Season 2 Episode 010
Shannon Berg
What happens when you trade corporate status for values-driven entrepreneurship?
In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, host Alice Tang sits down with Shannon Berg, Founder & CEO of Berg & Associates—the Pacific Northwest’s premier strategic communications and crisis management firm, named the #1 Best Place to Work by the Portland Business Journal. Shannon shares her journey of breaking free from executive titles to build an award-winning company rooted in radical generosity, unshakeable values, and financial discipline.
"I work really hard because I know I'm not gonna be a CEO forever. I'm trying really hard to resist believing that's who I am or that's my identity. It's a role I perform, but it is not who I am—and one day I'll let it go without being unmoored."
Alice Tang: Hello, everyone. I’m Alice Tang, the host of Women’s Million Dollar Conversation. Today, I’m sitting down with my wonderful friend, one and only Shannon Berg, of Berg and Associate.
Shannon Berg: Thank you, Alice. So excited to talk with you
Alice Tang: Let’s roll with the audience so that they can hear what you’re going to share, insight and wisdom. You’ve built an agency that is rewriting the rule of crisis management. Before we dive into your financial journey, what does Berg & Associates do, and who are you as a CEO founder?
Shannon Berg: So Berg & Associates is a strategic communications consulting firm, and we specialize in issues management and crisis communications. We’re based in the Pacific Northwest here in Portland, Oregon, but we have clients and team members across the US. recently we were named the number one best place to work in Oregon and Southwest Washington by the Portland Business Journal in the small business category, so we’re very proud of that. And next year, 2027, will be our 10-year anniversary, so we’ve been at this for 10 years here in the market, but I am a, a career-long consultant going back over 25 years now. And
Alice Tang: You look just like 25
Shannon Berg: Exactly.
Alice Tang: Thank you for noticing. right?
Shannon Berg: Thank you for noticing. I agree. And then you asked what kind of a leader am I as a CEO, right? Yeah, that’s a great question. I try to be an attuned leader, meaning that I’m, trying to always be attuned with the needs of my clients and the needs of our team members. So I think checking in and being aware of and noticing what my clients’ needs are and what my team needs is my job as a CEO
Alice Tang: An attuned leader. We love it. this is Women’s Million Dollar Conversation, so we got to talk about money.
Alice Tang: So we are very curious about the unspoken narrative about money in your childhood when you were growing up. Was that a source of fear, anxiety, or just a tool for freedom?
Shannon Berg: What is it? Yeah, that’s a really interesting question, and I was thinking back. we didn’t… I didn’t hear my parents talk much about money when I was growing up. I’m one of eight children. I’m the last of eight. my parents bought a home shortly after they were married, sometime around 1958. We still have that home, so that is the home that all of us grew up in. I think my parents were very smart and conservative. they, saved. they lived, within their means, [00:03:00] and we certainly didn’t have luxuries, but I always had a sense of financial security. And I’m really grateful to them for that because, my mom work much of her career.
Then when she was working, she was a schoolteacher. She didn’t have, a really high income. my dad worked his whole career for General Motors. so I would say they probably had a moderate income, but think they did a really good job of, with eight kids especially, living within their means and always creatinga feeling of financial security for us
Alice Tang: Wow. so much, learning and wisdom that your parents, they have role modeled for you now. So given that childhood, does it make you more hesitate to launch a company or fuel it fire, go for it?
Shannon Berg: I think it has challenged me in some ways because [00:04:00] I do tend to be very conservative. And, as an entrepreneur you have to take risks. You have to hire people when it’s time, even if you’re not 100% certain that, the revenue will always be there or the client base will be sustained over time.
You have to be willing to invest in the business, to take some risks, and I certainly, didn’t see a lot of risk-taking growing up when it came to finances. In some ways that was a good thing, but I think I’ve had to stretch into that, in being able to be comfortable, with a little more risk-taking and challenging myself in that way
Alice Tang: I would like to drill you a little bit about the risk taking. So since you said, your family, how you were brought up, you did not take much risk or saw them take much risk, right? Very good income, bought a home, raised eight children, always have the resource, will find fun in the limited resource, which is unspoken. I read between the lines. How did you, the last child, most likely the most spoiled, because the last one, I’m, stereotyping here, gear up the courage to just say, “I want to do this. I no longer want to be employed. I want to own a company, this is it”?
Shannon Berg: I think I’ve always had that drive, Alice, and the, desire for autonomy and self-determination really even at an early age.
