Brent Cassity

Author

This was the Sunday article that started the next 6 years of a nightmare to survive…eventually Brent lost it all and found himself standing at the gates of Leavenworth to serve a 5-year sentence.
The Sunday St. Louis Post article lead with…”if the funeral industry has celebrities, they are the Cassity’s of St. Louis… An HBO documentary. It is said the family inspired the HBO Series SIX FEET UNDER. The parents received press a couple of years ago when they sold their house on Nantucket for $16 million to Google’s CEO. The Cassity men – Doug and his two sons, Brent and Tyler – even look like movie stars: handsome in an All-American way with chiseled features and perfect hair. Ambitious, they set out to revolutionize everything from prepaid funerals to how Americans memorialize the dead. The father – a man who worked behind the scenes – built an empire, proving second acts in life are possible. His sons branched out with innovations, garnering acclaim. The family made millions. But now, the family’s empire appears pushed to the breaking point.
Last month, regulators took control of three companies that make up the heart of the Cassity holdings. Government agencies in at least 10 states are trying to sort out what happened. Their attention is focused on one unsexy, but lucrative part of their sprawling firm – prepaid funerals. This was Forever’s financial engine, spinning off cash and powering promises of change.
Regulators are trying to determine if enough money remains to honor the prepaid funerals of perhaps 100,000 people. Everything is just falling apart, said Ron Hast publisher of Mortuary Management and Funeral Monitor magazines. It is just ricocheting across the United States.”
Brent Cassity was the CEO of a national family company. His company and family experienced a 6-year Federal investigation. Brent’s Dad, Brent, and four others eventually accepted plea bargains, and were given prison sentences for insurance fraud. Brent received a 5-year sentence to Leavenworth Prison. He is now the host of the popular podcast Nightmare Success IN and OUT (Ranked Top 2%), and he is the author of the Amazon Best Selling Book Nightmare Success Loyalty, Betrayal, Life Behind Bars, Adapting, And Finally Breaking Free: A Memoir.

Brent has lived a rollercoaster journey of a life story. His Dad, who Brent idolized, went to prison when Brent was 15 years old. He said that will never happen to me…and 35 years later Brent entered Federal Prison. In between that time, the Cassity’s became the rebels of the funeral industry that hadn’t changed in over 150 years. They were chronicled by Forbes, Fortune, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Cover Story of Entertainment Tonight, and HBO. Their fall was a national story. It even followed Brent into prison as he watched his family’s episode of American Greed with 435 of my fellow inmates at Leavenworth Prison. When he got out of prison, Brent went to visit his dad (serving a 10 year sentence) at the same prison he had visited his dad as a 15 years old kid. Brent did not lose everything. He is married to his incredible wife of over 32 years and has 3 accomplished daughters who survived the wicked storm together. Julie, his wife, was the glue that kept it all together through the nightmare.
Brent feels like he has a second wind with a second chance in life. He loves doing his podcast. The theme of the show is, “What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive, and set yourself free? Brent interviews people who have experienced prison. Listeners have the opportunity to hear an inspiring story of surviving and overcoming struggles, and many times identify strategies they can use to breakdown prisons in their own mind. The goal is to break the narrative that prison was a dead end but can be a renewed second chance in life. Brent enjoys speaking to groups, businesses and universities, such as, The University of Missouri Business School on 3 separate occasions. Brent centers his talks around the 5 survival tools he used in prison, once his world had shrunk to a plastic chair, locker, and bunkbed.
Brent was recently asked, what does one do when they must start over from scratch? His response, “Don’t ever give up, keep stepping, action is better than perfection. You will eventually get to where you want to be, or a lot closer because you took action.” So much of this is about mindset. Brent’s favorite quote is the old Henry Ford quote, “whether you think you can or think you can’t…you are right!” When Brent was walking the fence of Leavenworth, he knew he had taken a heck of a fall in life. He was always wired to want to make a difference with whatever he approached in life. How could he still make a difference after such a fall? He decided to use his life story to help others. Helping them understand that rock bottom does not have to be the end but can be a new beginning. This was the motivation that fueled the passion for his memoir and his podcast Nightmare Success. Survivor and victim - There is a night and day difference from living your life as a survivor as opposed to a victim. One gives you strength to take on the challenge and not give up, the other takes away all your strength and paralyzes you to take the action you know you need to take in your life.
One can adapt to almost anything in life. Brent always says, “Nothing is as bad as your mind makes it out to be, not even prison.” Nightmare Success is about breaking down prisons you have built up in your own mind…confronting and stepping through your fears, nightmares, and ugly comfort zones to set yourself free