Courageous Entrepreneurship: Cassandra Burnett

Cassandra Burnett is a true renaissance woman and a shining example of courageous entrepreneurship in action. An attorney by day, as well as a wife and mom, Cassandra has created space for her entrepreneurial spirit to blossom.

In 2020, she launched Lizzie’s Love Cakes to honor the legacy of her mother, who passed away in 2012.

Then, in 2021, Cassandra launched the Hey Girl! Conference, an empowering opportunity for connection and inspiration, designed for women to voice their desires, dreams, successes, and challenges.

On this episode, you’ll hear about Cassandra’s journey of launching (and juggling) these incredible businesses, and the lessons she’s learned along the way!

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Episode highlights:

[00:00] Meet the Courageous Cassandra Burnett
[03:47] How Cassandra’s different roles converge into a fulfilling life and career
[09:45] Behind the birth of Lizzie’s Love Cakes, Cassandra’s “love letter” to her late mother
[16:30] How “sister angel friends” led Cassandra to launch the Hey Girl! Conference
[21:17] Lessons from Cassandra’s mom, Lizzie, on overcoming doubt and what if’s
[26:15] Reflecting on grief and gratitude in the wake of maternal loss
[31:37] Why prioritizing rest is an essential ingredient to success
[35:35] Cassandra’s one tip to rock it

Links from this episode:

Lizzie’s Love Cakes: https://lizzieslovecakes.com/
Lizzie’s Love Cakes Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizzieslovecakes/
Hey Girl! Conference: https://heygirlconference.com/
Hey Girl! Conference Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heygirlconference/

Transcript:

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Hello and welcome to the She Rocked It podcast. I’m your host, Karen Gross. And I could not be more excited for this conversation with Cassandra Burnett, who is a renaissance woman, a multi talented rock star, And you’re gonna hear so much from her. I can’t, I’ve been so looking forward to diving into conversation. So before we do, I want to invite Cassandra to tell us from her perspective a little more. Tell us a little more about you, Cassandra and your background and some of the ways that you’re rocking it that we’re gonna dive into in conversation.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Well, hello, I’m so excited to be here. I was expressing just before we went live and hit record that I woke up this morning, like, let’s go, let let’s dive into it. Let’s raise our voice. Let’s be those courageous women that I know that you attract and that you surround yourself with. So I am going to take that line. I am Cassandra Burnett, and I’m a courageous woman. Oh, that felt good! way makes me run it back one more time. I do it. Cassandra Burnett, and I am a courageous woman.

I am so many things to so many different people I’m learning and I’m leaning into that. So I’ve been describing myself as ever-evolving. Because I feel like I’m learning new stuff about myself every single day. From myself from other people, from you know, God, like I’m learning so much about myself. So what I mean, Hey, Girl, it’s a woman’s conference that I have. And we I hope we’re gonna dive into that a little bit more as we absolutely. I am a baker. I have a bundt poundcake company called Lizzie’s Love Cakes. I’m an attorney by trade. I’ve been an attorney for— year 17, right now, for me. I supervise a staff of about nine attorneys.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Okay, didn’t I tell you she was a rock star? Come on, keep going. Yep!

CASSANDRA BURNETT: I am a wife. We are celebrating 16 years in a few days of marriage. And if anybody has been married for a period of time, you know, you know, those 16 I don’t know, I just I know, I scared myself with that, you know, but you know, 16 years, it’s something to celebrate.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: It’s all about the voice, we got to be raising our voices in partnership. I mean, I actually think a lot of it starts there. That’s a whole other podcast.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: It is.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: The conversations with our you know, closest nearest and dearest raising our voices there I find can often be challenging, even more than the, you know, professional ones.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yes, raising your voice but also truly listening. Not listening in order to formulate your response or to fit it into the mold of what you want it to sound like and feel like to you, but truly listening to your partner. Oh, it’s a skill that you may have early on that you lose that you don’t flex, and that you have to relearn. I had to relearn that skill. So yeah.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: That’s a great insight. That’s a great insight. Cassandra, I’m gonna have whatever you had for breakfast. I can listen to you all day. I love it. So, I mean, you are a multifaceted Rockstar, and I’m so grateful to talk to you. I think I first kind of discovered your, one of your many genius areas, on Instagram, I’ll admit because I saw the Lizzie’s Love Cakes everywhere. You’ve been everywhere and you’re balancing courageous entrepreneurship with another calling, which is your legal work. And of course, your life as a as a partner. I think you’re a mom, as well as

