Founder's Story
Luck or Genius? How Kasim Aslam Turned Failures into a $10M Payday, Plus His Thoughts on AI's Impact on Humanity | S2 Ep. 150
Wed, 13 Nov 2024
In this thought-provoking episode, host Daniel Robbins sits down with Kasim Aslam, founder of the world-renowned outsourcing agency Pareto Talent. Kasim shares his unconventional path in digital marketing, exploring the nuances of talent acquisition, the impact of AI, and the future of humanity in a tech-driven world. This episode uncovers the power of failure, the importance of luck in entrepreneurship, and Kasim's insights on data, digital transformation, and the value of relationships.Key Segments:Entry into Digital Marketing and the Power of FailureKasim describes his winding journey as a “multi-time failed entrepreneur” across various industries. After numerous attempts, he found his calling in digital marketing, a realm where he could build infrastructure without the pressure of business fulfillment. He candidly calls himself the “world’s greatest failure,” attributing his ultimate success to persistence and learning from each setback.The Impact of Luck and Perfect TimingKasim recounts his exit strategy from the Google Ads agency, where he received 50 unsolicited offers in one year, ultimately selling for a low eight-figure sum. He stresses that timing and luck played major roles in his success, a sentiment echoed by other successful entrepreneurs.Transition After the Exit: Reflecting and RechargingKasim shares advice for post-exit entrepreneurs: prioritize “cash at close” and avoid long-term commitments immediately. He spent a year traveling, reconnecting with family, and focusing on his health before deciding his next venture.Building Pareto Talent: The Art of People and PlacementKasim discusses his passion for people, crediting his agency's success to his ability to find and nurture talented individuals. At Pareto Talent, he helps high-end entrepreneurs by connecting them with skilled executive assistants from emerging nations, creating a symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties.The Simplicity of Data Analysis and Decision-MakingKnown for his talent in simplifying data trends, Kasim explains how observing macro trends instead of micro details allowed him to time his exit and avoid the pitfalls of the agency model as the industry shifted. He encourages entrepreneurs to trust their instincts and focus on clear, visible patterns in data.Navigating the Age of AI and Human CapitalWith AI advancing rapidly, Kasim emphasizes the importance of focusing on tasks AI cannot replace. He notes that as AI amplifies efficiency, it also amplifies mediocrity. Therefore, businesses need skilled, insightful people to harness AI effectively, making human capital even more crucial.Vision of the Future: Relationships with AI and Decline of Human InteractionKasim and Daniel discuss the potential future of human relationships, especially as AI becomes more integrated into daily life. Kasim shares his thoughts on emotional connections with AI, questioning whether relationships will remain interpersonal or shift to intrapersonal, with individuals projecting their own beliefs onto AI.Returning to Simplicity and Human ConnectionThey explore a hypothetical future where technology fulfills all utilitarian needs, allowing people to return to simpler forms of human connection. Kasim suggests that instead of increasing digital dependency, the advancement of AI might encourage humans to unplug and reconnect with each other on a more primal level.The Decline of the Need for Traditional Search and WorkKasim predicts that as work and job-related searches decline in relevance due to AI, we may see a societal shift away from technology dependency toward simpler lifestyles. He relates this to the evolving human desire for purpose and fulfillment beyond just work and productivity.Final Takeaway:"AI and automation aren’t the enemy; they’re the next frontier. Success in this new era will come from those who embrace both technology and the unparalleled value of human insight and creativity."Closing Remarks:Daniel and Kasim wrap up the episode with a promise to delve deeper into existential topics in future conversations. Kasim shares his website, ParetoTalent.com, for listeners interested in learning more about his current projects or contacting him directly. He also invites listeners to subscribe to his newsletter for updates on his upcoming book.Notable Quotes:“Every failure is a step forward if you’re willing to keep going.”“People aren’t just employees; they’re the core of any great company.”“The future of work isn’t just AI; it’s the balance of AI with human intuition and insight.”Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com
Chapter 1: What led Kasim Aslam into digital marketing?
Stress test this theory for me. Every successful digital marketer is really just a multi-time failed entrepreneur. So all digital marketers just tried to be good at like real businesses and we just failed over and over and over again.
And, but over time kind of figured out like, well, the digital thing I can, 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 yeah, I'm 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 try to do vending machines. You name it and I've made an attempt at it. And digital marketing was just with stock. So I like to call myself the world's greatest failure. Which is true. I just rode 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 saturated with buyers, let's say. So the inventory dried up. So then they dropped down to agencies.
And I had 50 somewhat unsolicited offers in one year. And I sold for a low eight figure sum. I'm rich. And...
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Chapter 2: How did luck influence Kasim's exit strategy?
it was the best timing anybody's ever had not because i'm smart i the the 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 the model that i had died um and i'm just lucky he'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. And 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 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 really worked your ass off to get there, but you exit it. And then what?
I spent a year trying to figure out what I want to be when I grew up. Somebody gave me really good advice. I got two really good pieces of advice around 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 or burnouts, retained equity is slavery.
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Chapter 3: What advice does Kasim offer for post-exit entrepreneurs?
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. So that was piece of advice number one. Piece of advice number two is 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. Really spent time 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.
And 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 to end 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. I own a Montessori agency. I'm not Montessori trained.
So I have no compulsion about knowing how to do the thing. Dude, 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. And people are literal miracles.
And 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 when you can acquire talent. And 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 employee 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 them 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, and 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.
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Chapter 4: How does Pareto Talent connect talent with entrepreneurs?
It's a really interesting kind of like it's the corridor principle. When 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 a year.
Something interesting, I think, about you, just looking from the outside in on the few conversations that you and I have 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 ability to analyze data, right? 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 figuring out, like, anyone can analyze data, but what does it mean? Like, what does it stand for, right? Yeah, exactly. 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 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 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. Every 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, et cetera. Three 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.
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Chapter 5: What is Kasim's approach to data analysis?
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 a different model and 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 we're going to get really deep. Uh-oh. We're going to 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 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 tap 12 billion and then taper down from there. According to Jordan Peterson, who I love.
Yeah. So, and this is just my personal theory. Okay. Is this, I bought this website, date robots.com back in 2016. Cause I really feel that this is the thing you have on one side. Uh, people are just having less kids. Like you're saying most countries keep 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 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?
Those generations are rising. 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.
and 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 gonna you know 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 um
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Chapter 6: How is AI changing the landscape of human capital?
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.
Like, 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. And we released an immense amount of pheromones and nerve 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. 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 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 StarTech, you know, utopian world where nobody has to work.
I don't think the human choice is to go interface with robots. Right. I think the human choice is actually to go back and to sit in a loincloth around a campfire playing a guitar just talking. If you had nothing to worry about, most technology is utilitarian in nature. I only use technology because I have to. But if you notice, 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 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 don't think we become more digital. I think we become less digital. That was I went on a billion different directions. Daniel, how did I do?
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Chapter 7: What future does Kasim envision for human interaction and AI?
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 seven, 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 Ferriss, like four hour work week. Maybe we should be. He's a liar, by the way. He works 80 hours a week. You know what I mean? Maybe we should be doing those things because that's better for us. But we're so accustomed to we need to grind and work 24-7. But no, this has been amazing. We could talk. I know we got to go, but we could talk for another hour. I can get real deep.
I've been looking for somebody else. to talk to you 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, I love using people in Latin America.
I've used them from Colombia to Venezuela, 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.
And 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. How can people do that?
You can go to KASIM.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.
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Chapter 8: How does technology shape our need for purpose?
One day I want to come over 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. You have like an incredible book. 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's Story.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, Daniel.