The Truth About Scaling: Myths and Opportunities with Kasim Aslam

[00:00:00] Kasim: First time you screw up my fault. So sorry. I didn't explain things well, obviously. Second time you screw up your fault. What the hell's going on here? Third time you're fired. I don't have time to babysit you.

[00:00:15] Suneet: All right, welcome everybody back to another episode of the reside platform podcast. My name is Sunit Agrawal. I'll be your host today. And I'm joined by my good friend, the very illustrious for episode number two.

[00:00:31] Kasim: Dude,

[00:00:33] Suneet: Qasim Aslan. Qasim, what's going on, bro?

[00:00:36] Kasim: I think I've done three of your shows, by the way. I think this is episode number three. Yeah, you jackass. Thank you for remembering.

[00:00:43] Suneet: will have to go back and check. I know we've scheduled about eight times.

[00:00:47] Kasim: Yeah, we've had a lot of things move around. We're both very busy.

[00:00:50] Suneet: So Kostam, we just got back from Mexico for the Driven Mastermind. Why don't you just really quick, tell everybody what you do, what you've done and talk about the Driven Mastermind because it's been real, I love it.

[00:01:06] Suneet: Wasn't I the first person ever in it? I don't know, but

[00:01:08] Kasim: I think you were the very first person who signed up.

[00:01:10] Suneet: yeah. So tell everybody who you are, what you do. We can talk a little bit about driven. That was a

[00:01:17] Kasim: Yeah, I think that was our best driven yet, to be honest with you. I've built five, seven and eight figure professional services agencies. I built the largest Google ads agency in the world. I sold it in October, 2022. I built one of the top real estate investment lead generation agencies sold that in 2019.

[00:01:34] Kasim: I dude, I know, I know agency really well, which it's not a brag because it's the dumbest business model in the world. Right. So I'm like, I know the dumbest business model in the world. Yeah. It's like, it's like being like, I know print really well. I'm great at direct mail. You know what I mean? But like, for some reason I cracked the code on agency work and it, you know, it pays the bills.

[00:01:52] Kasim: So here I am I own driven mastermind with two buddies, Perry and Jason Perry's really the, The star of the show. Like he's the godfather of digital marketing smartest guys ever lived. We had a call with him this morning and he, dude, he just blew everybody's mind on that

[00:02:06] Suneet: Blew my mind. I think I was going to text you right after, like, while he was talking, but I just got lost in what he was saying. It was really good.

[00:02:13] Kasim: it was supposed to be on those calls for 90 minutes and he was done at minute 45 and I was just like, so I guess we're done now. I don't know what else there is to say, but he, he told everybody what to expect in 2025 and, and we all know he's right. Like

[00:02:26] Suneet: I know he's right.

[00:02:27] Kasim: Yeah,

[00:02:28] Suneet: I've been listening to him since 2017 and I'm

[00:02:31] Suneet: make more money from it. I'm a smarter person from it.

[00:02:34] Kasim: there's never been a human that can skate to where the puck is going better than Perry

[00:02:37] Kasim: Belcher.

[00:02:38] Suneet: the way that you say that is very accurate. A hundred percent. So driven mastermind for those who are in this podcast, the only ones who would probably know is if they heard our episode, one of our previous episodes or heard me talk about it, why don't you just tell them we can

[00:02:52] Kasim: we have, I think the top mastermind in the world. It's all about obsessive business growth, profitability. I hate to use the word scale, but we can even use the word scale. I actually think scale is

[00:03:01] Suneet: talk about scale too, on this podcast. Yes.

[00:03:03] Kasim: Scale is the dumbest fricking construct in the entrepreneurial environment. That the fact that we've sold everybody on this shit, it's like, Hey, here's what doesn't profit and will instantly commoditize your business.

[00:03:14] Kasim: Why don't you go try to do this aggressively? Yeah.

[00:03:17] Suneet: Okay. We we'll, we'll come back to scale. So tell us more about the mastermind because I

[00:03:21] Kasim: Uh, we meet four times a year in person. It's we've capped the membership at a hundred people. We're actually at threshold now, but you know, you people cycle out every year of a mastermind. That's so, if you want to join the mastermind, come give us 35 grand to be my friend join the wait list. We meet every week for 90 minutes.

[00:03:39] Kasim: We have a dude, the value and the benefits are unreal. Like you get everything that Perry Belcher has ever produced. Everything that

[00:03:44] Kasim: Jason Flatman's

[00:03:44] Kasim: Ever.

[00:03:45] Suneet: Ever. Wait a second. It's not something small. It's a fucking

[00:03:50] Kasim: he's so old, dude. Like hundreds of years of content.

[00:03:53] Suneet: Yeah, it feels like it. He puts out a hundred years worth of content every week.

[00:03:57] Kasim: year. Yeah. He's nuts. So all his workshops, all his courses, everything I've ever done, you get like, you know, badass benefit.