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yes, two girls,

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Two girls. So, you know, I think a lot of women are reflecting on I don’t know if the right word is balance, but they’re reflecting on the kind of joining of all of our passions and all the things we have going on. So I am really curious. And of course, the conference. I didn’t even mention that. I’m curious about how you bring it all together. And look at you showing up like with so much energy and Rockstar you don’t look like you’re any worse for we’re having all these balls in the air. So give us a little insight into kind of how you’re managing all these tracks of passion, including one of, of incredible entrepreneurship that I’m seeing everywhere.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah, yeah. I had to, I call it the convergence because you, it really is the convergence of all the different parts, facets and aspects of your life. And how do I manage that? I had to learn to trust other people. And even saying that, and I don’t know, if you notice I had to take a breath,

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Yep,

CASSANDRA BURNETT: It is still an active choice that I have to make. I tell you that, to trust other people, I had to learn to be a collaborative leader at work, and in my life, because we lead in our lives. And I had to learn to do that collaboratively. I had to learn to trust that if I delegate a task, whether it’s at home, or at work, that it will get done. And as I got older, I had to have faith that it would get done, and not be so entrenched in what you did in the past or what you didn’t do in the past. And I’m talking about my partners, I’m talking about my kids, because people have let me down in the past. And that is huge to kind of grapple with. How can trust that 42 years old, when I have felt for 10 years straight in my 20s or my 30s I couldn’t trust people. So I had to learn to trust, Karen.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Are you all feeling all of this? Come on? I feel that and I’m curious. You know, you said with such emotion and emphasis earlier, I am a courageous woman. I was so moved by that my hair was standing up. I think there’s a lot of courage in trust. Right, what you’re saying, Oh, my hairs, come on goosebumps. I mean, you’re right and what, it strikes me that I mean, I say this with maybe correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ll say I’ll speak for myself. I’m a perfectionist. I like things done a certain way. So when you’re being a collaborative leader you’re delegating. To do the things we want to do. I mean, to trust, that letting go is a big deal, right?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Right. So what I learned the hard way is when you are not a collaborative leader, when you do not trust and you put it all on your shoulders, you are dealing with your type A personality of perfection at all costs of excellence at all costs of, I have to show up 10 times better than the person next to me, I’ve learned that there is a cost to that there is a consequence to that. So some of the consequences that I felt.

My lifestyle wasn’t healthy. My diet wasn’t healthy. I had constant headaches, I constantly was in a perpetual state of feeling overwhelmed. I was a bit short with my kids, because by the time I got home, because I was operating, I was over-operating. Let’s use that phrase. Throughout the day that when I came home, I didn’t have anything left. And I didn’t like how I felt. I didn’t like how I showed up.

Because it was so much effort to not show up how I really felt on the inside because I would show up like, “Hey, you guys, it’s Cassandra, I’m here to support I’m here to serve”. But on the inside, it was such a heavy weight and heavy lift. That masking that needs to take place when you are doing every single thing and not trusting the people that are around you the people that have been sent to help specifically you, when you’re not doing that, you are working harder, you are actually taken away from who you could be in all those different facets of your life.

Because you’re not being authentic. You’re not telling people, “I really don’t like to be in charge of everything. I really don’t like to have the feeling of the weight of the world on my shoulders. I don’t like it,” but I’m doing it because it’s what I’ve always done. It’s what I know to do. It’s what I know gets it done. I’m a woman who gets it done, but at what cost? What cost?

