Luck or Genius? How Kasim Aslam Turned Failures into a $10M Payday, Plus His Thoughts on AI's Impact on Humanity | S2 Ep. 150

0:06Welcome back to founder story today we have a special guest who I got to meet a few years ago who is the number one, the number one Google ads agency on the planet. Kassam, when I met you and you told me this, and then you and I got to speak about Google ads, I'm like, holy crap, like this guy is legit. Because a lot of digital marketing agencies have told me something similar, but I don't know if they really fully understand. And you didn't just talk about digital marketing. The first time I met you, you talked about like the government and censorship. I mean, the thing that you were talking about, surprisingly, the stuff that you talked about is really like a thing now.

0:53Like Joe Rogan is talking about some of the things that you talked about years ago around the data in Google. And I thought it was super duper interesting. I think we were in Austin. We were in Austin. Steve Sims. That was Steve Simpson. Yeah, that's what that was. And then we met at War Room. But I was really, really intrigued by the things that you said then. And I was very fascinated. But let's kick it off with your story first. So can you walk me through what was it like for you to get into digital marketing and then for you to exit? it. Stress test this theory for me. Every successful digital marketer is really just a multi-time failed entrepreneur.

1:38So all digital marketers just tried to be good at like real businesses and we just failed over and over and over again. But over time kind of figured out like, well, the digital thing I can do because you're so sick of rolling up businesses that that's what digital marketing is. It's the infrastructure to a business without any fulfillment. So I'm a a wannabe entrepreneur I've been trying since I was 19. I've been in every industry. I've been in software development, import, export, medical transcription. I sold purified mercury. I'd like, dude, if you name, I'd try to do vending machines, like you name it.

2:10And I've made an attempt at it. And digital marketing was just what stuck. So I'm just, I like to call myself the world's greatest failure, which is true. I just wrote every failure a little bit further forward. My exit was as much serendipity as anything else. I owned a Google ads agency right when the M &A world froze. So because of a bunch of things, right? Like post-COVID, they printed all this money. There was this liquidity freeze. They stopped buying SaaS. So private equity groups went to e-com. Well, e-com became, you know, saturated with buyers, let's say. So the inventory dried up. So then they dropped down to agencies.

2:45And I had 50 somewhat unsolicited offers in one year. and I sold for a low eight figure sum. I'm rich. And it was the best timing anybody's ever had. Not because I'm smart. Right after I sold, the agency model disintegrated. So like when I sold, we had 200 clients. Nine months later, the company that bought me had 130 clients in my agency. They were acquiring a bunch more agencies. So the agency model didn't die, but it definitely changed. And the model that I had died. And I'm just lucky it's getting the whole wide world. Dude, I was born under a star. it's really interesting. I'd say we've had like billionaires to incredible people like yourself as well.

3:28And everyone says luck. I'd say people have told me that luck was everything. Like they weren't any better. They didn't do anything better. It's just in that moment, they got luck or they got lucky and the exit was pure luck. but what do you so when something like that happens and you've seen all the data you've been through all and i love the you know digital marketers like entrepreneurs i feel you on that i mean i have a lot of every idea i have has failed so what do you look at next so you do this you're like holy shit that was incredible you know you obviously it wasn't all luck right you you really worked your ass off to get there but you exit it and then what uh i spent a year trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

4:18Somebody gave me really good advice. I got two really good pieces of advice around the time I was exiting. The first one was, be happy with your cash at close. So if you're listening to this or watching this and you're about to exit, please, dear God in heaven, earnouts are burnouts. Retained equity is slavery. If you're not happy with your cash at close, do not do that deal. And thank God I was happy with my cash at close because you never know what's going to happen post-closing. and I can't comment on everything that happened post-closing but it was all very surprising uh so that was piece of advice number one piece of advice number two is don't don't make any commitments don't decide what you're going to do for 12 months and I did that I traveled I hung out with my kids I caught up on my health I really spent time um just letting that marinate and that was really helpful too where I landed was people I love people with everything inside of me the only reason my agency was as good as it was was because of people I had almost 100 employees when we sold.

5:18And they were the number one question I got during due diligence over and over and over again was, where do you find these people? This is like, we've never seen anybody like this. And that might be the only thing I'm good at. Fun fact, I built the number one ranked Google ads agency in the world. We were the largest dedicated Google ads agency at the time of our sale. I've never run a Google ads campaign and in my life. I don't know how to. I couldn't screen share with you right now and show you how to run Google ads. I just found really, really, really good people. I had the highest performing real estate investment campaign on the planet before I knew how to invest in real estate.