[00:04:04] Kasim: Like I have a an EA, I place EAs and we do a bootcamp every month to train new EAs. And if you're a driven member, we'll train your EA for free. You know, you get to go to Perry's breaking point for free. You get to go to Jason's events for free. Like basically anything we're not doing with a partner where we can just pop somebody in there.

[00:04:22] Kasim: If you're a driven member, you get right in. So you have to do a million gross rev. And more than that, you have to bring something to the table. You have to like, cause our dude, that's the other thing. Have you noticed, I don't know if this has been your experience. We have more members that own masterminds than any mastermind I've ever seen in my life.

[00:04:38] Suneet: No, I'm not hip to all that. I know Steve owns one.

[00:04:41] Kasim: Dude, that's the thing. Like Allie Bloyd's a member, Chris Mercer's a member, Tim Bratton's a member, like all these people.

[00:04:47] Suneet: has a mastermind?

[00:04:48] Kasim: If he doesn't, he should fricking. But you know what I mean? Like our mastermind, you bro, you're a good example. Our

[00:04:56] Suneet: yeah, we have a mastermind,

[00:04:57] Kasim: Yeah, that's what I mean. So we're full. We're like the next level.

[00:05:00] Kasim: We're all the people that actually own the other masterminds driven is where the real players go to learn how, how to like what's next, what to do. Perry Belcher is the godfather of digital marketing. Jason Flatland is the best pitch man has ever lived. And dude, our faculty, are you kidding me? You know, Steve Sims, Rachel Miller, Reed Florin, Reuben

[00:05:18] Suneet: Me and Reed talk every day. Me and Rachel talk every other day.

[00:05:22] Kasim: Yeah, Reed's a, he's a beast. He's gonna die at 40 with the amount of work he does. I don't know how he keeps that up.

[00:05:30] Suneet: He's a stay at home dad. That's what he does. He's holding the baby while his wife's at work.

[00:05:34] Kasim: Yeah, that's so funny.

[00:05:36] Suneet: It's so funny.

[00:05:38] Kasim: I really love that

[00:05:38] Suneet: just going on the computer, just type it.

[00:05:42] Kasim: He shows up to the calls with his baby in hand. I'm like, that kid's gonna learn some new words.

[00:05:49] Suneet: Yeah.

[00:05:49] Kasim: how did I do, bro? That's the Driven pitch. Come join

[00:05:51] Suneet: think it was great. And I get a lot of value value out of it. Yeah. I mean, I think I was the first member and it's been super transformative and

[00:06:01] Kasim: if you weren't, let's just say you were from that one.

[00:06:04] Suneet: okay. Well, I thought I was,

[00:06:06] Kasim: I think you were.

[00:06:07] Suneet: Okay. Well, whatever. I'll take like second, I, I guess, but it's been super good for me. And I've learned a lot and it's helped me develop into, you know, I've, I grow from it every year.

[00:06:20] Suneet: It'll be my third year now. So it's been super good. So we just went to Mexico and I want to touch on this next. Cause we had our driven family, but no kids allowed retreat because it's all included. It's a, it's a adults only resort in Mexico,

[00:06:37] Kasim: you on the yacht?

[00:06:39] Suneet: yeah, it was on the, uh,

[00:06:40] Kasim: Well, I got sick. I went below deck and fell asleep. I got seasick, dude. I don't, I'm not gonna do the yacht next year.

[00:06:46] Suneet: I took dramamine.

[00:06:47] Kasim: Did you? I took it too but I don't think I took it in time. I took it while, once I got on the boat and I realized how rocky it was, by that time it was too late.

[00:06:54] Suneet: I remember you going down. Yes. And. Yes, I was on the boat.

[00:07:00] Kasim: Straight to sleep. And then Emma came and got me and said we're going back to shore and I, I had no concept of time. I didn't realize that we'd actually like, you know, stopped and tethered the boats and had fun. I thought we were like being called back early so I thought it was like a failure.

[00:07:13] Suneet: Oh, no, it was fine. Yeah, it was good. It was, I think the timing was actually great.

[00:07:17] Kasim: That's what everybody said. Yeah, the last time we stayed out too long,

[00:07:20] Suneet: That's how we stayed out too long. Yeah. But so your talk at Driven really impacted me. So, and you talk about now for everyone listening, Kostam is the traffic guy. Like, right. You're the traffic guy.

[00:07:38] Kasim: dude, I, I'm, I'm in a very fortunate position at being able to see more ads spend towards paid traffic than probably every other human on the planet with a handful of exceptions.

[00:07:49] Suneet: Yes. So you're the traffic guy. And when the traffic guy gets on stage at Driven, And it starts talking about the biggest opportunity in traffic being drum roll. I wish I had a sound effect

[00:08:01] Kasim: I don't even want to, I didn't know we were going to talk about this. I don't want to tell Pete, this is secret sauce, Sunit. You want me to give this away to your audience? Is that what we're doing right

[00:08:07] Suneet: Yes, we are getting it away.

