Meet Sammie Cassell

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sammie Cassell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sammie below.

Hi Sammie, thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout
Burnout is a real and potentially harmful thing. The easiest way to avoid it is to make you sure you sprinkle in stuff you really enjoy to your schedule. The stuff that makes YOU really happy. Without judgement or criticism from anyone else. Now when you’re someone like me, who sometimes does too much fun stuff at times too, then you need to make sure you have downtime. Sometimes that’s watching a tv show for a half of day, maybe reading a book or just sleeping. Luckily, I don’t have an issue sleeping at night, so a good 7-8 hours gets me recharged and ready for the next adventure. Family and friends should also be helpful in destressing your life. Help them and they should help you. Be supportive of them and hopefully they will return the favor

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I was born and raised in a small rural town in Southwest Virginia. The kind of town where nothing really happens, but everyone knows when it does. I couldn’t wait to get out. So, I went to a community college to learn electronics and then moved to North Carolina to live with my mom. I started out as an electricians helper which is hard work. Around 1992, I got into the video game/arcade route business. It’s fun but very hard work. I feel like my life really started in 1998 when I met my now wife Diana. She had two beautiful daughters and they became my everything. It led me into coaching softball and being a dad. Our lives changed in 2006 though when I had, what turned out to be, the last of 3 major strokes. The girls were in high school and it scared all of us. I wanted to live and be healthy and see them grow up and succeed. I’m not sure that I made a conscious decision then to live life for the better, but definitely subconsciously. When the kids graduated and headed off to college, I found myself bored. Through a random Facebook post from a local haunt, I found myself playing a zombie in a short film, which turned into a feature film and me having a speaking part. That lead into a tight friendship with the writer/director Dan Sellers and us partnering in Wreak Havoc Productions. From there, we’ve made over a dozen projects together and I’ve acted in almost 40 movies, tv shows and commercials. Then the pandemic hit. My business was non essential. We were closed almost a year. One of my best friends, Zack Fox, owned movie theaters, they were closed. So we started taking improv comedy classes at the Idiot Box in Greensboro NC, so began my next adventure. 4 years later, I’m still performing every week with the troupe and have also started doing sketch comedy. So, between owning 3 businesses, acting when I can, working with Wake Forest School of medicine as a Stardardized Patient, and doing comedy, life is full, busy, and fun.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Realism-be real with people. If you can do it and say you will, then stick to that. If you can’t, still be true and say that.

Kindness-the golden rule may be antiquated but the principal is still there. Treat others as you want to be treated, if they don’t reciprocate, don’t continue to keep them around.

Don’t Burn Bridges-we’re a society now that if you don’t agree with my way of life, then I’m a pariah and I hold no value. Everyone holds some sort of value. You can just walk away, you don’t have to burn that world/bridge down. You never know when you might need that bridge to get off an island

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
To raise a child, it takes a village. Same with adults. My mom and grandmother taught me how to treat people well. My old boss taught me how to network and do business. My wife taught me how to parent and how to love someone properly. My friends taught me how to be supportive and how to work as a team to get to a collaborative end goal. Have friends and family who love you but keep you grounded and are honest with you. But don’t judge them or criticize them for doing so. If it’s out of a place of caring and love, they are trying to help, not hinder.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Www.zfoxgraphy.com Steve Lesser-Idiotbox.com

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