5:46I own a Montessori agency. I'm not Montessori trained. So I have no compulsion about knowing how to do the thing. I could, dude, I could, I could start, you name it, spinal surgery right now today. I could start that business. It doesn't matter. I could rocket ship to the moon. I don't need to know anything because I know the power that people provide when people are literal miracles. And when you, when you kind of crack the code and it's not hard, it's counterintuitive, but it's not hard. But when you crack the code on talent acquisition, it opens up the whole world to you. You can do anything when you can acquire talent.

6:18And so I launched a, I don't know what to call it. It's not really a placement agency because we maintain that we continue to be the employer of record, but we find, train and place executive assistants for high end entrepreneurs. And it's been the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my entire life because I get to take somebody in an emerging nation. We're not allowed to call them third world countries anymore. So somebody in an emerging nation, I pay many, many multiples more than they would make domestically. I let them work from home, flexible schedule, life-changing, right? And then I put them with a massively overwhelmed entrepreneur.

6:52And it's such a win-win. It's a symbiotic relationship where somebody who wants an opportunity and somebody who really, really needs help and you connect those two and it's just freaking lightning, man. It's amazing to watch. We've had some failures, of course. That's the way that things work. It's matchmaking and personality management. But for the most part, It's been epic and it's been so much fun and it's the least scalable business I've ever been in my entire life. But I even like it for that reason. You know, like I don't think this is my forever thing. I want to make a lot more money than this would yield.

7:21But it lets me see, it's like a metal detector for opportunity because I get to see what high-end entrepreneurs are tasking their EAs with. So now I've started to build businesses around those tasks. You know, like we just built an agency called Architects that helps people build out their high level instances because I noticed 50 percent of my EAs were getting tasks and go high level. And I want to build a podcast booking business because I noticed, you know, a ton of our EAs are being tasked with podcast booking. So while it's not scalable, it's a really interesting kind of like it's the corridor principle.

7:53When you're on the field of battle, you see the opportunities. Well, I'm on 50 fields of battle because I have 50 EAs placed. So that's where I am now. We'll see where I am in here. something interesting i think about you just looking from the outside in on a few conversations that you and i've had besides your obvious power to find incredible talent which can be the make or break right because we know most entrepreneurs they want to do every freaking job every single thing and they get tied down and the business fails but something with you i think is your your ability to analyze data that was the first conversation i had it was you explaining about the analysis of all of this data that you have and kind of and figuring out like anyone could analyze data but what does it mean like what does it stand for right now it's like the noise yeah exactly uh so how do you like how do you do that because i think a lot of people see a lot of data but they don't really know like what does it mean you're kind of like a human chat gbt before chat gbt by the way it's funny man because um i feel like the answer is in the simplicity i don't look at micro trends i'm not capable of that there are people who are you know like straight up autistic rain men count the toothpicks you know go to vegas definitely 35 you know what i mean like those those people exist and god bless them and they're amazing way smarter than me what i look at are things that a toddler could graph with crayons like I had the highest performing real estate investment campaign on the planet for seven years.

9:33Every year, year over year, the cost per click on our most valuable key phrases was going up. So it doesn't take a math scientist to say, this is becoming a commoditized industry. And that trend line led me to sell the business. And I sold in 2019 and I got out at quote unquote, the perfect time. The perfect time. it was it wasn't it wasn't triple phd science it was looking at the simplest macro trends my favorite example and i use this often from stage when i speak 10 years ago you used to be able to run ads pay for the cost of traffic pay for the cost of goods pay for fulfillment and still make money five years ago you ran ads paid for the cost of goods pay for fulfillment pay for traffic, probably broke even, but made money on OTOs, upsells, etc.

10:23Three years ago, run ads, pay for the cost of traffic, pay for the cost of fulfillment, pay for the cost of goods, not make any money, but you're making money on your LTV. Today, most businesses can't afford to run ads. We're in a traffic bubble. And I don't have to be a mathematician. I don't have to be an Ake Silver to tell you that because you should be able to run an ad and make money. and now you can't and that's not you know what i mean like i there's there's no triple phd science telling me this it's just it's very obvious and yet most people i think are reluctant to rely on the most obvious trends that are right in front of their face and i'm i don't know man i just kind of bullish when it comes to that stuff i'm like i'm just going to trust my gut here and this feels like I should get out of the traffic game and I sold my agency and I got out of the traffic game and now I see the way that AI is heading and AI is what really convinced me to get into the personnel piece because everybody else is like oh look what AI can do you know let's figure out what AI can do and I'm like all the things that AI can do are by definition no longer monetizable because AI can do them stop trying to figure out what AI can do go figure out what AI can't do That's what you can charge money for.