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I am so hearing and feeling you I mean like Yes. And I want to I want to dive into kind of how that plays out in your various passions and the things you work on, you know in your life. But I’m very interested in in Lizzie’s Love Cakes —and tell us a bit about how you decided to launch that venture because you have you know, you have a great gig. You’re a lawyer, you’re crushing it. And then it sounds like a few years ago, this vision called to you. Tell us about birthing that homage to Lizzie, to your mother.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: It was truly a birthing it was. So yes, I was crushing it, I was doing all the fabulous things, Karen. And on the inside, I was hurting, I was so broken, I was dealing with the loss of my mother who passed away in 2012. And I just didn’t know how to even address the stages of grief. I didn’t even know how to like even crawl up to them. Okay, because it was so breathtaking. I call it my untethering in this world cuz it was kind of like floating out here in this world. So I was dealing with grief and the pandemic hit. So my mom passed away in 2012 pandemic hit in 2020. And I still had not broached the subject of grief.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Wow,

CASSANDRA BURNETT: We had to sit still. We had to sit still. And we had to get real with ourselves. things slow down, things quieted down, and I had to get real with myself. And my husband, oh, God bless him. He I call him my rock. Speaking of rock, he rocks,

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: He rocked it give him his flowers to husband partners who bring us to ourselves.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yes, because I think about rock and it’s really a refuge. It could be a foundation, it could be your support. And that’s what he is to me to know that He is my refuge and my biggest cheerleader.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT:I love it, amen

CASSANDRA BURNETT: So my biggest cheerleader said to me, “why don’t you sell your mother’s cakes?” And I was like, Wait, why? Because I wasn’t leaning into the courageous side of Cassandra, then I wasn’t owning that, I was like, No, and I kind of just dismissed him. But what I’ve learned about myself and my husband knows about me, he can plant a seed. So he planted that seed and he scurried about, and that seed was planted, and it took root within me.

And what I did learn throughout the process of doing a business plan for Lizzie’s Love Cakes, that my focus and losing my mother was on what I lost, as opposed to what I gained. And Lizzie’s Love Cakesis an extension of that thought process of what I gained. So I gained an ancestral Angel, right. But what that means for me and my business, is that I gained the legacy of love that she poured into her life, into her cakes into her family.

So I say thatLizzie’s Love Cakes is a legacy of love. It is a love letter to my mother. My cakes are named after my mother, her sisters, my mom was one of 15 two sets of twins, triplets, by my grandparents, and everything.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: That’s unbelievable. That’s amazing. And I see all the ca- when you go on her website, you can see all these cakes that were literally like make your mouth water. They’re all they’re all named after women. Yeah, they’re all the sisters?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah, they’re all named after my mom, her sister, and my grandmother and they’re from the south. It was down south loving that created them. So you have a Flossie cake. You have a Lula cake, you have Mae&Menia cake,

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: And a gluten free cake. I saw!

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Peggy Ann is our gluten free cake. Yes, she is. Flossie is our vegan cake. So yeah, so it is it’s about the extension of love. It’s about continuing that legacy of love. Every time I talk about them, you get a piece of them and they are still very much alive and present in this world. So I’m not really untethered, I’m actually tethered to this world by their memories by their stories by their wisdom that they poured into me. So that is Lizzie’s Love Cakes.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: So so tell us about kind of how you’re bringing it into the world. Do you do custom cakes, you’re doing lots of different things. Tell us about that, how can we?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: I do pop ups in Philly and in South Jersey. I’ve been all over Philadelphia and all the different neighborhoods. I ship nationwide. I sell full size cakes. I sell our mini cakes which are called “lovelies.”

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I saw them too,shipping nationwide friends because I know we have people tuning in from everywhere. So yes, actually that website find her

CASSANDRA BURNETT: I’ve shipped to Florida. I do little love bites and I dress them up we have some gold flaking. I do them for special events. I do slices, I’ve done baby showers, I can customize them, but they will for sure be moist. They will be evenly balanced. They’re not overly sweet and they are cakes of emotion so they make you feel something.

