Ep104 Kasim Aslam - The Talent Superpower: Why Finding Great People Is the Only Skill That Actually Matters (And How AI Changes Everything)

Kasim Aslam  0:00  
I'm actually really optimistic about a I think a long enough timeline, AI cures all of humanity's ills. I think in 100 years, AI will be the best thing that's ever happened to us, but in 50 years, it's gonna be a lot of growing pains.

Jason Croft  0:11  
Welcome to strategy in action, where we reveal how industry leaders build real market gravity, the force that naturally attracts opportunities, partnerships and profits, you get raw insights, proven frameworks and strategies that actually move the needle in your business. Let's get started. Qassem Islam is on the show today, and we're talking about this amazing, critical skill to have as an entrepreneur, which is hiring talent, not only the mechanics of it and how to get somebody great on your team, but even before then, letting in the fact that it is absolutely critical that you do so That's something that you know, I've worked on even since recording this interview and going through customs book, which definitely check that out. Go to the higher book.com, get his book and a bunch of other resources for free. It's fantastic. It's not just about how to go out and hire folks, but how to get amazing folks. And then when you have people in, how do you work with them? The best way? It's amazing skill, because if, as an entrepreneur, if you can't figure out how to get other people to help you in that endeavor, you're going to be limited. It's not that you fail, it's that what you build is very different than what you build if you have a team. And we get into that early on, Kassem brings that point home really well, that it's really just deciding what kind of entrepreneur, what kind of business do you want to have? And Qasim and I would both argue that even for someone who is kind of operating at that solopreneur level, and even if you want to stay at that one person business, there's still power in having that executive assistant, having this outside help in these certain areas, so that you can do what you're amazing at and really thrive, even if it's in That solopreneur style business. I think by the end of it, you'll, you'll be on board, if you aren't already. All right, let's jump in. Costum, welcome to the show, Jason, thanks for having me buddy. Appreciate you absolutely. So glad you're you're doing this. We, we jumped in here already talking about the amazing miracles that people are. And I was like, We gotta, we gotta hit, we gotta hit record, because this is already, already gold. You've got a brand new book out called higher, and I'm deep in the middle, and I'm probably about page 90. What about halfway? A little over halfway? Slow reader. Sorry. Forgive me everybody. I need the audio in my ear, and it's already just so fantastic, and it really inspired this conversation today, this core topic that I think I could feel you reaching out through the book, just wanting to smack people into just stop thinking about hiring and employees and all of that in this old factory, commoditized model. So I want to dig in deep with that, because I know you're passionate about that. Certainly have an expertise in that. But let's dig into that first real quick, on that expertise. Give folks a little bit of geography, on the amazing Casa Mazal and where you are and what kind of led you to write this book and focus so much on that hiring process.

Kasim Aslam  4:15  
Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate you reading it. I do have an audio book coming, so I'll send that to you if that's easier and better. Easier and better. I I'm far more successful than I deserve to be. I've built six, seven and eight figure businesses, five of them have been agencies. I've had two exits, one freight figures. And it's all built on on this core thesis, which is the only skill an entrepreneur actually needs to master is talent. Once you've cracked talent, you don't need to crack anything else. It's like the super skill or the meta skill, because once you're good at finding good people, any problem you encounter is now not just solvable, but solvable in. Way that doesn't cost you time, which is our least scalable resource as entrepreneurs. And dude, it took me a long time to learn this lesson, but then once I learned it, you know, I feel like I'm sort of, I'm weaponized in a way that a lot of people aren't. And what's really frustrating, I think, for a lot of folks, is it's a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me, you know, there are people that are smarter than me, work harder than me, figure things out before I do, and they just can't keep up. And they can't keep up because what they don't realize is they're running the cart themselves. And I'm just building chariots, you know, and I'm doing it with these extraordinary humans that just they astound me daily. The talent that I have access to astounds me daily, and that the risk of maybe slandering my personal environment. They're not impossible to find. Dare I say, it's actually not unique. I think every human on the planet has the the ability to be a literal miracle when, if given the right opportunity in the right context. And so I want to help employers do that, and I built a framework, dude, it's my it's my life's work. It's 20 years of iteration in working towards finding and cultivating and nurturing and managing top talent. And the book is free. The cheat sheets are free, the templates are free, the audio books free. There's no ascension. There's nothing to sell. On the back end, my goal in life is to help people in emerging nations find more meaningful work, and we're running towards that goal, I think, with some degree of efficacy. So that's kind of the background. How did I do there

