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There's a tension every B2B service leader navigates: How do you scale without compromising your client experience and the core values behind it? When your clients depend on you for high-stakes services like finance, technology, or strategy, that question carries real weight.
The CEO's Heart for Service is where accomplished B2B CEOs and consultants share hard-won insights on walking that tightrope. Join hosts from Brand3 B2B Growth Marketing for conversations that deliver peer insights, field-tested strategies, and a holistic view of scaling premium services with integrity.
Ep14
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Meet Cassandra Shea
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[00:00:00]
Matt Wolfe: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the CEO's Heart for Service. I'm your host, Matt Wolfe. I'm flying solo today. I'm without my trusty co-host, but I am no worse for the wear because you are about to meet Cassandra Shea. She is the founder and CEO of Gold Standard Consulting Group. she is a consultant with a very unique power, talking about, uh...
Sh- she interacts with individuals and teams [00:01:00] around the idea of capacity. She helps unlock hidden and unused capacity in individuals and teams. and she can put numbers to it. She can show you the real impact of the work that she's doing, which is one thing that makes her so unique. She's talk- She is merging soft skills with real numbers in a powerful way.
But I think, man, you are gonna... When you think about scaling, when you think about being able to grow an organization and having the capacity to do so, she is tackling this from an angle I've never heard anyone talk about before, at least not in this, not this articulate, not this deep, and this powerful of a way.
She's coming at it from the place of identity, and the thing holding us back is so often the stories that we tell about ourselves, and she's gonna invite you, into a, a journey that's going to unlock more than you probably expected. And then there's some sub themes that we get to explore today.
Uh, the idea of how so many of us in the consulting space and in the services [00:02:00] space, we, we give other people solutions that we don't use on ourselves. We don't actually take our own medicine, and how powerful is it if and when we do. And another thing, I'll just put this bug in your ear before you go and listen to her.
What happens if we rehire our past self? We tend to, uh, go through different phases in our careers, and maybe we discount or forget about or leave behind, past skill sets and things that make us really valuable and are a huge part of who we are, and what happens when we recapture that to tackle the present.
There's just so much packed into this. Uh, you're just gonna find a thoughtful, supportive conversation here that's gonna unlock new possibilities for you as we go over and talk to Cassandra Shea
Cassandra, welcome to the show. I'm so happy that you're here today
Cassandra Shea: Thank you, Matt. I'm really looking forward to this conversation
Matt Wolfe: Me too. We had a great talk the other day, and it just really [00:03:00] got me excited to dive deeper, and just to understand everything that you're doing at Gold Standard Consulting Group. let me kick off, though, with... So we have a l- just a sort of fun, silly, little thing we like to ask, although it does reveal some interesting stuff.
Cassandra Shea: Okay
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, our, you know, the premise here is we're talking about B2B services, very high, and you and I both work in very high-stakes situations. These are high-stakes, high-trust things that people, uh, allow us to step into their world with. and the only way that ever happens is if somebody meets the human.
You know? That we, people love that we have great information, they love that we have great qualifications and all these things, but the big question is, "Can I trust this human?" So we try to address the human side of things and, and get to know people on the podcast as well, and the first way we usually do that is just this.
Like, you probably, when you were a kid growing up, didn't have Gold Standard Consulting Group written in crayon anywhere. Like, you probably didn't see [00:04:00] yourself going this direction in life. So wh- where did you think you were gonna go when you were younger?
Childhood Dreams
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Cassandra Shea: I'll give you two, two time snapshots. When I was five years old, I wanted to be an artist and an archeologist. Why? I don't know, but I thought it would be so interesting to, like, paint the picture of the past, and I just had this fantasy of going on archeological digs. Uh, fun fact, I've actually never seen the Indiana Jones movies, um, so I don't actually know where this idea of being an archeologist came to being.
And the second thing that I'll answer that I think is so funny, and I've thought about this a lot over the last year, when I was 18 years old, I was in my sophomore year of college, so second year, undeclared. I had majored... I had switched my major 13 times by the time I was 18 in my second year because I wanted to learn everything.
And I remember one of my professors, I was in the non-science track for [00:05:00] biology, just to check my liberal arts requirement for that, and I remember him asking, like, "What do you wanna do? Like, you're obviously curious. You love learning. What do you wanna do?" And I remember, I'm 18. I know nothing, okay? And I go, "I wanna be a consultant."
And he laughs, like not in a funny, like, "Ha-ha," like, "That's so nice." He just laughs, and he's like, "That's ridiculous." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "You know, you have to have tons of experience. You need to create this whole life story. You can't be a consultant till you're probably in your 50s." And I just remember thinking, "I think a consultant would be great because I can learn.
I can go deep, and there's always gonna be something for me to expand my skills, expand my network, expand my, my challenge zone." And I've just been thinking about that. Now, that's more than half a lifetime ago, and I've been thinking about that professor kind of laughing me out of the room, and now I've built a [00:06:00] consultancy, and I'm not yet in my 50s.
It did not take me that long to do it
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, you showed them. That's amazing that you just pulled that out of na- I mean, 'cause truly that this is often a more discovered thing, profession or, you know, thing, a pivoted into thing to be a consultant. That you had that wherewithal, that's, that's really amazing.
Cassandra Shea: And, and where that came from, I can't tell you. I didn't know any consultants. Like, I don't... Again, it's like the archeologist. Like, where did that inspiration come from? I don't know
Matt Wolfe: Those are both fascinating things. Um, you've already addressed my follow-up question about Indiana Jones, so we can move past that.
Sacred Work of Consulting
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Matt Wolfe: You know, I, I was li- I literally just had this conversat- a conversation similar to this, before we started this recording in that, you know, when you talk about getting to learn from other people and all these perspectives, I've, I've been thinking about this podcast a lot in that vein. Anytime I get to do discovery [00:07:00] work,
uh, as a cons- as a brand and marketing consultant, it's a really privileged position to be in on so many levels that I know from our first conversation I think you really appreciate because you are, um, do get to learn from other people, which is very cool. You get to absorb other perspectives, but you also get to hold people's stories,
Cassandra Shea: Hmm.
Matt Wolfe: not a small thing at all.
you know, everyone's story is, I think, a, a sacred thing. Um, there's a particular sacredness to the... w- when you're working with a business owner who has spent so many years and so much heart and energy to build something really special. There's just... And, and, and what they've sacrificed and what they've given along the way.
There's just so much packed in there. I don't know if that resonates, but that's, that's, that was something on my mind about what you and I do from different directions.