I always tell people it should convey a sense of home. Whatever home was for you, whether it was with your parents, whether it was with my mom mom and pop pop, whether it was with your sister or your favorite teacher, that place where you felt the most comforted and supported is where a bite of the love cake should transport you to.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I love that so much there really is nothing like cake to provide comfort. And I love how I think you wrote on your website that even the process of of baking the cake which you do I assume yourself with everything. You have to be in that mood, you have to be in that spirit of love, right? It reflects in the food, right? I love that.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: When my mother passed away, I was so determined to make sure that at her repass, every cake had a seven up every table, excuse me had a seven up pound cake on it because that was my mom’s signature cake a seven up pound cake. And so I went to start making the cakes I think it was like 12 or 15 tables. So I started making the cakes, I could make that cake with my eyes closed.

Okay, the first two cakes I came out the oven word this saddest lopsided deflated cakes that I have ever made or seen. I’ve never made that cake that way. I was pouring into it the loss and the sadness and the cake felt it. And I remember my best friend in life. Her name is Bedia, she went through Bundt cake bootcamp during that time, and she learned all the tips and the tricks. She was like, Oh, I’ve never noticed this.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Oh, she’s got all the secrets.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: So shout out to my best friend, my sister angel friend forever and ever did, she went through boot camp. But that’s just again, we don’t go through life alone. And we’re not meant to go through life alone. And whether it is a blood relative or a friend, as I call my friends, Sister Angel friends, we need to get our people because we’re going to need support. And we’re not meant to do this thing alone. We’re just not.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Sister Angel friends. I am, that is going to stick with me. And they know who they are out there y’all who have been there for me for ever. That’s really what women do. I mean, that’s what our kindred women do for us. They step in and those especially in those moments, and I imagine that’s in part why you founded Hey, Girl Conference. Speaking of women connecting, give us the lowdown on bringing women together through this Hey, Girl conference,

CASSANDRA BURNETT: You your intuition is correct, Karen so you trust that intuition? It was the sister Angel friend. So we would get together we are on, you know, we’re professionals, we have all different responsibilities. So we would get together. You know, sometimes it will be on a monthly basis, sometimes it will be quarterly.

And when we got together, ooh we talked about everything, I mean, literally, we could talk about, I don’t know, from Spongebob Squarepants to like, I don’t know the wars that are taking place, and just have those real, authentic moments where we can be ourselves where we can lay our titles down, we can lay the initials behind our names down or we can just be. And so when the pandemic hit, again, we still did that. We got together every Thursday, we had charcuterie boards on Zoom. We watched Beyonce together, we looked at Hamilton together, I celebrated my 40th birthday, we looked at The Color Purple together my favorite movie.

So we still did those things. So now my husband, the rock in my life again, he knew that we got together and we cut up as I would say, Oh, we just cut up. But he got a bird’s eye view of it, Karen. And he was just like, “Oh, my goodness.”

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: We’re gonna have the two of you next on this podcast because I want to see this in action. This partnership is rockin. Yes!.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: So he planted the seed again and scurried off. He was like, You should do a conference site. And it literally like took my breath, like what are you talking about? I was like, are you okay? So he planted that seed, and then it grew. And so I started it along with the support of my husband in 2021.

We were 100% virtual that first year. Our theme was “I see you.” We had to rebuild ourselves. And we had to see other women because when we did that we saw such similarities. So that first year we talked about taking care of our tatas. We talked about the Superwoman Syndrome because we can be superwomen, it’s when it becomes a syndrome that we need to take and make some adjustments, we need to take note of that.

And so the second year, our theme was “choose life” and we were in a hybrid format. We talked about the imposter syndrome. We talked about being a caretaker and what that requires of you and what that takes from you, because we’re taking care of parents of

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Absolutely no, I’m of the same age as you. And so yes, all those life changes with our families. And when you’re saying we talked about, is this, like you have a panel or you kind of have different speakers? How did it feel in the space? Let’s say

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Absolutely. So we have a dynamic panel of all female speakers. So we have a main session in the morning, a main session in the afternoon. We have two breakout sessions in the morning, two breakout sessions in the afternoon. We call them “conversation suites,” because we want women to share we want women to understand that this is a safe and sacred space created just for you. For your needs, for your voice for your desires for your hurts. Let’s talk about it as a community. Let’s be in community with one another. And we serve them brunch. So we have all women owned vendors. It’s I mean, it’s a thing, like you know, it’s a woman thing one of conference very,

