466 Kasim Aslam

[00:00:00]

Jeffrey Feldberg: What if the secret to scaling your business lies not in capital or connections, but in the art of delegation?

Kasim Aslam is a serial entrepreneur with two large and successful exits. As the founder of Solutions 8, he transformed a modest Google Ads agency into a global leader managing over half a billion dollars in ad spend annually.

His journey didn't stop there. He recognized the power of remote talent and co-founded Pato Talent, a company dedicated to connecting entrepreneurs with top tier executive assistants from emerging markets. Customs insights into digital marketing and business growth have earned them accolades, including being named one of the top 50 digital marketing thought leaders in the US by the University of Missouri and receiving AZIMA's 2017 TIM Award for person of the year. He's also the author of the Amazon Bestseller, the Seven Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing, but beyond the titles and achievements, Kasim story [00:01:00] is one of resilience, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of freedom. Not just financial, but personal and operational.

He believes in building businesses that serve your life, not consume it. 

And before we start this episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Jane, a graduate who says, and I quote, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program prevented me from making what would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career. I almost signed on the dotted line with an unsolicited offer that I now realized would have shortchanged my hard work and my future had I accepted that offer. Deep Wealth Mastery has tilted the playing field to my advantage.

Or how about Lyn? Wow, he gets right to the point, and I quote, Deep Wealth Mastery is one of the best investments ever made because you'll get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anyone who doesn't go through this will lose millions. 

And as you're listening to these testimonials, are you wondering if you have the time? Are you even thinking that you've got this covered, you have the advisors or people in your [00:02:00] network? Well, I got to tell you, these myths, they're often behind the 90 percent failure rate for liquidity events. Think about it. You have one chance to get it right for your financial freedom. You really want to make it count.

And when it comes to time, let's hear what William has to say. We just got in this testimonial, William says, and I quote, I didn't have the time for Deep Wealth Mastery. But I made the time and I'm glad I did. What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've experienced. 

So what do you think?

As I hear that, that's exactly what gets me out of bed every day. That's my mission. That's the team's mission here at Deep Wealth to literally change the social fabric of society. One business owner at a time, one liquidity event at a time, and my Deep Wealth Nation, what I want you to know, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it isn't theory.

It's from the trenches. It's the only one based on a nine figure deal. And that deal, that was my deal. You know my story. I said no to a seven figure offer. I created the system that later on, myself and my business partners, we said yes [00:03:00] to a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure deal. That's what we now call the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or the Scale For Ultimate Sales system.

It's built by business owners, for business owners, so if you're interested in growing your profits for preparing for a future liquidity event, and that may be two years away, it could be 22 years away, whatever the time may be, you want to do this now, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you.

To get started, email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success. S U C C E S S at DeepWealth. com. You'll receive all the information about the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or better yet, why not hop on a complimentary strategy call.

We'll go through exactly where your business is today and what's standing between you and your financial independence and your dreams. So that's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders, just like you they're looking to grow their businesses, create markets.

Market disruptions and [00:04:00] unlock their financial freedom to get what they deserve. And whether you've been in business for three years, 40 years, you're a startup, you're manufacturing you're in high tech, low tech, whatever the case may be, coming in and network with other business owners, it's a safe space.

It's a confidential space with business owners, with businesses just like you, because they all wanna lock in their financial freedom and enjoy both success and fulfillment. So again, the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Please send an email to success at deepwealth. com.

Deep Wealth Nation welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. I have a very special guest in the House of Deep Wealth today, a two-time postex exit entrepreneur, an author, a thought leader, a brilliant guy.

He's gonna blow your mind today and what we're talking about, but I'm not gonna let the cat outta the bag and you keep you in suspense. But Deep Wealth Nation, I want. To ask this question, it's a rhetorical question. Do you wanna grow your business? Are you looking for talent but you don't know where to look?

Or it just doesn't make sense? Do you wish you had, wow, I can [00:05:00] wave the magic wand, have the right people show up to do the right things. Have them on the right bus in the right seat. We're gonna be talking about that and a whole lot more pass. Welcome to the Deep Up podcast. It's a true pleasure to have you with us.

There's always a story behind the story. You have quite the story. So what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, story behind the story is hopefully not gonna sound too America's Got Talent. You know, Have you ever watched those shows where everybody's just got that horrible sob story that makes you root for them, but a, in a way that doesn't feel integrous, right? It draws on sympathy more than I think it should.

So I'm gonna try not to do that. And I actually think that you can't hide from it either. So I was raised by a blind single mother on Social Security Disability in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was a welfare baby basically, and I was. Very convinced for the entirety of my childhood that money was gonna solve all my problems.

And so from seven years old, Jeffrey, I've been hustling. on the way to school, I'd walk to school and I'd pass this rundown gas station [00:06:00] called Loan to Star. I. And they had this barrel of candy, right as you walk in, there's this barrel of candy, and I'd grab a fistful and you could buy candy for 10 cents each.

And then I'd go to school and I'd sell it for 25 cents. And the business ideas only got worse from there. And that was my genesis as an entrepreneur, had way more to do with financial trauma than anything else. In retrospect, I actually realized that I can call myself a welfare baby, and yet I was blessed to be born in a country where.

