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Kasim Aslam is a serial entrepreneur and marketing powerhouse who has built multiple 7- and 8-figure businesses, including two successful exits. Named one of the Top 50 Digital Marketing Thought Leaders in the U.S., Kasim knows what it takes to scale companies, build world-class teams, and make smart hiring decisions that fuel real growth. He’s also the author of the #1 international bestseller You vs. Google: The Very Unauthorized Guide to Google Ads. With a gift for making complex strategies both relatable and actionable, Kasim is ready to dive deep into topics like business scaling, team-building efficiency, and the art of delegation—offering practical insights that can transform the way leaders build and grow their businesses.

 

In this episode, Jason and Michael discuss:

  • Why solving for traffic first is the ultimate business hack
  • How building a community creates a sustainable advantage over paid traffic
  • The difference between entrepreneurship and fulfillment — and why founders must separate the two
  • Kasim’s framework for effective delegation through the “Black Box of Delegation”

Key Takeaways:

  • Solving the traffic problem is the critical first step, setting the stage for business operations to flow with far greater ease and predictability.
  • The conversation encourages moving away from paid ads to cultivating small, loyal communities—an approach that builds resilience and lasting brand equity over time.
  • There's a clear distinction drawn between entrepreneurship and fulfillment, with Kasim urging founders to stay focused on multiplying opportunities rather than getting trapped in day-to-day tasks.
  • Through the concept of the "Black Box of Delegation," Kasim unveils how leaders can foster true ownership by providing clear inputs and desired outcomes, then resisting the urge to micromanage.
  • The episode challenges traditional models of AI adoption, advocating for grassroots empowerment within teams instead of inefficient top-down mandates.

“Solve for traffic first, and everything else about business becomes easy.”

 - Kasim Aslam

Connect with Kasim Aslam:

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:


 

Kasim Aslam- Entrepreneurship Is Not Fulfillment

Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell. This is the first guest that I've had in, I don't know, 300 or so guests where we're just going to go with one name. Kasim, welcome to the show, my friend.

Jason, thanks for having me. Appreciate you.

So, your name and information about you ran across my desk and as you can imagine being a host of a podcast, I get a lot of names and a lot of recommendations of who should sit in the guest chair, and yours caught my attention. And sometimes I'll read an intro of a guest, but this time I'm going to let you do it, man. You've got some pretty interesting things. You know your life better than I'll ever know your life and you also know what stands out to people, and so, would it be too much for me to ask you to introduce yourself a little bit?

So, I'm just going to recite my YouTube intro. Is that unfair?

Do what you feel is right. There are no wrong answers today.

Yeah. Well, I shoot a video every day. So, I hop on and say, "Hey, this is Kasim. I've built 6 million multi-million-dollar businesses, I've had two successful exits, one for eight figures, I've generated a decade net worth, and my goal in life is to help you achieve 3x freedom. That's financial freedom, freedom from limitation, and freedom of purpose.” And that's the name of my holding company. It’s 3x freedom. My job is helping people achieve freedom across every level of analysis, and the problem is that everybody focuses on financial freedom, and the issue with that is if you climb that ladder as it's propped up against the wrong wall, you trap yourself elsewhere in places that you don't necessarily realize that you're trapped. It’s a fun conversation to have and it's a fun mission to be on. How did I do?

I mean, pretty good. I'm interested. I've actually watched a few of your videos and I've heard you do that, but doing it in person, like, I'm all in. So, there's two or three things that have already been unique and again I've done this a few hundred times, but there's a few things that are unique about this podcast and we're only, what, 90 seconds into it? First, you're the only guest that we've gone with one name. So, there's a first. You're one of the only guests that's introduced themselves, so there’s that. And you are the only guest where we haven't asked our typical first question first. Like, I asked you to introduce yourself first. I have a question that my listeners are aware of. I don't know if you are. If I asked you a question that has nothing to do with 3x, nothing to do with your one name deal or any of that, is that cool?

I'm excited. Let's go.

I mean, even if you said no, I'd ask it anyway. You and I are engaged with one another through the magic of technology. Good old Zoom. Who or what are you grateful for today?

My boys. I have two sons, Sammy and Ronan. Sammy is turning 10 in two days, on April 12th. Ronan just turned eight on April 7th. They're both born in April because I've read Malcolm Gladwell's book, which interestingly is the second time I've talked about Malcolm Gladwell with you

Today, yeah.

Once in the pre-roll, too. I don't normally evoke him. I don't know why he's coming up so often. And they're the best little men in the whole wide world, man. I've got, my eldest is just the kindest, sweetest softest, most empathic little cherub and my youngest is a wrecking ball of demon hellfire bent on death and destruction. And between the two of them, it's fun because I just get the best of both worlds, you know? I've got just the cannon, and I can wind him up and throw him and he gives it as good as he gets it, and then I've got the angel, you know? He likes to cuddle and he's so thoughtful and introspective and he loves animals and plants and birds and trees, and he gets mad when the landscaper cuts weeds.