11:39And so, you know, there's the fun quote. I think it's attributed to Bill Gates. I don't know if he actually said it. He said that automation applied to an inefficient system just amplifies the inefficiency. Right now today, pre-AI, because we're still pre-AI, a mediocre employee is good enough. It's fine. So there's Jerry, right? You've got Jerry. And if you're a graphic design shop and you have like three rock stars, but they're all full. And you're like, you know what? Just give it to Jerry because he can keep the project going long enough for one of the rock stars to actually get into it. do it and polish off the round edges jerry's works in this economy in this world in this paradigm with ai you're amplifying jerry you're amplifying mediocrity and and leverageable mediography is catastrophe it's death and destruction it's that business isn't in business any longer because jerry goes from 10 units of output a day to 10 000 so people interestingly counterintuitively become exponentially more important in an AI-driven world.

12:36So I got into Pareto talent. Pareto is the mathematical construct. It's the Pareto distribution, 20 % of your input equals 80 % of your output, which is true in every organic ecosystem. So we created Pareto talent because I know that AI is going to need really intelligent people at every level of the organization. For some reason, these businesses think that AI is going to be top-down. How? How on earth could that possibly be true? too the c-level execs and the directors and the managers know how work is done no it's the foot soldiers that know oh i press this button at this time in this way oh i can use ai for this obviously ai is going to be bottom up obviously unless you're an ai company right but that's that's a different model in a different paradigm so i don't know man i'm not telling you i'm smarter than anybody else i actually might be dumber but i'm just willing to look at like really opaque really pixelated cloudy kind of gray data and say i'm going that direction and so far it's paid off a couple of times all right so i can tell that you are a deep thinker like me and so i'm we're gonna get really we're gonna get deep oh we're gonna get really deep i have a theory like you said elon musk just said it i've heard you know mo goddad from google said it like many people have said the cost of goods and services will go down to basically zero right like like you just mentioned if it could be generated by ai it basically goes down to free and you should no longer sell it but i am really convinced that our population will decline let's say 2050 i'm making up numbers it'll be like half of what it is and this is supposed to cap 12 billion and then taper down from there according to jordan peterson who i love yeah so and this is just my personal theory is this.

14:25I bought this website, daterobots.com, back in 2016 because I really feel that this is the thing. You have on one side, people are just having less kids. Like you're saying, most countries, people are having less kids. Younger generations are hyper-focused digital. Their best friends might just be AI bots in the future. People are going to be having intimate relationships with humanoids that is my opinion i think because i think humans are just not great at realizing that like a robot is not a human it's a robot right as it becomes more lifelike and it sounds more lifelike we're not really good at differentiating we're also not very sociable in many instances the younger people are right like those generations are rising um i really feel like people are really going to start finding like robots, humanoids, AI bots in intimacy, but not just like intimacy, like physical, but emotional intimacy.

15:29And then it starts to say, like, what if you're in a relationship like with human to human, but you're also in a emotional relationship with an AI bot? How's that going to fall into place? These are some things I'm thinking about what are your thoughts so my response might dip too far into the esoteric so we'll do our best okay and you can reel me in if you think i'm about to lose all your listeners

15:57um i'm really into this book called a course in miracles right now which relies really heavily on christian theology but it's not a christian book per se i was raised a christian so that languaging can appeal to me but i'm not a christian either so I'm going to use some words that might be a little repellent to a non-Christian audience. That's my disclaimer. All that said, every relationship you have with every person you've ever had a relationship with is really a relationship with yourself. You are interfacing with your projection of who you think that person is, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.

16:33You don't see that person as a person. Most people are incapable of seeing other people as people. They see them as they're like holograms almost. And that person becomes two-dimensionalized. And that's what, you know, and some people are really bad at this. Like some people are just good and bad. And then other people get a little more three-dimensional in their views. And yet every relationship you've ever had is really a relationship with yourself. And that's why every relationship you have is triggering because you go find what about that person triggers you. And that's where the relationship starts, interestingly.

17:04with. And you don't see the other person, and this is where the languaging, I might even try to avoid using the words that they use, but we're all splinters of God, let's say, if you believe that. And you can't see another person until you see him as a splinter of God. And that would be the point of the relationship, is that you get to actualize your splinter of divinity, and then you get to see their splinter of divinity, and then those splinters of divinity are reflected back to each other. But the point would be for you to allow yours to emerge first. And so if you're having a relationship with the robot, I don't actually think, functionally speaking, that's any different than the relationships you have now, until we've ascended to the psychological and spiritual plane that allows us to see people as truly miracles, truly divine, truly fragments of the creator the source whatever word you want to use until you're there and very few of us are i'm not i don't think relationship is interpersonal i think it's intrapersonal and so i would imagine that a relationship with the robot would probably serve all of those or most of those let's say purposes i do think that there are some things that we're leaving behind from an anthropological perspective.