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: You know I love that. Yeah. I love it. And so you have been doing this annually now since 2021. It’s so interesting, because She Rocked It also was born in lock down. It was one of those things that surfaced as we reflected and slowed down.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: And actually, like I’m different now. I’ve changed. And I’m evolving, and I am changing. So, because I’m changing. Maybe there’s something out there that actually fits the newer version, or the updated version, that elevated version of Cassandra and Karen.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I love that so much. And sometimes it takes being in that safe, sacred space with other women to help us find that and navigate that. We can’t do it alone. You know?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: It’s interesting, because it’s so my mom would call it “old man can’t,” right? Because we sometimes focus on the things that we can’t do. And literally when we were younger, my mom did not let us say CAN’T, we could not say that term. And literally she buried Old Man Can’t in the backyard. Literally, it was like a whole thing. buried him beyond the fence in the backyard. I grew up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, buried him in the backyard. And she referenced that, if we started talking about what we can’t do, she was set up. Didn’t we bury Old Man Can’t? and

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I love that.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: And she would say it ad nauseam to the point where we’d be like, “Yes, we know we buried Old Man Can’t in the backyard. You know, but I think about that. And we started talking about that earlier. What I was just gonna say before we went live, friends, we’re gonna circle back we were talking about doubts that sometimes we feel even if we’re doing our thing and rocking it. I will tell you I woke up this morning feeling a similar kind of way of overwhelm. And not sure I can pull some things off and it’s just too much you know, so what what are we what what is Lizzie telling us now?

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Yeah.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: So it’s interesting because on Monday on the social media on the Instagrams, I came across a quote and it said, “doubt the doubts you have.” And and it just took hold of me. Doubt the doubts you have, and I think it was Xavier Dagba, where that quote came from, and I started thinking about it. I was like, what fuels my doubts? Where did they come from? And I was thinking that, you know, they’re fueled by lies, by mistrust. They’re fueled by hurt, trauma. Like, that’s what’s fueling my doubts. And I think about it like, well, what if I actually do it? And it doesn’t work, or it fails? Or what if I speak up, and I was wrong?

And the key phrase in that is, “what if,” and again, my mother, Lizzie, oh, my gosh, I had to be like 15 or 16, Karen. And we were sitting in her room on her bed on my parents bed, and you have to get the visual of my mother. My mom had big bushy eyebrows. She had big hands, we could palm a basketball, I get that from my mom. She had broad shoulders, but she had the smoothest skin like just like supple and smooth skin.

And so we were sitting there talking and I was, you know, talking a mile a minute, I was always the Road Runner with my words, my mom would say “just slow down”. And my mom talked very deliberate, with almost like a southern twang underneath it all that that’s drawl a southern drawl because she was from Florida. So I was telling her about my day, I was like, “you know, what, if I was just a little bit skinnier, maybe the boys would give me some attention? Or what if I was smarter, I would have got a higher grade on my test.” And I just kept on talking about the What Ifs in my life. And she took that big, large, smooth hand and just put it over my lips just very gently, and it stopped me. And I was like, “okay,” and she said, “you know, IF is a very deceitful word”.

And I’m like, “Okay, I don’t know what she’s talking about.” She said, “that I stands up so tall and proud. And that f is hunched over”. And I was like, “okay”. So she was like, “remove the IFS out of your life, Cassandra and just do it. Just do it. If you want to be healthier, just to it. If you want to do better in school, do it, don’t do the IFs is very deceitful, you can get trapped in the IFs”.

And that has kept me throughout my entire life. So don’t get trapped in IFs. Let go and do it. Do those things that are on your heart to do, do, execute those ideas that are in your mind, do it and you may fail. And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean that the idea wasn’t correct. It may mean that you weren’t around the right people in the correct situation, to execute that idea. But not the fact that you actually did it. So get out of the what ifs in your life.

