How Cassie Shea Uses AI as Her Co-Founder to Scale with Soul

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale a Business Podcast. My name is Hector San Ban. And I am your host for today. Our special guest is a dear friend, Ms. Cassie Shea. And I just thought I'd share her LinkedIn bio because I thought it made, it just made so much sense On there it says that she engineers the inner and operational architecture that lets 500 K to 2 million, , thousand dollars founders, three x the revenue without torturing their nervous. Usually I ask people to gimme the title, what they do. You know, founder of CEO and the company, and you have such a, you are such a unique individual and your business is so unique that I thought instead asking you that, that share. and so maybe you can explain that and, and also, , you know, how you ended up doing what you do for your clients.

[00:01:04] Cassie: Well, this is turn around.

[00:01:08] Hector: Okay.

[00:01:10] Cassie: Hector, what role are you playing in the business'?

[00:01:13] Hector: My role is Visionary Guide. And then also, you know, sort a mentor my team is so fresh and so, , you know, sort of stepping in and being a nurturing role too. , So that's what I'm playing.

[00:01:31] Cassie: So Visionary guide and, , cultivator of opportunity with your team. Does that sound about right?

[00:01:40] Hector: Yeah, maybe less opportunity, more like skills. It seems like they have a lot of potential. , They are just green or fresh in their experience.

[00:01:50] Cassie: Ah, okay, so we're playing with this. It sounds like your identity in your business right now is the visionary guide. And instead of boating, I actually got the metaphor, I don't know, maybe it's 'cause I wanna go hiking this weekend of like being in nature and backpacking and having that guide who not only knows the map, but knows the terrain.

[00:02:10] Cassie: The map can tell you one thing, but your body, how you're sensing if you're smelling rain, if you're, you know, feeling the wind start to change. Those are the subtleties that once you really know your, and. Other thing that comes to mind is a potential coach. You're coaching potential out of your teammates.

[00:02:30] Cassie: So what I do is I sit down with founders and I figure out the heck are you doing? What do you wanna be when you grow up in your business? Which is a playful way of asking like, what would be fun? what would be some new opportunities that you could tackle? So what you were sharing with me in terms of this visionary guide energy that you're bringing to the table, the other part I was thinking about is, , being a potential coach, like coaching potential outta your team as a leader, you often see. More context than your team does, but you also see their growth edges maybe more clearly than they do because imposter syndrome gets in the way.

[00:03:05] Cassie: Or we just get tunnel vision with our day-to-day activities. So with those two identities, those are gonna shape how you see opportunities in your business, and they're also gonna shape how you make decisions. So if you were to want to create a new website, for example, for your business, you'd hire somebody probably to do messaging and positioning.

[00:03:27] Cassie: And one thing I deeply believe if, leaders wanna change something dramatic about their business, if they wanna create exponential growth, similar to how marketing would need message and positioning to, kick off any large initiative, I believe we need identity transformation to kick off any large exponential change.

[00:03:44] Cassie: And so now, instead of thinking about setting goals with business owners and founders, which I do. always start with identity transformation because just like we kind of sharpened the story of how you're showing up in your business, that story dictates how you see opportunities and then what risks you take and also what decisions you make on a day-to-day basis.

[00:04:05] Cassie: So I reverse engineer that formula and get people, I guess, to collapse time to become more of who they're really meant to be in the business by focusing on the founder's identity.

[00:04:16] Hector: Yeah, one of my favorite books recently is Atomic Habits, and in it he talks about, affecting change. You know, the book actually should be called like Atomic Identity, you know, because one of his keystone things is that the fastest way to change, you know, a quality or change something about us is not through the habit.

[00:04:38] Hector: It's not necessarily even through the system or those sorts of things, but it's going straight to the identity and everything else is sort of downstream.

[00:04:46] Cassie: I believe identity, it's, almost like the strains of DNA, like it tells us how we're replicating ourselves in the world. And it's so fundamental that if you were to change express. Your body would change for the better or worse, depending on if we're talking about disease or we're talking about potentially like anti-aging techniques.

