Ep 170 – How Cass Bailey Protects Deal Value With M&A Communication Planning
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Featuring: Cass Bailey, Slice Communications –
In episode 170, I sit down with Cass Bailey, founder and CEO of Slice Communications, a national strategic communications agency based in Philadelphia.
Cass shares her path from litigation support at a DC PR firm to economic development to launching Slice in 2008, selling it in 2010, and buying it back in 2012. From there, we dig into how she has grown through acquisition, why most of her deals came from people already in her orbit, and how a painful experience as a seller shaped the M&A communications playbooks her team now builds for clients.
Agency owners will walk away understanding why 60 to 70 percent of acquisitions fail to deliver their intended value and what they can do about it. Cass explains why an all-hands announcement is usually a mistake, how to segment a team into champions, skeptics, and the undecided, and why clients should hear the news from the people they already trust.
Key Bytes
• Between 60 and 70 percent of acquisitions fail to deliver their intended value.
• Your first acquisition will most likely come from someone already in your orbit.
• Employees should never learn their company was sold from a press release.
• All internal communication is external communication.
• When you announce a sale, people read your energy before they hear your words.
• Skip the all-hands and cascade the message through your champions first.
• Clients should hear the news from the people they already trust.
• Revenue is vanity, and profit is sanity.
Chapters
00:00 Meet Cass Bailey and her path into PR
02:08 Why AI slop puts critical thinking at risk
04:57 Launching Slice, selling it, and buying it back
08:05 Where acquisition deals actually come from
12:30 Why most acquisitions lose value after closing
16:34 Planning who finds out, when, and how
19:51 Why all-hands announcements backfire
22:09 Protecting client relationships through the transition
25:35 When the skeptic holds the keys to your biggest accounts
29:22 Rapid fire with Cass
Cass Bailey is the Founder and CEO of Slice Communications, a national strategic communications agency. She is the founder and Chair Emerita of the Social Media Collaborative, a nonprofit membership organization. She is the author of two marketing books—Pay Attention! and Social Media is About People—and creator of the "My Mom Is…" children's book series. Cass has appeared on TV broadcasts including Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, and The Today Show. Her work and commentary have been published in or quoted by Forbes, Philadelphia Magazine, and TheNextWeb, among many others.
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Steve Guberman (00:01.376)
Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I help agency leaders build agency optionality. The freedom to grow, sell, or keep your business because it's your call. This week, my guest is Cass Bailey. She's the founder and CEO of Slice Communications. They're a national strategic communications agency, and she's also the founder and chair emeritus of Social Media Collaborative. She's the author of two marketing books and this the creator of the series My Mom Is. The children's book series and
Her work's been featured everywhere from Good Morning America to Forbes. Cass, it is great to have you. I'm super grateful that we recently met and got to invite you on to join us on an episode.
Cass Bailey (00:41.068)
Thanks, Steve. I'm glad to be here.
Steve Guberman (00:43.48)
So give the backstory, I like to start with this kind of your your journey as an entrepreneur, CEO, founder of a lot of programs, like all the things that like excite you that you've been been running with for the past bunch of years.
Cass Bailey (00:56.952)
Sure, growing up, I never thought I would be an entrepreneur at all. That was not even in my realm of possibilities. I actually at some point thought I was going to simultaneously be a Catholic nun and the president of the United States, because, you know, why not dream big? And then went to school really thinking that I was gonna be a lawyer. And so I got a degree in international politics, economics, and philosophy, and then decided that more school was not for me.
And so instead I started working in litigation support at a PR firm in DC. And that was really interesting because it was law adjacent. If I still wanted to go to law school, I could, but I was learning a lot about communication and a lot about PR. And the thing that I think is important for young professionals, any young professionals, is to find careers and degrees where you learn how to think, how you learn how to write, and you learn how to analyze.
really come up with what you think the solution is and what the situation is. And so through both my degree and my early career, I got access to that sort of skill and training.
