Episode Details

Andrea McKenna didn't come from accounting she came from marketing, from operations, from a belief that how a firm makes people feel matters just as much as what it delivers. That outsider perspective is exactly how she and her husband Shane turned a dining table in Hawthorn East into a 60-person professional services firm without a business plan and without a blueprint. In this conversation, Andrea is direct and thoughtful on what it actually takes to build something real: the seasons of a life that made the myth of work-life balance irrelevant, the discipline of stepping back from thought before making a decision, and the hard-won clarity that comes from 21 years of building alongside your partner in every sense of the word.

IN THIS EPISODE

Building Aintree Group from two people on a dining table to a 60-person firm and why calling it 'the Group' from day one was a deliberate act of vision The early challenge of having a business manager caught between two founders who didn't always agree Why she abandoned work-life balance for a 'life in seasons' philosophy and what that actually looks like in practice How to get honest feedback as a senior leader, when almost no one gives it to you directly Knowing when to fire a client and why protecting your team sometimes means walking away from the fee Her advice to young people: slow down, find older and wiser voices, and stop measuring yourself against everyone else's timeline