We decided that there should be some level of social safety net. My mom went blind. She couldn't work anymore. She applied for Social security and got it. It wasn't an exceptional amount of money, but it was some money. It kept us fed and it kept us clothed and it kept us housed, which in so many ways, if you think about it, is just like a trust.

And so I can say I am a welfare baby, or I could say I was a trust fund baby, and that trust just happened to be the United States Social Security Office. But one way or the other. We were cared for and it came from a system that I'm eternally grateful for and quite confident I can pour back into now.

And so that was [00:07:00] the beginning of the beginning. Hopefully I didn't go too far back, that really was the thing that made me want to be a business owner and an entrepreneur because think even children can see the leverage in creatively solving problems, which is all entrepreneurship is.

Jeffrey Feldberg: My goodness, there is so much there. Before we begin though I, just want to salute you for your vulnerability being so open with us and sharing all that, not easy. And the other narrative, which isn't your narrative, thankfully. And most people would understand this, Hey, I didn't have the best beginnings and didn't really have things work out for me, didn't have money.

And your life could have taken a very different path, which thankfully it didn't. And you're now successful. You're helping other people. You're really making a difference out there. Was there any one point growing up, or was it a collection of things growing up that allowed you to go from where you were?

To the successful entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, multiple exits, changing the rules of the game, particularly in industries that aren't easy industries, [00:08:00] like what you did with Solutions eight and some of the other ventures that you've done. Not easy stuff, but you've done it. Is there a part of your childhood growing up that you attribute to that?

Kasim Aslam: I have an odd and maybe uncanny comfort with failure which think, to be honest with you, and I don't like just putting this hat on right away, but there is some truth to it. I got an autism diagnosis in my late thirties.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

Kasim Aslam: From a therapist and I was the one that asked him because we were circumnavigating some issues that I was working through and I finally came out and I was like, do you think I'm autistic?

And he laughs and he goes, definitely. And what does that mean now? Like I don't think those diagnoses mean the same thing when you receive them as an adult. It's not the same. From a label perspective, but I do think that my comfort with failure probably comes a little from that. Failure just feels like data. So that's one half of it might just be, between nature and nurture. That was the nature element. The nurture element was because of, our upbringing. I'm referring to me and my brother. It was a lot of instability. I got beat up a [00:09:00] lot. I got picked on a lot, which again, you can look at and you're like, oh, woe was me.

And. at a certain point you get comfortable with life throws, punches, and I'm not saying that didn't impact me, I think it did. And I'm still working through some of that more now maybe than ever. And I got used to being punched. And I think as an entrepreneur you need to get used to being punched because far too often people.

Fall off the horse and just refuse to get back on. And entrepreneurship is, it's a game of iteration, so imagine stepping up into a batter box and taking one swing missing and saying, well, now we're gonna do that again. that just can't, it can't, there's no framework within which that could possibly work or function.

Even in a statistical model where you're. Assume outliers, right? Nobody could ever be successful with that. And for whatever reason, I got really good at looking at the key performance indicator being the number of swings I took, not the number of connects I had, and that's been extraordinarily helpful.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that [00:10:00] KPI analogy. I feel you're being modest because I'll just put this out there. You're resilient. Yet there's so many people who do get punched as you experience going through life, sadly, and unfortunately it shouldn't be part of our childhood. Somehow it always seems to be,

Kasim Aslam: Yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yet other people don't get up and it forever changes their trajectory and with you.

You bounce back from that and you didn't let that become your story, your narrative. In fact, despite that, you got up, okay, I'm back at it. What else can I learn from this happened? Don't love it, but I'm gonna be resilient and I'm gonna figure out the next one. And you weren't afraid of stepping back up and again, anything looking back or lessons along the way or advice that you got that allowed you to do that?

Because not everyone, you may take it for granted, but not everyone has that ability to do that.

Kasim Aslam: you know, my mom she was blind. She went blind. I can't imagine. How terrifying that is to just be in the dark. And [00:11:00] what an example she was, is someone who, in spite of everything, just kept going. You single mom living on social security, which is nothing.

It's a pittance. And she raises these two little boys the best she can. And so I think I had a really good example. And to be honest with you, there was no other option. Tony Robbins always says it's either inspiration or desperation. It's usually desperation. And it's either just curl up and die, or.

Get up and find a way. And that felt like the preferable option. I think that was it. my friend told me very recently I went to a, a group, I'm in a group called Front Row Dads and I went to a front row dad meeting. It's just a bunch of men that wanna be better fathers, extraordinary group of humans. It's run by a guy named John Roman. Somebody was giving somebody else advice that I was just overhearing and it ended up being the best advice I'd gotten in quite some time, he said, all you need is faith in a next step.

I feel that very strongly about life. Like we wanna plan, we want, the framework and the standard operating procedure and the book and the manual, and that's okay. And sometimes those things exist sometimes, but more often than not, you really have to build the plane as you fly it. [00:12:00] Build the bridge as you cross it.

Pick your analogy. If you're comfortable, I actually have a poster on my wall that says, the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with, which is a Tony Robbins quote. It's the second time I've mentioned Tony Robbins. If you're comfortable with the idea that all you need is faith, and faith doesn't need to be religious, incidentally, faith is the belief that things can be better assuming you.