Steve Guberman (02:08.782)
gonna say I think those skills are like the common thread of what we're telling quote unquote kids they need to bring forward. And I'm so scared of like what AI is doing for that critical thinking process and writing, not necessarily handwriting, but like how to craft story, how to craft narrative, how to build sentence structure, like all that's what you mean by writing. And I'm just so nervous about that for that that continuing to be a common thread in like junior talent, young incoming talent.
Cass Bailey (02:37.995)
Same. I'm I'm equally concerned about that. I'm also concerned that people because they're fed so much AI slop, especially in their younger days. I mean, our kids assume that almost everything is AI generated that they see on Instagram or that they see on Facebook, that they never develop the a sense of what is good and what is crap.
Steve Guberman (02:52.408)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (03:02.197)
And that crap detector, a crap detector is something that like you need to develop as a professional in your early days with the coaching and guidance of others. And if the feedback you're getting is entirely from a robot, you won't have one. You won't know what's good and what's not good. And that to me, I think, is one of the biggest threats when it comes to communications is this level of standards and this level of scrutiny over what is being what work is being done and what work is being delivered and what we're all willing to accept.
Steve Guberman (03:31.959)
Not to go down the AI slop rabbit hole, but I'm curious from your perspective as a communications expert, do you think that the slop sure, we can identify it, we can see it big time. Do you think that it connects differently than and as I'm saying it, I probably know the answer, but it connects differently than a really well written, like human narrative to the audience? Like did the do does the end user have that emotional connection more or less with something that is just
pure crap versus something that's like really well crafted.
Cass Bailey (04:04.022)
The answer is contextual. I think if you're scrolling Instagram and looking to be entertained, AI Slop can be very entertaining. I think if you're trying to learn and develop and really look at a situation and understand it, AI Slop is not compelling in those situations because you're not really going to learn. You're not really going to get a level of insight, and you're certainly not going to get
the humanity that you need and the different perspectives that you need. And we talk a lot about considering diversity as it relates to how AI is trained and how AI is used. You're not necessarily going to get that from AI. But if you had a quick laugh, sure, it can absolutely connect on that level. I think sometimes, sure.
Steve Guberman (04:47.32)
Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. All right. All right. So back on track. get out of the AI rabbit hole. All right. So PR professional comms, what was next for you in your in your path?
Cass Bailey (04:57.912)
Yeah. I actually decided to go back to my core and start working in economic development. And those folks who don't know what that is, economic development organizations tend to be independent, but they're funded by big companies, enterprises, also the government, state, local, federal government sometimes, and their job is to develop the economy of an area. And our focus specifically was on technology-based economic development.
Steve Guberman (05:06.226)
cool.
Cass Bailey (05:25.122)
growing, starting, and attracting technology companies. And because it was a small organization and because I had worked at a PR agency, I got the great benefit of managing the PR agency that we hired. And so I went client side for a little while and have years of experience of what it's like to be the client. Eventually realized though that I liked what the PR firm was doing better than what I was doing and decided that that was my calling. I started SLICE in 2008.
Tough time to start a business. Yeah, amazing. My timing is impeccable. but in February of 2008, I think before a lot of us knew exactly what was going on with the economy at the time. That said, it was a good time to have a small agency. We were able to do really cool quality work at very affordable rates, and so it was advantageous. started growing the company. I actually sold it in 2010 and bought it back in 2012.
Steve Guberman (05:54.035)
great year. S yeah.
Steve Guberman (06:20.802)
Which side of the arbitrage were you on for those two two deals?
Cass Bailey (06:25.596)
selling it, I I maintained some equity and got a good deal, I think. And when I bought it back, I got a great deal. Yeah. Yeah. So I bought the company back and then spent a little bit of time rebuilding it because it needed to be rebuilt, rebuilt. A lot of the value had been had come out of the company. And then really that took about two years. So so that went on. and then eventually started growing the company both organically and through acquisition.
Steve Guberman (06:28.672)
Okay. Okay.