Oh.

Yeah. And my boys are, you know, I mean, put a pin in me, I'm done. I could die tomorrow and just like, yeah.

There we go.

Yeah. A blessing doesn't articulate it.

My kids are grown and out of the house now, but the way that you describe them as opposites and some of the adjectives that you use to describe that, I can really relate with when my kids were that age. So, yeah. Really, really good. Well, what a great what a great start there. Our listeners are also parents, and they probably also resonated with what you just said about being grateful for your boys, your kids, but they'd also be grateful if we talked about some business stuff. So, is it cool if we make that transition?

Let's do it.

So, 3X. You know, I see the title in LinkedIn often of ‘serial entrepreneur’ and like okay, that's great. Like are we going to go on an episode of the Bachelor or what are we doing here? But for you, you've got some shred underneath you, where you've done some things in that regard. And so, I'd love to for you to dive into, hey, I've started these many multi-million dollar companies, I have exited from here. Give us a little bit more detail there because I think it might drive some of where our conversation goes today.

Yeah. I built the number one ranked Google Ads agency in the world. So, that's probably my claim to fame. When we sold, we sold in October 2022, I had 200 clients. I had $100 million in ad spend under management, which is a lot. You know, the average ad agency gets 20 or maybe 30 clients topside. So, to scale beyond that requires just a different framework and different thinking. That was my second exit. My first exit was a real estate lead generation company called Geo Flip. We had the highest performing real estate investment campaign on the planet for seven years, and I sold that to my partner. So, I've done a pretty good job at cracking the code specifically as it relates to traffic. I think if you're listening to this and you're running a business, what most people don't realize is traffic is the single biggest problem you face. It's why retailers always say location, location, location. Really, what they're saying is traffic. If you think about it, I don't care about the perspective you assume. Like, from an e-commerce perspective, the thing that's insane to me, dude, and I know this because I managed $100 million of other people's money, people spent more money on traffic than they did every single cost center in some instances combined. So, traffic is more than cost of goods, more than fulfillment, more than shipping, more than customer service, and for many products, it's more than all those things combined, which means Google and Meta are making more money than you are. You work for them. And that's true if you're selling SAS products, e-commerce products, professional services, sometimes it evens out depending on your LT, but traffic is the biggest problem that people face. And so for every business that I've built, I've solved for traffic first. And that's a pro tip that I can't begin to tell you the value of if you really begin to integrate it. If you solve for traffic first, and I hate to say what I'm about to say because it sounds a little arrogant, but everything else about business is easy. You know, you get more at bats, more at bats, more at bats, because business is about reps. Well, imagine being in a batting cage where every single time somebody pitches at you, hit or miss, you got to go find somebody else who is willing to pitch at you.

Yes.

That’s a shitty way to learn to bat. You want to just sit there and swing and swing and swing and swing and swing, and when you've solved for traffic, when you know where your customers are coming from, when your acquisition strategy is predictable, everything about business becomes so much easier because you get more at bats. And the more at bats you have, the better you get. The better you get at onboarding, fulfillment, ascension, reputation, you know? It doesn't matter. So, solve for traffic first. I won't start businesses now unless I've solved for traffic. And, more to that point, I start businesses around traffic problems that I see. So very often somebody else's problem is your opportunity. Somebody else is getting traffic they don't want, You know? There's complaints coming in through a message board or people that have a problem that it it's not being solved. That's traffic in a very very real way. It's traffic that's problem aware. So, you know, you want to talk about the best business you could ever have is just to step in and be like, "hey, I can solve this problem for you."

Okay, great. I'm already pumped. I can't tell you the number of client that we have, and being a executive coaching and training company, we don't really solve the traffic issue, but I can't tell you the amount of coaching sessions that revolve around exactly what you're talking about. And here's what I hear commonly, and I'm sure you do too, even more with what you do now, which is, man, we're so good at what we do. Like, our customers love us. We're just good at the craft of what it is that we're passionate about, but man, we can't just get enough at bats or enough traffic. You'll call it traffic, or we need to market more, sell more, where does one start and does it matter the industry, whether it's service or manufacturing or whatever? Where would you direct people to start to solve that problem?