But I think I’ve always had that impulse. I’ve always liked work, I’ve always had a drive to work, and I’ve always had an impulse to create something that was my own. it does take some courage, and I’m glad that I found that courage. The only thing I regret was maybe not doing it a little bit sooner,
Alice Tang: Oh, when you say not doing it early enough, I had, chills in my body. I resonated with you.
Shannon Berg: Yeah
Alice Tang: I’d like to take you back to your childhood. [00:06:00] Going back to that first paycheck, what did you do with it? How did you spend it? What did you learn, what did it teach you about hard work?
Shannon Berg: My very first job I got when I was 12 years old, working at a farm Macomb County, Michigan, in Ray Township, So I started working at the farm at a very young age, and that’s where I learned the value of hard work. But I will never forget the first time that I got paid, and it was in cash.
Shannon Berg: It brought up a funny memory, I was handed a tomato and the money I’ll never forget that. that year, at the end of the summer I took everything that I had earned, and for the first time ever I went shopping, at a department store. It was Hudson’s, was the name of that department store, and that was an empowering feeling. that did something to me, and that feeling of being able to work hard, and then do something for myself and exercise a choice and options. to this day I remember the clothes that I bought
Shannon Berg: So that first job really had a huge impact on me, and I also will say that I had a wonderful boss. The family that I worked for, really taught me a lot about work, and I’m, to this day, extremely grateful, for that opportunity. And I think about that often because talk about a small workplace, A family farm is a very small business, and so I think about that, when I think about my own workplace because we, too, are a very small company, but you can still create really great opportunities for people to grow and to thrive and to learn great lessons for however long they are with you and in your environment.
Alice Tang: Like legacy. Thank you for sharing that
Alice Tang: So I’m still thinking about how to build your company, the best place to work, scale and continue to build, what belief habits about money that you have to let go because it is holding you back?
Shannon Berg: I think it gets back to being able to take risks. to be able to look at your track record and say, “It is reasonable to expect my business will continue to thrive and do well, as it has done in the last 10 years.” So when it’s time to hire someone new, to invest in the business in some way, to do that and to, not embrace a more, scarcity mindset, but really to build the infrastructure and the resources that are needed to support the business that you’re building [00:09:00] toward. How are we resourcing that future? How are we building the infrastructure that will support that way of operating or who we want to be in the market? And being willing to, look at the numbers, but also trust your instincts and trust your track record. So I think that’s been the challenge when it comes to money, is trusting, what I’ve already shown that we are able to do and have done, knowing that’s probably a pretty good predictor.
Alice Tang: I have follow-up question for you. I’m thinking on behalf of the audience. Obviously, having a good track record help you to be more confident in making those calculated risk and finally decision. year one, there’s no track record, and you still need to break through and make that decision.
Shannon Berg: Year one was terrifying. year one was, “Am I really doing this? Is this really gonna work? I have three kids in daycare. How am I gonna justify…” and at that time I was really a solopreneur, so I built my business from the ground up. I started the business from zero, from scratch. So in the beginning it was just me selling my time. I started to expand my capacity by partnering with some independent contractors,
Shannon Berg: And then at some point I realized that I needed more,consistency and predictability in my available, human resources, and that’s when I moved to hiring full-time employees. But I’ll never forget the very first full-time employee who I hired, who is still with me. I was so nervous aboutcommitting to someone And this was somebody who had a very good job at a, large organization with lots of great benefits, and I thought, “I’m gonna make her an offer for a job, and she’s leaving all this security. I better make this as secure as I possibly can.” And I remember that I didn’t make her the job offer until I had a year’s worth of her salary and benefits saved. So in addition to her
Alice Tang: goodness
Shannon Berg: revenue and,the revenue needed to cover the existing expenditures of the company, I’m much more at ease now with the decision to hire. I’ve always challenged myself to be as generous as I can possibly be. I never wanted anyone to say, “It’s a new business they don’t provide as good of benefits.” It was important to me that was not the narrative,
We do, a study about every other year, a comp study, to make sure that our pay is exactly that, at the top of the range of competitiveness for our market, and then our benefits are really strong as well. And I’m really proud of that, that even as a small business, that is something I’ve invested our money in as a [00:12:00] company
Alice Tang: I have a few admiration points here, if I may share
Shannon Berg: You may
Alice Tang: with you and the audience. So we see a risk. Shannon Berg saw a risk. The risk is I’m the number one employee, and I need a number two employee, but the fact that she has lot of things that is being offered by her current employer, how am I going to match that? You put a proposal on the table,
Alice Tang: So what you did to eliminate that risk is you save up that year of salary and benefit, and that is just erase that risk.
