We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cassie Green a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cassie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we talk about all of your success, let’s start with a story of failure. Can you open up about a time when you’ve failed?

As most entrepreneurs who have been at it for awhile, I’ve experienced some epic and very expensive failures. My first business was a little organic/locally focused grocery store in Chicago called Green Grocer Chicago. I opened that in 2008 and my husband left his corporate job in 2009 to join the business. It was overall successful (nothing is always smooth sailing but it was profitable and running well). We got an opportunity through some business partners to open a second location in Dallas. Like many of us in this situation, we said hells yes and boot-scooted down to Texas.

Well, our store Green Grocer Dallas didn’t take off like our first store. We had very different challenges and sadly we bled money (and our sanity!) until our lease was up in 2017. As we were approaching the end of our lease, we discussed what our next step should be. We didn’t want to move back to Chicago and didn’t want to work for other people again. We thought about what our most popular in-house-made products were and realized our immune supportive elderberry syrup was one of the most popular and effective products. Upon the recommendation of several customers, we started selling it to other retailers and now are in nearly 300 stores nationwide.

I share this story because as we were facing the loss and failure of Green Grocer Dallas, I felt defeated and like, well, a failure! But I’m so glad instead of sitting in that shame that we got creative and found a bright spot out of a very challenging situation.

Cassie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After spending nearly a decade in the corporate world (great learning experience but not my jam) and then opening and running two organic grocery stores, I knew the Health and Wellness world was where I loved being. After informaly advising customers and friends on a myriad of health questions for years, I decided to go to Institute for Integrative Nutrition and become a Certified Health Coach in 2016. I’ve been coaching private clients since then, working with them on their health challenges, patterns, habits and beliefs. I’m like a cross between a nutritionist and a life coach, digging deep into why people aren’t feeling their best and helping to guide them there.

I feel incredibly honored to be a part of the health journey of so many people over the years. The vast majority of my clients are women in their 30s-50s, successful in their careers, driven and identify as type A. This profile very much reflects what I call my “old self”. I have a deep understanding of the challenges that come up often for this type of person. Now, of course I work with clients outside of this category too!

I’ve been told by many of my clients that they didn’t expect the profound life changes to occur from working with me and that I’m very intuitive and make a potentially grueling process more fun. My goal is to help the client get what they TRULY want so I’m always asking questions and making observations about what they share and giving them tangible actions to help move towards what will actually bring them health, happiness and joy in life.

I encourage people who are curious about working with a Health Coach like me to reach out to me on my website or my IG (@cassiegreen or @cassiegreenhealth) to schedule a complimentary Health Consultation. It’s a great time for people to learn what I could do for them and if we’d be a good fit to work together!

Along with my private practice, I do a number of group talks (virtual and in person) and organize informal classes on different health and wellness related topics. I’ve spoken at the Chicago Diatetics Association, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Cafe Momentum as well as been featured in a number of media outlets for my work in the food and health space.

And of course, I have to share about our awesome immune-supportive, allergy-relieving, digestion-aiding elderberry syrup under my brand Cassie Green Health! It’s the cleanest ingredient elderberry syrup out there with no preservatives, thickeners or emulsifiers. It has a very high concentration of elderberry so our daily dosage is only about 1-2tsp for an adult (which is less than half of what many other brands recommend). I’ve loved seeing the emails and DMs from customers saying our elderberry syrup has changed their lives by obliterating their allergies or keeping them from getting their old annual bout of the flu. It’s highly rewarding to know you produce something that helps so many people. And it tastes good too!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that hustle and grind is the only way to success. I’m not talking about having a strong work ethic-that’s a positive in my book. I’m talking about the idea that in order to be successful, you have to nearly kill yourself and singularly focus on your business and your business alone.

During my years in the corporate world and for many years into owning our two Green Grocer stores, I had that same mentality. I would push myself and put work ahead of everything. And then it caught up with me (shhhhhhhhhhhhocking)!
I was working literally 100 hours a week for nearly two years trying to get our Dallas store to succeed and found my physical health, mental health, marriage and every other relationship in my life were all suffering. I had to stop and ask myself “Is this really worth it? Is my happiness, health, relationship worth trading for a store that sells kale and chia seeds?”

What I discovered is that no, it’s not. Life is short af and while I think it’s okay to have times in your life of pushing in certain areas, if there is no exit strategy to get out of that mode, what are you doing? I had to completely shift my mentality, delegate more, allow other people to make mistakes and be okay with that since I could no longer act like I had control of everything.

That intentional downshift was the most profound change in me and I am so thankful that I finally listened to my body to stop/slow down/reevaluate what truly mattered to me.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I’ll tell this story because my business partner is also my husband. In fact, we opened our business together four months before our wedding! He and I met in 2005 on Match.com (back in the day when you had to write LONG profiles). Soon after we started dating, we both knew this was a good fit and I credit two big factors for that. One was that we had/have similar risk tolerance. We both like to live a little outside of a societal safe zone. And two (and related), we both had a well-developed sense of adventure and a love of business. About a year into our relationship, we talked about how we wanted to own our business and soon figured out what that would be.

Now, the years since then have definitely not been all smooth sailing. We joke that when someone asks how it is to work with your spouse that we reply that we don’t recommend it! It took us years to figure out how to really work together. We both have strong personalities and thankfully very different strengths. For us, we use a divide-and-conquer method instead of working side by side on projects. It keeps us out of each other’s way and allows us to spend time doing what we are best at and what we most enjoy. Now I can’t imagine not working together and are are currently developing what our next joint business venture is going to be!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cassiegreenhealth.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/cassiegreenhealth
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/cassiegreenhealth
• Yelp: www.yelp.com/cassiegreenhealth

Image Credits
Erica Batterman