Okay. Perfect.
Steve Guberman (06:54.176)
What so w what drove the acquisition side of growth? Was it your experience of selling it and then buying it that opened your eyes to like, hey, this is a really good way to grow? Or like what was the driving factor behind that strategy? Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (07:04.96)
It was that, absolutely. I had gotten bitten by the deal bug. And when I worked in economic development, the goal was always for the technology companies that we were funding or investing in or supporting was for them to exit. And so I knew early on in my career that a big win meant exit. Now that's not always true. I found that out the hard way, personally, but exiting was something that a lot of the people that I surrounded myself with at that time were very focused on.
because there was a lot of venture capital investment and a lot of public equity involved and a lot of even angel investors involved in the companies that I was working with.
Steve Guberman (07:43.705)
Yeah, I do think the startup culture is let's grow the crap out of this thing and then sell it, right? It's either it's either IPO or sell, you know, one one and or both. but bringing that into kind of the boutique agency space, your driver was let's do acquisitions. So what was that journey like? What's that roadmap? What were those experiences?
Cass Bailey (07:51.83)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (08:01.517)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (08:05.472)
When I recognized that we wanted to do acquisitions, the first deal came to me. I had a friend who had an agency and he had a social media book of business that he didn't want to continue servicing and because it didn't align with really where he saw his growth plan going. And so my I I got to kind of tip my toe in the water a little bit with that acquisition. We bought a book of business, not employees, not business infrastructure, but it was a good way to learn about doing a deal.
And it ended up being advantageous, and some things worked and some things didn't work, but overall it was a net positive. And then coming out of 2020, really into 2021, we as a firm recognized that we were in a good position being digital communicators, being crisis communicators, and that that allowed us to start to pursue growing through acquisition. So we set it as a goal, as an intention in in early 2021.
And by February, I had somebody reach out to me, a business consultant who works with agencies, who said, Hey Cass, would you ever want to buy a business? I've got a client who's looking to sell it. And I was like, funny, you should mention that, actually. Yes, that is something that I would be interested in. And so that's how the second acquisition, the first full company acquisition happened.
Steve Guberman (09:24.024)
So I'm gonna pause you there because I do think there's a lot to be said about that. When I start working with an agency and they're like, Well, how are we gonna find who we wanna buy or what we wanna buy or what I'm like, in most cases, those first few deals will be from your first or second degree connections, people you know, people that have been in your orbit, and not to get too woo-woo, but sometimes I get a little too woo-woo, when you start talking about MA, kind of like I've never seen a
Cass Bailey (09:38.754)
Yes.
Steve Guberman (09:48.259)
Whatever, core vet, the R, blah, blah, blah. And then you start seeing them all over the place. There's a principle for that. I don't know what it's called. That's how MA works. When you sh when you get that mindset and you start talking about MA readiness and we want to be able to acquire, we want to be able to add on. Are we ready for it? These conversations just start happening. Now there's the right ways to have these conversations and and ways to like guide them in the right way to do it. But just the general
Cass Bailey (09:51.883)
Absolutely.
Steve Guberman (10:13.708)
awareness of these conversations will start happening and will be people that you already know who are like, I'm burnt out, or I don't want this kind of business anymore, or I want to peel off this sector of my business, or I just want a job. I don't want to be an owner or like that's that's how it starts to happen. So I love that that's your experience as well. It was my experience also, many of my clients' experiences. So it's the the overwhelmedness of where am I going to find the deal, don't worry about that.
Cass Bailey (10:28.695)
Yeah.
Cass Bailey (10:35.33)
Good.
Cass Bailey (10:41.268)
the deal will come.
Steve Guberman (10:42.892)
Yeah, a hundred percent. so how many deal fast forward, how many deals have you guys done to date?