Bury Old Man Can’t or old woman can’t, or old dog can’t old cat can’t in the backyard. And don’t resurrect them and do it. Because you’re looking at a courageous woman that didn’t realize she was courageous always. But look at me now. I’m like, on a podcast I have like lighting. I have microphones. And I’m out here sharing

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: And being completely fabulous. And I am I’m having a hard time finding words because I’m so moved by this conversation. But one thing I’m also really struck by is the mother daughter dynamic. Now you’re gonna get me emotional, right? You know, I’ve talked to women, when I asked them, Who has been a huge mentor in their life, a huge influence. So many of us say, myself included, say, Mom, you know, and I’m so touched to hear that moment that you had with her about the ifs, which I will never forget myself what a great piece of knowledge. So what is it about our mom’s?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah,

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: And I just I’m so I’m so moved by your tribute to her your ongoing tribute to her legacy and her wisdom and her love. Has this has this brought you into kind of that conversation also with other women in your, in your circle in your conference about this incredible mother daughter, which you know, can be fraught, also,you know, we can have very, you know, healthy positive other women may have different kinds, you know, we can have both at once with our moms. Give me any reflections you have on that because I just feel like you’re at the at would you say the convergence? You’re at the a convergence of the mother daughter dynamic and really living that out in the Lizzie’s Love Cakes venture.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: How does that feel for you?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah, it feels, it’s a mixed feeling, because I’m very present now. In how valuable. and how instrumental, in how big my mother was in my life. She was a titan to me. I’m very present and aware of that now. There were times during my rough teenage years where I was wasn’t as present, you know, where I challenged my mother.

Where it was, “mom, you just called me this morning,” we spoke and then she called me an afternoon. And then I didn’t return her call, because it’s like, I took her for granted. So it’s somewhere in between not realizing the national treasure that she was for me back when I was in my teenage years, in my 20s and my even early 30s, to now really be in present, and understanding the huge impact and all the wisdom that she poured into me. So it’s somewhere in between those two things, and I see it, replicating itself with my daughter. My, I have, she’ll be 14 tomorrow.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Amazing.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: And she is, I tell her that she’s an upgrade on a design of me. She just, you know, she just says she’s courageous now where I discovered it later on. So we are going through that because I was a daddy’s girl. She’s a daddy’s girl. I did everything for my daddy, I coddled him, I found over him, she does the same thing for my husband.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Apple doesn’t fall far.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Oh, my goodness. And when my mother wasn’t on this earthly plane, I realized like, “oh my gosh, she was everything to me”. Like, I didn’t even realize that. Like, even with, like, you know, my kids, my youngest daughter has never met my mother. She has through me, through my family members, but she’s never physically met my mother. So I’m saying all of this, I’m gonna make a point here.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Um, no, it’s it’s beautiful reflection, and also just how this translate to your life as a mother is super interesting.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah, it is, what I, when I talk to my friends, it is you know, try to be present with your your mother, because you know, mothers, they poke and prod, you know, they know the buttons to push, they know the trigger points, but really just try to be present with them. Because, like, their smell is going to be gone one day, you know, their laugh, is not going to be reverberating off of the walls in your house one day, the way that they get up out the chair, that that is going to be gone one day, and to just really kind of stay right there stay present, even on their worst day, you know, try to give them some grace, because we are the sum total of our experiences, right?

So we don’t know, everything that our parents went through, our mothers went through, just try to stay in a place of gratitude and of thanks, when you’re engaging with your mother, because it is just, it is…I oftentimes say that when I lost my mother, it’s almost like I went back to that little girl with the pigtails.

You know, I was no longer that confident woman in this world. Because my safety net, my security blanket was gone. And I didn’t realize how much of a security blanket she was for me in this world. Because when everything went wrong, when everything was chaotic, I could always count on my mom to say the right thing to give me a good quote, or a good scripture, or a good metaphor to save the day. And I didn’t have that anymore.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I so, I so feel you. Yeah. And I’m just grateful that you’re continuing that energy, even right here at this moment. Thank you so much for sharing. And I’m wondering about, you know, as you build this business, in her name, and in her honor, tell us a little bit about, you know, it’s not easy to build a business to, especially when you already have you know, another job and a conference you’re building.

