Zero to Ten with Stacy Cassio

There’s a phrase that Pink Mentor Network’s Stacy Cassio has been carrying around with her over the past several months:

“Today’s challenges will prepare you for tomorrow’s opportunities.”

It seems particularly fitting given the state of the world over the past year, but Stacy can look back at her entire career and see the challenges from years ago that have helped prepare her for the current chapter of her life. She can see, for example, that years of being the woman who was uncomfortable in male-dominated professional setting has prepared her to now help businesses change that culture and create a better workforce for women today.

It’s not exactly what she set out to do when she founded Pink Mentor Network 4 years ago. Her organization originally started as a community of women who would meet once a month – or more often – to discuss various industry challenges with each other and grow their network in Charlotte.

There’s still plenty of that to be found at Pink Mentor Network, and in fact, since the start of the pandemic Stacy has noticed the community has grown beyond Charlotte as more are looking to connect with others. But she also started getting calls from employers who wanted Stacy to help them figure out ways to support their women employees in particular.

This means her business has shifted to more of a B2B model than she originally expected. At first she wasn’t sure how to feel about it, until she realized this was exactly what she had been prepared for her whole life. She’s now able to go into corporate settings and help them set up a framework for empowering women and providing support. It’s an exciting shift for her because this is where she believes true change will happen day-to-day.

“It’s been an interesting year for me and it’s actually been the best for my business,” Stacy says. And she admits there’s some survivors guilt that came from that thought. There are times over the past year where she’s felt bad about the excitement she has for her work and the success she’s seeing.

In this week’s episode of Zero to Ten, we talk about all of this with Stacy, as well as why her program works better than a traditional mentorship program that typically fizzles out after 3 months and what’s next for her and her business (hint hint: she’s writing a lot lately).

Give it a listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or by clicking play below.