Cass Bailey (10:47.948)
So we we completed our third deal about a year ago. That one, actually, I found her. I found the owner. We are certified woman owned, and that means we get a database of other certified woman-owned businesses. I like to network, as you can imagine, and so I will do outreach to other agency owners that are also certified woman owned, and just ask them, hey, do you have time to talk? And usually in that conversation, as we're telling each other our growth stories.
I will drop that we've grown through acquisition. And that either sets off an alarm bell for somebody, yes, or it does not. And either way is completely fine. And sometimes people ask me, well, how did you grow through acquisition? I want to do that too. Can you tell me what it's been like for you? And I'm happy to do that. For other people, they say, Hey, I'm thinking about selling my business. Would you be well willing to talk to me about it? That's great. And then the third way it happens is people just say, well, it's nice to meet you. Maybe one day we'll do something together. Maybe someday we won't.
Steve Guberman (11:22.69)
Yep, yep.
Cass Bailey (11:45.027)
But the conversations are always fruitful in one of those three ways. And so I've got very and and I've become very intentional about doing that outreach on a regular basis because I d I do wanna know what's going on the market and I do wanna know who might be potentially available for sale.
Steve Guberman (12:00.504)
Yeah, I think it's important to have those conversations. I've found in the past, I don't know, eighteen months, ninety five percent of my conversations somehow have MA built into them. Un like intentionally or not, that's just that's the route that they go into. And I do think there's a massive uptick in MA activity in our industry. I think it's gonna continue to accelerate, you know, over the next two to three years. and so those that are MA savvy or have an MA mindset, I think we'll be winners in this disruption in our industry.
Cass Bailey (12:12.749)
Yeah.
Cass Bailey (12:16.738)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (12:21.848)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (12:30.926)
not all deals work out and the true success and value of of a deal post closure is integration and communications. So I'm curious your experience in finding success in how do we communicate to our clients, to our teams, how like what does that messaging plan look like? you know, what's worked and what hasn't worked for you.
Cass Bailey (12:33.206)
No.
Cass Bailey (12:40.258)
Absolutely.
Cass Bailey (12:54.386)
I love this topic in part because not only is it something that we do for ourselves, but we've actually developed a specialty in helping others through MA communication. All sorts of clients, especially those who have a couple hundred employees that they're looking to go through the integration, or they have a a significant value or a second bite at the apple where they want to make sure their valuation continues to be high post post-acquisition. And so
Steve Guberman (13:05.666)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (13:22.668)
We've actually built MA communications playbooks for companies over the years. Yep. And and we're we're working on a couple right now, actually, with some of our clients. And we have a white paper on the topic. It's something that that we spend a lot of time researching and developing and thinking about, how to make sure that the value of the deal is realized. That's what we're here for. a lot of people don't realize that anywhere between 60 to 70 percent of acquisitions fail to realize the intended value.
Steve Guberman (13:26.476)
Love
Cass Bailey (13:51.905)
either in terms of revenue or in terms of business strategy. That's a huge number. 60 to 70%? Enormous. No, no, right. And people keep doing it. And they and they keep doing it without really thinking about what is the communications roadmap and playbook I'm going to put in place. So when we start working with a client, there's two trigger points that we usually get involved in. One is on the sell side, if they are getting ready to go to market.
Steve Guberman (13:55.608)
Mm-hmm.
I'm not playing those odds. Yeah, no.
Cass Bailey (14:20.852)
And the market will be a public transaction. Like they're probably gonna sell to a strategic competitor, or they might sell in private equity, but they have they're a large player in a market that knows them well. We'll get involved then. Or we'll get involved right before the LOI on either buy side or sell side. we usually have the conversations 30, 60 days in advance of the LOI, but companies are ready to pull the trigger when they're signing that. that's the right time for us to get involved.
Steve Guberman (14:49.666)
On the sale side, are you helping them with messaging as far as like we're we're for sale, here's our strategic positioning, here's what's good about your building their sim or whatever you want to call it, to take them to market as opposed to going on to like a merge dot com or acquire dot com or anything?