Is there like a challenge that maybe you faced in building this that you want to share with us and maybe how you overcame it with your courageous self? Or maybe just a word of advice to other women who maybe want to launch a dream like you, but have another gig, I speak to women a lot who may not want to leave their nine to five, let’s say, but have this other passion that like you said, it’s just when you got still you knew you had to do this. So, tell us a little about a little bit about any wisdom you’d have to share with women in that position.

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah, I would say the challenge that I faced is resting. And building in the time to rest. So that was a challenge that I learned throughout the process. I didn’t see it as an issue. I didn’t put it as a point to keep my eye on in the beginning because remember, we were in the pandemic, so everything was kind of slowed down. And I did not adequately prepare for when things got back to our new normal. And so that is a challenge.

And what I would recommend to address and deal with that challenge is from the very beginning, in your business plan, put that REST, literally write it down in your business plan. Because if you don’t get rest, you’re not going to be able to show up in all the aspects of your business in the way that you need to show up. If you don’t get rest, your creativity will suffer. If you don’t get rest, you won’t be able to manage the pre-sale for Father’s Day that you need to get out in the first quarter, even though Father’s Day is in, what the second or the third quarter of the year. You won’t be able to have a clearer mind to even see the forest for the trees, if you don’t schedule in time for rest.

And rest can mean so many different things, it can look differently. But that is a challenge that I have. And if I would have, I think been able to identify that very early on and have it just a part of the business model and the business plan, I think that I would have been able to really kind of rein it in that that hyperspeed of life that kicked in once things kind of went back to normal.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: I think that’s a great piece of wisdom. And often like an, a missed piece of the of the pie or the cake is sleep, actually because it’s funny, I’m reading a book right now called Essentialism, which I think you would love about kind of paring down and making choices to like kind of pare things down in your life to the essentials. But one and one thing that is in this book is just the power of sleep and protect he calls it “protecting the asset,” which is protecting you yourself, you are the asset, Cassandra, you know, I’m the asset that is going to have to do all these roles that we want to do that we love to do, but we can’t do it if we don’t get sleep.

And like you said, it really affects our cognition, it really affects our creativity, our long-range strategy. And so, you know, for all those reasons, yeah, you know, not to get tactical, but yeah, it affects that and it just affects, like you said, how we show up in partnership, how we show up with our kids, you know, if we’re cranky, so, sleep, everyone is important and I’m whatever I say to everyone is what I’m saying to myself, so I’m really glad you brought that up.

Cassandra, there’s so much I want to talk to you about I could I hope we’ll have another opportunity. And I feel like we’re just beginning but, in the meantime, everyone please check out Cassandra’s website for Lizzie’s Love Cakes, please check out Hey Girl Conference and follow this woman because she’s so courageous and such a rockstar and I know is just, you know, going to keep on birthing as we said so many beautiful things into the world.

Cassandra before I let you go, you know, I always end by asking one tip to rock it. You’ve shared a great intention for all of us to think about in resting. But if there’s any other tips that you’d like to share, one tip in particular, to help us rock it in our careers and callings. What’s the tip you want to share?

CASSANDRA BURNETT: Yeah, what I would say Stop apologizing. You be your unapologetic self. Stop apologizing for your likes and dislikes. Stop apologizing for how you feel. Stop apologizing for the dreams that you have. Stop apologizing? It is freedom on the other side of being unapologetically you that’s what I would say Karen.

KAREN GROSS / SHE ROCKED IT: Period.

OUTRO:

Thanks so much for tuning in to the She Rocked It podcast. I’m your host Karen Gross. This episode has been produced by Tori Marchiony with audio engineering by Teng Chen. The She Rocked It theme song is by Karen Gross and Tim Motzer. Please join us over on Instagram and check out our website at sherockedit.com to check out our Rockstar Network and check out all the cool things we have going on. Hope to see you soon!