Jason Croft  6:37  
a plus, my friend, I love it. Yeah, it's a good, good setup with this. What comes to mind, too, the barriers to achieving what you've achieved in terms of talent, in this realization and this superpower that you've cultivated in other people, I think two main barriers. One is that old style of thinking when it comes to people and hiring and having them in the far end of the spectrum, though, is that doing everything yourself, especially at the super small business solopreneur coach, consultant, and both are barriers, I know, for me personally, right? Like I've done a little bit of outsourcing, project by project, you know, can hire people in. And there is this, I feel like it, there's this chasm, if I could just jump over that to to fully let go and embrace because I believe it all up here, but that I feel like, you know I need to either completely shift what I do so that what I'm selling the business I'm in, much like your Google ads. You've you, I've heard you talk about too. It's just like, I've never worked a Google ad in my life, ran, grew the top agency in that it's like, I feel like I almost have to do that, like go to a business I can't do, just to keep myself from being in it and being the one doing at times. And that's so I think those are two different mental barriers. Are you seeing that? Do you have, you know, smack in the face words of wisdom for either of those spectrums?

Kasim Aslam  8:29  
No, it's not, it's not smack in the face at all. Actually think it has more to do with just your goal. You know, I build Legos with my son, my 10 year old, he's just a little genius, and he loves building and creating, and he likes little things, and he likes skin is, you know, he likes seeing how things are made. And I remember at one point I was asking so frustrated because we got this Lego Castle that is massive, and I was getting frustrated with the process, because I just wanted the castle done. Like, I was like, as soon as we have the castle, then we can play with the castle. And I realized it's the building that's fun for him. And I was waiting until, like, in my mind, we can't play with the Legos until the Legos are done. And for him, it was like, no, actually, this process, start to finishes, is the point. And I use the analogy because I think it's, it's really helpful to look at things in, you know, sterile ways or terms, or through a child's eyes. Let's say, you know, it's the classic, explain it to me like I'm five. I think entrepreneurs need to forgive themselves if. And it sounds like there's some of this in there for you. Jason, tell me if I'm if I'm if I've misdiagnosed. Sometimes we're playing. Sometimes, when you dive deep and you get your hands dirty and you're doing the thing in in you're really engaged, then my only question for you is, well, do you want a castle, or do you want to build. Castle, you know. And I have some friends. My friend Perry Belcher, is like this. We were talking about him on a pre roll. That dude loves to play with stuff, loves to tinker, and he will sit there and play with an AI tool for 23456, hours, you know, just trying to get something just right. And that process always yields fruit. He always has great ideas and great ideation, and somebody might look at that. And let's say he's trying to come up with a book cover, you know, he's using an AI he's using an AI image generator to come up with a book cover. A person like me might look at that and say, dude. Delegate that. Send it to an EA stop wasting your time. You're Perry Belcher. You're the godfather of digital marketing. WHY would you spend your you know, your time's worth a few $1,000 an hour at a minimum. Delegate it. And that's I want a castle thinking he wants to build it. He wants to play. He wants to build the castle. So do you want a cast, or do you want to build a castle? And both are equally Okay, by the way, like they're both okay. I just think that that's, that's the starting point of the question. If you really just want a castle, stop building the castle and go delegate the castle building. If you want to build a castle, great, keep it. And most entrepreneurs don't give themselves the luxury of really understanding or identifying the difference. It's all right to want to be the mad scientist or the artist or the adventure as long as you've made the decision to do that, it's when we start doing work that is beneath our pay grade and doesn't have, you know, a peripheral yield. That's the stuff that we need to get off of our plate and delegate out to another human. So I wouldn't grab you by the shoulders and shake you at all. I think that, you know, given who you are and what you do, I think some of that work is probably, like, really, really fulfilling, and then some of it, dude, stop doing that. You know what I mean, like, if it's time to let somebody else take it and run with

Jason Croft  11:43  
it? Yeah, I think that's the that's the piece. I think that that's a perfect example. Like with Perry's got that great like, yeah, he's sitting there tinkering with that book cover design, but his business isn't dependent on that book cover getting done right today either. So he can, he's allowing himself to kind of play, and it's, and it's a lot of stuff that's tangential to, you know, he's gonna go have his next conference talking about that process he's going through right now too. So there's, it also makes sense, and he gets to play while business is going and running, and that is that that's a good piece. I think it is that letting go and not like you said, make a decision, right? Same thing of, hey, do you want to be a one person business? That's okay do that, but don't get frustrated at the things that you don't have that only come from a 500 person business, because that's not what you're building.