It's what you're doing right now. I think the best solution to the traffic problem is community. And there's a reason for that. When you pay for traffic, paid traffic is the most expensive form of traffic. And dude, I can actually prove with data that we're in a traffic bubble. And what I mean by that is people are spending more on traffic than the traffic is worth, more often than not and it's because Google and Meta both- it's a crazy monopoly and Ponzi scheme that they have. When you run Google and Meta campaigns, you'll actually pay less for both CPM and CPC, which means cost per impression and cost per click. You pay less until the mechanism sees that it's working for you and you’re getting conversions, and then the cost of your traffic goes up. So, basically, both of the entities, you know, as we see you make money, we charge you more money. Which, I don't know why there's not an antitrust suit there. I don't understand it. Like, that's a congressional hearing waiting to happen. And it's just a good example of paid traffic being the worst kind of traffic. And I built the number one ranked Google Ads agency in the world, and I can tell you now that I'm on the other end of that, don't run Google Ads if you can afford not to, because you're effectively at the mercy of this this pool. You get to make one offer and if they say no, you've already paid for your chance, you know? And it's $20 a click or $50 a click or, if you're in personal injury, it's $500 a click. That means that somebody came to your website, clicked, was there for a fraction of a second, left, and you paid 500 bucks.

Boom.

The way to build a business around a repository of traffic that you control is to build a community, and the way to build a community is to give. Give first, give last, give more. A podcast is a community, a YouTube channel is a community, a school community is a community, a mastermind is a community, but what people do wrong with these communities is they make them vending machines. And what I mean by that is, hey, if you give me a little, I'll give you a little. You give me a buck and I give you candy bar. Nobody's ever had a positive relationship with a vending machine. Nobody's ever been loyal to a vending machine, right? The folks that really earn loyalty are the people that build communities that give, first and foremost. And you see this. That's what social media is. When people are like, oh, go out there, be an authority, be a thought leader, you're just building a community and you're building a community around value. I'm giving value and then someday the law of reciprocity says value is going to come back. So, if you're in business, and I can't stress the hyperbole enough, if you're in any business, you have the opportunity to build a community, even if it's small. A little teeny tiny community is okay. You actually don't need massive numbers and that's where people go wrong. They think, oh man, I shot a video and it only got 200 views. Are you kidding me? That's 200 souls.

Right.

You know? That's 200 bank accounts, 200 families. On an anthropological level, go picture 200 people in a room. That's a huge room. Thirty people in a room is a big room.

Sure.

So, when you're building these communities, it's okay if you're going after small numbers because you're going after quality, not quantity. Now, the reason that this is hard is because communities take time to build. And every business is like, I need traffic now. Well, great. Good for you. God bless. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

Sure.

But if you don't start today, you're not going to have the tree 20 years from now. So, start building a community. And dude, the community is the wealth from which you can always draw. I had an 8-figure exit on the back of a community. My YouTube channel had less than 30,000 subscribers when we sold. Almost all of the value to my business came from our YouTube channel. All the customers, all the employees, all the visibility, all my opportunities. 30,000 subscribers in YouTube adjusted for margin of error is zero. That's like the smallest YouTube channel. You couldn't sell that channel for anything, and yet, I was able to produce an 8-figure business.

So, dive into that a little bit. Just explain that scenario, because there's already listeners like me, I’m in the listeners seat right now, that are going to go, okay, that sounds cool but give me some details there.

Yeah dude. You know what's funny is when I started my Google Ads agency, when we niched down to being Google specific, because when we started solutions-8 it was it was a full funnel agency, and we did everything for everybody and we did SEO and PPC and web design and graphic design and video production and you name it. Basically, if you paid me money, I was willing to do it.

Yeah.

Which is, I think, the way most people do it.

Sure. That’s right.

And then as we began to cut off services, we became more profitable and more efficient. So, we finally niched down into Google Ads. When I did that, Google Ads was already a saturated industry. Massively saturated. You throw a rock, you hit somebody who does Google Ads. I did something that most people don't do. I started producing videos. So, it's already a saturated industry. There's, you know, I mean, Mike Rhodes who's a buddy of mine now, he had the bestselling book and Perry Marshall had the bestselling course and Isaac Gradinsky had the bestselling Udemi, and you would think there's no room in Google ads for a thought leader. I shot one video every day. At the 120-day mark, I got from 0 to 120 days every business day. At the 120-day mark, all of a sudden YouTube starts recommending my videos, because YouTube wants to see that you're consistent. My videos dude were not earthshattering. You can go see them right now today. Production quality was low. It's just me in front of this exact webcam that I'm looking at you now, which has got to be 9 years old at this point.

Yeah.

And I'd get on and I wasn't even an authority. You know what's funny? I built the number one rank Google ads agency in the world. I've never run a Google campaign myself ever.

Yeah. I want to ask you about that also, but let's continue with this story.

 

Well, it put me in a position of being, like you just said, I'm also a listener, I would start the videos with look at what I learned today. So, I'd go talk to at the time my vendor and then when we brought it in house, my staff and I'd say, you know, what's new, what's weird, what's different, and because I wasn't a Google ad manager, I was actually able to see the anomalies better than people that were doing it on a day-to-day basis. I would just ask the questions and distill that into a video. You shoot a video every single day for 120 days and all of a sudden you're an authority. You're a thought leader because nobody else is willing to do the work. I don't care what you do. You're underwriting mortgages, you're selling insurance, you're an aesthetician, you're doing nails, you're a dry cleaner. Like, name the industry. There's all these little FAQs, questions, issues, you know? Confessions, comments that people have that you can address. If you can't create a video every single day, I don't believe you're an authority in your space.