Alice Tang: No more risk.
Shannon Berg: Yeah. That’s exactly right
-Alice Tang: wow. And one of the things I overheard only is pertaining to maternity leave. So would you expand a little bit?
Shannon Berg: We have a leave policy. And of course, here in Oregon, short-term disability is offered through Paid Leave Oregon, so we have really good benefits. But we’ve made sure that our employees in other states have access to, similar leave benefit. we have a very generous PTO policy, so it ends up being between eight and nine weeks, if you add up the PTO plus our week of closure at Christmas time, plus all of our holidays, 13 holidays, two floating holidays, a volunteer day, and then at five years you get an additional week of vacation. And we have a 401with a 4% employer match. We pay 100% of, healthcare premiums for the primary insured. We have an annual wellness stipend that we provide, and a monthly, stipend for internet and phone.
Shannon Berg: We have short, we have long-term disability. We have, life insurance policies for all of our employees. So at every turn I’ve tried to make sure that the benefits are, as close as possible to what you could get if you went to work for a large company, and in some cases even better.
So that’s what we’ve done and it’s, it’s nice to be in a workplace where there’s evidence that we value people and we want them to have, access to great healthcare and, and have time off and be able to save and build their wealth,in a retirement plan.
Shannon Berg: That’s what we’ve done.
Alice Tang: that’s a beautiful company culture and once again, no wonder, you were named number one place to work in Oregon a few years ago. And still, I think the company is growing and based on that belief and that concept.
-Alice Tang: we are getting in a curious mode drilling into crisis management
Alice Tang: crisis management seems like, it’s really reactive, right? is on fire, and then people call you to manage their crisis. How did you transform the unpredictable model into predictable and recurring revenue?
Shannon Berg: I think about effective crisis communications. the piece that I lead is, how do we communicate during this incident or this issue that we’re facing or this crisis? So there’s sort of two sides of the coin. There’s what do we do, the operational response. How do we communicate? And what we see when we look at case studies and all of the data around crisis response is that you really have to get both sides of that coin right to get an A. in cases where companies have, done everything right, where they initiated and executed a, an operational response that was highly effective, but they didn’t communicate well, the perception by their stakeholders is they failed, the opposite is true as well. you could have a great message, but if you’re not actually substantively fixing the problem well operationally, then the perception by your [00:16:00] stakeholders is you failed. So I help companies deal with that communication side. How do we talk to our customers? How do we talk to our employees?
Shannon Berg: there’s a lot that I’ve learned over the years, but I like to think about as a responsive, strategy, not reactive, ’cause when you’re in a reactive mode, your fight or flight instincts are activated.
Shannon Berg: Your amygdala is activated, and you will have impulses to do things That are reactive and that we know from all the data and all the case studies, again, make things worse. So when a leader is in a fight or flight mode and they are in a reactive mode, they might have an instinct to not say anything, to hide or to delay because they wanna understand
Shannon Berg: everything they could possibly understand before they say anything, and that can be a big mistake. Or they want to point the finger and, blame a third party, “This was actually the fault of our vendor,” when the truth is people trusted you. So lot of what I do is help companies build readiness by establishing a foundation of knowledge of effective principles in crisis communications at the leader level, has to be at the decision-making level, and then we build very practical tools for the communicators, for the people who will actually be pressing send, crafting the message, posting the statement.
Shannon Berg: And a lot of what I do, Alice, is I just point people right back to their values. the first thing I always do is look at an organization’s mission, vision, and values, and that’s the litmus test is, are we embodying our values in how we are responding? So I use some of the tried and true frameworks, [00:18:00] and my experience and also my knowledge that I’ve acquired over time, both pursuing additional, education in this, in this arena, but also again, through my own personal experience to walk through that fire with an organization and with its leaders and to be an outside voice for them.
Alice Tang: I’m processing everything and applying to personal, challenges. If we are stuck with accepting, you can’t really move forward because you’re still negotiating with the past
Shannon Berg: That’s right. It is true, Eh, bad things happen. The real test isn’t whether, how could this have happened, it’s how do you recover? What do you do next? And isn’t that true in life as well? we can’t fight with the past, like you said, but we do have a choice about how we respond and how we move forward.
Alice Tang: I’m 100% wholeheartedly agree with you. the, the startup cultures tells us sacrificing sleep or life for succes
-As a female CEO building and scaling your growing company, what is some of those non-negotiable boundaries, you draw every day draw and now you need to redraw?