Cassandra Shea: I agree the, the preciousness of holding the story is, is such a [00:08:00] sacred honor, and to be a trusted advisor, I think, you know, you and I both have a Venn diagram where we typically meet leaders at a point of change. There's something changing in their life, their business, their vision, and it's really sacred to, to meet somebody in potentially the middle of a chaos or a transition and hopefully be a ballast of clarity and be a force of peace in an uncertain future.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. And it's because you see things this way is why you're such a great person to be here today on the podcast.
Identity Meets Capacity
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Matt Wolfe: Well, let's talk about what you do for people because you're filling... Uh, it's fascinating. I'm fascinated by what you do. I think you're filling this really unique and valuable need, uh, for people as a coach.
So I'd love you to- if you could just share a little bit about the work you're doing at, at Gold Standard Consulting Group.
Cassandra Shea: Yeah. If we had a whiteboard, I would draw you a Venn diagram, and one circle would be [00:09:00] identity and one circle would be capacity. And I believe that we unlock leaders' potential if we want to change the outcome, if we wanna change a result, the, the middle of that diagram where those two factors intersect is where change happens.
And the two levers that I believe affect change on, on the greatest level have the, the biggest impact, if you will, are identity, which I would define as very simply the story we tell ourselves about who we are, and that ends up dictating our decisions. That ends up dictating what's possible. It creates potentially false flags and assumptions that we get to remove as we consider possibility.
And then we also need to look at our capacity. You and I both run businesses and have busy lives, and we have life outside of business and family and these different identities we play. And so our capacity, I believe, is not infinite, but we have agency to choose how we direct it. And [00:10:00] if people have the capability to change, that's where I get really excited to help them unlock, both at the individual level as well as the team level.
And what's been interesting is I've spent the last, you know, six and a half years since I started this business largely in one-to-one coaching settings. And in the last year I've expanded that to coaching teams, and I've logged about 3,500 hours plus at this point of this work And what was happening before is I would, you know, use words like identity and people would go, "Okay, that sounds kind of squishy," or, "Maybe that's a nice to have."
And what's interesting is the collective conversation has really shifted to realize that identity is, I believe, it precedes our strategy. If we're gonna go to the whiteboard and figure out the next business move or the next evolution of what momentum and change look like in an organization, I believe we start at the identity level, both for the individual as well as the org.
And, the last thing I'll say is not [00:11:00] everyone wants to change.
Capacity Calculator ROI
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Cassandra Shea: And so what I've been able to do and kind of where I've focused and honed in on the capacity side of the circle in the last 13 months, is developing a capacity calculator. So I can actually show a CEO where the capacity is hidden on their team, where their leaders, the smartest, highest paid, best people on the team who are meant to be solving the hardest problems and scaling the company, might be misdirecting their efforts.
And what that's done, Matt, has been really fun. I know that y- you're in the marketing world, and so we talk a lot about, you know, return on investment for marketing. And for consulti- consulting and coaching, it's sometimes hard to quantify change. And so what I've been able to do, or at least the focus area for me over the last 13 months focusing on how does capacity affect identity and vice versa, is actually starting to assign a number to it.
So I did a study last week, and one of the, the senior leaders in the company, he's a VP, is at a 10% [00:12:00] utilization ratio. He's working in 10% of his capacity. And this is all self-reported data, which makes it even more interesting. And the cost to the company, based on his self-reported data, is $164,000 a year of misallocated labor spent.
And that's one leader. And I already found $300,000 from two other leaders. So now we're sitting at, you know, 464 just between three leaders where they're focused on things that are not directed to scaling activities, and they're self-assessing that they're out of the pocket of the things that they know they can do, their gifts they can bring, their talents they can offer to the company 90% of the time in this one case.
Which then gives us a roadmap to not just say, "Hey, here's what needs to change, but here's the cost of not changing, and here's the opportunity of what change could look like and the fruit that it could bear
Matt Wolfe: That's so powerful. That was something that really struck me about what you do. This, aren't [00:13:00] many models that do actually mix the numbers with the squishy stuff, right?
Cassandra Shea: I know. It's hard to get one without the other
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, like, right. So much of coaching and consulting a lot of times is sort of trusting that people will trust that the squishy stuff matters, you know?
That it's gonna in something later on. but that... So, so then the, so the metric or the thing that we're looking at is, are they, uh, engaged in, you said scaling activities, right?
Operationalizing Scale
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Cassandra Shea: So I would define scaling activities as anything that's going to drive outsized growth efforts. So I've studied a lot of Dr. Ben Hardy's work, 10X Is Easier Than 2X, The Science of Scaling. I got to actually train with him online and in person in 2023, and there's so much meat on the bone in those two books around identity and why our identity creates a filter with which we decide how we're gonna be and act in the world.
And my [00:14:00] obsession kind of started when I realized, like, the premise makes sense, the hypothesis makes sense. The story you tell yourself about what's possible is going to dictate how you show up in the world and the choices you make to grow the business. But scale is different. Scale is nonlinear growth accelerated.
And what I got really obsessed around is this idea of how do you operationalize it? Like Ben created this roadmap of the why and the what, but I started getting obsessed with this question of how do you do it? Like, how do you actually take a leader on that journey? How do you change their identity? How do you change a team's identity?
And so that's kind of been the genesis of how I got to this point.
Matt Wolfe: How do you do that? What does that look like?
Cassandra Shea: Well, there's a few different, uh, layers to it, as one would expect. And I would have to say there's a couple things that I would preface the answer with that might surprise people.
Grief Before Growth
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Cassandra Shea: One, I think you, you actually [00:15:00] start by grieving that things need to change, and change is really, really hard. And so when I meet leaders in a point of transition, we usually have a conversation around this work is going to get harder before it gets easier, and there will be some grief because who you are can't get you where you're going next.
Such a platitude in business, I think it's really true. It's one of those things we say, but I see it in, in person. But we don't often stop to grieve. We don't often stop to grieve that the person we were in our last iteration, and even maybe the things we loved about that person and how we showed up in business, they can't always go forward with us.
And so there's a lot of, I think, misconceptions about the, the inner journey to ch- changing your identity. One of the biggest ones, I think, is that it's easy, and it's gonna be relatively frictionless, like almost like creating a marketing persona. [00:16:00] And that's part of it. But I think the first step, the, the deeper work, is to grieve that what once was is falling away.
And if you want something different, if you wanna create a different outcome, you can't, A, stay the same or stay stagnant, like we know that about change, but we also need to create some space to grieve. And nobody-- I have not seen a single person on the internet saying that. Um, and I hate to be the person that bears that news, but if we can grieve, if we can hold space for our own evolution...