Good call. Yeah.

If you can't create a video, if people come to me like, I don't know to talk about, great, you're not an expert. You want to tell me you're good at what you do? Dude, I know nothing about windows and I could right now spread the bushy babble about, you know, single pane versus double pane, how do you clean the window? How do you tint the window? You know what I mean? Like especially with chat GPT. And now I'm not telling you to use GPT generated content. I'm telling you to use it from an ideation perspective. If you can't create a video every single day, you're not an expert in your field. Create a video every day and watch. Do that every single day for 120 days because nobody's willing to do the work.

That's right.

And when you do, there's so much room at the bottom. There's so much room at the bottom.

Yeah.

The empty space is at the top.

Yes.

I mean there's so many people that are just running around being like, "Oh, I wish I had more customers." Well, go create a video every day for 120 days. And on day 121, you're going to have it. The best part about that, man, when I had solutions 8, our sales calls weren't sales calls. People would call and be like, "oh, I've been watching you for nine months. We've just been waiting to pull the trigger. Where do I sign?"

Right.

They're already indoctrinated. You know what I mean? They already know you because you've provided them with so much value.

Yeah. It's a good call. Okay, I do have to ask the question. You ran the number one Google ad agency in the world for a while, but you didn't run Google ads. Just talk me through that.

Entrepreneurship is not fulfillment. One of my favorite personal frameworks. Entrepreneurship is not fulfillment. As a matter of fact, I actually think the two are generally speaking mutually exclusive. If you own a bakery, you shouldn't be head baker because those two things are so entirely different from just a hat perspective. When you're baking, like that's a creative endeavor. It's passion fueled and it's myopic in scope and you need to be very specific, and if you're trying to be the head baker and the entrepreneur at the same time, the issue with being the entrepreneur and the technician is the entrepreneur is looking for expansion opportunities. The job of the entrepreneur is to multiply, the job of the technician is to simplify. By definition, the job of the entrepreneur is to multiply. How do I get more customers? How do I expand into more regions? How do we get a broader location? How do we grow more? Bigger? The job of the technician is how do I do this more efficiently? How do I shave costs? How do I cut? Less. More efficient. More specific. Now some people can do both of those things and God bless them.

Sure.

Generally speaking, I believe that you're better off as the entrepreneur not to be the chef, not to be the mechanic, not to be the doctor. And you actually have a more objective view because the technician, God bless them, and they should do this, they get almost religious in their commitment and it's the reason that Blockbuster didn't come up with Netflix. Once you're the technician, once you're the surgeon, you think to yourself, man, this is the way that surgery is done. This is the way that I learned to do surgery. This is the only way that we should be doing surgery. And the minute there's this new fangled, you know, who what's it, that to you is repellent. And so should it be because you should actually be repelled by it, right? Like you want the tried and true as a technician. As an entrepreneur, you want to be like, hey, is this faster, cheaper, better, easier?

Right.

And those two roles are mutually exclusive. And so, you know, I had the highest performing real estate investment campaign on the planet before I was a real estate investor or knew anything about lead generation. I owned the largest monastery community in English speaking world. I'm not a monatory school owner or a trained monostorian. I built the number one ranked Google ads agency on the planet. I know nothing about running Google ads. I can't say no nothing. I can have these conversations and I've never run a Google ad campaign myself end to end, and it's because I don't rely on my own abilities. The thing that I rely on are other people. I do the one thing I'm best at in life, which is talent acquisition. I see people and I see the miracle that every human being is, and the real key to entrepreneurship is finding these little miracles and saying, "You know what? You do that better than anybody I've ever seen in my in my life. You should sit here." And each person has that ability to like really flourish and do something that would change the course of humanity. And I'm not exaggerating. And it’s our job as business owners and entrepreneurs to identify what that is and then to just support them. And really support usually means get the F out of the way. Like, your intervention is not helpful or necessary here.

The best of the best. I hear that. I've had the pleasure and the honor and opportunity to interview some of the coolest people in the world, which you're becoming one of those people in my mind as you and I talk right now, by the way. And that is a thread that just runs through our conversations, which is hire the best and get out of their way. And the entrepreneurs that do that the best seem to really scale and do well and they're happy and everybody's making money and the organization is good and they're serving the world in a really great way. Like, it just seems like, I don't know. It just seems like that's a common thread. You talking about that topic makes me think of when I was doing my research, I did see a video of yours where you were talking about the difference between dumping versus delegation. I think you already kind of touched on that, but would you mind just teasing that out a little bit?