Kasim Aslam  12:43  
Yeah, what's your Buy Box? What's the goal? What do we want here? You know, is it a lifestyle business? Do you want money? Do you want an exit? Do you want cash flow? Do you so I think us defining the ideal scenario and then working backwards into it. Nobody does that. Nobody teaches you to do that either. And I still struggle with this dude. I can't stop seizing new opportunity, because there's so much of it. You know what I mean, especially now. And I had a friend call me yesterday, my business partner, Yvonne, who owns half of my staffing agency, we just got the green light on this amazing opportunity. I'm so excited about it. It's a AI staffing and training for this huge organization. I can't give away their brand. I'm not trying to be cryptic, but it's just a really big deal. And Yvonne called me yesterday, and we're a smaller piece, so we have the referral partner gets 10% of the gross. So shave that off. Well, no, back up. The organization we're partnering with, gets 50% of everything that we're selling from a certification perspective. So then now we have half, and then the referral partner who sent us the deal gets 10% so now we have 90% and then we're splitting that with the other guy that's helping to do the job, who's kind of the primary point of contact. So now we have half of that. And then there's me, Yvonne and Nuno, who are the three partners. So now we have a third. And Yvonne is like, this is a multi million dollar deal, and when you do the math, we're all getting about 100 grand. And all of a sudden it let me know, like, Oh, I'm playing in the wrong sandbox. My goal and my I want $100 million not to me after taxes, and I'm not going to get there doing deals at 100 grand a pop. You know what I mean? Like now there's a continuity thing and a membership on the back end, and the upsell and the ascension and all that garbage. And had I started with my Buy Box from the beginning, I never would have said yes to this deal ever, you know. So I think that's that was just a good lesson. I, you know, I learned that last night, and was reminded of it. And it's something I work myself into. Often, it's a problem that, you know, just because you can solve a problem doesn't mean that you should. And you know, here I am guilty again of breaking that rule. So

Jason Croft  14:50  
it reminds me, I heard you talking about this too. I was going to get into this a little bit later, but it's a perfect segue of this idea, especially us as entrepreneurs. Yeah, and we have, when we do have that team, you go going to them with figuring out this process, because you, you painted the perfect picture in one of your videos of going to them with every idea, Perry talks about that you brought up, you know? He talks about doing this with its folks all the time like the idea of the hour, right? And it is, Hey everybody, here's what we're doing now. And it can be to the point you're making the other day. It can be such a disruptive force. Sometimes it works. How have you either tempered yourself with that, or kept little side projects, or keep it in, keep it to yourself at a time, like, where's that threshold, right? So that you aren't disrupting this well oiled machine you've got, they're going to doing their thing in the in your business, and you're in like, Hey, here's what we could do. And then everyone's like, well, we gotta listen. We gotta try this. We gotta go down this road. But it may shut everything down. It may lead to greatness. Where have you found that that threshold to before you go to your team with this brand new idea?