Interact with the universe in a way that complies with natural principles. So if you are hardworking and integrous and consistent, I actually have faith that most things work out most of the time does lightning strike? Sure. And just statistically speaking, I think if you do the right things, the right thing happens.

That's faith. And then I do believe in God. And so there's an added layer, but you don't have to have that added layer for faith to exist. And then the next step feels like a dismissive part of that quote, but that's, I think, exceptionally poignant. Most people miss that part. It's like you don't need to figure out how to get to the top of the [00:13:00] mountain.

You need to figure out where to put your foot next. And if you can do that. Then you'll know where you're to put your other foot next, and then it's just left left left left right, and on a long enough timeline, bet money and get to the top. And most of the success that I've achieved has actually been that it hasn't been planning, it hasn't been like four year breakdown with incremental progress reports and, ongoing reporting like it.

None of it's been linear. It's been a very broken road, built via faith in a next step.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Faith, you're talking my language. I know there's some in deep Deep Wealth Nation, they're going to hear that. They hear the word God. We turn them off right away. Just between me and you and I may lose all the listeners at this point. I'll share like you, faith has just been instrumental and whenever I have not.

Been on that path. Wow. That's where the dark clouds appear

Kasim Aslam: yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: not so great things happened. And that's my own doing. That's my own ego stepping in the way. But let me ask you this, because you've had two successful exits and from the two successful exits that you've had, [00:14:00] many an entrepreneur would say, I'm hanging up my hat, I'm done, and I'm just going to enjoy.

And so with that in mind, you've had two exits, both successful. Lessons learned looking back, anything that you can share with us.

Kasim Aslam: Oh golly. Yeah. I wasn't prepared. My first exit was to my business partner. I just sold my half of the company to him. So it didn't feel real. It didn't feel like a real, like a real exit is when a brand new entity comes, does due diligence, says, yes, this is worth buying. So the first exit was a gimme in so many ways.

you know, there are people that might even take umbrage with my definition, which I'd be okay with. The second exit was real. I had 60 some odd unsolicited offers. I was the bell of the ball and for a very brief period that mostly was luck, to be honest with you. It just had to do with the ecosystem at the time, which is, I hear that a lot from my friends that have had exits.

They're like, dude, I was right place, right time, thank God.

And I did everything wrong. I did everything technically speaking. I did everything wrong. I had no tax planning, no preparation. I paid a million dollars, literally a million dollars more in taxes than I need to. Had I [00:15:00] done any amount of prep which was, to be honest with you I don't even know how I could have done that differently, so it was just a lesson to learn for the next time. I also did everything wrong personally. I wasn't prepared for the impact my exit would have on me, psychologically, mentally, emotionally. I defined myself by what I'd built and by the fact that I had this thing, and when it was gone it was hard.

The thing that was hardest about it was I kept telling myself, when I have money, I'll be happy. post my first exit, I was a millionaire. But what you already know is that means nothing like you can't retire on a million dollars. And especially depending on what you've done with your assets and what your, quality of life is.

I live very humbly, live in a home that's very nice, I think, but it's two standard deviations beneath my current tax bracket. I drive Hyundais and Kias and 'cause you can't beat the warranty and I don't, like I just don't need to play the San Diego Beach house game.

Not that there's anything wrong with that game, but I feel like for me and where I am, I'd rather have the cash. I'd rather be liquid. So I kept telling myself once it was $10 million. I had a check written to myself. I taped on my screen that was $10 [00:16:00] million. I wanted $10 million net to me after taxes.

I have generated a $12 million net worth pre-divorce and post-divorce. I cut a handsome amount of that out. But I reached this goal that I thought was gonna make me feel. Successful and it's so hard to get what you want and then have to face the fact that it doesn't, it feels weird.

It feels, and it also feels whiny. It's dude, shut the hell up. Are you out of your damn mind? You're a deca millionaire, you're in the 1%, you did the thing, but there's only so many mi ties by the beach. You still wanna chase meaning and contribution. And I'll tell you, money made me feel safe.

It absolutely did. Do you know, especially growing up as a poor kid I don't wanna tell you money doesn't buy happiness because I think that a key ingredient to happiness is safety, and I do feel like money bought me safety. But it only gets you so far. And then there's so many other things. You know, A friend of mine said, safety's an inside job, so I could have felt safe without the money.

And then there's more about life. That's an [00:17:00] inside job that you might not realize until you have the money. And I've seen that in a lot of my friends. You end up being thrust into this circle of people that all have this same luxury. And I can tell you as a, a statistical and anecdotal truism, they're not any happier.

As a matter of fact, they might be less so. Because there are just some harsh realities that we're forced to face. That doesn't mean don't go seek it out because I think you should. And I think that it opens opportunities that I'm really grateful to have, and I've been able to make an impact in ways that I didn't know I could.

And, just be careful to manage your expectations because that jolt of. Success I expected to feel, or that climbing the mountain or the Super Bowl moment where I get to spike the ball in the end zone, like none of that happened. None of that happened. And it requires more responsibility from you to take ownership out of what you feel.

'cause before I got to blame everything that I felt on the fact that I just wasn't where I wanted to be, you know, it's like, oh, well, you know, I know I don't feel great about it, but that's because I haven't done the thing as soon as I do the thing. And then you build up all these expectations and you get there and you're like, oh, good golly.

Is this all there is?