[00:08:09] Kasim: Here's what pisses me off about this is. Is it's not going to last and everybody who's listening Make hay while the sun is shining because this shit is the rest of the world is going to crack this code We've got a year

[00:08:21] Suneet: We've got

[00:08:21] Kasim: really make this work.

[00:08:22] Kasim: We've got a year So I didn't realize I was being baited by my friend to give away My very secret sauce that said drumroll Drumroll.

[00:08:35] Suneet: an open loop. I learned that at driven.

[00:08:37] Kasim: Dude, it's, it's podcast guesting.

[00:08:41] Suneet: Wow.

[00:08:42] Kasim: traffic is a bubble. Programmatic is a bubble. SEO is an absolute, complete, and totalized commoditized nightmare and will be for the foreseeable future. Social media is impossibly hard. And dude, I had a, I had a reel go viral the other day. It had a million and five views.

[00:08:55] Suneet: You did.

[00:08:56] Kasim: Yeah, it was really good. It was on tiktok.

[00:08:59] Suneet: Oh

[00:09:00] Kasim: here's what's funny about it Though is is the traffic to my link tree and my website was nominal The subs bump to subscriptions was nominal the bump to followers was nominal and then the day after It and tiktok's like well, what have you done for me lately?

[00:09:12] Kasim: You know what? I mean?

[00:09:12] Suneet: you start at zero.

[00:09:13] Kasim: yeah, you start right back to zero. It's so traffic is so so so hard Here's the thing about podcasts is even small podcasts with small audiences People don't realize that the viewership is not pair pursue in Google or meta. Let's say because that's that's what people understand from a traffic perspective.

[00:09:29] Kasim: If I were to pay to have my video shown to an audience, the cost per click or cost per view, let's say cost review because we're talking about videos isn't comparable. To a podcaster or YouTube or whatever interview, because you're talking about a cost for a matter of seconds,

[00:09:47] Suneet: Yeah.

[00:09:48] Kasim: seconds, can and actually Facebook measures by seven seconds, Google measures and engage views 10 seconds, seven seconds, 10 seconds, with podcasts, people are listening to you for upwards of an hour, sometimes more.

[00:10:02] Kasim: I did a podcast yesterday was an hour and a half.

[00:10:04] Suneet: Wow.

[00:10:05] Kasim: And dude, even to get a dozen people, we're so dismissive of small numbers now, because we're so spoiled by the idea that like, Oh, I had half a million impressions. Well, yeah, you had half a million impressions. That's a fraction of a second, but to get a dozen people in a room to sit there and listen to your message and for those people to be targeted, because every podcast, generally speaking, is niched down to some degree.

[00:10:24] Kasim: So now I can have a specific conversation with a specific audience over an extended period of time. And I can do that for free. And bro, every podcast right now, this won't be true, a year from now, every podcast is dying for quality

[00:10:37] Kasim: guests. Dying for quality content. I did, I did four podcasts yesterday.

[00:10:42] Suneet: Smart.

[00:10:43] Kasim: The opportunity in podcast, and now it's not scalable, it doesn't scale costume and that's, you know, go hang yourself, you scalable morons. The opportunity in podcast guesting is insane. It's insane. Actually, dude, I did a podcast with your buddy. Who was it? I'm going to tell you, he's got the biggest. Or one of the biggest podcasts for realtors in the world, you know what I'm talking about?

[00:11:07] Suneet: I don't know. I, I hear a lot of people say that.

[00:11:10] Kasim: Do they? I'm having a hard time finding his name. Good dude, love the podcast, I feel bad now. But, bro, it was like, he just casually dropped it, he's like, yeah, we do about 30 or 40 thousand downloads a month. And I'm like, pfft, are you kidding me? Yeah, and, and, and, oh, Real Estate Rockstars.

[00:11:28] Kasim: Do you know those guys?

[00:11:29] Suneet: That's the first Bob real estate podcast I ever listened to and the original owner sold it. Pat sold it. And yeah, he ain't lying. That's the number one real estate podcast in the world. It's

[00:11:41] Kasim: I'm on that podcast and any casually and I made up that download number, by the way, I don't know what it really is. I don't give away his numbers, but he's telling me. Yeah, it was off the charts. And I'm like, how much would I have to pay to get because that's not, you know, let's say it is 40, 000. That wasn't really the number, but let's say that it is.

[00:12:00] Kasim: That's not a CPM number because 40, 000 views is 40, 000 people to watch it for 10 seconds, not 40, 000 people that downloaded it and listened to now they've heard my, my voice. They potentially seen my face, the trust bill, the authenticity that, you know what I mean? Like just the, that branding. There's, there's no amount of hyperbole I can add to this point.

[00:12:21] Kasim: How do you, how do you, how do you calculate that value?

[00:12:24] Suneet: Yes.