Kasim Aslam  16:16  
Yeah, it guys, to be honest with you, it goes back to talent. If who's the who you know, it's Dan Sullivan's who's the who. And if I have a who for it, I have a young man that works for me. Now. His name is Camillo. His official title is business builder. And when I have ideas, I send them to Camillo. And when Camillo is at capacity, I either have to take something off of his slate or I don't get to distribute that idea. So as you come up with ideas. I think entrepreneurs, you know this, this rule that we offer entrepreneurs, you have to focus only do the one thing, the whole Gary Keller thing. There's a lot of wisdom to it, and it negates who we are innately. I think we need to tinker, we need to play, we need to do all those things, but we have to do it in a way that doesn't disrupt our current business or destroy our staff. So if you have an idea, and there's somebody on your team or in your organization that has been with great let's play. If not, that's your limitation. I like to I don't want to be on the org chart. I don't want to run a business ever I have, you know, there's 15 entities that I'm a tax relevant owner in, let's say, which would mean that I own 20% of the business or more, and so I have a portfolio of companies, and every single one of the companies actually have a Google sheet that I check on a weekly basis. And my question for my EA is I need to know what the next step is for every single entity that I own. And I need to know who the driver is, is what I call it. So I'm looking at my Google sheet now, and I have a column that says driver, and I know Don is driving neat, oh, and Yvonne is driving Pareto, and Nuno is driving architects and and then I have a question next to tech stack, because I don't know necessarily who has that and who's gonna we're gonna put in front of it. And so as long as I have a driver and I have a next step, I don't have to do anything, because I just need to know that the driver is moving towards the next step. And this is why I think talent acquisition is so important. Acquisition is so important from an entrepreneurial perspective. Because if I'm the driver, it's over. I now have this one thing that I have to focus on doing, and it doesn't let me zoom out and operate from a, you know, a 50,000 foot view, which is where I think entrepreneurs tend to be the most, most effective and most successful. So I think if you're listening to this podcast and you take nothing else away, go focus on talent acquisition, you know, find, poach, steal, kidnap, do whatever you got to do, like find, find people that are, that are extraordinary, and needle movers, because those are the people that are going to really make you successful. If you're banking on yourself to make you successful, I think that's a bad bet. You know, you can do it, but it doesn't allow for the diversification or amplification that other people do when I sold solutions eight at an eight figure exit on a business that had, you know, 80 employees plus 20 some odd regular contractors called 100 people, and one guy managed 40% of my revenue. Is John Moran, the greatest school ads man in the world. Man in the World, one person, but that's the proto distribution, right? Like, that's what we're talking about here. And had I not had John solutions eight, never would have been solutions eight. And again, God forgive me for saying this. There are other Johns out there. You know, Yvonne is he was my EA. Found him as a 20 some odd year old kid going to school in Poland, was promoted from being my EA to the tech lead of our company to our CTO managed my entire exit. We got him over here on h 1b when Russia attacked Ukraine, and now he's my business partner, and he and I own product talent together, and I touch nothing. I found out yesterday that we're running our next boot camp in August. I don't even know the dates. I don't need to, right? Like that's so that's the the point is, there are these people out there that will run these businesses for you, if you give them the opportunity. I own aeo.co with Perry Belcher, and the entire thing is run by Julian, who's a Colombian EA who ended up just being absolutely brilliant. We had to kiss a couple of frogs. He and I tried to do a few things. He was my business builder before Camillo me and Julian tried to build a newsletter business for I own conservative boomer.com we're going to build a newsletter business for conservative the conservative elderly. We tried building a social media repurposing business. We tried to we tried to do a few different things. And all of a sudden, the AEO opportunity showed up, and Julian was just just on it like a pit bull on a beef steak. He now manages a staff of five people who, for the last nine months have done nothing but study how LLM sources citations. We've written the book on aeo.com, Julian did it. We started the community on AEO. I own school.com for such AEO, Julian built that I just got off of Josh Nelson's podcast promoting it with a slide deck of 190 slides that was all built off of Julian's like, I have this just extraordinary human being. I'm going to be the world authority in AEO. It's only in doing the work, you know what I mean? So like, and I feel like that's accessible to all entrepreneurs. So cracking the Talent Code, man, there's just, there's nothing that, especially in the world of AI, you know, there's nothing that that it's the little hinge that swings the big door. There's nothing that could be more effective for your business. Because when you find a really person, and then you weaponize them with AI, one person can do what an army used to. It used to take an army to do. So that's my that's my drum to be. That's my sales pitch.