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:18:00] My goodness, again, so much there. You're right. Money doesn't buy happiness. It does buy safety. It does lubricate life, to make things smoother for you. Happiness does come from within, but money can go a long way.

And so two exits by your side now, and you have a great runway ahead for you, and yet you throw your hat in the ring again.

And this time, based on what we're talking about offline, it sounds like something very personal for you. It fires you up and you're very passionate about that. Why don't you share with us what that's all about?

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, well, it's multi-variant. I built a business on the backs of international labor. Which is a caustic way to say that, isn't it? It feels predatory. and I don't think that it was, I pay people more than they'd ever make domestically. I give them meaningful work. I let 'em work from home on a flexible schedule.

I think I was the best boss most people had, and I was told that as often as not. And yet there's a whole, the majority of the world doesn't have access to opportunities that we have in the emerged world. [00:19:00] So if you're in. Western Europe or North America and even North America is a misnomer.

I think if you're in the US, Canada, what we have. Is extraordinary. What we've built is extraordinary and we're not grateful enough for it. And I don't care how grateful somebody is. unless you have a very strong anthropological view of time and humanity. The gratitude that we hold should be multiplied by many factors because we are blessed and we, the poorest of us lives better than the wealthiest of humanity 150 years ago.

And we have so much opportunity, and this is where I'm gonna get in trouble. By most people, probably not your listeners. Most people hate when I say It's so easy, Jeffrey. It's I'm a welfare baby dude, like I came from quite literally, within the confines of common definitions, and as it pertains to just the emerged world came from nothing.

And before I'm 40 years old, I hit a deck a million. Are you kidding me? I'm a college dropout. I have no education to speak of. I had no connection to know what not works. I just worked my ass off. And that's not me, [00:20:00] that's my environment. My environment allowed for that, and I refuse to accept anybody who tells me that's not possible they can, to be honest with you, pound sand, like I'm inaccessible to the idea that I'm unique in some way, but it's because of these opportunities that have been given to me by people greater than me that have created environments and countries and sets of rules and law and order.

That make this accessible, we have access and it's extraordinary. So there's the thesis, put it on a shelf for a moment. Most of the world doesn't have that. If you go to Latin America, north Africa, Eastern Europe, all of Asia. It's hubris to think that those countries don't produce as many extraordinarily brilliant people as we do.

Obviously they do. Statistically speaking, how could you think otherwise? Unless you're violently racist? And I don't think anybody is anymore. I think that we've actually flattened that curve too, and they don't have access to what we have. But for some reason, when it comes to looking for help, entrepreneurs still only outsource the [00:21:00] grunt work.

Then they expect that all of their brain work, all their smart work is gonna come domestically. And the opposite is true. We can't afford top tier talent domestically. 'cause if you're in the US or Canada, those kids don't wanna work for you. They wanna work for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, apple, Facebook, or they wanna go work for the fancy startup offering stock options.

'cause they could potentially be a billionaire, or most importantly, they wanna go work for themselves. Why would they work for you? They can make twice as much working, half as much and then build their own equity. And yet we're still scrambling for that talent. Where you can go to Bogota, Columbia, you can pay somebody five times what they make domestically.

Which is still a fraction of what you'd have to pay somebody here, you can pay them five times what they make domestically, pull 'em out of a call center, whatever other soul sucking job they're currently in 'cause they don't have access to the same level of opportunity. Let 'em work from home, let 'em work on a semi flexible schedule, and most importantly, give 'em meaningful work.

And what you receive in return is something that Western employers aren't used to. It's gratitude. And these people will run through walls. They're the [00:22:00] best employees I've ever had in my entire life. And the things that they can create and the things that they can generate will blow your mind. So if you've ever found yourself saying, there's no such thing as good help these days, if you want something done, do it yourself.

Try me. Go to Latin America. Find yourself. I'm not telling you to just throw rock and hire whoever, go to the top of the heap, but the top of the heap is actually available and accessible to you. And when you find these people. My first EA became my director of social. My second EA became my director of automation.

My third EA became my CTO, managed my entire exit, which was a SoftBank backed exit by the way. So there's Goldman Sachs, Ivy Leagues, douche bags, basically giving me an eight month long proctology exam. This kid, this child, he was a university student, Ukrainian National in Poland when I hired him, moved back to Ukraine, and then I got him over to the States on an H one B Visa when Russia attacked while in the Ukraine.

He manages my entire exit. He's now my best friend and my business partner in Pareto talent. That talent is available and accessible to everybody, and the thing is Jefferies, I'm way more successful than I deserve to be. I've built six multimillion dollar businesses. Every [00:23:00] single one of 'em has been built on somebody else's talent.

I built the number one ranked Google Ads agency in the world. I don't know how to run Google ads. I never have. I never will. I have no intention to. I did it because I found the best Google Ads people I built. I had the highest performing real estate investment campaign on the planet before I knew anything about real estate investing.

Lead generation. I own the largest English speaking Montessori community in the world. I'm not a trained Montessori and I don't own a Montessori school, but I do this because I can go find this talent that's available and accessible to all of us, and I just get outta their way. I own aeo.co. I'm about to launch an a EO agency.

Most people don't know this, but SEO's dead because search is dead and the new endeavor is gonna be answer engine optimization, and I'm gonna be the world authority in answer engine optimization. Here's what's funny. I have one employee, his name's Julian. He's a young man in Bogota, Columbia speaking of, and he built the whole company for me.