Shannon Berg: I need to redraw them, Alice. early in the life of my business, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I’ve ever worked harder, those were grueling years building the business, I’ve had periods of time where I did much better in this category, drawing boundaries, prioritizing myself and my health. But I will say I’m still learning this one. And I have three kids that are almost all teenagers.
Shannon Berg: So those are a lot of demands and, I definitely have to be on the lookout for periods of time where my impulse to support everyone and everything, drives me into a place where I’m not taking the best care of myself, I’m able to be my best self when those things are all in balance, and that for me is, the ongoing thing that I am still learning, So I don’t know if you’ve done, StrengthsFinder 2.0. Yeah. So I love that tool. And my top strengths are strategic, achiever, and activator. And the achiever in me wants to work all the time, wants to wake up and work, and so I really have to find balance with that strength. I’m grateful for that strength. So it’s a practice in self-awareness and managing myself and managing my strengths, I am a work in progress, I will admit it.
Alice Tang: We are all work in progress. one of the things that, you reminded me of is, trusting that we have done enough.
Alice Tang: the situation and the circumstances I had yesterday. Could I do better? Maybe. I’ll try today. But if we haven’t forgiven ourselves and keep thinking that I can do better, I could have done better,
Alice Tang: yesterday has passed. I know. I’ve tried my best, and I can try again today. I can move the needle a little bit
Shannon Berg: That’s right. Yeah. Finding that grace for yourself.
Alice Tang: Yes
Shannon Berg: beautiful, Alice. I- this is why I always love talking to you. the wisdom that is-
Alice Tang: And vice versa, I’m learning how to handle my personal crisis. Because the model, I think it apply what you just taught us, apply to one person, family, business, big company, Fortune 500 company. So
Alice Tang: The crisis does not wait till Monday to come.
– how do you structure your company and your people or your team so that you are not the only one the company is- calling when they have crisis?
Shannon Berg: I would say the majority of the work that we do is traditional public relations and strategic communications. It’s actually telling the great stories and sharing the great news about how our clients are, making a difference and positively impacting communities.
Shannon Berg: That is the bulk of the work that we do, and that is absolutely fulfilling and fun. So crisis is actually pretty disruptive because like you said, you don’t know when you’re gonna get that call, and when I do get the call, I have to evaluate, do we currently have capacity? There’s many times where I get calls and I say, I would love to be able to help you, but I don’t have capacity for that right now,” and then I connect them.
Shannon Berg: Fortunately, we have a great community here in, Portland and in Oregon of people like me who do fabulous work, and I’m able to connect, folks in that case with someone else who can help them.
Alice Tang: Majority of the work is the happy work, for the public relationship, highlighting a company, helping them to show up so that more people recognize their brand and starts doing business with them. But then you do handle… You’re famous for crisis management, so in my mind, every day you’re dealing with crisis. Oh, no, she’s like the fireman department
Shannon Berg: Yeah. Yeah
Alice Tang: out fire, but that’s not so true, so you don’t get called all day long Sunday and Saturday.
Shannon Berg: Yeah. I have to be careful about what I take on and make sure that, I have the capacity for it. but I actually do love jumping into the fire, with a client that needs help and wants to do the right thing and wants to rebuild or repair trust,
Shannon Berg: But the two things go together because when you are communicating [00:24:00] effectively with, your people, whether it’s your customers or your communityall the time, and you’re telling these stories about the good that work that you’re doing, what you’re doing is you’re building resiliency for your reputation.
Shannon Berg: You’re building trust because someday you will face something challenging, and there’s gonna have to be a little bit of a withdraw from that account, You might take a small hit. So you wanna make sure that you’re constantly working toward building a strong reputation, so that when something challenging, when something hard happens, you’ve already got this, bank of goodwill. and you can recover more easily even after the occurrence has happened,
Alice Tang: when we accumulate those trust in the jar or the bank account, emotional bank account of the community, of the employees, you got a good healthy balance. Good, sometimes you need to take a withdrawal. Emergency happened, so that’s why we have that emergency fund.
Shannon Berg: right.
Alice Tang: we have to present our pricing the people who are interested in doing business with you, and sometimes I think we receive some pushback. And how do you get what you want without sacrificing the relationship when you are negotiating?
Shannon Berg: I don’t discount my fees. we do provide pro bono work sometimes to nonprofits, or we have on occasion provided a nonprofit rate to small organizations, Beyond that, our standard rates are our standard rates. And I have learned through many years of consulting that,discounting, marking your own fees down because you’re afraid that somebody might not hire you, or if they’re asking, first of all, it would be a red flag if somebody were to ask for, a, a discount.
