Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Worst Advice I Ever Got brought to you by Smith and Howard. I'm your host Sean Taylor, along with my producer, JB and today our guest is Casey Let Gordon. Casey is an Atlanta based founder, storyteller and media entrepreneur whose work centers on helping women rethink identity, power and leadership in the workplace.
Today, Casey works at the intersection of storytelling, leadership and culture, helping amplify the voices and experiences of women navigating major career and life transitions.
Hey, Casey, I'm excited you joined us today. Thanks for being here.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Casey, what's that worst advice you ever got?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: The worst advice I ever got, don't be too girly.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Good stuff. All right. Don't be too girly. I love it when the worst advice, like, makes me go, yeah, that sounds horrible. Well, let's go deeper.
Who and who, what, when, where? Why? Tell me more about it.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad that that was your visceral reaction because I don't know that it took me much longer to figure out that that was actually really bad advice.
So I was in one of my, I've been in corporate or in the working world now for probably about 15 years and this was probably, let's say, two or three years in. So I was not brand new, but I was still young. I was hungry and I was develop developing my point of view on the world. I was had just taken over sales and biz dev and it was a cell phone cover. I had a hot pink cell phone cover. And I'm sitting in a meeting with one of my ce, with one of the company leaders, the CEO who was a father, I think, a really good proponent of women in the workforce. This isn't like a chauvinistic story per se, but he was sitting there and my cell phone was there and he goes, hey, that hot pink phone case, no one's going to take you serious.
So don't be like, don't be too girly.
And it was one of these things that, you know, let's say I was 23, 24 years old, and you're in a position of power as a CEO to a fairly young employee and the gender dynamics, a male CEO. And so the internalized message was not just about that cell phone case of which was immediately ordered that night to be a new, more neutral color and less, you know, anything.
But it immediately started to reinforce to me that when you come across girly, feminine, embracing any of that, you lose credibility.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Well, so it made you immediately change the way you operated the way you practiced. Is that fair to say?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Totally. Especially as a young woman.
Sure.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: And. And in what ways did you find yourself? I mean, you obviously mentioned you ordered a new phone case, but my guess is you did some other things differently from that point forward as well. Can you remember some of the things that made you switch?
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I think it's an important thing to, like, give a little bit of context. I grew up as with. My mom is a small business owner. She's a founder and entrepreneur, and she was a woman that was also. I grew up with a single mom, my dad around, but in our household, it was my mom playing both roles. So I grew up with very strong matriarchs, very strong women in my world, and I was used to a woman being a CEO. I think that the part I, you know, I got to watch the side of her phone calls where, you know, she was. We were at the pool on a summer day, and she's taking a call while I'm still there. But I didn't necessarily see how she had to embody the masculine energy in these spaces because she was a sales leader. And so I think I saw one view of what women in leadership or women in work looks like, but I didn't maybe see the full reality.
So I'm showing up inside of, you know, a. At the time, an ad agency, but often a very male space because of the people I was selling to. We know that, you know, percentage of men in leadership, VP roles and higher, and I was selling into them. So I think that I initially came in thinking, well, I have a postgrad degree. I was, you know, top of my class. I had all this experience. I could show up exactly as I was because I had watched somebody do that in my personal life. I then get into these places, and it wasn't overt. It wasn't overnight. This light switch switches and you stop being a version of yourself.
But you start then saying, okay, well, if it's that, let me think about how I'm dressing. Let me make sure I'm looking more mature. Well, what does that lead to? It leads to you being. Spending a lot of mental and emotional energy to not be yourself.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Right?
[00:04:45] Speaker C: Not be yourself and then not being yourself at all. And then that. That's going to trickle down right into, like, how I talk to people and how I show up to meetings. And you're just literally not being yourself at all.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: And you're spending bandwidth on that too.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: Right?
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Or you're spending bandwidth, like mental energy on this.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Yes.