I know you shared in our conversation you had an identity shift in your own career, and I'm sure there was massive grief in closing a chapter. And sometimes it's more subtle for folks. It's a, you know, a longer change horizon, and sometimes it's all at once. I worked with people who, you know, recently were laid off, or there's this huge change event in their life, and we sit there, we actually stop and give some pause, [00:17:00] and we grieve
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. That is powerful. Well, yeah, I mean, if you switch 90% of what you were doing, that means you're working different people, your relationships change, the way that you feel affirmed or that you even know the scorecard that you're doing the right things has changed, let alone your s- you know, so much about your... You shift at work, their iden- the identity changes, and that's a big thing to grieve.
Cassandra Shea: Yeah
Matt Wolfe: It's like you said, I, yeah, I went from the world of theater into marketing. Had 25 years under my belt in a whole different industry, and community, and s- way that people talk, and converse, and values, and activity. and in my case, I don't know that I even recognized that I had maybe closed the door yet.
You know, you sort of sometimes you leave that door, you know, o- cracked open a little bit. And then when you realize it's really probably closed, that's a... Y- yeah, it's hard. Gosh, I [00:18:00] love... No, you're right. I've, I've heard a lot about change management and that being an act of managing grief through the change.
I've never heard it applied in this kind of setting. It's incredible, um, and deeply empathetic, which I really appreciate. so that was one layer, right? The grief
Cassandra Shea: Yeah. That's, it's the uncomfortable conversation I would have at the beginning. very simple, and I think for anyone listening, these are some questions that I would ask somebody if we were having a, a deep identity level conversation, and I can run you through a few of those. And if any of those spark your imagination, Matt, I'd love to hear.
Desire Deserving Decisions
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Cassandra Shea: Um, but the very first question I start with with identity work is what do you want? And I'll caveat the question seems deceptively simple. I've had clients work with me on that one question amongst a myriad of things for about six months. Because there are so many conditions we impose upon what we think we want based on our conditioning, based on the other roles we play in our [00:19:00] lives, you know, mother, daughter, sister, friend, wife, like whatever those other roles are also create a perception that we're, we're allowed to want a certain thing.
There's... I would... One of the tools I use is called a money thermostat, and it's in the, the sequence of defining what we want. And we go in and we basically, I ask somebody to deploy a billion dollars. Like a billion dollars is dropped into your account today, what would you do with it exactly? And the one condition is you have to deploy all of the dollars.
And every single client who's gone through this exercise, and there's, there's layers to it, there's additional questions, every single client comes away clear on what they actually want. And the second and most interesting thing is they recognize that they need less money than they thought they needed to make their wildest dreams come true.
Their most generous, most legacy-driven version of themselves, it's gonna cost less than they thought. But the number might feel out of reach for right now. Like maybe that number, [00:20:00] for example, is 10 billion. For one client it was 10 billion. Could fund every life dream he's ever conceptualized of. Um, another client was super interesting.
He wanted to deploy $450 million to buy a college and completely reinvent the system of higher education. So it was really interesting to... And he works also in marketing and coaching. So it was fascinating, like what our hidden desires reveal about our orientation and our values. But I would say that what gets in the way of answering that question of what do I want is two things.
Our prior conditioning It could even be like the zip code you were born in, the story your family of origin told you about career and money and possibility. There's so many conditions that we've created in our lives to tell us a story about what is or is not possible. And the second piece is o- oftentimes we justify what we want instead of being able to say, "This is what I want," without justification.
And I believe those desires [00:21:00] are a hidden compass, or maybe they're more aptly put like a spiritual compass to more of what we wanna create in the world. And so regardless for that client, he didn't go out and raise 450 million to go buy a college, but he did start looking at how is he transmitting information, and is there a training component to his business that he was missing, 'cause he loves training.
And so there was this energetic shift around the orientation of his work that also affected his identity. He stopped coaching or working on getting coaching clients one-to-one and started realizing that his best work was coaching entrepreneurs who had teams, so he could facilitate change on a bigger scale and have more impact.
And so I believe once we surface these desires- It reveals to us parts of our identity that either, A, we might have left behind or said that's too big or too scary or too weird or too different than what I'm doing now. But it also gives us some really rich fodder to create the story of who we're becoming and what we want [00:22:00] next.
So then the second piece to identity work is deserving. Um, that's where I find the most resistance in the process, is once we get clear on what we want, do we feel like we're allowed to have it? And nine times out of 10, I've met a few clients where they don't have a single deserving block. It's fascinating.
like I really wanna meet their parents. I'm like, "Explain to me how this all happened." But a lot of us have some kind of wound that I don't wanna shine my light too bright. Gay Hendricks talks about this, about the upper limit problem. I don't wanna be too bold. I don't wanna take too much action. I don't wanna shine too bright.
It might, eliminate the spotlight from others. There's these different ways we perceive that if we were unapologetically ourselves, perhaps someone else would suffer. We would diminish the possibility or abundance for others, which I believe is not true. So there's a whole protocol I go through to get people more in touch with their values and drive from their inner compass versus seeking external validation.
And then we operationalize it by figuring out what [00:23:00] decisions does your new identity make, what decisions would be different as a result of your identity shift, and then we unlock capacity through delegation. And delegation, I believe, is more of a system than a, an act that's one and done. So I have a filter that I run people through and do deep training on delegation.
Those are the four phases. We figure out what we desire, what do I want, without justification. We figure out if there's a deserving block, which is where, again, 90% or more of clients get stuck. And the question I would ask there is, do you feel like you're allowed to have it? And if not, what's getting in the way?
Mm-hmm. And it's not just to go and remove those roadblocks, but it's to surface the data. Third is what decisions would be different based on this new identity? And then fourth is who are our super whos? How do we stack a team and build a team around the energetic strengths of the leader that's right in front of me?
How do we build that? And that's very practical and [00:24:00] tactical, and I use working genius as one of my favorite ways to discern how are we going to create a delegation system for this leader that's gonna keep them in the pocket of their capacity as much as possible. And we're shooting for 80% or more. I think it's unrealistic to get to 100.
Uh, for most people, getting to 50% would actually be a huge lift to the business
Matt Wolfe: Oh, of course, yeah. This is wonderful. No wonder you enjoy this work so much.
Cassandra Shea: Can you tell?
It's my playground
Matt Wolfe: yeah. Oh, it absolutely shows that you love what you do, I think, uh, a million percent. But it's, um... again, to the idea of the privileged journey, right? Like, what a wonderful journey
Cassandra Shea: Yeah
Matt Wolfe: to go on with somebody.
And the thing that keeps coming to mind for me is you're just, you're just removing limitation after limitation, self-imposed limitations, you know, that we put on in all these different ways that you're working with them. again, addressing... So I, you know, the sort of forward-facing thing of what you do [00:25:00] is this issue of capacity, which I think, I would argue that gives people, um, a reason to move forward, right?