Yeah, I call it the black box of delegation. So, if you want to delegate properly and appropriately, first, to delegate a 15-minute task probably takes an hour to two. Which, that's not a good exchange on the front end. It's really frustrating. And when you're overwhelmed and you have a 15-minute task in front of you and you think to yourself like, gosh, this is going to take at least an hour to explain and then another to do it.

I’ll just do it myself.

Just do it myself. The issue with that is if you do that 15-minute task every single day, by week two, you're net positive. In week three, we're not talking about compound interest.

Yeah.

So, one, you have to just put yourself in the frame of mind that this is an investment. With that frame of mind, I call it the black box of delegation, and the black box of delegation says, I'm going to provide you, let's say, Jason, that you were working with me, and I was delegating a task to you. I'd say, Jason, here's everything that you have at your disposal. Here are all the resources. Here are my brand guidelines. Here's the software applications that we have. Here's the amount of money I'm willing to spend. Here are the other stakeholders, vendors, employees, whatever. Everything that you have in the box of Legos that you can use to build this thing. Here's all of it. And that's important because very often when people fail at delegating, they're not empowering the employee with enough of the resources.

Yes.

So that's our starting point. Our ending point? Here's my desired end result. And this is important because very often people are delegating, and they don't realize they're really micromanaging. They're delegating tasks, not projects. That doesn't help you and it doesn't help the resource.

Yeah.

So, you say, "My desire desired end result, I want the Eiffel Tower. I want a brand-new onboarding program for all my clients. I want a brand-new training program. I want a book. I want a whatever. I want a finished website. My desired end result. And the more specific you can get about that desired end result, the better. Here's where you start, here's where you end. Everything that happens in the middle, the black box, none of your freaking business. Stay out of it.

Yeah.

And this is where entrepreneurs fail miserably. Now, you have to trust the person that you're delegating to. So, what you can do is you can delegate smaller and small boxes. So, let's say to use something that's accessible because most entrepreneurs have done it or thought about it, write a book. Maybe you don't want to delegate writing the entire book, but in the very beginning, you can delegate the table of contents. Jason, I want to write a new book on delegation and what I’d really like you to do is go look at every YouTube video, podcast, and book that exists on delegation and do a distillation for me. What topics do they talk about? How do they talk about those topics? And what do you think the table of content should be?

Yep.

Here's the input. Here's the output. And then you come to me with your table of contents. And this is the other piece that's really important. Do not critique subjective values. Hey man, I don't like the font you used here. I don't like the spacing. Shut up. Shut up.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter. You critique objective values because authorship creates ownership. The more you tweak, change the square to circle, change blue to red, the more you tweak, the more likely it is that your hyper valuable, hyper intelligent resource begins to take their hands off the wheel.

Yeah.

Because subconsciously, it's like, oh, you're driving now, and I refuse to put my name on something that you've tinkered with. What entrepreneurs don't realize, they do a really bad job at putting themselves in the in the shoes of an employee. Employees still care. They still take ownership. They just do it in a very different way. And they want ownership of their department or their task or their project or their whatever. So, the more you can let them keep those subjective decisions, the more ownership they're going to assume and the better that project gets. And if there's something about that that you don't like, hey, I really don't like the colors, and this doesn't match our brand, great. Did you give him a brand guideline on the front end?

Ah, it’s your fault.

That’s on you on the front end. So, better inputs, well- defined outputs, blackbox, don't touch it.

 

Damn, that's good. You wrote a book. I know that's not why you're on our podcast, but you wrote a book called You Versus Google. What's that all about?

That's so funny, dude. I didn't write that book. I shot videos. There was a young lady named Patience Hurlburt-Lawton, she's one of the best employees I've had in my entire life, and I delegated the book to Patience. I said, "Go watch all the videos John and I have shot and make a book out of it." It was the number one best-selling book in marketing and advertising when it launched. And then the entity that acquired me, they owned the IP and they’ve actually chosen to deprecate the book. I don’t know why. It's no longer in print, which is kind of sad because we worked really hard on that damn thing. It's a weird thing that happens when you sell your business.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. I get it. Kasim, I've got 39 questions, but I'm only going to go with a couple more, I promise. You build things and you do it really well. Where do you see AI going, which I know is such an open-ended question, and knowing who our audience is, what would you recommend them to do right now? Here we are in April of 2025. What would you recommend them doing when it comes to AI?

My answer is not impartial. I own a staffing agency. This is exactly what I do. So, forgive me and feel free to edit out anything that feels overly self-promotional.

I'm asking, man.