Cass Bailey (15:04.534)
Yeah, for these larger sales, figuring out the messaging is important because that messaging then has to be consistent over the course of the entire transaction. So whatever you're saying in this public go to market is eventually the thing that you need to say to the employees and that you need to say to the customers and the clients and if they're investors, the investors and the industry community. And so by getting us involved up front to do that message development.
And then to do the message training with the executive and leadership team at the company, it then sets everybody on a good path instead of saying, like, oops, people found out. What are we gonna tell them? Which is the worst way to go about a transaction. We actually have message training with one of the executive teams that we're working with next week on how to talk about this acquisition within their industry, within their employees, et cetera. Because they don't want to lose the employees. I mean, what happens so often, and this is the biggest threat in MA.
is that somebody finds out that you're selling or that you've sold and the employees go looking for different jobs. Right.
Steve Guberman (16:05.646)
They are scared that that means that they are on the chopping block whether they are or not. And so almost as important as solidifying what we're saying, solidifying what we're not saying until it's time to say it. And I can't express I I can't say that with enough exclamation points to my clients that please make sure your seller doesn't leak this out to their team ahead of time. I know you're excited. Shh
Cass Bailey (16:24.949)
Abs absolutely.
Yeah. And when we do an MA communications playbook, we very clearly outline who finds out, when, from whom, how do they find that out? And then what is the ongoing communication to each of those groups? A lot of times people just ask me, like, well, who do I tell when? And that's fine, but that's not the end of the story. The how is so critical. Is it a one-on-one conversation? Is it
Steve Guberman (16:34.882)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (16:55.382)
you know, some sort of in-person communication. Is it an email? Usually it's not an email, Steve. but most people default to like, we're gonna send an email. The worst case scenario is when the employees find out their company is sold because somebody sends them a press release about it. That should never happen. Never. That is poor planning, it's bad communication. It creates a tremendous amount of fear and uncertainty within the organization and then leads to the devaluation of the deal. Like
We've all seen it. It happens again and again and again. So the MA comms playbook has a roadmap and it addresses all of these things. And it addresses them with empathy. It addresses them like knowing that the natural response initially will be fear. But if that fear response is met with kindness and thoughtfulness and understanding, people can very quickly and easily get beyond the fear response. But you have to get them there.
Steve Guberman (17:40.814)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (17:53.207)
If you just tell them the information, let them sit in there scared, they will never move on. And instead, they'll just leave the company. And so that's why these comms playbooks are so critical. And we manage everything from, hey, if it's going to be an in-person announcement, what time of day is it going to be? What is the venue? What is the menu? What are you feeding these people at the moment that they have one of the scariest interactions of their lives? Like
People think it's a it doesn't matter, but it truly does in terms of sharing the commitment and expressing the concern for the employees and prioritizing them. When we do message training, we do training, yes, on the words, but what we really focus in is energy training. Because when you tell somebody that the company has been sold, they will probably not hear anything else that you say. However, they will pick up on your facial expression.
Your body language, and if you can start to reflect and understand theirs, you will probably get their attention back on your words. But there's that critical moment of saying, okay, this person I can see is scared. They're looking at their phone already, they're wringing their hands, they or they feel totally calm and confident, or they've become completely stoic and unresponsive. my gosh, they are stuck in in.
in the fear response that's known as freeze. We gotta manage through that. And so when we're doing this role playing and we're doing this energy and management training along with the message training, it makes a humongous difference in terms of keeping employees committed through change.
Steve Guberman (19:35.256)
Have you seen it probably not as well, but work well on, you know, teams are fully remote these days. So we're gonna do this messaging, sign the deal on Tuesday, Wednesday we're having an all hands, we're getting everybody onto a Zoom call, we're merging the two teams. Like, how have you seen it play out digitally or remotely, whatever it's called?
Cass Bailey (19:41.176)
Is it?