He wrote the book, he created the community, he developed the agency. We have four full-time employees and a part-time employee that he manages that do nothing but check how LLM source our citations. He built the whole damn thing and I did nothing. But I own this business and obviously our, [00:24:00] our incentives are aligned.

And I actually had a conversation with him two days ago saying, you're gonna be a very wealthy man, and I wanna make sure that you manage that appropriately and that I don't lose you to that, but that talent is so accessible and at the risk of getting too soapboxy or too preachy if you wanna make a difference in the world.

I don't believe in charity any longer. I've worked with too many nonprofits. They're just, it's a snake eating its own tail. Nonprofits are there to support the mechanism that is the nonprofit, not whatever mission they've stated That's almost a ubiquitous truth. To put that in perspective, I was a primary vendor for NPower, which is a Bill Gates funded nonprofit that provides nonprofits to technology services.

I worked with thousands, not hyperbolic, not an exaggeration. Thousands of nonprofits and I, cannot begin to stress the inefficiency of these organizations. Good hearts, good people, poor execution. If you really want to help it's employment, help people, it's the Teach Men to Fish. If you give somebody a job and they're making more than they could make domestically and they're working from home, [00:25:00] that has anthropological implications.

Imagine a mom, my mom, my single mom. In the US we had social security. You don't have that in Columbia, not to the same degree anyway. So you take this mom, you let her work from home, which automatically the minute there's a parent in the household, what happens? Drug use goes down. Teen gang involvement goes down, teen pregnancy goes down, literacy goes up.

Let 'em work from home. Let 'em work on a semi flexible schedule. If you wanna go to ballet, that's great. Don't ask me, go to your kids' ballet recital and then just make it up on the other end of it. Treat 'em like adults and giving them meaningful work. Pay 'em more than they make domestically and look at what happens from an economic perspective.

I have a hundred trained das right now in my talent agency. I hope by the end of next drill I'll have a thousand, and by the end of the year that follows, we'll have 10. And really, if we think through this endeavor, if we can find these people and if we can employ 'em and we can give 'em these opportunities, we can change the world.

And by the way, it's not a purely philanthropic endeavor because. The impact they'll have on your business is incalculably large. I sold the business I sold, had 40% margins in the [00:26:00] agency space, which is a labor space that industry aims. This is a HubSpot statistic, and HubSpot has more data on agencies than any other company that I know of.

HubSpot says the high water mark for a media agency like that is 20% the high watermark. My margins were at 40% when I sold because I was using international talent. And the international talent I was using was the best of the best and that you still get 'em at a discount. And there's a bunch of reasons for that.

We can talk about the petrodollar and the pernicious lie that is fiat currency and the fact that we keep everybody else's economy suppressed because of how we do international commerce. And maybe that turns some people off, maybe it doesn't, I don't care. But the truth is that we can all.

Agree with, we have opportunities other people don't have, and we can help open up those opportunities to everybody's benefit.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So an observation and then a question for you. And the observation is simply this. And I know a lot of the people in Deep Wealth Nation, maybe they're more open to it than others, but it's still gonna be there. There's a prevalent view you're taking advantage of a workforce, and I'm gonna put it out there.

It's simply not true. I have a private cigar [00:27:00] business. It's invitation only VIP, all those other kinds of things. Also in Latin America, relative to North American standards, what the labor force gets paid to your point, it's dollars a day. But what people don't realize when you factor in the conversion rate. It's huge. So going from US dollars into the local currency, and then you also factor in the cost of living, and then you factor in what it does for that family and the prestige that it brings and the honor that it brings.

It's a very different story when you look at it from the eyes of the people that are going through that. Capitalism, democracy isn't perfect. Lots of issues, but it's the best system around relative to the alternatives.

And here you are really handpicking talent to give them a shot at life that they may not otherwise have in their country. And it's a win-win win. A win for you. It's a win for them. It's also a win for the customers. So that's the observation.

Question for you is you're 10 Xing, okay, I have a hundred EAs. I hope to have that [00:28:00] by a thousand. And then after that 10,000, and you've also said, I don't have to know how to do it. I just have to know the who, so it's the who, not the how. I'm gonna 10 x the business. I love that. That's our language here at Deep Wealth. Share with us that philosophy. Can you give us some more insights on that?

Kasim Aslam: I don't love planning, to be honest with you, as a business endeavor, because I I've seen how necessary it is to be nimble, especially in the age of AI, where everything changes on a daily basis, and there's no way for you to control, there's no control group.

You can't play a board game when the board keeps changing. It's near impossible. And so I like goals. I wanna employ a thousand people. When I'm done with that, I wanna employ 10,000 people. Great goal. And then I like being very nimble and very active. this is what's interesting is I don't think, and again I hope this is okay.

don't wanna come on your podcast and then begin lobbying grenades in a direction that might contradict the core ethos. I don't believe in passive income any longer. I think there was a passive income dream that was very real for a very long time, and there might still be with things like real estate, but it's [00:29:00] not earned passive income.

That's investment income. I think for people to build businesses that passively yield. Man, I just don't see that happening because if you look at it from a, just from a definition perspective, anything that can yield. Passive value in the post AI world is something AI can do. It used to be that you, as the person, as a software engineer, developer, an entrepreneur, business owner, had to create the mechanism to system the process.