Yeah. I remember people, you know, asking about, you know, when did you graduate? Or things and things that are just naturally occurring in my life that I can't control. But you find yourself like dumbing down the numbers or not making yourself seem like, oh, I'm just dating my boyfriend, oh, we're in a long term relationship. Things that you're so scared that somebody's not going to take you seriously. And to your point, the bandwidth that I spent, I now can look back and say there's no way I was doing all of my best work of what I was truly capable of because of the mental energy and, you know, capacity spent.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it had to start to grind on you. Tell me, tell me about how that use of bandwidth and that spending of energy started to affect you and when kind of maybe you started to feel like I'm, I'm cracking or I'm at a little bit of a breaking point here even maybe.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: I think I wore it as a badge of honor until it became the thing that broke me. Like, I think so many of us do that. I think we're talking about my experience as a woman in the working world, but I think this is true of so many of us that, you know, we are able to, I don't know if it's like cheat the system, but we're able to embody what we need to in any given space until the things we're carrying become too heavy and we're not able to expend that energy. So I spent the next decade after that experience being the only woman, the youngest. I was a VP by the time I was 30. I was promoted to senior vice president when I went out in maternity leave for my first daughter. I now she is six years old. So, you know, you watch this all happen.
And when I look back now, I think that the workarounds for me were I would be exhausted, but I assumed that just meant I was killing it. You know, we're holding these rocks and we keep adding more rocks but we don't put any down. And that's when the breaking point happens of sorts. And you can insert any role or responsibility.
I became a first time parent in 2019.
I, God love her. My daughter didn't sleep for six months.
And yeah, you, you guys get it. Sleep deprivation is real. I was promoted to senior vice president as I went on maternity leave and I thought, well, hot damn, this is having it all. Look at me. I, I, you know, I see these stats of women in leadership and earning less. I'm making great money, I'M the breadwinner in my family. I have this title. I have these degrees. I have this beautiful home. And in returning from maternity leave, having spent the past decade embodying, and I won't say necessarily being, but embodying very masculine energy, as I was now becoming this other version of myself at home, tapping into very messy feminine energy in all the best ways. I was having this paradox of really identity. Okay, I know this has been serving me in the past, but the energy that I have to embody this or fake it till you make it, is not there.
And so it was this tension in fall of 2020 or 2019, I was driving home and I thought, I would rather drive my car off the road than go to work tomorrow than to continue this.
And I always say that, like, the real tragedy in that isn't that I thought it. It's that whenever I talk to a working mom about that, she goes, oh, yeah, me too.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Oh, that's terrible.
Well, clearly you didn't, thankfully, and you made a different kind of pivot.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: How did you make that pivot? What. What went into your process to change?
[00:08:28] Speaker A: I think it's so important to highlight, like, support and resources.
We call these moments. And this will get into a bit of the work I do now, but we lovingly call these moments, quote, unquote, it all moments. It's the moment in which you thought something was perfect.
The expectation meets the reality. It's not. And what do you do in those moments? And so this, the, you know, you reject the one version of it all and you rewrite. I came home, first of all, and said, this isn't normal. Like, I know that this is not okay. And I thankfully had a husband and a partner that said, you're right. What do we have to do? We developed what I now call a peace of mind plan. Everyone wants to talk about Just get things like, just get out of that situation. Okay, well, we still have bills and health insurance and life. And I think that sometimes we talk about these in such, like, you know, utopia scenarios of getting self help, so to speak. But there's a very real thing that we're all existing in of, like, having to still run our lives, send the email, make the dinner, do the grocery shopping. And so the next, you know, nine months of my life, it was securing my raft, it was getting. Talking to my doctor and getting, like, the actual physical and mental health I needed to stabilize.
It was figuring out what was a financial Runway. And so for me, the peace of mind plan, I wanted to have six months. Six months of finances in the bank.
And it then, you know, cue lots of therapy, lots of talking to other working parents, not just moms, lots of assessing what is I. What was I experiencing? And, you know, was this unique to me or was this part of a much bigger, you know, I think, epidemic that we've continued to see detailed publicly?
[00:10:12] Speaker C: So you could have gone to work for somebody else at that point, but obviously you started your own thing. Did you start your own thing because you were like, what I'm looking for doesn't exist, or did you try to create something new? What's the thinking behind that?
[00:10:25] Speaker A: I would love to have said I was that intentional, but that would be a lie.
I.