Jason Croft  21:16  
Oh, yeah, and that, and let's get into some of that, that tactic too. Because again, back to this idea of getting outside of this typical traditional, 100 year old version of hiring somebody and getting out of it. We have so many opportunities now, globally, now AI, now tech, everything enabled that. We don't, we don't have to. Okay, let's do the posting on indeed. Let's get this, send it to HR, you know this old style, which anybody, if you talk to anybody out there in the just world, looking for a job, it is just worse and worse and worse because it is so commoditized like to even break through that. So not only are the potential job candidates at a it's a disservice to them. It's also a disservice to you as the hire to find these gems out there, like you're talking about, how can we start to, you know, if you know, mid sized company, it's doing its thing. It's got its infrastructure there. But how can they start to, you know, let in the fact that, you know, we really can outsource this overseas. This can be a remote job. This can be, you know, we can find people that aren't going to show up or even know about us on Indeed, or whatever it is. How do we start down that road of opening up out of these old, old style silos? I guess,

Kasim Aslam  22:57  
the way to begin, I think, if you're not used to, if you're not used to a an environment that allows for the distribution of work in a non traditional way, which is my fancy ass way of saying, you know, like you're, you're you're stuck to the way that you do things. Go. Hire yourself an assistant. Everybody should have an EA, and the EA is the easiest role to hire for, because it's easiest role to fire for. You know, there's, it's a very, very soft commitment, and it doesn't change the org chart, and it doesn't threaten anybody's job. And so if you don't have an EA, go hire an EA. And what's really fun about having an EA is, all of a sudden you get this kind of this dumping ground for everything you don't want to do. And in EA is, it's the only role that I know of that basically doesn't have a job description, which means you get to send them anything you want. And that's the, that's the agreement between employer employee, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to send you a whole litany tasks. Now the the expectation can't be that they're going to be good at all of them that we have to be really clear about that you're going to send your EA 10 things to 10 things to do, and they're going to suck at two of them miserably. And they're going to do two six. They're going to do six just fine, you know, check the box. I did it. And then they're going to do two better than any human you've ever met in your entire life. And then, if you're smart, you go, that's your new job. Same way I do with Julian so and my first EA became my director of automation. Her name was Julianne. She was a young woman in the Philippines who, as an EA, wasn't great, you know, she wasn't really good at calendar management. She wasn't really good at some of the research stuff I was doing. She was probably too smart for the grunt work, to be frank. I think she got bored. But then as soon as I had her start doing automation stuff, bro, like she she flourished, she thrived, she bloomed, and she built the entire infrastructure solutions. From an automation perspective, all of our Zapier, all of our air table, all of our high level was on Julian's back and in her mind, like she's I had one of the most. Over engineered agencies. Everything was automated because, because I had her and she was, she was just this extraordinary resource. She started as my EA, Julian Amador. If anybody, I think Julian still freelances. So if somebody wants to go find Julian Amador, M, A, M, A, D, O, R, shout out to my former EA. Go poach her from wherever she's working. I had another EA become our Director of Social. Yvonne was an EA who became my CTO. So starting with an EA and then actually delegating real work. Don't you know if it's just cold calling or data entry or any of that garbage? You're not taking enough off of your plate to see where somebody's really skillful, delegate them a project. Give them. Every entrepreneur has a list of 30 things they've never gotten to go send them one of those things, or send them all of them and say, Hey, tackle these in sequence. Keep me updated. The key is to if you're delegating tasks, you're not really delegating your micro managing delegate projects, not tasks, and you'll start to see what people produce. I call it the black box of delegation. The Black Box or delegation, says you're allowed to define the input and the output. So the output is your desired end result. That's what you should define first. So I want a training program for new employees. I want a course on how to do this thing. I want to write a book. I want to launch a new product. I want to create a website, whatever it is desired end result, the input is everything you're willing to invest here are the other stakeholders involved. Here's the money I'm going to spend. Here's the software available to you. Here's our brand guidelines, whatever brand guidelines. Whatever input output, what happens inside the box. None of your damn business. Ignore it. Leave it alone. Stop worrying about it. As soon as you lift the lid on the box and peer into it, you've now ruined the entire process. You know, it's just like old school photography. You have to keep it in the dark room, and not everybody's capable of functioning that way. And what I mean by that is that's true of the entrepreneur. It's also true of the resource. That's why you have to find the people that can do that, and when you find them, hold on to them for dear life, because those are the people that can build entire businesses for you. And that's that's what the book is about. The book is a framework, a step by step framework with templates for finding people that are thoughtful, intelligent, proactive, hardworking, and most importantly, want you to get out of the way, because more often than not, it's you and it's me, it's the business owner, it's the entrepreneur That is inhibiting the productive process. And so the framework has kind of this built in thesis that allows us to identify the folks that are actually going to get stuff done.

