Today we’d like to introduce you to Lynn Casey.
Lynn, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Born in NYC and raised on the East Coast, I was fortunate enough to travel abroad a great deal while growing up. From these experiences, I developed a strong curiosity about culture and the many different types of lives humans imagine and create for themselves. I was determined to tell those stories. I spent the early part of my career on Madison Avenue working and thriving in the ad biz and moved to LA in the 90’s. I was determined to get back to my earliest goal of journalism, and so for my first work in the West, ran Beverly Hills Magazine. I loved the chance to capture a city’s zeitgeist and flair and to use design, language and photography to bring the stories to life. It was a short-lived sortie, and I soon ended up as a studio executive at Paramount Pictures. The work was fast-paced and exciting, but the purpose behind it left me lacking.
I kept longing for the human element behind the shows we developed and sold. After my third child was born, I left to start my own business with a goal of unpacking the ‘why’ behind human behavior. My belief is that when we understand why people make the decisions they do, we can help chart a course to delivering what they want better and more holistically. Since launching Shine Scout, I have listened to and told the stories of thousands of humans: parents, teens, college students, and kids for Fortune 100 companies around the globe. From P & G to Coty Cosmetics, Dreamworks to Coca-Cola, I have enlisted the human heart as the most critical data point available to us today. The work is rich, revelatory and always interesting!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth roads are rarely interesting, right? The work has always been there – but figuring out how to manage it all has been the learning curve. I travel a great deal (pre-pandemic!) and also have been a single mom to three kids, so juggling the wants and needs of it all have pushed me to the limit at times. I love what I do – most successful entrepreneurs do – but there are realities about running a household full of kids and dogs as well as a business don’t always play well together. It’s tricky managing what’s in your head and heart and trying to do your best. Figuring out how to hire and delegate, and learning what you can’t let go of in order to really do the work is messy at best, and draining at its worst. A business is a demanding entity. Fortunately, I have a tremendous team of terrific freelancers and specialists that make it all work. It is never easy but its been beyond satisfying!
Please tell us about Shine Scout.
Shine Scout is a cultural insights and future trends consultancy. We help companies unpack the ‘why’ of human behavior so that they can pivot and meet people on their authentic journeys. We dig deep into real-time day to day behavior, whether that means driving across Minnesota with a mom in her minivan, shopping with teens in Paris, or talking money in Manhattan, the work is in listening, observing and connecting the dots. I couple this with broad and long term forecasting around macro-trends – the larger and broader shifts in human behavior that result from major demographic events ( Baby Boomers, Millennials) or events, like the recent pandemic. By putting these two views – the microscopic and the telescopic together, we can plot a course to the future. I am really proud of the deep and real maps we have created for companies like Mattel ( a two year exploratory across the US leading to a seminal ‘Future of the American Family’ report out), intensive re-calibration work for Shiseido (the Future of Beauty); and my most recent work: cultural spelunking – leading teams of Facebook executives across the country to embed them in real-time human life in order to help shift the social media directive.
I think my work is really rich, multi-layered, incredibly visual and highly language. My clients feel their customers by the end of our projects together – its not just words on a slide. And because of that, they come back again and again. I think I inspire the confidence for leaders to take big leaps.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Curiosity. The willingness to ask, to explore, and to learn. I start every project knowing I don’t have the answer – but believing I will find it.
Empathy: You must lean into each human story, you have to feel it to share it.
Tenacity: The work won’t knock on your door, you have to engage, embark and enlist others. Work is a verb, not a noun!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shinescout.com
- Phone: 310-926-3803
- Email: lynn@shinescout.com
- Instagram: @shinescout
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