We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kacie Lett Gordon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kacie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

IT ALL Media was born from what we now lovingly call a, “F*ck IT ALL’ moment – one where we must choose ourselves over expectations from society, community, and – hardest of all – former self.

6 months postpartum, despite having ‘it all’ on paper, I found myself wanting to drive my car off the road. This was mental health meets identity crisis, as so much of my adult and career life had been working towards the very things I now had – a child, a marriage, a beautiful home, a high-paying “big” job… and yet.

The pressures, tensions and impossible standards of what it means to be a women were crushing, and it was in that moment that I realized:

1. It’s a privilege to act on a “F*ck “IT ALL” moment; many of us have them, but a very select few can do something about it. If I didn’t have the support, education, access, privilege, and network that I do, I don’t know where I’d be.
2. If this was how my daughter defined, ‘having it all,’ I would have failed as a mother and parent.
3. There is a huge deficit of narratives of women living life on their own terms without judgement or otherness.

I was hungry for more stories, and even more, conversation around the tensions and pressures I was facing; and from there IT ALL Media – which became: a podcast, research, curriculum, and now a docuseries was born.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are our customer; and that makes this work so much more meaningful and relevant – because my Co-Founder and I are creating the stories, conversation, tools, vocabulary, education, and community that we ourselves needed navigating transition in our careers, relationships, identity, and personal growth.

We laugh now, looking back at our story, it all seems so linear. Laughably so, the cliches, “life’s about the journey,” and “hindsight is 20/20” ring true. That being said, it was actually a complete shit show!

IT ALL Media’s vision is a world where women are equal and valued architects of the systems that run our lives – at work, at home, and in our communities. And to live that mission everyday, we make sure to pull back the “social-media-perfect-posts” of where we are today to show the mess, chaos, and unknowns that existed along the way.

If we can show that we’re still standing – mentally sound, financially secure, doing work that lights us on fire, WITH our best friend – all the while having had our own struggles, failures, missteps, etc. then we hope every other woman (and person!) feels in their own power to do the hard thing.

Our two products are stories and conversations. We believe stories allow us to see ourselves in a different reality, but it’s conversations that allow us to make sense of that reality together. We are storytellers, researchers, curriculum developers, coaches, teachers, and professional hype women for anyone choosing to live life on their own terms.

In our work, we help women – individually and collectively – understand the macro systems that exist and that they are living in, so that they can navigate the change they want to create from a place of personal power.

We have created something from nothing – in 2 years – a podcast that 20K+ people have listened to, been able to take our learnings and messages to speak at cultural convenings like Sundance and SXSW, coach tens of women through transition, help women earn 40-100% more in 6 months, executive produce films and events we believe in, help first-time candidates get elected, and now are pushing ourselves again to create a docuseries introducing our research to the world.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Productivity as an entrepreneur looks so much different than it did in my corporate life. The biggest unlearning is that productivity these days looks like energy management, versus check-marks on my to do list. Arguably it’s easier when you can exist within a system – even a broken one – because it’s then ‘someone else’s fault,’ that things are the way they are.

However, when you’re building your own company, acting as your own boss, responsible for your own culture and ways of working – there is tremendous self awareness and intentionality required. Muscle memory still kicks in time-to-time, making me go into overdrive that leaves me laid in bed, exhausted (and usually sick); but with time, I recognize it and remedy it faster.

In speaking to entrepreneurs – men and women – this is such a hard thing to undo and unlearn, especially in a busy-obsessed, hustle culture.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Fortunately for me, my co-founder is my best friend. We met 12 years ago in grad school, and have been inseparable (at least emotionally!) ever since. Life, work, relationships took us different places – me to Atlanta, her to Charleston, Thailand and Washington, DC. Our careers looked differently – me in consulting and sales, her in social impact and nonprofit. And yet, despite how different our lives looked, we found ourselves navigating the same pressures, breakthroughs and breakdowns.

Shortly after starting the podcast, I realized there was something bigger happening here – it was research, it was real women baring their souls, it was impact. I immediately called Katie (selfishly eager to get my. best friend to relocate to Atlanta), and pitched her the business and the vision. 3 hours later she was ‘in.’

From there, we designed a Founder Retreat where we spent 3 days in the mountains not only talking about the business, but getting real about what it means to go into business with your best friend. Admittedly we had a lot of neigh sayers, people close to us worried about what would happen if things went poorly. The work we did over those three days – talking through our values, what we wanted out of this work, how we worked, what pissed us off – became the foundation of our partnership, and are still referenced today nearly 2.5 years later.

10/10 recommend for ANY cofounder relationship.

Contact Info:

• Website: itallmedia.co
• Instagram: instagram.com/itallmedia
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itallmedia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/it-all
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAhHhrKVAPFuttVkH7q53_g
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itallmedia

Image Credits
Erin Dickman