'cause there's only four things we can sell. We can sell products, programs, processes, and people. So in order to have a passive yield, you had to create the process that generated the, product and, or, empowered the people in order to accomplish this endeavor. And then you could step away and put your hands up and say it's passive.

Well, in a post AI world, AI looks at that and says, oh, great. I can do that. Instantly commoditized. Commoditized to the point of ubiquity, to the point of zero margin to point of no longer being profitable. So to come all the way back and answer your question, I think you have to have the goal. And then on a day to day [00:30:00] basis, you have to outrun.

Commoditization. And interestingly, I don't even feel like I'm out running it. I think a lot of people are, if you're a video editor or graphic designer right now, I do not envy the position that you're in no matter how big your shop is. I know the folks I spoke to, one of the lead advisors at design Pickle, which is they sold for nine figures in major design company and their ability to outrun AI is getting more and more tenuous.

For me, I feel like I'm being carried forward by a wave. Because entrepreneurs know they need ai, know they want AI know they're never gonna be able to learn it. So what am I doing? I'm selling AI enabled EAs. It's like, why would you go learn this yourself? Let me inject a really smart, intelligent, probably much younger human, and they're gonna embed this in your business.

And so I don't have to outrun. I think I need to be carried by, and that's my thesis is long-term goal. Short term, very frantic hyper obsessive

mobilization against what I'm seeing right now. I think if [00:31:00] people can't be nimble in this environment, I don't think they survive, and I actually think that's okay. I think AI solves for that too. To be frank, I think 80% Sam said this, or maybe it, was it Sam Putty? I think it was on my first million on a podcast.

He talked about the case shaped AI economy. 80% of people fall to zero from an efficiency perspective. And that's okay. 'cause we just pay them to stay home. Like universal basic income becomes an a priority prerequisite. We experience massive deflationary events because AI does make everything so much easier.

And we can pay the whole world to stay at home and be healthy and safe and watch Netflix and we'll just nationalize Netflix. That's what we'll do. And it'll be a great environment for artists, musicians and painters and people that wanna do things for the sake of themselves. And 20% of people become weaponized assassins who just solve all the world's problems and create all this stuff.

And that's okay too. my question for everybody is, do you want to be part of the 80% of the 20%? If you wanna be the 80%, don't even worry about passive income generation 'cause it's coming and it'll be UBI and a lot of the smartest people in the world have already seen this. OpenAI did the largest UBI study ever done because they knew [00:32:00] what they were doing.

If you want to be the 20%, that's actually still in the game. You have to be every day you wake up and you move and you run and you work. And for some of us that's actually really exciting. And for some people that sounds like really fatiguing and it's just a matter of choosing what side of the fence you choose to be on.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting as you're talking about that I'm actually flashing back to when artificial intelligence just came on the scene, and I'm sure you'll remember, like I remember, oh, no jobs are going to be replaced. This is a great technology and it'll just make life. Utopian,

Reminded me when what we now call the internet or the worldwide web, when it first came on board, very utopian, how it's gonna be all good and roses everywhere.

Unfortunately, it's the human condition. But my second thought was, okay, Jeffrey, don't believe that no jobs are gonna be lost. Massive jobs are going to be lost. But my second thought was, okay, look around Jeffrey and most of the jobs today, many of them. Didn't exist five years ago, 10 years ago. So yes, there's gonna be massive [00:33:00] job layoffs from ai, but there's also gonna be new jobs that we can't even think of, we can't even imagine yet coming on stream and hopefully better jobs for humankind than what we have right now.

So perhaps that utopian vision in me a little bit muted compared to the big picture wine that is there. But what's interesting with what you're doing, and I'd love your take on this. So with Frito Talend, you're taking. Talented smart people outside of the US who benefit from an exchange rate and lack of opportunity.

You're pairing that with AI to make them even that much more efficient to leverage off of their just innate abilities. To me it seems like a recipe for terrific success when handled properly. Thoughts about that?

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, I think AI is always gonna be a bottom up initiative. That's true for most innovation. Most innovation can't come top down because you are viewing things from a bird's eye perspective. Vision comes top down. So vision and direction of [00:34:00] course is top down. Innovation comes bottom up.

It's the person on the assembly line saying, oh, you know what? We should actually use this instead of that. 'cause this will make it faster, easier, better, more efficient. And that's been true almost across the board. If you look at most of. The major renovations, they generally come from within large organizations that are too bureaucratic to accept the innovation.

And then whoever came up with it, spins off and does their own, micro renovation and then they grow and become bureaucratic. And then this flywheel continues. So you might as well allow that to be a feature, not a bug, and begin embedding people in your organization that can help with this bottom up innovation and make that the key performance indicator.

So hire somebody to do the job. Then let 'em know my expectation for you is to overindex in the direction of AI overindex in the direction of how do you skill your endeavor? How do you actually work yourself out of a job? And then you, and this is really important, you align incentives. 'cause if I know I'm gonna work myself out of a job, I'm not gonna do it unless working myself out of a job means that I get a better job for more [00:35:00] money.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Customer you're talking about that I don't know. You might have heard of these startups, maybe not. Apple, Microsoft, I don't know if you've heard of them. Back in the day, there was this behemoth Bell laboratories that effectively developed the operating system that became for the Mac and later windows and the mouse and all these other things.