[00:12:25] Kasim: And he didn't charge me a dime to be honest, you know what I mean? Like, and now you might like, I really, I'm nerd famous. And so it's easier for me to get on podcasts than it is for some people, but that's only the big podcasts. Most podcasts, 90 percent of podcasts are accessible.

[00:12:38] Kasim: Real key is write a book. If you haven't written a book, do, do something mildly notable, you know, like it's not hard to position yourself and what's really cool is once you've been on three mediocre podcasts, all you have to say is, oh, I've been seen on these last three. And then that's enough. They're like, okay, you've clearly been vetted.

[00:12:55] Kasim: And, and man, the other thing that's cool about podcasts is they're evergreen. Yes. still find four and five and six year old perpetual traffic podcast episodes. I did

[00:13:03] Kasim: bro. Like it's, it's They just live forever as long as the content's applicable. So yeah, that's that man, that's the secret sauce. And I'm telling you come 2026, the whole world, it's going to get heavily commoditized and it's going to be pay to play.

[00:13:17] Kasim: And people are just gonna start getting really smart about, you know, how they allow guests and how they position it and swapping it up. So right now, today, everybody. Go out, be a good podcast guest. Give first, give last, give more. Don't do this horse shit like, Oh, I'm going to give you partial sum of the answer, but here's my QR code or my hot link if you want the rest of it.

[00:13:36] Kasim: Like, just be a real

[00:13:37] Kasim: person. Give it away. Give value. And, and if you really want to grow a brand, and that's the other piece of this, the other thing that people need to understand, the paradigm switch is, there's no such thing as non founder led brands. There's no such thing, especially in the SMB world, especially in the SMB world, you it's founder first, every brand needs a face and a voice.

[00:14:02] Kasim: And if it's not you, you better go find somebody that's going to stick around. But if you're not willing to get out there and bang your own drum and to your own horn and, you know, choose your vocal analogy. You're going to be behind because your competitors are willing to do that. You know what I mean?

[00:14:17] Kasim: So.

[00:14:17] Suneet: I, think the context around that for our audience here is which I told you off air and I've shared with a couple of my other friends and coaching clients is I live in Sacramento. There are no doubt hundreds of local podcasts called a hundred local podcasts. What about a sports team?

[00:14:37] Suneet: What about downtown shit to do? What about the mom's group? What about something?

[00:14:43] Kasim: there's 50 about the moms group.

[00:14:44] Kasim: Are you kidding?

[00:14:44] Suneet: Right. But I mean, they would all love to have a local realtor. Come on and say something.

[00:14:50] Kasim: Oh, bro. No question.

[00:14:52] Suneet: No question.

[00:14:53] Kasim: Yeah. No, here's the key though. And this is the, I'm about to, I'm about to throw shade. As long as you know what the fuck you're talking about.

[00:15:00] Suneet: Absolutely.

[00:15:01] Kasim: Like you can't be an imbecile, but the minute a realtor can step in and say, you know, this builder, this neighborhood, this, this guests, this prognostication, this is where I think things are going.

[00:15:11] Kasim: This is why things are slow. This is where interest rates might be this, this school district, bro. Even like. You know, the thing that I really love, I've got, I've got one of the best realtors in the world. I really, really love her. Shout out to Kathy's Holdsworth here in Phoenix, Arizona. Kathy will send me shit like new restaurants that are opening.

[00:15:27] Suneet: Yes.

[00:15:28] Kasim: That's the realtor's job. The realtor can be the community hub if they choose to,

[00:15:32] Suneet: You should see my three times a week newsletter that we send out.

[00:15:36] Kasim: Well, you're damn right. I bet that's true. You know what I mean? Like the realtor can step into the role and it's like the town crier. We don't have that anymore in this world. Like the campfire is dead. There's nobody who's really stepping up and saying outside of the church, but the church, even that's divisive.

[00:15:51] Kasim: There's no agnostic center of the community. It's a vacuum that a realtor could easily fill as long as they're willing to put their finger to the pulse and do the work.

[00:16:00] Suneet: Yeah, I mean, you know, Gary Vee used to say this, and I think he coined the term for our Realtors is be the, you know, the mayor, the digital mayor of, of your area.

[00:16:11] Kasim: You're damn right. Yeah, it's exactly

[00:16:13] Suneet: And he said that back in Crescent, the first book or ask Gary Vee came out, he said, you know, be the digital mayor. And that's when I started making a bunch of content.

[00:16:24] Suneet: I didn't want to take videos all fucking day long of

[00:16:26] Kasim: Dude, your content game is so on point. The shit that you do, your content is great. You do such a good job. If you're listening to this and you want to know how to do content, just go follow Suneet because he does it. He does it exactly right. You know the thing about your content that I love? Because I know you and you and I are friends.