I started a creative project. I started a podcast because I was so eager to have these conversations. I was watching these other FIA moments, as we call them, happening in people's lives. And again, think about what was happening in the fall of 2020. Like, we're in the throes of COVID We're in the throes of the great resignation. We're in the throes of, you know, protests for Black Lives Matter. There's so many questions, I think, that were, as a collective. I started a creative project that I meant to tell 10 stories as this little, you know, thing I would do on the side. And in a week, I had a backlog of a hundred. I reached out to the network of individuals I had worked with over the past 10 years, told them the kernel of this idea, and there was just a resounding response. And so for anybody that, you know, has sat in the world of go to market of, like, is there product market fit? Is there a desirability here? It felt like confirmed there is.
I then, you know, sat with that for a few months, and it was.
I would love to say I took the full three months. I think I took six days off. But in doing that, I recognized patterns that were happening and, you know, selfishly had wanted to get my best friend and now co founder to Atlanta for a long time.
She had just returned to the States by way of Thailand, was living in D.C. and I knew that working with women and systems change and social impact was.
Was going to be my calling card. I wasn't enough. And so I called her and gave her my best pitch, and three hours later, she said, yeah, I'll come. I'll move to Atlanta. I'll live in a carriage house in your backyard. We can build this company.
And it's become a company that's, you know, rooted in storytelling, we do a lot in the media space to amplify these stories of the everyday woman that's having these, you know, identity shifting moments.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: When you think about that pivot and you think about now doing what feels like a life passion feels like taking the learnings and turning it into something to share stories and share examples and to help others. Do you feel like the worst advice you ever got was.
Was really critical or necessary for you to get? Would you have ever gotten here if you had not gotten that advice?
[00:12:42] Speaker A: I love that question. Because I think, I mean, you all are builders and creators yourself. And you know that so many of these ideas are born from the tension of things not feeling.
And so I look back and, you know, the. The podcast is called Fuck it all. And there was a reason that we used the F word that there was the punch there because I felt pissed, I felt angry. And I think it was that anger. You know, anger is not a comfortable emotion to sit in for a long period of time, but it's a very effective emotion to drive you to create or do something.
And so I think the tension for me was I did all the things, I put the girliness away. I was amazing at my job, I had the titles, I did all these things thinking I was doing it in service of women in work.
And what it meant actually is like, perform, perform, perform.
You get to this point of perceived position of power, and the only person that's robbed was me with my mental health, my wellness, my peace of mind, my presence with my family.
I think this is just showing what happens sometimes with throwaway advice. Guarantee if that CEO heard that, this was the advice that I felt like when, you know, somebody asked the worst advice, it would probably shock them because it was probably a throwaway comment, never meant to be internalized the way I did. But isn't that how all of us do? We carry our own stories?
And so I now, like, I needed to be angry. And I say that, you know, had things never been bad, I never would have had the catalyst to be here because I now have. I know what the. The contrast.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:22] Speaker C: Did you put that advice all the way away? Did you say, all right, this is bad advice, now I'm going to go the other way with it?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question.
Yeah, I do. I think that for me, I worked with a therapist years ago and she gave me this analogy, and she said, if you ever doubt the power of feminine energy, remember that water is a feminine element and water created the Grand Canyon.
It just did. It Differently, Right. It wasn't brute force. It wasn't, you know, two tectonic plates hitting each other. It was steady and over time, and it's sustaining, and it's beautiful. And that was the shift for me of, like, oh, these other things that I'm good at and maybe have it named, they also have a role. And maybe it's up to me to build the narrative around why that those things that people often call like soft skills or intangibles are actually very intentional skills and very valuable in our personal lives, but certainly in the business world, I know as a sales leader, it was like, I can attribute almost all my success to those things.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: You know, the more I think about that advice, the more I think about, was it ever good? Like, did you ever find a moment where, like, you. You followed some of the things the CEO sort of suggested by that and you were getting wins? Because I can see us falling into this trap of get bad advice. We follow it, and we actually get some good returns from it. Were you experiencing some of that where you were like, well, I'm going to pivot. And then you could say to yourself, he was. I have to attribute some value to this. Right. Did that happen to you?