[00:05:05] Cassie: But if you change that DNA sequence or structure, there will be a massive change in your body. It will be felt, and I believe identity work is that piece for leaders and founders and owners of. Who have a big dream, they have a big desire. They wanna go on an adventure, they need a visionary guide, or they are one themselves and we often go to tactics, okay, let's set higher goals, or let's read all the business books, or let's get another certification, or let's go to the seminar, let's change our offer.

[00:05:37] Cassie: And all of those. can be helpful, but they're more helpful in the context of identity transformation and in the context of knowing which identity are you putting on, in which part of your business or which part of the day. Because that identity is gonna drive decisions. It's also driving your field efficient.

[00:05:55] Cassie: It's helping you see what's possible. And so if we wanna shift outcomes and collapse time, we need to shift identity.

[00:06:03] Hector: what's interesting about what you've done and, and also some of the people that you've worked with, is that you are not necessarily actually at all working with people at the beginning of their journey. You know, these are, are people who are, very uberly in some cases successful, and yet still they are having these sort of.

[00:06:21] Hector: Blind spots, I'm curious if there are like symptoms. I don't know if the listener necessarily will be able to self diagnose this. I know there's gonna be an opportunity for them to get connected with you later. But is there things that can sort of let them know that their identity might be the sort of limiting factor?

[00:06:41] Cassie: Yeah, that's a great question. it's gonna sound like a weird answer, but stick with me. I would say heartache. I find that the clients that I start working with, their heart is aching for something different. They're smart, they're capable, they're successful. They're usually multi-year, , multi six figure, at least up into seven and eight figure entrepreneurs who have a heartache, they want to be doing something different.

[00:07:06] Cassie: And the number one thing I've been hearing from clients this year, 2025, is they want more presence. They don't wanna be a slave to their business. They want more presence with their family. They want to feel more creatively fulfilled. Is another big one I've been hearing. And so it's interesting because business, I believe, can be one of the most transformative vehicles for personal growth.

[00:07:28] Cassie: And it seems like we're doing professional growth and we're selling services. But really at the heart of it, if you're in a founder led organization, a business can only grow to the level that the founder's willing to go. And so if we wanna go somewhere different, if we wanna take on a new adventure or take on a new mountain to height.

[00:07:44] Cassie: We need to become someone different to go there, and the size of the goal will determine how much we need to change. And I would argue that if you're in this place as a founder and you're feeling bored or stuck or rather burnt out, I think burnt out is often boredom. It's not interesting. The goal isn't big enough, or it's really not true enough.

[00:08:06] Cassie: Maybe it's not edgy enough to what you actually want. In one of the calls I led this week, we talked about the power of unnamed desires. What are all the desires that you have throughout your entire life? Don't just think of a business but throughout your entire life that you've never written down.

[00:08:21] Cassie: You've never given yourself permission to externalize. And if you started there and looked at that list versus your life, there'd probably be discrepancy we look at other people's business models or other people in the industry as experts, and we believe that they have all the answers. So if only we could copy and paste their templates, we should have the same success.

[00:08:45] Cassie: And the truth is that's usually not true. Usually we can learn best principles from those who've gone before us, but we need to alchemize and become the person that embodies it for ourselves and brings our own unique gifts and wisdom to the world. I love Dan SI love Dr. Ben Hardy. They're two people that've really transformed my career.

[00:09:09] Cassie: But I know I'm, yes, and I'm not here to create Strategic Coach or to write 10 x is easier than two x my own version. I'm here to take all of that and alchemize it and use my gifts and come forward with my own identity story. So I think identity story also keeps us in integrity with who we are, like the gifts that we have.

[00:09:29] Cassie: But to bring it back to your question, if, people are self diagnosing, I would say two things. One, where is your heartache? What feels unfulfilled? Either in your day to day, in your business, in your personal relationships, what are the unfulfilled, , heartaches? Is it having wanted a bigger company and never gotten there?