'Cause they can
Cassandra Shea: Totally
Matt Wolfe: put a value to it. Like you said, there's numbers that they can justify it to an expense and a whatever, whatever the way we s- we think of that. But you're getting them to this deeper thing of identity in a way that I've never heard anyone, know, work with people, and it really is the root, right?
Like you said,
Cassandra Shea: Hmm
Matt Wolfe: have placed these limitations in however, however we've told the story of, of who we are. God, that's incredible. And I, I love this. I feel like already, I think you're, if anyone's listening to this, they're getting a, a, a sense of what it would be like to experience working with you, right?
That, you know, you're gonna make space for them to, to answer these questions and, and tackle these things, and how liberating it would be to, to go through those things. What was so compelling when we first talked is we're... We're tackling the same thing of how do people scale?
How do we unlock scalability for a company? I th- I think we [00:26:00] probably both think also as, as, um, potential for impact, potential for people to,
Cassandra Shea: Absolutely
Matt Wolfe: lives, especially in services. So how do we unlock all of that? but they, both things do come to identity. So you're doing it at this personal level.
We tend to sit at the i-identity of the business. There's, there's two big characters in any good brand story. There's the people who they serve,
Cassandra Shea: Hmm.
Matt Wolfe: we call that the ideal client or whatever, and we're trying to get people to identify that person. It's funny you said the persona thing earlier.
We're trying to get them to identify it out of their own experience, out of
Cassandra Shea: Right
Matt Wolfe: of who, where have the actual real living, breathing relationships been that we know that's when this whole thing works best.
They get the
Cassandra Shea: Hmm
Matt Wolfe: results. We do our best work. There's the most joy in the dance of the whole thing, which is not squishy and does lead to productivity and revenue.
Cassandra Shea: Yes
Matt Wolfe: You know, so the-- we're trying to get them to name that person [00:27:00] specifically, but they also have to understand who they are as a business. Who, who is that character, the business, and that character in this B2B, often founder-led cons-consultative, high responsibility, high trust space is the person. It's not the business, it's the human behind the business. And a lot of these same things come up. Have, um, where we see the limitations, are often, probably haven't given themselves enough credit for what they have accomplished and how much power they really have or how unique the solution they brought to the table truly is. I'll die on the hill that -everybody I work with, and I don't care how boring they think their job is or how much they're swimming in a sea of sameness, there is something unique about who they are, um, and how they help the people they help. some are aware of it and feel like they've never had a place to say it, and some have just never had it celebrated and, and pulled [00:28:00] out.
Cassandra Shea: Well, that lights up really quick on, on you working on the, the identity at the organizational level.
Unconditional Confidence
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Cassandra Shea: What I see creates friction also for people in our seat, B2B service company owners, is that we might conflate our identity with the business's identity. And sometimes those are the same because of solopreneurs or, you know, expert consultants running a, a very micro team.
But one thing that I've worked a lot on for myself and my own identity journey, but also with all of my clients, is this idea of unconditional confidence, which is a term borrowed from positive psychology, that the outcome doesn't get to determine our worth as a person. Whether GSCG Consulting, you know, rises or falls, that doesn't affect how my poodle sees me.
Which on the, the worst days possible, you just have to remember, like, the poodle isn't reading the P&L. Like, he just wants a walk and to hang [00:29:00] out and to snuggle and, you know, definitely is gonna ask for some treats. But my dog doesn't see where my business flourishes or fails. He sees me as a person of worth whom he loves.
And one thing that I would say in identity work, just a very practical, tactical check-in for everyone listening, when we do love our work so much, when we do fall in love with the, the process of impact that we get to provide for the world, it's so easy to make that business our identity, and to see the rise and the fall of, of the business as a direct reflection of us.
And I'm not saying to not take accountability or responsibility. That's key, because we have agency. But what I found very helpful is to separate and create an identity story for ourselves, and it might change season to season as the business grows. The metaphor I use is I'm not a parent yet, but I've watched parents of toddlers and parents of teenagers.
They're parenting different. Like, they're not parenting the teenagers the same [00:30:00] way they were parenting the toddler. They're a different version. Their identity is different as a parent of a teen. I just have a lot of clients right now whose kids just turned 16. It's terrifying. And they're buying new cars.
They're like, "Well, we need to raise our income because our kids are getting more and more expensive." And that that evolution, that identity journey was different than when they were the parent of a toddler. And so I believe our business is, is somewhat the same. What our business needs of us at each season might dictate and change how our identity might need to flex and be fluid.
And so part of what I love about this work is giving people a method to keep changing their identity over time, because I might not be in that change seat with them in a deep container over the next 10 years. There's some clients I've worked with for, you know, two to three years. But once you have the method, you can keep changing your identity.
You can keep evolving your story, and that's what I find really fascinating
Matt Wolfe: Makes sense. Right. That there's no world in which that [00:31:00] capacity answer right now is a static thing, right? That it's gonna
Cassandra Shea: Even three months it could change, you know? Like, it can change so fast
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Defining Great Service
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Matt Wolfe: Well, so we call this CEO's Heart for Service, right? a- and so one thing we often like to make sure we tackle for a second is just like, what, what does that mean to you? Like, how do you... And this is very unique what you're doing with people. So How do you know when you've delivered great service? How do you assess that for yourself?
Cassandra Shea: It's a great question, and I would say it's, it's changed over time. I used to think great service was I did a great job, they paid my invoice, and we created this transformation together. And for me, especially earlier in my career, I was very a- addicted and obsessed with my clients' revenue wins. And those are sweet, and I love them, and they're never to be ignored or diminished.
But what I started asking my clients that was different is, "What [00:32:00] has your time away from work looked like?" Because to me, the measure of identity work and evolution is not simply us producing better and better business results. One of my clients has this phrase of, "Growth up into the right unchecked is called cancer."
And his thing for me is, "Please help me not hate my life as I grow." And so when I check in with him, I ask him, you know, "What, what does life look like outside, outside of work? How's your health? How's your sleep? Um, what vacation did you recently book with your daughters?" He's one of the ones who has a, a s- now newly minted 16-year-old driver, and he just took off for four weeks in July, uh, June, July, and took his daughters on a cruise with his wife.
They spent some time on the Oregon coast. They live in the Pacific Northwest. They had this whole adventure over the summer. And he's getting very intentional about what time is left before his daughters go to college. And that's not dissimilar from many of my clients, where we have this really [00:33:00] deep heart to heart of what's the why behind your scaling -journey?