[00:15:56] Speaker A: I think that I'm at a point in my life of both personally as well as just, like, all the things, right? My family, my finances, the experiences I've had, the network I have where I'm able to ask myself, what game do you want to play?
Like, I think that when we are at certain points in our career where we don't have all the accolades, experience, perceived positions of power, there are ways to play the game and be successful. So absolutely. The fact that I could go on a golf course, the fact that I could speak in a sport analogy, the fact that I could show up and not be super girl. Yeah. Do I think that. That one deals? And yes, of course.
But what. What was the thing that was the, you know, the willing sacrifice? It was me.
And I think that, you know, this is where certain positions of power, we see it with our women, and we call it like, the path of define, create, and own. There's a point in all of our experiences, men, women, as humans, that you step into some sort of owning of your power, and how will you wield it? Will you wield it for difference? Will you wield it for change? Will you wield it? And I was at a point where, you know, I was an svp. If everything for me on my entrepreneurial journey ended tomorrow, nobody can take away the Fact that I've had that title, done that work, I can still go and activate all of my past life. I get to choose whether I want to do that.
But it's, you know, it's. It's a position of privilege. And so I say that because. Yes, absolutely. And I don't think that advice was given out of, like, be less, Casey. I think it was, hey, this will help you be successful.
I think that that then goes to the broader narrative of why we are not valuing more feminine traits or why we deem it less. Why is girly less serious, for sure.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: When you made that switch to, like, okay, I'm gonna really actually lean into the more feminine aspects, what did you see happen with your business?
[00:17:54] Speaker A: I think that one women wanted to be talked to in a way that felt good for them, that felt authentic. And so our women, you know, they are the thing that have made our business over the past five years. They're speaking and telling women's stories. Brought us to Sundance. We spoke on at Sundance on the power of failure as creative fuel.
So it's taken us to rooms that I never thought back in my corporate days I would be on. It's taken me into spaces of, you know, social justice and how I want to show up in the power of women's voices to be architects of these systems, you know, so it's. I think that's the thing is, like, I have more stamina in my business because I'm not faking it. I'm being authentic and true. So my energy is regenerative.
I'm selling and working with women who have been craving to be addressed and seen and say, like, hey, you can put that extra weight down. And then in doing that, these women that we work with, you know, they are authors, they're filmmakers, they're CEOs, they're founders, they're creatives. They. They are now using their positions of power to say, like, here's another way.
And so those are the ripple effects. And has it been easy? No. And yet it feels better in my body day to day to do this work than I ever did in the years prior.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: It's not even really, like, a woman issue. You know what I mean? It's like having feminine energy and feminine, like, the skills in which you can acquire, like, empathy and the things. What are the things that every single person on the planet can embody by bringing feminine energy to their work? Like, that will make them better leaders.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Great question, and I love that you highlighted that. This is not a, like, men versus Women, this is not a gender conversation. This is like the traits and energy that we are bringing into the work we do think about the things. And feminine just usually means like there is more than one way.
That's a great collaboration skill that there is. It's okay for things to be messy because creation usually is when you are launching a new business, figuring out a new go to market, whatever that is. I've yet to be meet someone that say, yep, the first thing we tried, nailed it. I sent it. You know, everybody agreed none of that is true.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: I'm curious.
This might be stepping backwards a little bit in our, in our process, but where are we seeing that in the workplace where this quiet reinforcement of don't be too girly might be taking place?
[00:20:21] Speaker A: If anybody pulled up an AI image generator right now and typed in give me a person who is great at business, what image do you all think
[00:20:31] Speaker C: would generate a dude in a suit?
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Great point.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: And so it is starts at the most macro level of the media we are fed. This is what a version of success looks like. And it is, it trickles through. And so all the time, I mean, I see it with my kids, right? I'll say we went to the doctor and my mom will say, what did he say? I said, well, actually it was a woman.
So these ways that like, it has just been reinforced in our psyche. Then you go into these meetings and you look around the leadership team. Are there any women?