18:24Like, you know, I talked to a friend about this smell. This is really weird to say, but, you know, in the 1850s, if you and I were as close as you and I are right now, for all intents and purposes, we're about six feet from each other, technically speaking, right? Like, I know that you're in your room wherever you are in the world. I'm in my room in Scottsdale, Arizona. But because of the distance and the fact that I can see your eye color and I can see your pupils dilate and I can see the specificity in your features. We're about six feet from each other. But 150 years ago, a person I was six feet from, I could smell.

19:01And we released an immense amount of pheromones and their signals in the way that we smell. You actually choose mates, choose enemies, choose fights, choose... There's a lot in smell that we don't even know and we've lost over time because we've become so civilized. And that's not the only thing. There's cell and I think there's like sense perception. And then there's like the way that you would breathe that I'm not going to catch over a microphone, but I would catch in person. And I actually think, interestingly, I think we're going to swing back. that we've lost the campfire we've lost community we've lost religion we've lost so much of what makes humans humans functionally and so i think when the robots take over let's say and that and i don't mean that in the skynet kind of way i mean that in the functional way like when the robots are the ones working the assembly line and everything's free and we're all in the star tech you know utopian world where nobody has to work i don't think the human choice is to go interface with robots i think the human choice is actually to go back and to sit in a loincloth around a campfire playing a guitar just talking like if you had nothing to worry about most technology is utilitarian nature i only use technology because i have to but if you notice and you know i'm i'm semi-wealthy now i'm not ultra high net worth i'm a decamillionaire so i'm still not in the stratosphere of humans that truly have nothing to worry about financially speaking which is generally pegged at around 35 million dollars net worth i know those people though and what's really funny about them is very often more often than not they're not in front of their computers they're not in front of email they don't carry a cell phone right like they they start to unplug and so as our needs become satiated i i don't think we become more digital i think we become less digital that was a i i went on a billion different directions daniel how did i do no no no i i totally agree i was reading something recently about there was like an argument around will google lose a lot of its relevance from a search perspective because they were talking about you know search with ai but me i was like no that's why not that's that's not why google may lose relevance it's because we said like what do you search in google you search porn you search business, you search job related, right?

21:24These are the things you search. But if you didn't have to search for business, because we don't work, you didn't have to search for job related stuff, because we don't work, then you don't really need to search. Like you said, we're not going to have to search. I am totally on the, like, I am totally with you. Like, I don't see a world where we're going to have very many jobs, many generations on, like you said, Star Trek, whatever you want to call it but i am with you on you know loincloth around the fire i am totally in the same space mindset a lot of people come to us and like hey it's like human and ai and i need to learn this i'm like maybe now but i don't see a world where at the speed of the learning all my friends who are in it tell me the best people in the world have no idea how it really gets to where it's getting it does things they don't even understand that pandora boxes like already opened up and but i think the great like you said maybe we've been thinking about the wrong way that maybe we should be just hanging out having fun eating s'mores not hustling 24 7 being stressed out mental health down the shitter like maybe we shouldn't be living this way and i think that's why we kind of make fun of younger generations like three-day work week remember like tim ferris like four-hour work week yeah maybe we should be he's a liar by the way he works 80 hours a week that's you know what i mean like maybe we should be doing those things because that's better for us but we're so accustomed to like we need to grind and work 24 7 uh but no this has been amazing we could talk i know we got to go but we could talk for like another hour I can get real deep.

23:05I've been looking for somebody else to talk to about this and nobody ever wants to listen to me. So I appreciate your ear today. If people want to get in touch with the company though, and they want to find out more information, I love what you're doing. It's super needed. I use many of these people from, uh, I love using people in Latin America. I've used them from Colombia to Venezuela, uh, to Chile to Argentina for the last, I'd say 10 years. And it's completely changed my life. So if you want to find out more information, how can they? Go to ParetoTalent.com. Also, by the way, if people want to see where you're going to be speaking or they want to book you, because I think I need to hear more about what you're doing.

23:45How can people do that? You can go to costume.me, K-A-S-I-M.me, and you can subscribe to my newsletter. I'm writing a book that everybody can have for free. It's on how to hire an international talent. I'll be sending that to my list when it's available. So subscribe. I've got all my links there, all the socials, all that fun stuff. One day I want to come over to your house and read one of the books behind you. If you can't see it, you have the most amazing book collection I've ever seen. And I've interviewed over 500 people since two years ago alone. And no one has a book. I have three books behind me.

24:18You have like an incredible, but man, this has been an incredible conversation. We got to have another hour-long conversation about the meaning of life next time. But I super appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us today on Founder Story. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, Daniel.