[00:16:41] Kasim: I know that's you. So many Realtors. Produce content where I'm like, that's not, what do you, this is an American Idol. You're not auditioning for any, stop that, you know what I mean? Like, stop with the, the ultra polished, ultra produced, ultra, like your content's so authentic. It's, it's really you. It's you talking.

[00:16:58] Suneet: when we've gotten there, we didn't start there, right? We have gotten there, but I mean, at the end of the day, and I said this on the perpetual traffic podcast of yours that I was on, that was a good one was, you know. These people are just, you just need to post every day. Just start there before anybody in any industry could complain about not having enough leads, social media once a day,

[00:17:23] Kasim: Yeah. Which takes 10 minutes. You know what I mean?

[00:17:25] Suneet: right? You have to

[00:17:27] Kasim: minutes.

[00:17:27] Suneet: yourself. Have, have you read the Arnold Schwarzenegger book? His new one, be useful.

[00:17:33] Kasim: No, I'll go get it now. I really love him.

[00:17:36] Suneet: Yeah, it's real. I mean, get the frigging audible cause it's him. But he talks about, you

[00:17:41] Kasim: be useful. Do something big. Show me your

[00:17:43] Kasim: leadership skills.

[00:17:44] Suneet: nobody was going to give me anything. I had to promote myself. Non stop and before I was the number one movie star in the world, I called myself the number one movie star in the world when I was promoting myself.

[00:17:57] Suneet: It's true.

[00:17:58] Kasim: Yeah, before I was the number one Google Ads agency in the world. I was saying I was the number one Google Ads. You know what I say now, Sunit? I say I'm the number one staffing firm out of Latin America. I don't know if that's true, but how do, who ranks this shit? You know what I mean? Like who's, it's just, I say it.

[00:18:11] Kasim: And you know what? I know for a fact it's gonna be true.

[00:18:14] Suneet: It, I think it

[00:18:15] Kasim: I know for a fact I'm going to hold that crown if I don't hold it already. Dun,

[00:18:19] Suneet: What a terrific segue, by the way, I could not have

[00:18:24] Kasim: dun, dun, you see what I did there? Let's talk about how I make money.

[00:18:30] Suneet: But, but so, I first met you, you said, you know, one of my best superpowers is. is, you know, leveraging international talent for. are my companies and you had the number one Google agency in the world.

[00:18:45] Kasim: That's a fact, by the way.

[00:18:46] Kasim: I made this shit up in the beginning, but I was the number one ranked and we were the largest dedicated Google Ads agency at the time of my sale with 200 clients on 100 million and that's been under management.

[00:18:56] Suneet: but you did it with how much international talent on the

[00:19:00] Kasim: I had almost 100 employees and six of them were in the United States.

[00:19:03] Suneet: folks.

[00:19:04] Kasim: Yeah, and I mean there were legacy people. I didn't even need the six. God bless them. I love you all you know, bro The funniest part about that is I built the best google ads agency in the world I've never run a google ads campaign myself end to end in my life.

[00:19:17] Kasim: I wouldn't know how to I wouldn't I don't I don't want to know how to that's the thing entrepreneurship's not fulfillment, right? I built the the top real estate lead generation campaign before I knew how to invest in real estate I own an agency from Montessori schools. I'm not Montessori trained. You don't need to know how to do this shit You need to find it's it's who not how You To go back to Dan Sullivan.

[00:19:35] Suneet: so let's, talk about that because for the longest time, especially in the real estate space, and you gave me a total mindset shift on this when I first met you a couple years ago. Someone in Canada is international talent.

[00:19:49] Kasim: Oh,

[00:19:49] Suneet: Don't be stuck just on the Philippines. Don't, you know, don't be stuck on what everybody in frigging India has a thick ass accent.

[00:19:58] Suneet: In many cases, this is very true. And that can cause a lot of people here have some sort of trepidation when speaking to them on the phone. Right. So I think what you've done and have now taught me is open my mind across the cultural nuances. However, let's talk about Pareto talent and what you're doing in Latin,

[00:20:21] Kasim: So the Pareto distribution is the most important economic principle in existence,

[00:20:25] Suneet: economic life

[00:20:27] Suneet: principle.

[00:20:27] Kasim: yeah, you're

[00:20:28] Kasim: exactly right.

[00:20:29] Kasim: yes, if you don't understand the Pareto principle, there's so much about your life that's just going to be harder. The Pareto principle says that 20 percent of the inputs yield 80 percent of the outputs.

[00:20:37] Kasim: And it's it's true across every level of analysis. So 20 percent of the cows yield 80 percent of the milk and 20 percent of the criminals commit 80 percent of the crimes. It's insane when you dig into it. And it's not actually 8020. That's the other thing that's interesting. All it means is outweighed inputs and outputs.