Cass Bailey (19:51.873)
Okay, first of all, not a fan of all team all hands meetings. Not for this sort of communication, because it becomes too big for the leader to be able to understand and manage the emotional response from everybody on and all teams. When we're doing the commun MA communications playbook work, we work with the teams to say or the leadership to segment their employees by who are your champions.
Steve Guberman (20:08.59)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (20:18.008)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (20:20.044)
The people who are gonna love you no matter what. Who are the people who are skeptics who are gonna be the devil's advocate in the room who are gonna like push back no matter what? And who are the people who are undecided? And then we do a second level of segmentation, which is who has the most influence internally and who has the most influence externally with your biggest clients, your biggest customers, those sort of folks. Doing that sort of segmentation.
Steve Guberman (20:32.499)
interesting.
Steve Guberman (20:45.134)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (20:49.292)
Then enables us to figure out who the people who have the biggest influence, they need a different type of communication. They need to be heard, they need to be understood, they need to be, you know, engaged in a different way. And who are the people who are gonna be the skeptics? How do we then also prepare and train the champions to deliver the message and to sway the undecided? And so when we think about MA communication, it has to be a cascading communication.
It should never be an all hands communication. Of course, there are exceptions. Super small companies, right? You can do it all hands, super teeny tiny. But even in that situation, the managers, the leaders need to know in advance and not feel like they're being blindsided at the same time as everybody else.
Steve Guberman (21:21.239)
Interesting. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (21:35.65)
Yeah, that part I fully understand. I hadn't thought about it as opposed to like the champions and the skeptics, but it makes perfect sense because you're not going to have like a rally cry with the skeptics in the room. They're not on the same energy wavelength or whatever. So yeah, that's super interesting. I love that strategy. Talk about Yeah.
Cass Bailey (21:51.373)
And there's a point of sensitivity, right? There's a point of sensitivity. If you're skeptics, if you have a group or one skeptic, sometimes it's just one, who have a lot of influence with your biggest customer, that person is an outlier. They need to be treated very differently in your communications plan.
Steve Guberman (22:02.851)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (22:09.676)
Yeah. How how do you treat things differently w with the client facing so the acquiring clients?
Cass Bailey (22:19.831)
the companies that are doing the acquisitions, the buyers?
Steve Guberman (22:22.806)
No, no, the the clients of the so agency that's being bought. So now you're part of a whole new family.
Cass Bailey (22:28.42)
absolutely. So the first thing that Yeah. there is a right, because that has a huge impact on realizing the value of the deal. There is an underlying philosophy in all of this work that all internal communication is external communication. And so you gotta get the internal right first. Because whoever owns those client relationships.
Steve Guberman (22:33.6)
We want to ensure that they transition.
Steve Guberman (22:48.664)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (22:56.084)
will be the ultimate deliverer of that message with either credibility or skepticism. And so again, what you can't do is have a client find out, my gosh, I heard in the news that you got bought. That is a death null for a client relationship. And then to have that person reach out to their account manager or to their salesperson and be like, hey, I heard you got sold. And then the internal employee is like, yeah, man, I don't know what's going on. Right? Like
That's the worst. Say goodbye. Say goodbye to those clients. Say goodbye to those employees. Like maybe you can get them back, but probably not. You've now put yourself in a position of an uphill battle. The better way to do it is actually to create a toolkit, a communications toolkit that your employees can use with their customers and consider the customers and clients as part of the communications role roadmap and strategy. So when you're developing the timeline of like how are we going to roll this out, the clients and customers are part of it.
And it's better for them to hear from the people that they trust in your organization rather than to hear from the leader or from anybody else, or certainly from a mass email or a mass video. That is not a good way to do it. So we go so far as to write the email that the that the account manager or account leader will send to the client. They customize it, of course. We give them talking points. When your customer asks you this, this is how you answer it.
We help them and do some role playing with them. Hopefully, you know, even if it's an hour of role playing the morning of the client announcement, you do it. You prioritize it. Yes, the ROI on that time is tremendous. But a lot of these folks, because the timeline does move fast, it is not a slow timeline once announcement happens, right? Everything more or less happens within 48 hours. That's still a quick amount of time for them to process.