But these two scrappy startups, your point came along, bottom up. Their founders had a vision with it, jobs and gates, and took that, and the rest is history, as they say. So history seems to be repeating itself, but you're absolutely right in what you're saying. So if we bring this back to today, right now, entrepreneur, founder, business owner, who's listening to the two of us Talk, they're thinking about their organization and it doesn't matter if it's manufacturing or high tech.

AI is pervasive. It's going everywhere. Being where you've been, this master delegator, you're now building AI into this, you're finding talent, incredible talent worldwide that's been underserved, under-recognized and giving them opportunities. So as an entrepreneur in. [00:36:00] First world countries. I hate using that term, but we'll go with it for a moment.

So, you know, an entrepreneur in the US as an example, how should I be thinking about this? What should I be looking at and possibly doing or not doing? I.

Kasim Aslam: It's mildly counterintuitive. I wouldn't hire for skill, I'd hire for will. So this is why I tell everybody their first hire should be an executive assistant. I. Because it's a flywheel. It's a, it's an incubator. Flywheel's, probably not the right way to define it. It's an incubator. You hire an EA and you just give them a whole bunch of different tasks.

And here's what happens. You give a human being 10 things to do, they're gonna suck at two of them. They're just not gonna be good. They're gonna do six passively. Check the box. We're great. You did the job. I'm proud of you. And they're gonna do two better than any human you've ever encountered in your entire life.

And for some weird reason that I still don't understand, the entire entrepreneurial world looks at the two things they suck at. And we're like, all right, we're gonna get you there, kiddo, and I'll give you a performance improvement program, and you're gonna shadow Sally, 'cause Sally's good at this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the key [00:37:00] is just don't make 'em do those two things and go index in the direction of the things that they're extraordinary at. 'cause every human is a miracle. I believe that as a literal truth. A religious truth, every human being is a miracle. Give them the opportunity to be a miracle and get the hell outta their way.

So find what they're good at and then make that the rule. The problem is, is, is you can't. It's the corridor principle. You can't do it from the outside. You can't assume, oh this, my first ea, I like to say my first EA became my director of social. My second EA became my director of automation. My third A became my CTO.

I didn't know going into it that my first EA was gonna be great at social. We found that out together. I didn't know going into it that my second EA was gonna be actually funny. The EA that became my director of automation was not a great ea. She was. Unbelievably potent human that did not rot and routine work, and a lot of EA work is rot and routine work, but she had crazy mind for processes like brilliant, and so I was like, oh, let's move you in this direction.

That's how I would be looking at employment. It's not the employee's job [00:38:00] to comply with your wishes. It's your job to go see where they're a miracle and unleash them in your business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so from that perspective, working with the ea, working with someone who's not from the us, what should we know that we're not told when we bring somebody on board, that's probably gonna annoy the heck out of us, make us say, did I make a mistake?

Kasim Aslam: Oh yeah, there's a bunch. There's, cultural differences, language differences, time zone differences. I'll give you some specific examples that are probably violently racist and also in my experience, true I'll slander my own environment first. My father's Pakistani, so I'm allowed to say this.

My mom's white, my dad's Pakistani. I'm multicultural. It gives me kind of a, you know, interesting view and perspective on the world and society. Pakistanis are late for everything all the time. If a Pakistani tells you. Friday at noon, it means Monday at four and you can just beat your head against the wall trying to get these people to be on time.

And sometimes there's some movement there as they understand the expectation, or you just build that into the standard operating procedure and you [00:39:00] get to benefit from this amazingly potent, forgive me for saying amazingly cheap labor force that for whatever reason culturally timing just isn't as important to them.

. And which, makes sense if you look at it again, if you zoom out a little and you just look at it from a geographic perspective. If you're in a snowy environment, time is important because being late kills people. If you're in a tropical environment, timing doesn't matter as much because, oh, you're late.

Sorry, I got to hang out in the sun a little bit longer. And I, that's just been my understanding of things. I don't know. That's why it is the Filipinos are docile. They have a really hard time self advocating. Standing up for themselves and pushing back on authority, which means they'll suffer in silence unless you give them very clear conduits for providing feedback.

Eastern Europeans don't like doing things the wrong way. They'll actually say no. You come to 'em and say, Hey, the I know this should be a square. Best practices say this should be a square. The client wants a circle. They won't do it. They just will not do it. They just refuse. And so you end up in these positions where you're, you know, they're not afraid to tell you their baby's ugly.

North Africans use very flowery language, which, in Middle [00:40:00] Easterners are the same way. You have to learn some of these cultural nuances that can be so, so, so frustrating when you're not aware of them. But once you've committed. To overcoming them. They're actually really not only easy, but beautiful.

'cause here's the flip side of the Pakistani being late for every damn thing. I've never met a group of people willing to work nights and weekends more fervently than those folks. They'll stay up late to get a job done. They'll work weekends to get a job done. They'll work through holidays to get a job done because it cuts both ways.

Try getting an Eastern European to work nights and weekends if that's not been on the job. You know what I mean? That it, no. The business could go down. I don't care. This is my PTO and I'm taking it off. They're very like Prussian in that way. Those nuances are important. They're just, and are these stereotypes?

