Building Better Boards: A Conversation with Kevin Casey

At Business & Arts NL, we know that strength lies in diversity. And when your board is comprised of people from different sectors, with different experiences and skill sets, the stronger your organization will be (check out our previous conversations with Rhoda Reardon, David Hood, Susan Sherk, and members of the Tuckamore Festival).

We’re fortunate to be backed by a dedicated and talented board that supports our goal of uniting the business and arts communities to help cultivate a vibrant, creative and resilient province. And we’re grateful for each member’s contributions.

This week, we’d like to take an opportunity to express our gratitude to Kevin Casey, sales guy extraordinaire, for his many contributions to the Business & Arts NL board (he has also contributed his time and talents to Special Olympics Newfoundland & Labrador, the Boys and Girls Club of St. John’s, and the Rotary Club of St. John’s). Casey, who co-founded creative marketing firm The Idea Factory and is now Partner and Executive Vice President of Cal LeGrow Insurance & Financial Group, joined the BANL board in 2018. And while he recently left his post, his contributions continue to make an impact.

"We were lucky enough to have Kevin jump headfirst into several critical projects during his time on the board. Each time, Business & Arts was the lucky beneficiary of his enormous energy, generosity and talent. Our 7:30am meetings certainly won't be the same without Kevin's charisma!” Says Amy Henderson, Business & Arts NL’s Executive Director.

Kevin Casey. Photo credit: Chris LeDrew

Business & Arts NL Co-chairs Dr. Noreen Golfman and Mark Dobbin echo Henderson’s sentiment.

"As a board and executive member of BANL, Kevin was a bolt of lightning, illuminating our discussions with electric energy, bold ideas, and unfailing wicked humour,” Golfman says.

Dobbin adds, "Whether it's tennis, business or not-for-profit boards, Kevin is relentless in giving his all with a creative flair and an irreverent, yet inclusive sense of humour. I personally will try to channel my inner Kevin when meetings need a lift.”

We caught up with Casey to chat about his time on the board, what he learned along the way, and his newly released book (un)selling: 14 (un)conventional principles to reduce sales anxiety and increase sales. (This interview has been edited for length.)

Business & Arts NL: What made you decide to join the Business & Arts NL board?

Kevin Casey: I remember when I went to Brother Rice, and it was an all boys’ school, and Holy Heart was an all girls' school. So this was like, 1986. And when you went to the dances, the nuns or the Christian Brothers would have the girls on one side of the room and the boys on the other side of the room…and I always felt business people and arts people were kind of like my experience that I went through on those Friday nights, where they were put on opposite sides. But the real human connection and the real magic and the real interesting stuff happened when two different groups got together.

Magic happens when you get two different lenses on the same problem. I always loved the marriage of business and arts because they were always kept separated. And this was the only group that didn't feel like another one of those boring business groups.

When I see people like artists Vessela (Brakalova) and Amy House and I have a business-problem conversation with those people, they always see something different than me. So I loved the fact that we were taking two groups and colliding them together to solve unexpected problems in unexpected ways….There's artists that hang around with artists, there're business people that hang around with other suits. But who else has the courage to put Vessela and Amy House together with David Hood and Kevin Casey and see what comes out the other side? It's cool, what comes out the other side...So to me, the magic is two groups that have been pulled apart way too long, coming together in a province that desperately needs it with wicked problems that aren't going to be solved the same old ways.

I think Business & Arts NL is only at the start.

Business & Arts NL: Considering your prior board experience, with Business & Arts NL and others, what has been most rewarding for you personally?

KC: What I want to see is output, like tangible proof. The Cal LeGrow Foundation board that I'm on here, I know we've given out $367,000, and we're going to get to a million. And that's tangible. And we picked youth and mental health…the output's really important, for me. If I don't start seeing it, then this just becomes a board that you're on to check a box in your life saying I did board experience.

If there’s one thing I think I’ve got my fingerprints on (with Business & Arts NL), it's getting us closer to answering, ‘Would anyone miss us if we were gone, if we disappeared tomorrow?' And I think people now believe that no one else is going to bring these two groups together. And I think being on an island of 500,000 people, we better have these two groups working together, because there's lots of problems coming down the pipe and we don't need all the same people looking at problems all the same way.

I think people better understand what we're about. I’m quite proud of that.

During his time on the Business & Arts NL board, Casey also secured marketing guru Seth Godin as featured speaker during an “In Conversation” event in 2021 at the Emera Innovation Exchange (where Godin addressed the crowd virtually).

Business & Arts NL: What’s one of the main things you learned from your time on the Business & Arts NL board?

KC: I think how much I underestimated how much someone in the arts category could level up my game and business. I think I believed it always, but I was shocked about how much of an unfair advantage it is, for me as a business person, to bring in someone completely different than everyone around my boardroom table, and see things completely differently...And hopefully artists also feel that maybe someone like a David Hood could come in and give them an ounce of wisdom that may save them countless hours of fatigue and frustration. So it works both ways. But to me, it literally helped me in very tangible ways because Amy House sees the world differently than Kevin Casey. Vessela sees the world differently than Amy House. And you need those people in places they wouldn't typically hang out.

Business & Arts NL: Can you tell us a bit more about your new book?

KC: In 2020…when all that hit, you start to think about different parts of your life in a different way...I went down this path of looking at how I used to sell, because sales has always been the reason I've been brought into a company. And I realized that I wish I knew in 2012 what I know now, when I was a really struggling sales guy that ran an agency. I had this thing called unconscious commission breath, which means you actually don't know you're a product pusher and a hard seller because you think you're doing your job...most salespeople are actually really good human beings, but they're exposed to really bad training and then they turn into a broken person.

So I went down this rabbit hole in 2021. I had this word in my mind called '(un)selling.' And I looked at why is it that I can sell so well now, and I don't waste a lot of time, but back in 2012, everything was so hard? So I started to decode that a little bit, and everything was based on the opposite…so I started to test out all these opposites, secretly...I did the opposite of whatever I did before…and I found I chased less, I worked less and I sold more.

So this book is for people who feel anxiety and stress about selling… it's really going after people that are solopreneurs, freelancers, small business people that have a gift they want to share, but they're hiding in the shadows...This is the book that I needed in 2012, and I assume there’s a whole bunch of other Kevin Casey's that aren't really proud of the way they sell, or they just don't know where to start. This is the book for them.”