We train AI enabled executive assistants. Here's what that means. We train people who know how to use AI to go and be assistants to entrepreneurs, C- level executives, you know, directors, managers, etc. Because I actually don't think your listeners highest and best use is learning AI. How could it be? It changes too fast. It's too transient. Right now it's ethereal, ephemeral, it's a cloud. And so, if you spent two hours every single day of your life learning AI, you're actually not climbing the AI hill, because at this moment, and this will change, but at this moment there are no established best practices, and really what you're doing is you're spinning your wheels. That’s one. Two, and I'd love to be challenged on this, AI cannot be a top- down endeavor. Meaning, you know, a business owner, a manager, an efficiency expert can't come into a business and be like, "Oh, use AI here, here, and here." Not the way it works. The person who's going to really understand how to use the AI is the person on the assembly line, because the purpose behind AI is the completion of a task end to end, but those tasks are happening on micro scales. So, you have a video editor who says, "Gosh, every video that we produce needs to be transcribed. Descript works really well for transcription. Premiere works really well for cutting and then this thing works really well for that. And as the systems change, they get to update and iterate. You, Mr. and Mrs. business owner, can't and shouldn't know that, because you're not on the assembly line. So, AI needs to be ground up. It needs to be a ground up initiative and ground up endeavor. So that means, a, your people should be incentivized. You need to align incentives, because most employees see AI as forced obsolescence. It's like, oh, the minute the machine can do my job, I'm out. So, what you want to do is promise your employees, hey, the minute you can find a machine that does your job, I ascend you, and that's why really small, really nimble organizations are going to thrive and win. Quicken Loans is screwed, right? Or the Quicken Loan employee is screwed, we should say, because that's a job that just gets deprecated and now they're out, but if you have employees that can be really thoughtful, really intentional, really intelligent about this is what we're doing, this is the desired end result, here's where AI intervention is appropriate, here's where it's not, that's the key.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Anytime you try to use AI wholesale you realize it's good enough to be interesting and cool but not good enough to publish. Like right now I can't tell AI go write me my book on delegation, but I could use AI to iterate, edit, you know, come up with maybe some of the graphics etc. and a thoughtful intelligent human being can assist you in doing that. So, I think that from an AI perspective, business owners have to have that embedded in their culture and the way to do that is to have an AI advocate. And I think that should be your assistant, because your assistant is in your email inbox. They're in your calendar. They know what you're doing. They know the business. They know the mission. They know the vision. They know the values. They're properly trained on AI. So, they're the ones that can help from a ground up perspective and really begin to inject AI into the business. And I think that's the best and most effective way to do it. What's crazy to me is these business owners that keep running around being like, "Look what AI can do." The problem with anything AI can do, again, by definition, if AI can do it, it's no longer valuable from a monetary perspective. It's still probably a valuable initiative, but it's no longer something you can charge for. So, if you're like, "Look what AI can do." Great. That's no longer a billable task.

That's right. Yep.

The question to ask a business owner is, "What can AI not do?" That's where you make your money.

Yeah.

So, what AI can do scales your business, but decreases your monetization opportunity because it's by definition commoditized, and commoditization means efficiency and efficiency means a decrease in profitability. Right? That's what that means. That's the way the economy works. It's the invisible hand. So, you as the business owner, your employees should be looking for what AI can do. You as the business owner should be looking for what are the things that AI can't do. It's a complete reframe.

Yeah.

It's where are the inefficiencies? Where does my business not scale? Where are the things where human intervention still makes sense and people will still pay me to do this job?

It's interesting that you say, you know, hey, the business leaders maybe shouldn't try to keep up on every new thing that Chat does or AI does. It makes me think back to the late 80s, early 90s when my parents sent me off to computer camp one summer. I was like, "Okay, fine. We'll go do this." And we were learning coding. Like, I remember one of the coolest things we did was we taught the computer how to write our name like an infinite amount of times. And I remember thinking then like, "Okay, this is kind of cool, but this isn't what I want to do and the idea of, I want to do something with what computers can do, not me coding what the computers can do. And so, anyways, a little bit of a tangent.

It's the perfect analogy.

Yeah. What you just said about AI, I feel like maybe we are with AI now in early 2025 where computing and the internet wasn't out, or if it was wasn't available to me in ' 89 or ‘90 or ’91, you know, but what it can do, now I'm using computers all the time and the internet all the time. I'm a user of all the cool things that it can do and I think what you just said is for business owners and entrepreneurs, you need to be aware, right? Just like we're aware of the world, but maybe we don't need to be experts at all of it, but we could delegate that. And so yeah, that's what I think about when you say that. Secondly, I do want to know, because I think when you said, hey, we help executives and business owners find AI enabled EAS, I think people's ears perked up then, so please do talk about that a little bit. And I'd like you to frame it in the way of, hey, if I'm an executive or I'm running a business, I want you to paint a picture of having that person versus not having that person, what life looks like.

Well, a really wise man gave me a quote. He said, "If you don't have an assistant, you are one."

Who was that wise man? What the heck?

Which I really like. One of the issues that entrepreneurs run into especially is they have these tasks that need to be accomplished, and when they delegate the task, they do the arithmetic and they say, "Gosh, it took you four hours to do this task that I can do in 1 hour. So, it's more efficient for me to just do that task.” The issue with that is your time as an entrepreneur is worth at least $500 a month.