Yeah, absolutely. Are stereotypes. Stereotypes for a reason? You bet they are. And so you can also back into that. I like Latin America for a lot of reasons, Latin Americans are. Culturally, I think the closest in alignment, even closer to us than Western Europeans because we, watch the same movies, listen to the [00:41:00] same music.

The Latin American accent isn't as repellent to your more conservative demographic. Asian accents, we've been abused by because of call centers. And so if I put my dad on the phone with my Trump. It's supporting client. My Trump supporting client's pissed, but I put my Trump supporting client on the phone with a Latin American ea.

It could be his neighbor. It's a Christian country, which means that they're more aligned with our holidays, which is a practical reality that's really important. And the time zones aren't that big a difference. So if, if you're not sure where to go to Latin America. Unbelievable labor pool.

They're not as technically proficient as the Asians, again, as a stereotype. But that's okay. 'cause you probably don't need a software developer. People think they do and they don't. Just putting up with those little nuances, again, it goes back to failing fail a couple times, make a couple mistakes.

the Filipinos have a 13th month in their salary. So remember when you're negotiating salary with a Filipino and they don't like to negotiate, by the way, because it's very combative. But when you promise a salary to a Filipino. You have to pay that number 12 times and then at the end of the year you have to pay the 13th.

So factor that into your [00:42:00] actuary tables. Little things like that.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Nuances. They are everything. And the stereotypes. Yeah, you're right. They're there for a reason. Now, you also said something interesting that for a lot of people it's easy to gloss over, but let's circle back to it. Bottom up. So Jeffrey, start with an ea. Find a brilliant ea and that could be your future president.

That could be your future business partner. And from the outside looking in, when we hear that. No way, Kasum, what? What are you thinking? No way. How can an EA go from an entry level, EA executive, assistant doing manual menial kinds of things to running a company, to being a business partner? How does that work?

Kasim Aslam: they're hiding in plain sight. And I'll tell you something, and this will get mildly sexist here for a minute.

I read something and I, I think the study's actually really easy to find, so forgive me for not citing it from memory, but it's accessible online with a quick Google.

Men will apply for a job when they fill. I think it was 60% qualified women wait to apply for a [00:43:00] job until they feel a hundred percent qualified. So as employers pay attention to the women that are working for you because they're hiding from you and they don't. Feel qualified. And so they actually kind of need to be pulled outta their comfort zone a little bit and they end up being some of the best employees I've ever had.

The gal that ran solutions eight for me, Leandra, my COO, the gal that built starter PPC for me, Regina the gal that I mentioned earlier, Julianne, who ran my automation department. I had to coax them out at. Hiding. I'm like, Hey, I really think you're capable of this. And they were some of the most extraordinary employees I've ever had in my entire life.

Yvonne, the young man I mentioned who became my CTO, and then my business partner, he was young. I think he's still young. He was 26 years old, but I was 22 I think when I hired him. 21. Most people wouldn't look at him and think, oh, you could be an integral part of my organization. Why not? Why not?

So I think they're hiding in plain sight, and it's up to us as entrepreneurs to have the vision, to see the beauty in this human being and say, you know what? I actually think you could take this and run with it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's been my experience as well in terms [00:44:00] of the female perspective versus the male perspective. Saw that in the e-learning company and that continues. Well, Kasim, this has just been amazing. We are bumping up again some time and so we're gonna go into wrap up mode. And it's a fun question.

It's actually a tradition here on the Deep Podcast. It's. My privilege and honor where every guest is asked the same question. So when you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So I want you to imagine now, it's tomorrow morning.

This is the fun part, the DeLorean car, it's outside curbside, and the doors open is waiting for you to hop on in which you do. You're now gonna go to any point in time, perhaps when you're a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, Hey kasum, do this, but don't do that.

Kasum, what would that sound like for you?

Kasim Aslam: I think I would be, I'd go right back to like just post pubescence, like 13, 14 so anxious to get started and I'd convince [00:45:00] myself, which would be very hard. I'd convince myself that the shortcut is the long way and the long way is actually the fast way. That's the way. And so I spent the first. Majority of my cognizant life, trying to take the shortcut, trying to do it fast, trying to hack and cheat, and just get it now. And it wasn't until I finally decided that's too hard and it's too painful and it's too much friction, and I just put my head down and I just did the work and all of a sudden. It just started happening and it end way faster than I expected. So people hear 10,000 hours and they get overwhelmed, or they hear 20 years and they get overwhelmed. It's start now. Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Second best time is today. Everybody's heard the quote, but there's so much truth to it.

So shortcuts, the long way's, the right way.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that. The shortcuts a long way and the long way is the right way. So much truth, so much wisdom to that. And Pulp Nation. Run with that. Take that magnify that, leverage that. And before we wrap up, if a listener has a question, they [00:46:00] wanna start working with you, they wanna learn more what you're doing with these brilliant minds at Preto Talent Kam, what would be the best way to reach you online?

Where would that be?

Kasim Aslam: Now they can go to ka me. It's K-A-S-I-M, me, all my links are there. My entire portfolio of companies is accessible and including a link to proto talent. So we'd love to help them find an ea.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wonderful. And at this point Kasim, congratulations, it's official. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Kasim Aslam: Thanks, Jeffrey. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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God bless.