Why do you wanna change? What... We need leverage on the evolution. We can't just grow for growth's sake, in my opinion. That's not very interesting, and we will inevitably get burnt out. but what was so fascinating is allowing him to step back and see the quality of time that his life was able to produce because of the growth in the business, because of the systems we've set up, because of the identity evolution he's undertaken.
A year ago, he didn't have the team he has in place today. We've built that team together thoughtfully. We've curated systems that allow his business to work without him being in the seat. And so he's had this business now for three and a half years. He's never gotten to take a sabbatical for a month.
And what that tells me is if we go back to, like, the, the four Ds, his desire was very clear when we started working together 14 months ago. He was like, "I wanna be able to step away from my business. I want the business to grow [00:34:00] without me and/or be able to run completely without me." And that wasn't possible when we started working together.
But it took getting clear on the desire, and then it took a lot of decision and delegation work, where we kept, you know, calibrating. And so for me, delivering great service is that my client's life has improved alongside of their business scaling. And if both of those are true, I feel really lucky to be in the pocket of witnessing that change.
I would never want one to come at the cost of the other, specifically that the business growth is at the cost of health or relationships or life growth. But to me, I try to take a really holistic perspective of if we are gonna scale the business, how does the business become more and more of a vehicle for good and more and more of a vehicle to allow your giftedness, your talents to flourish in the world and create the impact you want while simultaneously allowing you to become more of the person or the human that you feel called and want to be in this season?
Matt Wolfe: that may be my [00:35:00] favorite of success in business that I've heard in a long time. everything about how you just said that is spectacular.
Cassandra Shea: And that's coming from a marketer, so I'm gonna clip that out and, uh, remember that for myself.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, yeah. Grab the transcript and
Cassandra Shea: Yeah
Matt Wolfe: that out because, well, I think that's what we all want. Everything you said is like that, that would be interested in this podcast that has this heart for service, those are the things we want. But it definitely, so much of the time, maybe most of the time, all of the time for some people, does not feel attainable.
Cassandra Shea: Hmm.
Matt Wolfe: to have hope that that kind of balance is attainable for so many founders, small business owners, uh, consultants, coaches, you know, wearing all the hats, that's phenomenal.
Redefining Balance
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Cassandra Shea: I love that you used the word balance 'cause so many people have ignored that, and I know it's very popular to say work-life integration. Balance is unattainable. But if we think about biology, like our spine [00:36:00] keeps us in balance, and I've been learning just very simple, like s- spinal stretching techniques recently with the idea of if you strengthen your core, your whole biology improves.
And I think that's such a metaphor for what I just said in, in business and what success can look like. Like I'm not ready to divorce the word balance. I actually wanna triple down on that word for myself because I think about balance like a table. It needs four legs. If you have three, it gets a little bit more, you know, a little bit more unstable.
Two, now you have a TV tray, and like you can't really host a dinner party. So you're shrinking your capacity, but I believe balance is something that, at least for me, I'm a professionally trained dancer, um, balance is the core of how we show up in the world. You can't move confidently in your body or in your business, I believe, without having that core strength that leads to balance.
So for me, I'm not giving up on that word yet. Um, I'm doubling down on it.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. I don't think we talked about that the other day. I didn't know the professionally trained dancer. That's... [00:37:00] I am somewhat, but I, I was in, I did musicals, so I had a lot of dance training,
Cassandra Shea: That's a lot of choreography. I think if you've done musicals, you have to say that you're really good at choreography
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, that's right. But what I resonate with is my whole world in that... And, and I've had to have people remind me that in this other world that I inhabited before, it was always the work was tied with the physical
my sense of being. Whether it... To me, it had to do how I was portraying a story, a character.
Living in someone else's body on stage, I had to be aware of all of the tension and all those things you're talking about. But we do, do forget to bring that piece along business.
I wanna ask you a question. So I wanna ask sort of the core question that we ask in this podcast to you, but in a slightly different way. so the thing we're always trying to get to and explore, of course, is if you're a person with a heart for service, you care about the people you serve, making a difference in their lives, [00:38:00] as you scale, a question on your mind is gonna be, how do I continue to take great care of the people in my charge?
How do I continue to be true to my core values and, and who I am and what we've made this business and this team to be? How do we stay true to what makes us uniquely powerful and effective
Cassandra Shea: Hmm.
Matt Wolfe: at the scale that we've been as we grow? So, so we're always trying to explore that, but, you know, we're already kind of in that conversation, and so I'm curious with you, the spin I'm kinda wanna put on it is where you see the intersection of this issue of capacity and identity impacting that ability to continue to serve well, to
to true
Cassandra Shea: Hmm
Matt Wolfe: to who you are
Service Through Self Expansion
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Cassandra Shea: I'll answer this with a quote from Myron Golden from one of my favorite podcasts this year. He talks about this idea of be fruitful and multiply is really about the law of increase. Like, we're meant to grow, to circulate more value, and to provide [00:39:00] the opportunity for others around us to grow and flourish as well.
And what I loved about that idea of this law of increase, like the universe is meant to continue expanding. I'm not a scientist. One of my favorite facts is that, that scientists can't measure the end of the universe because it seems to be continuously expanding. And so what I would say that's perhaps different than how others would answer that, the service question, how do we take the best care of people?
I would actually answer it by we have to take the best care of our own growth journey, and we have to be so fastidious and conscious and dedicated to our process of self-expansion, which I would say is both identity evolution and expanding the capacity. I don't think capacity is infinite, but we get to choose where to point it, and that is always within our control.
We always have a sense of agency about how we wanna show up and who we w- who we want to be. And the older I get, the more I think like, gosh, we just can't control so [00:40:00] much. Like, there's so much that we can't control, but we can control ourselves, and we can control our response to situations. We can control, uh, the reps we put into our business.
We cannot control or even predict. I wish I could. I really do. I spend way too much time trying to predict the outcome. We can't control that, but we do get to control, similar to an athlete, how many times we go to the gym, how many times I do my spinal stretching to maintain my core stability and flexibility and balance.
That is what we get to control. So I believe that leaders become an instrument. If our body is an instrument for our experience, I believe we, we tune our instrument by choosing to grow, choosing to expand, choosing to participate in the law of increase. And I believe that when we grow, when we expand, we are of service to the world because we're showing the world we're, we're doing our work.
We're not asking people in [00:41:00] services, we're not asking people to do things that we wouldn't do for ourselves or our business. And once we're in integrity with that, in very simple terms, for all the experts out here, this is always the hardest thing, and the one thing that I see every single client revenue explode.
When we do the thing that we're most gifted at for clients on ourselves, revenue blows up, like every time without question
Matt Wolfe: Do you have-- How do you do this for yourself? Can you do this for like how do you manage your own capacity question, you know, in running this business?