[00:09:49] Cassie: And then the second piece is to name your unnamed desires. I think desires are a roadmap for our creativity. It's the things that our, broader self or broader perspective wanna create or create through us. So what are we not naming? What are we not being truthful about? That'd be a great place to.

[00:10:06] Hector: Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the connection between personal and professional and I think spiritual development. Yeah. I like, I think they're all wrapped and entrepreneurship is really this, great. I think Tony Robbins sort of what calls it, like raising your thermostat, right? And, in a business or when you have an organization or something like that, you're sort of getting that on steroids and you're getting the chance to not only raise your thermostat, but you're raising this, thermostat of this organization, this organism of this community or whatever that is.

[00:10:37] Hector: And, At least for me it was hard because I thought all advice was like the right advice for me. I had to learn that certain advice is right for some people and not for everybody. And I was young and trying to emulate these people. You know, I came up in a sales organization and I wanted to be like so and so, and.

[00:11:04] Hector: and a lot of mistakes to figure out that I had to find my own sort of flavor mix. And, , perhaps people go through process on their own or there's.

[00:11:20] Cassie: Yeah, that's such a great point. I can remember in my twenties, I'm not sure what name I would give that identity. , It's probably not really appropriate, like Ballbuster, like I was just like, I need to be the most like hard charging masculine energy person in the room who gets everything done.

[00:11:36] Cassie: And then I built my career at that point in my life. So my early twenties, I was working in digital media companies and digital marketing agencies, and I realized if I just went around and did all the jobs that everyone else hated, I'd get promoted. And if I showed my boss's boss that my boss wasn't doing a very good job, I could really take their job.

[00:11:56] Cassie: And it wasn't from this greedy sense of like, I need to remove people. I just had this like aching need to prove myself. The most effective tool was, I'll just do all the jobs that everyone else doesn't wanna do, and then suddenly that amounts to quite a bit of work because you realize some people are kind of lazy, kind of skating, oh, I'll take that work.

[00:12:17] Cassie: I'll take that extra work, I'll take that extra work. Suddenly I'm running the department. And that wasn't from the healthiest place of self love or. Desire to be a leader that other people could look up to? I think there was a lot of fear. I been talking young, like early mid twenties. I think there was a lot of fear and there was a lot of need to prove myself and there wasn't very many models of, , other females who were doing it.

[00:12:42] Cassie: So I felt like I kind of had a bone to pick also, like I can prove that I can muscle my way to the seat at the table and I think about some of those early identity formation stories. And it's kinda like art. When you learn art classes, when you learn to paint, you typically replicate the masters before you develop and design your own style.

[00:13:00] Cassie: So there's nothing wrong, I think inherently with copying other people's ways of doing business or taking on their principles or ideas. Like I said, I've studied deeply with, and Sullivan and Ben Hardy. I realized though in the, the maturity process of the kind of work that I wanna put into the world, the kind of integrity I wanna have now is one from a change of not needing to prove myself really working on that proving energy and realizing that's not me bringing my highest gifts and best expression of the world.

[00:13:29] Cassie: 'cause it's ultimately about me. Like that ego needed to die and it's still dying a little bit every day. That ego needed to die because ultimately sales and service based business it. It's about the people you had to help. It's about the people you had to transform. So for me, , I love that you brought that up about could your identity be sort of a, a mini me or a shadow of someone else?

[00:13:52] Cassie: Absolutely. But there's a maturity point where the question will be how much do you wanna own your own story? And even a layer deeper than that. I believe we're all given gifts. We're given gifts because we're meant to.

[00:14:07] Cassie: And your business tends to explode, the more you circulate, circulate value, circulate money, circulate opportunities, circulate referrals, and those are all very tactical ways to grow a business. And that usually comes from an identity story of you being solid and you and deciding to be a person of service or integrity or creativity or generosity.

[00:14:30] Cassie: Like those are all identity stories that frankly are. Very tied to economic outcomes. I would say maybe the more unusual one to leave you with this one, the more unusual one is curiosity. I think when somebody has an identity that I'm a curious person and I'm here to connect deeply with others and around me, that's a superpower in business.