[00:20:49] Kasim: Sometimes it's 1090. Sometimes it's 199. Like it's unbelievably offset. 20 percent of the employees do 80 percent of the work, and that's fractal. Here's what that means. Imagine a 1, 000 person organization, okay? Still a small business, but a nice size small business. In a 1, 000 person organization, the Prado principle says, 200%, 200 people, That thousand person organization are doing 80% of the work, 200 to 80%.

[00:21:17] Kasim: You think like that makes sense. That's, you know, sure, that makes sense. But zoom in on those 200, of those 200, you have 40 people doing 80% of that work. Zoom in on those 40, of those 48 people do 80% of that work. Of those eight, 1.6 to 80% of that work, that means that in a thousand person organization, one person is doing 40% of the work, 1.6, which is insane.

[00:21:40] Kasim: And it's exactly true. When I sold my agency. I had almost 100 employees. One guy, John Moran, who you know on the faculty now driven, one guy was managing 40 percent of my revenue, smartest guy in the world. And here's what's insane. Here's what blows my mind. The rest of the business world tries to flatten The hierarchical distribution that is the Pareto principle, because they do this, their business analysts, Goldman Sachs, Ivy League douchebags come in and they look at this Excel spreadsheet and they see existential crises.

[00:22:10] Kasim: Why is this one person responsible for so much output? And then they say, diversify the risk. It's a key man insurance. But the problem is, is when you diversify the predator distribution, you, you, you create, by intention, average. You want all employees to be average. So they, if the Prado distribution is a hierarchy where your best employees travel to the top of the hierarchy, they flatten the hierarchy.

[00:22:35] Kasim: So neat. It's insane.

[00:22:37] Suneet: That's insane,

[00:22:38] Kasim: It's insane. And you can index towards the higher distribution. So at Prado talent, we find. Train and place the best EAs in the world. And there's the other thing too, that's really interesting is there's nothing more expensive than a cheap employee.

[00:22:56] Kasim: So you can go

[00:22:57] Kasim: find EAs at, you know, 2 an hour and God bless you.

[00:23:01] Kasim: And best of luck. We find Train in place the best days in the world and we pay people more than they'd ever make domestically And they get to work from home on a flexible schedule and we give them meaningful work We don't place for like, you know, I want 500 cold calls a day best of luck to you.

[00:23:13] Kasim: God bless I know there's a

[00:23:14] Kasim: place for

[00:23:14] Suneet: but, however, There are places that do do that as

[00:23:19] Kasim: 100

[00:23:19] Suneet: right. Yeah, we are very focused. You're very focused in Pareto, which I think is what it takes to bring such a great product. Like what Perry said earlier, right?

[00:23:27] Kasim: Yeah, you're exactly right. So that's the proto and now we interestingly we're out of ea's right now I have a waiting list that's you know, not insignificant and so i'm not even selling My agency per se, you can come join my waiting list. I'd love to place for you. You'd have to be patient. However, what I want to do, my mission in life is I would love to see more opportunities for people at emerging nations.

[00:23:47] Kasim: And, and the thing about it, dude, is

[00:23:50] Suneet: because we're kids of immigrants, bro.

[00:23:52] Kasim: Well, right. It's like, Hey, I bro, I could have been slumdog millionaire. You know what I mean? Like it was, we were

[00:23:57] Kasim: just, we won the geographic

[00:23:58] Kasim: lottery.

[00:23:59] Suneet: I could have been a skinny little Indian guy. Yep.

[00:24:01] Kasim: Yeah. So when you look at, it's, it's interesting because all my friends, all my entrepreneurial friends, they will outsource, but they'll only outsource grunt work.

[00:24:10] Kasim: All the knowledge work they feel like has to happen here. And in my mind, I'm like, in what world are, they're not outstandingly brilliant people in Asia, Eastern Europe, North

[00:24:19] Kasim: Africa, Latin America. Yeah. You know, so like, stop outsourcing just the bullshit. My first EA became my director of automations. My second EA became my director of social.

[00:24:29] Kasim: My third EA became my CTO, managed my entire exit, and is now one of my best

[00:24:32] Suneet: And move to the U S with his family and

[00:24:34] Suneet: change his entire

[00:24:35] Suneet: life

[00:24:36] Kasim: in Wisconsin.

[00:24:37] Kasim: Yeah. I, I filed for an

[00:24:38] Kasim: H1B. So yeah, yeah, dude, that was like, what a stellar human he is,

[00:24:43] Kasim: um, also helps with Driven. There are, dude, my, I have a personal CFO right now from Argentina, who's one of the smartest humans I've ever met.

[00:24:51] Kasim: He's a college professor, master's degree in economics. He's my personal CFO, and you would, it would blow your mind what I

[00:24:57] Kasim: pay him.

[00:24:58] Suneet: work for you full time?

[00:24:59] Kasim: Full time, full time employee. I mean, he's actually, so this is what's cool is he wants to be a college professor. He also teaches, but that doesn't pay him anything. So I pay him, Many multiples what he'd make domestically, which is a pittance for me and both of us have this massive win win synergistic relationship and do those people are so like go higher internationally for director level management level C level they're there and.

