Today we’d like to introduce you to Cassie Petrey.
Cassie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I will always say, that our business started when both my business partner (Jade Driver ) and I were teenagers. We were the master super fans, who would travel the country to see the same acts over and over again. We met in college at Middle Tennessee State University, and formed Crowd Surf as we were both graduating. We started out running MySpace pages, and have evolved into a full on music marketing strategy and career management firm at this point.
Has it been a smooth road?
I would say that if you’re traveling a smooth road, you’re either not driving fast enough, or it’s a road to a destination that’s not going to be very exciting when you finally get there. We’ve had every type of struggle you can imagine – staffing issues, cash flow problems (when you start a business, you realize some invoices you send out will never get paid), not having enough clients, having too many clients, past employees stealing your clients, past employees stealing your current staff, competing companies spreading straight up lies about your service and staff, and many many more things. However, I’m grateful for every single difficult experience we’ve gone through. It’s made me a better executive… and personally a stronger human being.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Crowd Surf – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Crowd Surf specializes in talent solutions. I understand this is a broad concept, but we have a very broad scope of work. In order to best capture this, here’s a list of a variety of tasks that we will complete in one work day:
Crowd Surf is a “talent solutions” company. We’ve evolved over the years from a social media marketing firm, to really just doing anything and everything we can help our clients solve various problems they encounter in the digital and marketing world on an ongoing basis. To best describe what we do, here are some of the things we’ll be doing for our clients today:
+ Doing several meetings where we’re laying out a client’s digital strategy from now until the end of the year, and setting up the broad strokes for quarter one
+ Getting leaked album artwork removed from the internet (yes, websites/socials and everything else)
+ Protecting our client’s music, and making sure that nothing gets leaked online
+ Conducting a photoshoot so that our client has many photos to use on Instagram over the next 30 days
+ Editing a video piece to tease a song on social media, and creating a special vertical edit of that piece to post on Instagram stories
+ Producing and directing a music video shoot
+ Scheduling a press run for a client in NYC next week
And this is really just scratching the surface…
I would say what makes me proud is that we get things done. We are down in the trenched, figuring out how to solve any problem we possibly can. A lot of people in our position would claim “that’s not my job” or “above my pay grade” – but we just figure out how to help to the best of our ability. We like to make a difference in any way that we possibly can.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Working in Los Angeles is amazing. So many of our clients are based here, along with a lot of the work that they do. We’re really able to be onsite and connect with our clients here. Also, being able to “get away” from the city and sitting by the ocean or taking an amazing hike is something truly therapeutic. I think it all sits here together in one place for a reason!
In terms of what I like least, it would be the things I miss about “suburban comfort”. I’m from Kentucky, and there is something really awesome about being able to go to a Target or Mall that’s not in a parking garage. Or being able to go have lunch in a place with a real parking that… that has spots or isn’t valet. I miss daily tasks and errands being easy rather than exhausting.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.crowdsurf.net
- Phone: 6154950496
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/crowdsurf
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/crowdsurf
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