Cassandra Shea: Yeah, I mean, I, I like to keep it honest.
Using Your Own Method
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Cassandra Shea: So thir- 13 months ago, I launched this project of what, what would my business look like if I participated in the law of expansion and increase? And it's taken a few different forms. The first research question was, most of my business has been with deep one-to-one transformation with a client.
I show up on Zoom, we coach, and that's the container. And I've evolved [00:42:00] it quite a bit in the last 13 months. The first question I asked myself is, "If, if I had to teach someone else to do what I do, how would I do that?" And that launched multiple revenue tests, including ch- a training certification for other coaches that eventually became a group program, and that eventually became software.
So I can answer your question very simple right now. I started doing the coaching exercises that I give to clients for two hours a week on myself. I took kind of my greatest hits, like a Taylor Swift Eras Tour. It's like, what are all the things that I know have changed the game for clients? And I literally started doing it on myself.
you know, the quickest, easiest example, I've had a lot of clients who are marketing agencies and marketing consultants and professionals, and they don't do their own marketing. And I'm like, "Hey, guys-"
" What's your marketing plan?" And they're like, "What do you mean?" And I'm like, "Well, what's your marketing plan for you?"
So it's a super tangible, s- silly, but true example that often we just don't do what we're best [00:43:00] at for other people. Um, you know, I had a finance professional as a client years ago, and I very gently asked... I just kind of had this intuition that something was a little awry in the house of finances for his business.
I said, "Hey, how often do you close your books on time every month and review your financial statements?" And he said, "I haven't closed my books in months." And I was like, "That's why your sales are in a drought. Has nothing to do with your leads, your sales conversations. It's the fact that you're not in integrity with what you...
the results you produce for other people." And I said, "Who's your bookkeeper?" He said, "I don't have one." And I was like, "Okay, great. We're gonna hit pause on everything we're working on. Clean up your house." And that happens inevitably with every client I've ever worked with. there's something subtle or that large and glaring where we're just not doing the work on ourselves.
So at this point, I go back to the drawing board. I actually pull up my software. I run myself through my coaching exercises, which prior to that I did on my Google Docs. So there's always an, an introversion to anyone's big [00:44:00] idea. And I just ran myself through the coaching exercises and stepped into using the tools I've used on my clients, quite literally, on my own business.
And sometimes that was two hours a week. Sometimes, frankly, I needed more time. Um, but there's always a tune-up process. And now I've installed a team who actually can, because I've trained other people in the method, I can actually give them a call and say like, "Hey, I need you to run me through this exercise.
Um, I'm gonna be the client this time." And they actually run me through the exercise and tell me what my blind spots are, um, you know, according to them. Everyone's perception is different, but I really value that feedback. So I've actually trained others to know what I know at some level, given them the software and the tools, and said, "Hey, please use it on me and, and help me understand what my blind spots are."
But I just know for a fact in, in the type of business that you and I run, and for everyone listening, if we can turn our magic for a second on ourselves, which is so uncomfortable and maybe feels really foreign, that's been the [00:45:00] biggest explosive factor of growth for me, both revenue-wise, but also clarity, I would say.
The clarity that's come from using my own process on myself has been astronomical
Matt Wolfe: That's incredible. Well, I know it would give you great... Anyone who does this, right, it would only increase your confidence that it works.
Cassandra Shea: 100%.
Matt Wolfe: If it can work on you, it can work on anyone else.
Messaging Needs Outside Eyes
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Matt Wolfe: But you, you did solve the other piece that marketing side, people get stuck. We don't do the work ourselves because th- there's a very real truth that we can't.
Cassandra Shea: Great
Matt Wolfe: The one thing that we know is that everyone is too close to their own story, so we really can't do our own messaging. Every client we work with, they just can't possibly tell their own story. They're too close to it. And, and that applies down the road to, as you're building out the marketing strategies and all those things, and just trying to see what's best going to click and work for your business. So we eventually, that outside perspective on someone's story and collaboration of, of those viewpoints is essential [00:46:00] to, to make it all work. Just one question. And before we do our sort of final questionnaire here, to, to that idea of, you know, of telling your story, uh, we do like to explore, you know, the, the reason why so much marketing wastes time and money is because one has worked with that business to stop and think about, okay, how do you tell that story?
How do you tell the right story to the right people? And that's brand strategy. That's really all that is. That's everything that that is. It's a big deal. Nothing works until that's in place. So I always like to explore with people, how, as you've grown and as this business has, uh, matured over the last six and a half years, how has your understanding of how you tell the story of the relationship between what you offer and your clients, changed or grown?
Rehire Past Identities
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Cassandra Shea: You know, the word that comes to mind is, is simplifying. And I think it's frankly the, Matt, the [00:47:00] hardest thing that I've had to, to do in my business. Like exactly what you said, we, we can't read the label when we're in the jar. Like we just can't. None of us can. And I would say more than anything Identity work is kind of this deep, soulful journey that I feel called to, to do for myself, that I've done in this really tremendously deep way across, frankly, every area of life you could possibly imagine.
So I've really lived this experience. I've embodied it. But what was so frustrating for me over the last several years was, gosh, how do I quantify it? Like, no business owner is sitting up at 11:00 at night thinking about revenue, thinking about payroll, thinking about their team and growth strategy and thinking, "You know what I need?
I need a new identity." Like, it's just never occurred. And so I guess what, what I would say is I, I spent the last 13 months kind of on that problem, is not only how do I describe what I do, but what are the other methods? What are the other applications for doing what I do? So there's both a messaging question as [00:48:00] well as a business model question.
And the biggest unlock for me is realizing I can put a number to capacity. I am a trained executive coach. I've had years of experience coaching, as well as consulting. I've done a lot of consulting in operations and HR, which are kind of my two specialties in addition to revenue strategy. So it's kind of that triangle of people, process, product.
But what I realized is I also have an MBA, and I forget that. Like, that identity didn't really land for me. It wasn't the degree I wanted to go get. It's a long story, but I basically had a free degree handed to me by a university where I was working in my early, early 20s. And I had a job, and I was great at my job, and they said, "You have to get a master's degree to keep your job."
And I was like, "What? What? Like, but I'm already good at my job. Like, look at the numbers." And they're like, "It doesn't matter. Like, you have to get a degree." So I got the MBA to satisfy, uh, a requirement to keep the job I had that I was successful at. And I don't know. I was meant to be an entrepreneur 'cause I can't deal with [00:49:00] that level of bureaucracy.
And what was so, what was so funny to me, though, is I realized I'm always future casting identity. I'm always future casting, like, what comes next? Who, who about us comes next? And what I've recently learned, and this is more of a humble, like, in-progress learning, is sometimes the past identities have an unlock or a key that we might not be accessing.