[00:25:22] Kasim: You're the bell of the ball when you're hiring domestically. Nobody wants to work for you. A Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook are swallowing all the best talent. So the fortune 1000 eats the best talent alive of those that remain. They want to be entrepreneurs of those that remain from there.

[00:25:37] Kasim: There's a problem with them. Work. Isn't their passion. They don't necessarily want to do it. You're their side hustle. They're going to just punch in, you know, like I hate to slander our collective environment, but if it's true,

[00:25:46] Kasim: when you go international, do those people, you're a very real opportunity. And they're grateful for the work.

[00:25:53] Kasim: You get to change somebody's life. There's such anthropological significance in taking somebody, paying them more than they would make domestically, giving them a flexible schedule and giving them some level of purpose. Imagine, especially in these emerging nations, dude, in Buenos Aires, traffic can be one hour each way.

[00:26:09] Kasim: Easy. You take a mom or a dad who has to travel two hours a day just to work. You let them work from home. Guess what? That's two more hours a day with their children. You can't. Quantify the impact you can have on somebody's life, but you can see The response that they have when they work for you because they'll be more dedicated more motivated Than any any employee you've ever had and and dude Like you said there are some cultural things some hoops to jump through some things to figure out You Indians and Pakistanis can't be on time for shit.

[00:26:37] Kasim: Filipinos can't take constructive criticism. Eastern Europeans can't do things the wrong way. Latin Americans have unbelievable adherence to religious holidays and they will lose their job over it. So, but as soon as you kind of figure out like, okay, these are the cultural idiosyncrasies that I have to work with.

[00:26:51] Kasim: You get to benefit from insanely potent labor.

[00:26:56] Suneet: the other interesting thing that you had mentioned we've discussed is how, for example, we always look at the Philippines, but Walmart's in the Philippines, Dell's in the Philippines,

[00:27:07] Kasim: Go, go daddy. Wells

[00:27:09] Kasim: Fargo, Google. Yeah, yeah, the philippines is a small country dude two and a half years ago. The philippines is blue ocean I have a hard time hearing the philippines now. Yeah, so the philippines is I mean, it's it's not there's nothing wrong with filipinos

[00:27:21] Suneet: at all. I have 12. Yeah,

[00:27:23] Kasim: Yeah, and it's not the same environment that it was because why would they work for you?

[00:27:29] Kasim: Graveyard shift, you're lonesome when they can go work for a great big corporation with benefits that's local on their own hours. And the Fidu, the Filipinos are very, very, very family driven. So graveyard to Filipinos is, is not what it would be. It's really is. That's why I like Latin America. They're effectively on our time zone.

[00:27:46] Kasim: And then, you know, you mentioned accents earlier. My father has a Pakistani accent. So I'm allowed to say this.

[00:27:51] Suneet: Is it super thick? Is it super

[00:27:53] Kasim: It's not bad. He was he educated in a English school. So he sounds like

[00:27:57] Kasim: he's one of those Packy's that sounds

[00:27:59] Suneet: Well, everyone says that

[00:28:00] Suneet: over there.

[00:28:01] Kasim: But I mean, he does not, you know what I mean?

[00:28:03] Kasim: He's not that bad, but, but even so if I put my dad on the phone with my more conservative clients and dude, I'm not crying racism. Cause I don't think it's racist. Everybody's had. a bad call center experience or probably multiple and their Asian accents. So it's bad neuro associative conditioning. The Latin accent is a neighbor.

[00:28:22] Kasim: The Asian is a call center. So if you need callers Go to Latin America or like we said earlier, go to Canada, dude. In Canada, paying 50 K us is like paying 75 K Canadian. They're not worried about healthcare cause they're social country and it's cool. They can't go outside. All they do is work

[00:28:38] Kasim: and they're friendly dude.

[00:28:41] Kasim: Really like no weird oversight. No. Yeah. I love, I had. 30 Canadians are probably, I think a little less, it's 25 Canadians. When I sold a solutions, a amazing labor force in Canada, go and go, don't go to Vancouver, Toronto, go to the, go to Edmonton, go to the middle of Canada. It's like middle America.

[00:28:56] Kasim: Everybody's the cost of living is way lower. They're so unbelievably friendly. Great for customer service, not great for objection handling. So Canadians aren't going to do, you know. You know where you go for that, dude, if you really want salespeople? Egypt.

[00:29:13] Suneet: Dude. I,

[00:29:15] Suneet: I

[00:29:15] Suneet: disagree, bro.

[00:29:16] Kasim: Really? Tell me why.

[00:29:18] Suneet: In real estate sales. The Egyptian ISAs I had were extremely direct. And if someone would ask them, they would just say, no, right. It wouldn't be like an objection handling, which is probably my fault.