So by giving them a toolkit and things that they can use, which is like, here's how you're gonna talk about this thing, you set them up for success rather than putting them on their heels. Another thing that people don't realize that I think is really important is to clear your calendars for 72 hours after the announcement period. Leave lots of space for people who wanna come talk to you. And everybody who's considered a manager or a leader should do that.
Cass Bailey (25:15.766)
And that's another reason to delegate the communication to the customers to the account managers or the sales leaders or whomever, so that then you're available to take those calls from the clients if they do want to talk to you. Or you're available to take the calls from the sales reps if they want to talk to you. So clear those calendars.
Steve Guberman (25:35.11)
So you you laid out these different audiences and I my brain is stuck on like the skeptic. What a what do you do when the skeptic holds the keys to the accounts?
Cass Bailey (25:39.724)
Yes.
Cass Bailey (25:43.435)
that's a big challenge. Absolutely. They need to understand the what's in it for them.
Steve Guberman (25:45.154)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (25:51.383)
That's the most important thing that they can see and understand that they're gonna get maybe it's a retention bonus. Maybe they're going to get some sort of benefit in terms of professional development growth. Maybe they'll get a new title, a better title, a higher title. Maybe they'll get a bigger team under them. There's all sorts of things that you can do so that they understand the vision of how they're gonna grow and benefit from the deal. Because ultimately a lot of times the skepticism comes from a certain level of selfishness.
of it's really about them and not necessarily about the company. So make it very clear what's in it for them.
Steve Guberman (26:26.734)
Yeah, the instant they hear this, they're is my resume together, is my portfolio together, is are there jobs available? What's gonna happen? They think they're losing their job instantly. And it may be the case, but it also may not be the case. And so we have to instill a a sense of direction and confidence and this this is a good move for everybody moving forward. And so yeah, that messaging has to be tight.
Cass Bailey (26:35.445)
Instantly.
Cass Bailey (26:46.848)
Now, if there's a situation where the skeptic is not anticipated to continue with the company, maybe they're a cultural pariah. We've seen that. And everybody's scared of the relationship that they have with the clients, the communications playbook works differently.
Somebody else from the company calls the clients, lets them know what the change is, ideally rips off the band-aid and says, so-and-so is not going to be your contact anymore. I am instead or this person's going to be instead. So by planning that out, you avoid a lot of unfortunate discord later on that could also take down the value of the deal.
Steve Guberman (27:21.998)
Yeah, and that has to be executed very precisely of cutting off communications and how you would typically terminate somebody, but with a lot more involved in it in and a lot more relying on it. So this this yeah, real tight. This service, the thing that you are s like selling or delivering to clients, this came out of your own needs through your own acquisition process. Was this something that you're like, man, we really like
Cass Bailey (27:33.44)
That timeline has to be tight.
Cass Bailey (27:43.425)
It did.
Steve Guberman (27:49.326)
Screw pooch on this. We got to tighten this up and figure it out. And then it became a service or has it gone smoothly every time for you?
Cass Bailey (27:55.979)
It has certainly not gone smoothly every time for us. I'm not gonna say that, but this service actually originated from when I sold the company. So it came from my experience as a s as a seller and just how poorly the communication was handled. And like level upon level of oof, that was a bad idea, that was a bad idea, that was a bad idea, we shouldn't do that. And because I I was still in the company, I still had equity in the company, I saw firsthand.
Steve Guberman (28:02.753)
Okay.
Cass Bailey (28:23.628)
the value that was destroyed because of the lack of communications on behalf of the buyer to their entire team. And so I at that point was like, this is this terrible experience. For a long time, Steve, I would only talk about it over drinks. Long time. And eventually I was like, okay, we need to do something about this. There is a better way. And started, you know, working on this service that way.
