how not everyone on her team feels the same way.From there the episode gets personal and practical. Erica shares how she makes business decisions through daily meditation and conversations with God, including a very real debate over a spare office desk. She talks about letting go at home too, like the night her daughter came home with a disappointing history test grade and Erica chose not to spiral. She also walks through the energetic box and backpack visualization she uses to hand off anxiety, shame, and dread, and what stepping into a leadership season looks like when you are done doing everything yourself.What We CoverA world in the rapids. Erica explains why this season feels like everyone is being forced to pivot at once, and why letting go is a muscle that gets stronger with practice.AI and the shaking ground. How constant change in the digital world is pushing Erica to rethink services, processes, and revenue at The Mina Company, and why she is loving the challenge even when it is unsettling.Settling the ground for her team. Erica talks about her role as a leader in helping people who do not thrive on change feel steady while things are shifting.Business meetings with God. How Erica uses meditation and daily conversations with her higher power to make decisions, including whether to keep paying for an empty desk heading into Q4.Trusting intuition over AI. Why Erica relies on gut feelings and spiritual guidance for the big calls, like when to hire and when to slow down, even while using AI for so much else.Letting go at home. Erica shares the story of her fifth grade daughter's history test, and how choosing not to make it about herself turned a stressful moment into a simple plan.The energetic box and backpack. The visualization Erica uses to hand over anxiety, dread, and shame, and why she calls it one of the most freeing things she does.Letting your team lead. What it looks like to watch someone else own a task, make mistakes, and fix them, and how Erica decides when to step back in.Becoming the student again. Erica shares why she wants a peer group of women who are further along in business and AI, and why she is choosing to be a learner in this season instead of the guide.Honest friends are gold. A short story about a sales email she almost took seriously, and the friend who set her straight in one sentence.Is this a peace worthy mission? Erica leaves listeners with a simple filter for decisions: lead with peace, and go wrestle with whatever feels off.Connect with EricaBusiness inquiries: The Mina CompanyPersonal connection and coaching: Erica Vander SandeSubscribe and ReviewIf this episode helped you loosen your grip on something, leave a review or share it with a friend who is standing at the edge of the river right now. New episodes of Conversations in the Dark are on the way. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Episode SummaryErica is a few weeks into the school year, navigating a new schedule with two kids in sports five days a week and not enough time to go home in between. In the middle of that chaos, her youngest daughter, seven years old and a spicy ADHDer, got moved up from the beginner jujitsu class to the 7 to 13 age group and completely fell apart in the car on the way to her first class.What started as a parenting story turns into one of the more useful reframes Erica has offered on the show. She walks through the heart to heart she had with her daughter in that car, about the gap between deciding to grow and actually feeling ready, and why that in between stage is supposed to feel awful. Erica connects it back to her own biggest leaps, a home birth, starting a business eight months pregnant, running that business through her mom's death, and makes the case that bravery was never about feeling confident. It was about doing the thing scared anyway.The episode closes with a funny, honest twist: the exact thing her daughter was most afraid of actually happened a few classes later, and what it looked like to get through it anyway.What We CoverA packed fall schedule. Erica talks about the reality of sports five days a week, long gaps between school and practice, and choosing to be the one who absorbs her kids' after school meltdowns instead of outsourcing that time.Why she still shows up for pickup. Erica explains why she built her business around being able to pick her kids up from school, and what she gets out of those raw first 20 minutes in the car.The jujitsu meltdown. A full breakdown of her daughter's spiral before her first class in the older kids group, and what was actually underneath the tears.The gap between deciding and doing. Erica names the specific, uncomfortable in between stage that comes after you commit to growth but before you feel any momentum, and why so many people quit right there.Bravery is not confidence. Erica revisits her own biggest leaps, a home birth, launching Mina eight months pregnant, and running her business through her mother's death, to make the point that she never felt ready for any of them.Do it scared. Why waiting to feel brave before taking action gets the order backward, and what it actually looks like to move forward without the crystal ball.When the worst case scenario shows up anyway. The moment her daughter's biggest fear about jujitsu came true in class, and what it taught both of them about resilience.Memorable MomentErica describes the exact image of growth: a tiny two or three inch window of time between deciding to do something hard and actually feeling momentum, where your inner voice is doing everything it can to talk you out of it.Connect with EricaBusiness inquiries: The Mina CompanyPersonal connection and coaching: Erica Vander SandeShow Notes KeywordsConversations in the Dark podcast, Erica Vander Sande, do it scared, parenting an ADHD child, kids and sports anxiety, growth mindset for moms, overcoming fear of failure, raising confident daughters, entrepreneur bravery, jujitsu for kidsSubscribe and ReviewIf this episode gave you the push you needed, leave a review or share it with someone standing in that scary in between space right now. New episodes of Conversations in the Dark are on the way. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Conversations in the Dark, Episode 4: Stop Avoiding the Hard StuffErica Vander Sande on her 14th anniversary, the anxiety of good seasons, grief that shows up sideways, and learning to talk yourself off the ledge.Episode SummaryErica is coming off a great weekend. She and her husband just celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary, and their anniversary dinner turned into a walk down memory lane through every season of their marriage. Somewhere in that conversation, Erica caught herself saying something she didn't expect: she wanted to avoid any more hard seasons.That comment sat with her for two days, and this episode is her working through it out loud. She talks about why we instinctively try to dodge hard things, why that instinct is actually a waste of energy, and what it looks like to prepare for hard seasons without living in fear of them.From there, the conversation goes deep into anxiety that shows up even when life is going well, grief that resurfaces in unexpected moments, and a practice Erica uses to talk herself through spirals: picturing every past version of herself sitting around a conference table, reminding her what she has already survived.What We CoverA 14th anniversary and an honest slip. Erica shares what came up during her anniversary dinner and why she caught herself trying to avoid future hardship.Why avoiding hard things doesn't work. Erica explains the difference between planning for hard seasons and trying to skip them altogether, and why most of the best things in her life came out of the hardest ones.Anxiety that shows up when things are good. Erica opens up about the clenched fist feeling that creeps in even during genuinely good seasons, and why she can't always turn it off.The conference table exercise. A real look at how Erica talks to past versions of herself, at 20, 26, 30, and 32 years old, to remind her present self what she is actually capable of handling.Grief that shows up sideways. Erica connects her frustration with after school carpool chaos to a deeper grief over losing her mom, and how anger is often standing in for a different feeling entirely.The mama bear mentality. Why showing up for yourself first, the way you would for your own kids, changes how you handle stress, anger, and anxiety.When to outsource instead of white knuckle it. Erica talks about calling a friend, a family member, or a therapist when you can't think your way out of something on your own.Memorable MomentErica compares holding onto anxiety during good seasons to her daughter learning to swim, gripping the side of the pool out of habit even though she already knows how to let go and swim on her own.Connect with EricaBusiness inquiries: The Mina CompanyPersonal connection and coaching: Erica Vander SandeShow Notes KeywordsConversations in the Dark podcast, Erica Vander Sande, anxiety and grief podcast, avoiding hard conversations, marriage and business owners, motherhood and anxiety, grief after losing a parent, entrepreneur mental health, mama bear mentality, meditation and mindset podcastSubscribe and ReviewIf this episode hit home, leave a review or share it with someone who needs a reminder that they have already survived their hardest days. New episodes of Conversations in the Dark are on the way. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Conversations in the Dark, Episode 3: I Don't Want A Business That Needs MeErica Vander Sande on starting Mina eight months pregnant, stepping away during burnout, and why the goal was never to be irreplaceable.Episode SummaryErica opens this episode with a belief she has held since day one of owning a business: she wants to build something that does not need her. Not a side hustle that depends on her showing up every day, but a company that can run and grow even when she steps back.She walks through how The Mina Company actually started, freelancing while eight months pregnant, dealing with a complicated pregnancy, and caring for her mom through stage four cancer, all while her husband encouraged her to try working for herself. From there she traces the business through her mom's death, a period of deep burnout in 2022, and the decision to step away and take a full time role with a client rather than shut the business down.Erica gets honest about the shame she felt at the time for stepping back, why that decision was actually the right one, and how she eventually returned to lead Mina into its current growth phase, now in the top 4 percent of women owned businesses by revenue. The episode closes with a practical challenge: stop treating your business like a child that needs you every day, and start using AI as a real operations partner to figure out how to need yourself less.What We CoverHow Mina actually started. Erica shares the real story behind founding her marketing agency while eight months pregnant, recovering from job loss, and caring for her mom through cancer treatment.Replacing an income, then some. How her first clients found her, why they were all moms, and how quickly she replaced her previous salary.Losing her mom while running a business. Erica talks honestly about grieving while still needing to show up for clients, and why she never told people what was actually going on.Burnout in 2022. What it looked like when Erica hit a wall, considered selling or dissolving the business, and chose a third option instead.Stepping back without stepping out. Why Erica took a full time job with a client rather than walking away from Mina entirely, and how she kept the business running from a distance.The shame of doing it differently. Erica reflects on why stepping back from your own business still feels taboo, and why she has always been willing to break the mold anyway.Coming back to Mina. What it looks like 18 months later, now that the business has grown into the top 4 percent of women owned businesses by annual revenue.A business is not a child. Erica's case for why founders, especially women, need to stop treating their businesses like something that requires them forever.Using AI as an operations manager. A practical prompt Erica recommends for figuring out what your business actually needs from you, and what it does not.Try This PromptErica shares the exact type of prompt she recommends running through Claude to start building a business that needs you less:"If you were an operations manager for my business, what areas do you see that I need growth in, in order to be as needed as little as possible? What would I need to do to get there, and how much annual revenue would I need to build to make that happen?"Connect with EricaBusiness inquiries: The Mina CompanyPersonal connection and coaching: Erica Vander SandeShow Notes KeywordsConversations in the Dark podcast, Erica Vander Sande, building a business that runs without you, entrepreneur burnout, women in business, The Mina Company, business owner grief, using AI in business, small business growth, stepping back as a founderSubscribe and ReviewIf this episode resonated with you, leave a review or share it with a fellow business owner who needs permission to build something that does not depend on them. New episodes of Conversations in the Dark are on the way. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.