[00:29:32] Kasim: Yeah, I think that given the script, but the thing about it is like, dude, Filipinos cannot overcome objection because like culturally, if somebody says no, Oh gosh, I'm so sorry, forgive me. Canadians are the same way. The Arab culture is very, you know, it's all built around like barter and negotiation duty to, to buy groceries in Egypt.

[00:29:51] Kasim: You ever been to Cairo? You negotiate for every, just your tomatoes. You're sitting there. It's actually a lot of fun. If you're into that sort of

[00:29:58] Kasim: thing.

[00:29:59] Suneet: into it. Yes.

[00:30:00] Kasim: You know, we should go to Cairo together. It's one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Like the Cairo market is such an experience. You wrote people will grab you bodily they'll grab your arm and bring you into their shop and not let you leave until you buy something.

[00:30:13] Kasim: And the whole time they're smiling. It's it's just this weird a lot of people are really uncomfortable with the environment experience. It's so much fun. But the Egyptians are so good. You know, if you say no, they're like, Oh, but listen, you don't need like it's just so it's like a joke to them almost.

[00:30:30] Kasim: Everybody has different experiences. That's the thing is like, go kiss some frogs, figure out what works for you. You know, and there's some extraordinary people in miracles, people are mirror, but they're only miracles. If you treat them that way, if you treat them like automatons and commodities, and you sit there and you screenshot their desktop and you make them.

[00:30:47] Kasim: Clock in and clock out and ask you to pee. Like who wants to work in that

[00:30:50] Suneet: Nobody. Nobody. And who wants to manage to that level?

[00:30:54] Kasim: swear to God, bro, I actually know some people that really get a kick out of it. I think they're all sadists. But yeah, man, if you let people, if you cut them loose and really let them be autonomous, they're amazing.

[00:31:03] Kasim: And if they're not firing them, that's the other thing I fire so quickly.

[00:31:07] Suneet: Yeah,

[00:31:08] Kasim: First time you screw up my fault. So sorry. I didn't explain things well, obviously. Second time you screw up your fault. What the hell's going on here? Third time you're fired. I don't have time to babysit you.

[00:31:17] Suneet: Even here. That's everybody.

[00:31:19] Suneet: You know, have write ups. That's right. You get three write ups. Like. So we could go on for so long. I know you got somewhere that you, that you have to be. If somebody wants number one, this was another good episode. It was really good.

[00:31:35] Kasim: but you say that to all the guests. I know you

[00:31:36] Kasim: do.

[00:31:37] Kasim: You flatterer.

[00:31:38] Suneet: Yes. Yes. What's, what's next for you?

[00:31:41] Suneet: Where can people follow you? What should they be following?

[00:31:43] Kasim: I'm writing a book called hire. Your audience can have it for free. It should be done by the end of this month. If they want it, go subscribe to my newsletter at KASIM. me. K A S I M dot me. It's due to my whole hiring framework wholesale. I hold nothing back. You can have it. It is exactly how I find.

[00:31:59] Kasim: These amazing

[00:32:00] Suneet: Which I'm doing right now for myself. So thank you for your guidance. Yeah.

[00:32:04] Kasim: that about you. That makes me so happy, dude. So you can have my book, follow me on socials, also Kossum. me. And if you want to hire somebody at Pareto, we don't staff for grunt work. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just don't do it. I make promises

[00:32:15] Kasim: to

[00:32:15] Kasim: people.

[00:32:16] Kasim: Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a different niche. So go to ParetoTown. com, join my waitlist. I've got a bootcamp running right now. We only hire 1 percent of people. So I expect to graduate about 40 people from my bootcamp. I already have a waitlist. That's over 20. So I'm going to be margin thin and narrow.

[00:32:32] Kasim: So we're going to be selective about who we take. Join my waitlist. If you want to print out Preto hire, cause my people are the best people in the whole world.

[00:32:39] Suneet: What if somebody wants to follow you on social? Where do they go? Do

[00:32:42] Kasim: Costume. me has all my social links.

[00:32:44] Suneet: Okay. And you used to write these beautiful, long things on Facebook that

[00:32:48] Kasim: dude, I published them as a book. I'll send you one. You can have it I play it's called the book of threads. It's about ready. I'm going to publish it on amazon I put them all together. The book is so thick dude is crazy.

[00:32:57] Suneet: That's awesome. Good stuff. All right, guys. Well, make sure you go give a shout out to Kostam. Check out the Pareto website. What's that website again?

[00:33:07] Kasim: pareto talent. com. P a r e t o. I

[00:33:10] Suneet: Pareto talent. com and Kostam. Thanks for being on again. I can all talk to you like later this week, everybody else who's listening and watching. Thank you so much for tuning in means a lot to me. If you got something out of this number one, I sure frigging hope you did. If you did leave a review, give us a thumbs up, share with a friend.

[00:33:31] Suneet: I will see you on the next episode of the reside platform podcast. Peace out.

[00:33:37] Kasim: love you, buddy