[00:14:51] Hector: Yeah, and probably something that the world needs more of. When you think about identity or shifting identity, is it a recipe? Is it a, process? are they pillars? Like, if someone goes, this sounds great, but, what do I do? You know, and that's my sort of practical brain trying to bring to it. are there methodologies?

[00:15:12] Hector: Is it a mindset shift? Like how can someone start to move the needle on some of this stuff?

[00:15:17] Cassie: So if you wanted to, to move the needle right now, I can walk you through the first three steps of the exercise that I work on, whether I give this training in a group. For an hour. I've done this as a keynote from stage where I did a live identity transformation. When I meet with a client one-on-one for our VIP day, which is the kickoff to my private coaching container, this takes six hours.

[00:15:39] Cassie: 'cause we go so deep, we peel back so many layers and we look at how identity affects every single decision they're making in their business. , When I've done this in a group just recently, it was a three hour experience with a.

[00:15:52] Cassie: We all start with the same three questions, and I can give those to you right now. The number one question is actually the hardest to answer, and it creates the most roadblocks for people. And that question is, what do you want? No strings attached, no justification, no, I should have this or I could have this.

[00:16:10] Cassie: It's a genuine look under the surface of that heart. What do you want? And Dan Sullivan talks about wanting what you want with no justification is a very conscious leadership position because when you tell yourself a story about why you want what you want, or if you make up a story that, oh, I want what I want because it'll be good for my family, , there's suddenly strings attached and you can be either accidentally manipulating other people into helping you get what you want or.

[00:16:38] Cassie: You can be out of alignment with the truth of you because you're wanting things to make other people happy, which is still approving energy. So number one question is if you're following along with a journal, what do I want? And I would ask you to go seven layers deeper than you normally go. Question number two is how are you showing up right now?

[00:16:55] Cassie: What's your current identity story? You're not sure. And you're like, how? I dunno, that sounds complicated. What are the jobs you're doing in your business? If you're a solo founder, it's probably sales, marketing, finance, customer service, fulfillment of the product, qa, maybe like write down all the jobs, visionary, maybe that gets, you know, 5% of your time.

[00:17:17] Cassie: Write down all the ways you're being, and then what I like to do is pick a really absurd goal, like if you were to 10 x your business this year. So for example, if you're at. A million, million dollars and you wanted to 10 x your business to 10 million this year, who would you need to be instead, that $10 million CEO, they're making different decisions and they're seeing opportunities differently than if you're running around at $1 million doing literally all the things in your entire business.

[00:17:46] Cassie: So once we figure out what we want, not what we were conditioned to want, not what we think our family wants for us. Whatever we want. Step number one, don't pass, go until you finish. Step number one, it truly is the most important question, and for some clients it's taken months to get honest, and then we refine it and keep refining it.

[00:18:07] Cassie: Second step is audit. your current job, the hats you're wearing, the proverbial many hats that we wear for business owners. What are all the hats that you're wearing? Three. Once you set a really big goal, audacious, perhaps even feeling unreachable, it becomes a forcing function and a filter for you to say, who would I need to be instead?

[00:18:26] Cassie: Not what do I need to do, or how could I do it? That's not what we're asking. It's who would I need to be instead. A lot of times what that looks like is you would need to be the evangelist. You would need to be the person, front and center name of the brand visible. Out there selling. That would usually be, number one would be the shift.

[00:18:45] Cassie: So anything that's taking you away from that identity as Chief Evangelism Officer as another CEO moniker would be taking away from the identity that's creating the most power in your business. Because if you filtered every decision through that. Filter of being a $10 million CEO, whose number one job is to get visibility for the company, everything else would become a lot more clear.

[00:19:12] Hector: Yeah, one other thing I'd like to get your take on is you have found, , some really unique ways to integrate AI into your business and into your life. , How do you look at AI from a. Whether it's a philosophical or strategic sense or even some of the t when I.