Shannon Berg: I would really be concerned about how much in the relationship the client values the [00:26:00] services. this is what it costs for us to support our business and be able to support people in all the ways I talked about before, to be able to provide, good wages, to be able to provide, top of the market, benefits, which means that we have, very low turnover and longevity in our team and great talent,
Shannon Berg: So I can’t start to charge rates that don’t allow me to build that workforce and that team to provide the level and the quality of services that I provide.
-Alice Tang: So that’s awesome. Great learning for Alice here. How do you mentally separate Shannon Berg, the woman, from the financial ups and downs of the company?
Shannon Berg: spent a lot of time thinking about this, and not just as it relates to my role in my business, but really any of the labels, the things that we say we are, right? I am a homeowner. I am a business owner. I’m a mom. We attach significance and identity to these things which are actually external to us. For me, I should say, if I’m not grounded truly in a sense of who I am, a creator, an artist, a mother, things that are not about roles that I fill or jobs that I do or ways that I move through the world, but are really qualities inside of me. Who am I? if I’m lacking that groundedness and a sense of who I am, then when these things that I’ve hooked onto Start wobbling or changing, my whole sense of identity is, dislodged, right? I work really hard because I know I’m not gonna be a CEO forever. And I’m trying really hard to resist, really believing that’s who I am or that’s my identity. I think it’s a beautiful role I’ve been able to fill, it’s a function I’ve been able to perform because of some of the skills that I have, but it is not who I am, and one day I’ll let it go. And it won’t unmoor me because I’m trying to cultivate a deeper sense of who I am, I tried to think back to early childhood when I may have had an early… my earliest sense of identity. who did I think I was before the world told me who I needed to be to survive? what would my five-year-old self if you’d asked me, “Who are you?” My five-year-old self would have said, “I’m an artist, and I love to be outside and in nature.” That was my earliest sense of self, to create, to be connected to, the Earth. So to remember and not forget and cultivate those deeper of feeling of who I am, and sometimes that means I take a painting class or, I
Alice Tang: practice, you know, that takes me outdoors
Shannon Berg: I nurture those different pieces of me.
-Alice Tang: what are you doing to help, fund the gap, between the successful Shannon today, which we just said we are not associating with that ID, with those people who wanting to, you know, to be you? How do you mentor them?
Shannon Berg: It’s funny because I have an interesting relationship with the word like mentorship, because in my mind it had always felt like something very formal, like somebody says, “Will you be my mentor?” Or I go to someone and I say, “Will you be my mentor?” And then we enter into some, we’re meeting once a month. And so for a while I thought, I really should mentor more, and I should have a mentor.” And I think not too long ago I realized I am, I do mentor. And it may be it’s not a formal, but I, I, what I try to do is be accessible to people when they ask for my time, within constraints and in a focused way, and you taught me how to do that, Alice, and how to mentor in that way. So I try to be available, and then when I do connect with people I try to be very present in that conversation so that even if it’s a half an hour I’m very attuned to what is this person looking for and what could I offer that might actually be helpful to them. I’m grateful to have mentors. Alice, I think you’re a mentor to me.
Shannon Berg: And I love to be able to be a resource, to people who are starting new ventures or just walking in a new, a path that’s new to them that maybe I’ve walked.
Alice Tang: Good. Be available and within your own constraints. So is, knowing ourselves is the biggest wisdom according to Chinese wisdom. Who’s that Confucius who said this?
Shannon Berg: Yes. Yes
Alice Tang: So with that, we want to thank Shannon Berg, who took out a chunk of her time interviewing with us and, you can find her information in the show notes Shannon. We’re so grateful for you
Shannon Berg: Thank you, Alice. Thank you so much. This is… I always love talking to you. You’ve built an incredible platform elevating voices of women in leadership. Thank you so much for doing that and for being my friend
Alice Tang: Likewise.
Shannon Berg, APR | Founder & CEO, Berg & Associates
Shannon Berg is a high-stakes crisis communications strategist, workshop facilitator, and the Founder & CEO of Berg & Associates. With more than 25 years of public relations consulting experience, Shannon specializes in protecting corporate reputations, navigating critical incident responses, and guiding organizations through litigation, labor disputes, and regulatory threats.
Before launching her firm, Shannon was an owner and managing partner of a regional public affairs firm and previously served as the Director of Communications for the City of Detroit and Press Secretary to Detroit’s Mayor—a role where she played an integral part in managing communications during the Northeast blackout. Today, she translates decades of field-tested crisis management into actionable training suites and keynotes that help industry leaders elevate their crisis preparedness and resilience.