So I kind of rehired the MBA cast, and I was like, "Well, how would you quantify identity coaching? Like, how would you talk about this?" And that's where capacity came in, and I was too close to it to see it. That's always what I've been unlocking. In my W2 journey before having the, coaching business, like, that's what I was going around unlocking, was capacity for teams and individuals.
And I was able to put numbers to it because I ran hiring pipelines, and I had budget and forecasting tools. And I realized that The answer was not just in future casting the next identity, but actually rehiring one of my past identities that I sort of kind of put in [00:50:00] the closet. I was like, "Ah, who cares?
Like an MBA, like whatever." I've talked to many-- I've talked dozens of people out of getting an MBA. I'm like, "It's really not that valuable. Just go read some books." in fact, when I was in my MBA curriculum, I read all of the For Dummies books, like Operations for Dummies, Marketing for Dummies. That was like my shadow curriculum 'cause I was like, "This stuff isn't practical," that I was learning in school.
But to summarize, I realized that it's not always about the future. It's also connecting the dots backwards and realizing that maybe a past part of our identity has the solution to the problem we're currently facing in our business, and how do we simply rehire that person? And that's how I got to, quantifying the impact of capacity in an organization and at the individual level, and being able to assign an ROI number to that, which really has changed the game for my business.
It helped explode me from selling, you know, contracts, uh, prior, you know, signing clients anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000 a month for an individual, and then being able to instantly sell $30,000 to $50,000 [00:51:00] engagements to organizations to drive massive change and impact. So I think for any of us listening, maybe just a question to, you know, workshop is maybe what's a past identity that you could rehire to solve the current problem in your business?
And there's probably something in our past that we've forgotten about, and we could reuse or remix some of those gifts in order to help us solve the current problem
Matt Wolfe: A wonderful concept to rehire one, one of your past selves. And most of us
Cassandra Shea: Yeah, it's a boomerang
Empathy First Marketing
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Matt Wolfe: you know, you know, this far down the road, we've lived a couple lives and, um It reminds me of, you know, when on our side of things, when we're doing, we're doing brand messaging for a company, uh, one of the essential things you have to identify to tell a good story, in an empathetic way that makes somebody feel heard, like you're telling their story. Step one is articulating the problem that they're up against, the problem that they face. and really it's two pieces. It's what, it's what you said earlier. What do they want? What are their goals? [00:52:00] And what is the obstacle in the way? And if you can nail those two things down, you're beginning to build a bridge of empathy to help someone feel heard within their own story.
It's just the simple act of saying, "Hey, I really see you.
I really see
Cassandra Shea: Hmm
Matt Wolfe: where you're trying to go. I see what's in the way. Uh, that stinks, and I've been there, and we actually know how to help you with that." That's, that's good marketing messaging. But what happens is, out of anxiety to, uh, wanna be approved of, to wanna prove that we're good at what we do, we tend to shove solutions into those buckets. So we try and prescribe what we know to be an answer, what we know they need to be thinking about into those early parts of our marketing messaging, but we have to meet them where they're at. So a, a great example is, you know, your problem is your all, askew. You've lost your sense of identity.
Cassandra Shea: Alright
Matt Wolfe: Like you said most people aren't living in that space. But your problem is you have a real sense that your team, is not working to [00:53:00] capacity and that something's missing and that people aren't maybe right in the right roles in the right seats. And if you could just dial that in, oh my God, what could your team accomplish? A lot of people are s- if they're in the leadership role, are sitting in that level of awareness. they know that there's something not right in how they've dialed in their team. You can meet them there. And then in StoryBrand terms, we say in the, in the thing that I'm trained in, you know, we say you make the ma- you make the person you're talking to the hero of the story, make them the protagonist of their own narrative.
Talk about what they want, what problem they're solving, and you arrive as a guide to be able to help them, with a, with a particular set of skills that happen to arrive in the, in the right moment. but in that, they meet the guide and they meet you, then that's the opportunity to be able to, enlighten,
Cassandra Shea: Mm-hmm.
Matt Wolfe: to bring new ideas to the table because that's exactly the moment where they're ready to hear that. it happens too soon, they're like, "What are you talking about? I don't, I don't know that... I don't, I'm not worried about that. about that. [00:54:00] me about, tell me a different story." But I really resonate too with the rehiring the past self. Like, you know, I went from theater guy to marketing, and for so long I felt like the theater kid who snuck into the marketing and That was a big...
You know, and it sounds so crazy, 'cause when I talk about it now and people understand it so well, I'm like, I've spent my whole life figuring out how to tell stories in powerful ways. I did it over here for 25 years and I brought it into this world, and I see the, the juncture of those two things. But early on I was like, "Oh no, I th- maybe that know that about me.
They're gonna think he doesn't know what he's doing."
Cassandra Shea: Hmm.
Matt Wolfe: those past selves and celebrating how... If, if anyone's paying attention right now, we know that we have rehired ourselves, most of us in any career, like five times already, that, that none of that experience most of the time is wasted.
So why can't we have those? What I love about what-- I guess this is my long way of getting back to you. What I love about what you're doing is you're [00:55:00] inviting people into very real, very vulnerable conversations, and to me, those are some of the most productive moments people can have.
well, I just think you, you are doing this is not a good enough adjective for it, but incredible very needed out there. And just, I, you know, I think coaches and consultants at, at their best really do help people answer their own questions and find a, a, you know, a liberation to live into their own identity. But, um, this is, to me, is one of the best models I've ever heard of this being done.
So I really appreciate what you're doing, and I
Cassandra Shea: Pat, thank you
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. Oh, you're very welcome.
Behind the Brand Quiz
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Matt Wolfe: well, I wish we had many more hours to talk about this, but, um, we're gonna wrap up with what we call our Behind the Brand questionnaire. this is so, again, you know, people need to know the human behind the work and the task and the goals and all the things that they're gonna work with.
In a, in a B2B space, when they're [00:56:00] gonna trust you to take them on this really personal but powerful journey that you've been on, they're gonna trust us to get ahold of their marketing strategy and their identity from that end. They're gonna have to meet the person behind the brand. So these are, uh, seven, seven questions,
right,
Cassandra Shea: Here we go
Matt Wolfe: get to know you.
Here we go. Number one, what is your go-to karaoke song? Or if you don't like karaoke, what song do you wish you could sing and then you would go do it?