Steve Guberman (28:50.348)
It's a great case study of how vital integration and communication planning are in any deal. Like it can look great on paper, the numbers can look great, the projections can look great. If the integration is not tightened up, there the value to your the stat you said, 60 to 70 percent of that post deal value gets lost. Like that's what we're here for is the post deal value. So I'm not betting on sixty percent loss, seventy percent loss. Not not the numbers I want.
Cass Bailey (29:08.952)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cass Bailey (29:15.36)
No, I would do everything you can to get an unfair advantage to make sure that you're in that thirty percent.
Steve Guberman (29:22.862)
Yeah. Yeah. super awesome topic, very relevant. Cast, I'm really grateful for your time. wanna wrap up with a couple of random rapid fire questions. So let's see, what's the first? What is something that's part of your daily habit that keeps you focused?
Cass Bailey (29:31.864)
Sure.
Cass Bailey (29:40.737)
Okay, so I am not above Instagram ads. And one of the Instagram ads that I got that I good for that performance marketing team, is I got a vibration board and I love standing on it for 15 minutes every morning. And then sometimes in between meetings, I'll go back and like just and it it goes like this, right? It just vibration back and forth. It just
Steve Guberman (29:57.814)
Cass Bailey (30:05.814)
Settles my my body and my mind and gives me fifteen minutes of clarity and I'll use it during the day as well.
Steve Guberman (30:12.118)
Love that. So it's a meditative device. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. What's a piece of advice that you previously kind of swore by or lived by that now you look back and you're like, Man, that was misinformation or toxic or something along those lines?
Cass Bailey (30:14.765)
It is.
Cass Bailey (30:27.608)
I early on, after I bought the company back, was in a business program for small business owners and the fixation was top line. How many employees, how much revenue? And for a lot of years, I became obsessed with top line. And then over the years decided and and figured out that that was a terrible thing to be obsessed with, actually hindered the growth and success of the business.
And so now the thing that I keep my mind on is that revenue is vanity and profit is sanity and that is a much better way to go about business.
Steve Guberman (31:03.16)
Love that. And headcount is so underperforming now because we're doing more with less. And so a lot of providers like myself, we're not using headcount as qualifiers anymore. So it is top line versus bottom line, how healthy is the business, that kind of thing. finally, if you were to look back and say twenty-five years ago, Cass, what would be a vital piece of advice you'd give to them from today?
Cass Bailey (31:10.06)
That's right.
Cass Bailey (31:16.554)
Yeah.
Cass Bailey (31:20.941)
Yeah.
Cass Bailey (31:30.404)
past cas. PastCast needed to know the importance of having the right trusted people around her. I think it's critical when you're growing an agency because anybody who works with you could walk out the door at any moment.
Steve Guberman (31:32.258)
Mm-hmm.
Cass Bailey (31:47.292)
and take with you take with them a tremendous amount of value in the company. And so to really look at those relationships and to understand those folks that get it, want it, and have capacity, we are an EOS, an entrepreneurial operating system company. Like I wish somebody had told me a long time ago about get it, want it, have capacity, because it it does provide a framework to making sure that the right people are in, are in the agency.
Steve Guberman (32:12.034)
Love that. Yeah. Kind of feel like every entrepreneurial group like the SBA groups and things like that should just give out traction. Like, you wanna start a business? Don't do a business plan, read this book. Yeah.
Cass Bailey (32:23.01)
Well and by the way, when you read the book, don't do it in the order that the book is written. They don't tell you to the end that it's meant to be implemented in a very different order. So I also made that mistake. But yes, we've been a traction company now for 10 years and highly recommend it.
Steve Guberman (32:33.016)
Fair enough. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (32:38.796)
Love it. Cass, thank you so much for joining me, for sharing your experience in MA, MA messaging. folks, check out Slice Communications in Philadelphia. Find Cass on LinkedIn. All the links will be in the show notes. Cass, thank you very much.
Cass Bailey (32:53.388)
Thank you, Steve.