Yeah.

Excuse me. At least $500 an hour.

An hour.

At least $500 an hour. And we know that because businesses sell at a multiple. And generally speaking, the minimum multiple is 6x. So, your business is worth at least $500 an hour because every hour that you spend as an investment in that business can be 6X And I think your time should be worth thousands of dollars an hour under that paradigm, but 500, the reason I use that number is because every entrepreneur agrees with it. At least 500 bucks an hour. So, what that means is if it takes you an hour to do something, that's $500 loss, and as long as your assistant is less than $125 an hour, that's a great trade. You're the least scalable part of your business. There's a tragedy to that because every entrepreneur says to themselves like, "Oh gosh, if I can only clone myself." Well, you can. You can by taking all the tasks that you don't need to do and getting rid of them. And I actually don't even believe delegation is the first task. I learned this from Steve Napoletano, who is a brilliant entrepreneur. When you're looking at your task list in your calendar, which is that's everything you should be doing, first question is, can I eliminate this? And the answer is yes, way more often than you think, if you're willing to get ruthless. But very often it means hurting people's feelings or, you know, killing sacred cows. So, I'll let you contend with that because it's a come to Jesus moment that people have to do on their own. But, can I eliminate this? The answer is no. Can I automate this? And the other paradigm that I want people to assume is the answer is yes 100% of the time. In the world of AI, the only question is, is the endeavor of automation worth it? So, it might take $100,000 in development costs to automate this task, and it's probably not worth it. But can I automate this? Gmail filters and Zapier, if you know those two things, you can automate most tasks. Can I eliminate? Can I automate? If the answer is no to both, question three is can I delegate? If the answer is no to question three, you don't have the right person on staff, and now you know who to go hire.

Yeah.

When you get past this three-question filter, the only things left should be your particular realm of genius. This is what God put you on earth to do and that's where you should be spending 100% of your time. So, to have an effective assistant, it's not about what the assistant costs you, it's about what the assistant saves you. And what's nice is there's actually two levers there, because there is not just this the saving, but there's also what the assistant can make you. What I tell entrepreneurs is if you manage your own inbox and calendar, that alone, because most entrepreneurs statistically speaking are spending 3 to four hours a day inboxing calendars. Three to four hours a day. Imagine having 3 to four hours to yourself. And that's a really easy thing for an assistant to take over. And then, you know, amplify that with there's a smart intelligent person learning your business, understanding your employees, understanding the processes and beginning to say here's process improvement, here's AI, here's iteration. What's really fun about the assistant role is it's an incubator. They're not going to stay your assistant for long. My first executive assistant became my director of automations. My second EA became my director of social. My third EA became my CTO. Managed my entire exit and is now my business partner and my best friend. Like, your EA is going to prove themselves. You know, my friend Calvin Carelli, his EA became his chief of staff. Because there's this person who's sitting there doing everything you need him to do and what people do is so wrong, dude, it is so funny. If you give a human being 10 things to do, they're going to suck at two, they're going to do six just fine, and they're going to do two better than you've ever seen a person do those two things. And what we've been trained to do is focus on the two things they suck at, and we say, "Oh, don't worry, Jason. We're going to get you there. We're going to do a performance improvement program and you're going to take this training. You're going to shadow Sally."

Never works.

Yeah. And it's like, just don't make them do those things. So don't hire an EA thinking, Oh, you're going to become my CTO, because maybe they're way better at the creative piece or maybe the human piece, but hire an EA and just pay attention to like, gosh, you're so good at X. X just became their job or their role. That's how I like to build businesses. All my businesses are just flywheels off of other businesses because I'll give you a really specific example. We have Pareto Talent, which is my executive staffing agency. We started doing podcast booking. That's how I got you. And you saw beforehand, I have a dossier on every podcast host.

It's legit. Well done.

It's great. Like, my process is rock solid. I'm getting on super legitimate podcast. What’s really funny about it is now that I built this process, I have an agency. It's a podcast booking agency waiting to go. And as soon as we have the time, effort, and energy to put into it, I need to peel off the person that built that process for me.

Another business.

Dude. The director of operations for my podcast booking agency, because they're so so good at it. The last quote I got was $1,500 per placed podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. Good ones.

Yeah, good ones, right? And I'm doing that at a fraction of that. So, I know where the leverageable opportunity is. So, dude, I went so far field. I'm so sorry.

No, this is good.

If you don't have an assistant, it's the most impact for the least input. People just have to be really realistic about what they're going to be capable of in the first 90 days. That's the other thing. Entrepreneurs hire somebody and they're like, "Oh, they didn't walk on water."

No.

Or because they're not delegating right, so they get rid of them. You have to be patient and just wait and see what they can do.

Yeah. No, no question. No question. Well, man, I feel like we could make this short form podcast into a long form just because there's so much more that we could dive into together. Again, an open-ended question for you, Kasim, but is there anything that we did not cover today that you would have hoped that we would have touched on?