Cassandra Shea: I love karaoke, so the, the song that I've been doing for years is I Will Survive. Like, very old school disco vibes. Gloria Gaynor all the way
Matt Wolfe: Nice. Nice. That's excellent. That's a fun one too, 'cause people will sing with you. That's
Cassandra Shea: Totally
Matt Wolfe: karaoke song. what is the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
Cassandra Shea: All right, this is, this is a little embarrassing. I don't watch reality TV. I would like to caveat that. There's only one exception, and it's Below Deck Mediterranean. [00:57:00] I love the Below Deck franchise. I've seen, not all of them.
I don't want to paint that picture. But the debrief, when I've gotten my fiance involved with watching it with me, and now we can laugh about the characters together, that's, like, the next level of just silly. And it means nothing. It's not serious. It's not deep. But we just laugh, and it's so fun to unpack it.
He's a clinical psychologist, so I always try to get the, the psychological read on the, the crazy. So yeah, armchair quarterbacking next to a clinical psychologist analyzing reality TV stars is, is a pretty good, pretty good laugh
Matt Wolfe: Maybe that's why I don't like those shows. My wife loves all of those things, and I get so frustrated, and I think it's because I can't figure out why they act the way they do.
Cassandra Shea: No. I don't know if anyone can, but there's theories.
Matt Wolfe: It's there's a camera.
Cassandra Shea: Exactly
Matt Wolfe: What is your favorite way to get away from it all?
Cassandra Shea: [00:58:00] I love to travel. There is nothing as special to me as seeing a new place, but I would caveat that and say also seeing a familiar place anew. So I've spent probably six weeks plus in Portugal at this point over 10 years. I, I kind of consider it at this point a second home. I have a Portuguese family. Um, some of them are coming over for my wedding later this year.
And I love going back to the same place different, and traveling to somewhere familiar, yet each time I go back I'm changed. And I feel really lucky to go back there specifically because I have such good friends who've, um, officially adopted me, and I'm the first American that's ever visited the village that their ancestors are from.
So I've gotten some really interesting behind-the-scenes tours of Portugal, which is just so near and dear to my heart
Matt Wolfe: That's incredible. when you said family, you mean like found family?
Cassandra Shea: Found family, yeah. I mean, they will [00:59:00] tell you I'm their family, but found family. I look nothing like them, but they've adopted me fully
Matt Wolfe: Okay, well let's just note that you found a found family in six weeks of time invested in Portugal. That's pretty impressive. What, uh... Oh, I love this. What smell reminds you of a specific place or time?
Cassandra Shea: These are surprisingly hard. I would say that the smell of wet asphalt, wet pavement. I live in Southern California, and most of my life there's been droughts. But whenever that smell comes up, it just reminds me of childhood. And one of my favorite things to do with big rainstorms, California, uh, with the droughts, has also had massive weather patterns and flooding.
And so when I was little, there was an El Niño storm. I don't remember what year. I don't remember how old I was. But we built these, like, tiny little boats, and then we just, like, sent them down the gutter or the flooded street, uh, where I grew up on. And so the smell of wet pavement just reminds me of the infrequent [01:00:00] California rainstorms as a little kid
Matt Wolfe: Wow. awesome. What is one day in your life you would like to relive?
Cassandra Shea: None. I don't think I would go back and relive anything. I, I treasure, I cherish... If there was one, I would have to say maybe the day that I got engaged last summer, so about 13 months ago. Um, my fiance proposed in Chicago, and I'm from California, third generation. And when I was a little girl, I'd never visited Chicago.
Now I'm marrying someone from Chicago, and when I was a little girl, I always wished I was from Chicago, and I would practice my Chicago accent, and I'd say, "Hey, I'm Cassie. I'm from Chicago." Like, "Nice to meet you." so it's just kind of this funny nod to maybe our, our childhood dreams do come true years, and years, and years later.
Um, but gosh, like, Matt, I just think, I think every day is precious, and I don't think I would relive or change any of it at this point
Matt Wolfe: That's wonderful. Uh, that's the first time anyone's answered [01:01:00] that, that way. What three words would your loved ones use to describe you?
Cassandra Shea: Corky Intelligent and kind, I think.
I don't know. I hope so. I'm gonna go ask them after this call. I hope that's what they would say. I think quirky's gotta be on there, though. It's not... That's gotta be on there
Matt Wolfe: I've had a lot of people say that. They're like, "I gotta go ask my husband, my fiance,
Cassandra Shea: Yeah
Matt Wolfe: Okay. What would it mean, what would it mean to have truly succeeded in your work? not just the c- and as sort of along the lines we've talked about, not like the company, but, Cassandra
Cassandra Shea: Hmm
This is another pattern interrupt, but I'm just gonna tell you top of mind. I also like to speak top of heart, like what hit my heart first. I would say that I changed. My, my deepest joy is, is walking alongside leaders in transition and teams undergoing change. It [01:02:00] feels like a privilege and an honor. But I would say the greatest success is that I'm changed.
Because like I said in the podcast, like, I believe that we, we can't lead people where we're not willing to go. And so I think the greatest success is that over time I continue to change, I continue to evolve
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. That's a marker of the, the work that you hold yourself accountable to, but also, I would- that's a good point. It's, it's, it's, it's an indicator that you, that any, to any of us, it's an indicator that we dug in, right? If we dig in with people, we're gonna be changed by them, you know, in a relationship.
Cassandra Shea: Totally
Matt Wolfe: Wow, that was awesome. Uh, thank you for sharing all of that, first of all.
Connect and Next Steps
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Matt Wolfe: Second of all, where can people connect with you? Where should they look you up? What's the first thing they should do if they would love to talk to you about your services?
Cassandra Shea: Yeah. Thanks, Matt. This has been such a joy. I hang out on LinkedIn, so you can find me on LinkedIn and at gscg.ai. Feel free to send a note, [01:03:00] especially if you're looking to work together. There's a easy way to book a call on there. Um, if you have any questions, hello@gscg.ai. Um, we'll-- I personally read those and would love to hear if you're undergoing change or transition and interested in expanding capacity for you or your team.
Very happy to say hello, but come hang out on LinkedIn
Matt Wolfe: Awesome. Well, I hope everyone does. I think they'll be the better for it, from this side of things, uh, we have a brand new program called Scale Beyond Referrals that is for B2B service providers. It's for B2B service providers who probably gave up on marketing at some point and are trying to get by on referrals and warm introductions. And w- we help restore your faith in marketing, uh, and help understand why it didn't work in the past, and introduce you to, rather than a transactional model of marketing, a relational one that is built for a space that is built on relationships and trust. So we have a workshop that we teach, that introduces you to all that.
That's at [01:04:00] scalebeyondreferrals.com. And you can also find us at brand3.net. I was your host, Matt Wolfe, and this has been The CEO's Heart for Service. We'll see you next time
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