[00:19:35] Cassie: Yeah, I think one of the number one things sector is I've picked a position to change, but I picked a position on my approach to. And for people out there who maybe aren't yet into it or you're sitting there reading the news or you're afraid of it, I think one of the first steps right now, I believe we're in the AI revolution and what preceded us was the computer revolution, the internet revolution.

[00:20:06] Cassie: Now we're in the AI revolution. The AI revolution, I believe, is going to, , quantum expand the possibilities, but also if we think about. The pace of innovation and technology over the last a hundred years. We are moving so much faster into the future than ever before. I think the internet truly did revolutionize communication, global supply chain economics, like I mean it, there's not really a sector.

[00:20:30] Cassie: Untouch and AI is going to, I believe, do that at the quantum level. Like there is nothing at this point that I think AI won't. The joke was the other day, like, you probably won't have an AI plumber, my like, honest, cheeky response is like, what can't AI do? Every time I hear that, I just go figure out if there's an AI use case for it.

[00:20:51] Cassie: Keep a little journal. So I guess, , to answer your question, number one, I've taken an approach to AI and my approach is that it's my co-pilot, my co-founder, it's my second brain and I use it. Probably more than the average user. I think it's the number one app other than Zoom, which is typically how I am exchanging with people all day.

[00:21:12] Cassie: , It is a true second brain. Like I, instead of thinking about it as artificial intelligence, I think about it as augmented intelligence. How can I take everything I know and push more value into the world? As a result of what I can do in combination with ai, with my AI technical co-founder, I have had experience with product, , road mapping and running a product team and technology.

[00:21:39] Cassie: , Not a lot, but I do have experience there. Now, I realize that the past you'd have to go meet an engineer, convince them to be your co-founder if you wanted to create an app or create a technical solution. And now. AI has really dropped the barrier to where I don't need a second human to look at my ideas when they're in early formation that doesn't ignore the power of ideas in the marketplace.

[00:22:05] Cassie: And I have even deeper relationships with people. Since I've learned more about ai, I've also doubled down on my true real life relationships. But I do believe that AI is going to, . Expedite at a quantum level, which is to say like faster than we could imagine with our human brains. What is possible for our economy, for our health, for our creativity, the way we exchange ideas in the world for hopefully the way we solve larger and larger complex problems.

[00:22:36] Cassie: , Not holding my breath there on that, I dunno. , But I do believe that having some kind of position is gonna help you learn AI in a way that will help you personally stay riding the wave. Because I think this is a tidal wave and I'd like to be, above where the wave is about to crash.

[00:22:52] Cassie: , I wanna be in the ocean because I know that. It is something so big and so monumental that me learning it and being dedicated to it is essential. So the flip side is I'm building many things into my business that are unairable. So for example, instead of sending just written recaps to clients or prospective clients, I pop on a Loom video.

[00:23:15] Cassie: I show my face, I record a video. It's hyper personalized. It's me to them. So looking for all those different ways where I can make my business life as amiable as possible while using AI to do almost everything is a really interesting paradox.

[00:23:29] Hector: Such good stuff. I've got two questions for you. , The first is, people want go deeper in your world, find out more about you.

[00:23:40] Cassie: Yeah, you can read about my backstory at coaching cassie com and I love to hang out on LinkedIn. You can find me there, Cassie, on LinkedIn. I would love to be your friend and I usually publish thoughts about five times a week There.

[00:23:53] Cassie: So I do have an aligned freedom assessment on my website. There'll be a question that says, ready to get aligned If you click gives perspective. On what areas of your life you're feeling aligned and energized by. And then what areas, , there might be room for improvement. And if it looks like we're a fit to have a conversation, I'll reach out personally, say Thank you for filling out the form, and then suggest a couple ways that we can connect further.

[00:24:21] Hector: Amazing. My last question, , for you Cass, is in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?

[00:24:28] Cassie: Know you're asking one, two things. don't. In committed. Number two, evolve your identity story. We evolve our technology. We evolve our hardware that we're using, we evolve the books we're reading. The most effective lever to scaling a business is you evolving your identity story.