No, there aren't. Wow. Okay, so I'm the only woman. Well, how do I create connection with these people? What are the things we have in common? It's not going to be the things that maybe are innately girly. Those are reinforcements. So when I have to say, hey, I have to hop off because I have to go pick up my kid at daycare because they're sick. Nobody else is having that same thing. So then now it's the next layer. It's not just girly, but it's like, oh, don't be an outward mom. So do you see that these things come up? It's less about, sure. There's times of how you dress or. And I think that that brings a whole other layer of the role of sexism in the market or in the workplace or, you know, things that can feel, especially in the sales world. You're out late networking, you're having these. Being mindful of how you're presenting and being safe in those situations.
Again, going back to our point at the very top of this conversation, the amount of mental chatter and energy spent just going through a traditional one week in your. In, you know, a work week.
I don't know that all of our counterparts have that. And so that to me is. I think it can be very lonely.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: So for, for anyone who's hearing, don't be too girly. What's better advice?
[00:22:16] Speaker A: I think use the things that others may deem as a weakness, as a superpower. That has been true of me in my entire career. In life where everybody goes left the time that I go right.
Especially if it's true to me, not just trying to be contrarian, but actually true. The results are so much more powerful. I think it is less over ambition or title. It's alignment over everything.
If you were in alignment, you will find the places to ascend. You will find the community that amplifies that, that supports that. And so go where you are, the divergent voice and live in alignment. That, to me, it's, you know, it's as good for business as it is good for mental health. Right?
[00:22:59] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Without a doubt, without a doubt. I think when we all start being our inauthentic selves, we end up losing and we end up really lacking alignment. This cultural alignment between what the business needs, what its leaders want, what it's, you know, future leaders want. Once that's out of balance, you know, at best you have artificial harmony and you're an underperforming organization and you're an underperforming individual. And so I think you've done a, a really, a great service to our listeners today and basically showing that, like, you were this, you pivoted to something, you weren't it. It almost cost you your life. And then that pivoted into really going deep into your authentic self and changing the lives of others. So I, I thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your story because I think it's going to mean the world to our listeners.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Well, thank you all for creating this space to have this conversation. It's important. And I think the more people that, you know, hear a little bit of this in their own, you know, and take it through their own lens, hopefully we're seeing a collective shift.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: You know, JB one of the things that really stayed with me in, in this conversation was, was how Casey talked about this just being a throwaway comment early in her career.
You know, she heard this, but it ended up shaping her behavior for, for, you know, for several years. And something said casually in this case, for example, really can end up influencing how a person shows up at Work, how they think about themselves and how much of their real identity they feel comfortable bringing into the room.
[00:24:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, for sure, we hear this a lot on the show. Obviously, how, you know, the advice, quote, unquote, is not always like, hey, they sat me down and we talked about this thing. And a lot of times it's just like, hey, you know, what about this? And you don't even know she said that. You know, the person who gave us advice would probably be surprised that, you know, here she is talking about this, you know, on the worst advice I ever got.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. And what Casey did that I really respect is she eventually stopped and asked herself what was the game she actually wanted to play. You know, she said it worked to some degree for her, but at what cost, Right?
[00:25:16] Speaker C: You know, a lot of times, what makes the advice we hear on the show, you know, the worst and not just sort of like some bad advice I got one time is that for a while, it works for you. You know, you might get a promotion or close a deal or move up a ladder, but the cost is constantly performing like a version of yourself for her. And, you know, that wasn't real. So eventually it's like, what am I doing?
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Her story shows that success and alignment don't always show up at the same time. You know, you have to sometimes go through one before you realize you need the other.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm good for her. You know, she took that experience, turned it into something constructive instead of, you know, like she said, she could have just been bitter about it, and woe is me and, you know, still working that job, going about it in the same way because, you know, it's working.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit about what the show is about, you know, taking those moments where bad advice shaped us. And sometimes it's the exact thing, you know, that helped us figure out how to actually move us forward.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Good reminder to the people listening as we start our next season.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Always good to remind people what we're doing here, but thanks again to Casey Let Gordon for sharing her story with us today.
And thanks to everyone listening. If you've ever gotten a piece of advice that made you question who you were supposed to be, you're definitely not alone.
Like JB said, we're back. This is our all new season with all new episodes. So excited for you to continue to tune in, follow along, and as we post more bad advice, call that worst advice actually turning into good stories. So we'll see you next time for another episode of the worst advice I ever got.