I think the last point I'd like to make about the assistance is look international. We, as small business owners sadly don't have access to the same talent pool that the Fortune 1000 has access to because we can't afford to compete. You know, everybody wants to work for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, right? Even if you could match that salary, you can't match the high-rise or the $12 croissants. When you go international, you get an unbelievably adept person, but you become the aspirational employer. If you're in Bogota or the Philippines or Delhi, to work for an American company is a big big big big deal.

Yep.

So, if you're a US employer and you've never experienced an employee being grateful for the opportunity, which has been hard for me, when I hire Red, White, and Blues, and I'm not trying to slander our collective environment. I'm super proud to be American. I love our country. I'm related to Thomas Jefferson. Blah blah blah blah blah. And we've won. We've won. And there's no real reason to be employed any longer. And so, we're experiencing that backlash in our labor force.

Yeah.

And when you go to emerging nations, man, there's anthropological significance in the way that you can change people's lives. And you experience that as an employer. They're so grateful. If you treat them well, pay them well, they don't they don't have that at home, generally speaking, in my personal experience. So, go international.

I will say to your point, I was literally coaching somebody, and I don't know that this has ever come up, but this morning it did, so it's kind of serendipitous that you just said what you said. I was coaching an executive this morning and they're offshoring part of their just a piece of their customer service. And I said, how's that going? How's that project going? And he said some things related to just what you said. He said, first of all, they're excellent. They're doing an amazing job. Okay, great. That was one step. And he said, and I didn't even ask him this, he said, "But here's what I've noticed. They're so appreciative of the work and they're so proud to be doing the work and helping us in the way that they're helping us, unlike any employee that I've ever had before." He's like, "They just love it, and the culture is good." I was like, these were these intangible things that just came out of his mouth. He's like, "We actually love it. It's going great." And so, it's interesting that you're saying that right now, saying, "This is what it could look like." I literally just coached somebody this morning that said exactly that. So, yeah, it's real life.

I love that, man. There are some cultural nuances, linguistic nuances, things that are, you know, there's some friction. You got to get over it. But, if you're willing to push past those, when I sold my business, I had 100 employees. Six from the US. Everybody else was somewhere else in the world. I had 40% margins in an industry that aims at 15%. HubSpot says that the high-water mark for an agency is 15 %. I had 40. And it's because I had an economy of scale nobody else had. I was hiring. Dude, I got bloodthirsty assassins, killers, like, the most amazing employees you've ever seen in entire life. I had a young man who worked for me. The average Indian specialist makes, I don't want to give away Unar's secret sauce, so maybe I should be really careful now that I've named him, but he was making nine times what the average Indian Google ad specialist make, paid by Google. He was making nine times working for me. He managed my biggest client, a publicly traded supplement company that was paying me $54,000 a month. So, it didn't matter what I was paying him, because I was making 54. But I got clients like that because I had the best people. The best of the best of the best of the best of the best. And man, thank God for those people out there. They're just dying for the opportunity, and we can give it to them. I encourage people to go to Latin America. The language is more accessible, the Latin accent isn't quite as repellent to the American ear as some of the Asian accents can be. I'm allowed to say that because my father's Pakistani, especially if you have a conservative audience. Time zones aren't an issue. They're not quite as tech savvy as East Asia or South Asia, but they're definitely above board, above the line, and the financial arbitrage is extraordinary.

Yeah.

You know, so if you have the opportunity, go try it.

I have a feeling as a result of this conversation, people are going to want to reach out to you. How do they do that? What's the best way to make that happen?

Yeah. If they want to hire an EA, they can go to paretotalent.com. My short link is Kasim.me. All my businesses are linked there. All my socials. So, come be buddies.

Perfect.

Appreciate you having me on, buddy.

Well, you and I are buddies now. I appreciate your time, the value. I want more, man. We'll have to do this again. I appreciate your willingness, your authenticity, and obviously your expertise. So, there you have it, Insight interviews audience. Kasim, thank you, sir.

Thanks, Jason. Appreciate you, buddy.

Well, well, well. That's the first guest that I've had with one named Kasim. You can go to his website Kasim.me I wrote down all kinds of things. Gosh, what does it mean when he had this whole thing about entrepreneurship is not fulfillment? And he had a great explanation of that. And then I don't know, this is the one and only one that I'll leave you with. I put a box around it and I underlined it. Nobody has ever been loyal to a vending machine. So, anything that you can do to humanize and personalize your business is just a really good idea. And he talked about building community and that whole example that he gave of doing a video a day for 120 days. Yeah, I haven't met anybody that has tried that. And so, that alone is still a separator. So anyways, those were my insights, but it doesn't much matter what my insights were, what really matters, as we say at the end of every episode of the Insight Interviews, is what insights did you have?

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