Jason Croft  27:31  
Oh, yeah, because, to your point, in that black box, like, that's the that's the person you want, is that person who, yeah, leave me alone, right, and you've got great segments in there too, of, you know, in that hiring process, to those, the fly traps you call us going through there, and all these little things through the hiring process, just to make sure that they can follow instructions on their own. They can do this they I guess there's two things, right? There's being able to follow instruction, and then there's also the black box aspect that, hey, I just need to give you. Here's what I want go rock and roll, right? And that's they're both criteria of, hey, is this person gonna Can I trust them to go right? And if they're just so uncomfortable. Okay, what would you like me to do next? What is step three of this process? Like that? Yeah, to your point, that doesn't help. Then you're a micromanager and you've just got another job

Kasim Aslam  28:30  
well, and in the post AI world, that person is so replaceable. It's not funny, you know, like, that's the other problem. Now, I did, I think we're, you know, there's a whole bunch of different opinions on this, and I take the dystopian view. I think we're looking at the biggest labor collapse in human history. It's a funny time to write a book called hire. You know, it's one of the first times that we actually need less people, not more. But that's why I think it's so important, because you need far less people, but the people you need need to be far better than anything that we've ever looked to attract mediocrity used to be acceptable. It used to be okay to hire. You know, I need this job done. I can get 20 mediocre people to do this job the way AI works. 20 mediocre people just means you're scaling mediocrity to the moon, which is deadly for a business. What you need is one exceptional person, and that one exceptional person gets quantified. That's what AI does it? You know, it's like, it's, you're taking this human and then you're, you're making them nuclear powered. And so, you know, 20 mediocre people used to be able to build just about anything because over time and with iteration and supervision and management and processes, they could create something that was acceptable. And that's not true anymore, because everything else along the periphery is done by the computer. The one thing you now need now the kernel, the. Input has to be brilliant, because that's the thing that's being amplified. So, you know, in the world where we are looking at a labor collapse, we're also looking at an amplification for high quality talent in equal measure, you know, to the same degree to which labor will collapse, so too will there be an in and this is proving out. This isn't a theory. Mark Zuckerberg offered $100 million signing bonus, bonus, not salary, not, you know, over the course of 10 years, $100 million signing bonus to anybody from the AI team over at open AI to move over to meta. I don't know an athlete that's got $100 million signing

Jason Croft  30:46  
bonus. Wow, you know

Kasim Aslam  30:48  
what I mean. So that's, that's the point is, is now, and at the same time, meta has laid off 1000s of engineers. So is Amazon, so is Google, so is Microsoft, and they're making more money in those layoffs, so they need less people, but the people they do need are of of a level of critical importance that money no longer matters any longer.

Jason Croft  31:11  
That's the new framework. But when it comes to tech and all of this kind of stuff, it's easy for me to say, and I always acknowledge that. I always I just, look, I'm the optimist, right? I just think, I think it's awesome. I think I think it's gonna it's going to work out. It's gonna figure out, because tech helps in these ways that we're not even imagining yet, and all of that stuff. So I lean into that. But how do we you know, as we build, that I've heard you and Perry talk about, you know, making your money with AI now, investing in everything that isn't going to get touched by AI. Is that sort of, I feel like that's a, it's almost a something every entrepreneur should be thinking about, and hedging their bets, a little bit of going in fully with AI and looking for every opportunity that AI isn't going to touch as those needs increase.

Kasim Aslam  32:13  
Dude, the key performance indicator in every entity I own now is how much and how well are you using AI for employees. So I take a contrarian view. It's so funny. I think employers are doing it all wrong. I think internally, employers don't want employees using AI. I don't know why they like feel like they're getting out of work somehow. And then externally, employers are so obsessed over what AI does. I think the opposite should be true. I think internally, the KPI should be you how well you use AI. And externally, we shouldn't be obsessing over what AI does. We should be obsessing over what AI does not do. The opportunity, the entrepreneurial opportunity, is in identifying what AI can't do and then doing that, nobody's going to pay you to do what AI does. They're gonna pay AI to do that, right? So they're gonna go buy an AI tool. And by the way, everybody who thinks that they're coding AI tools, you're not. You're just teaching chat GPT what to put native next, you know? So it's like, oh, I vibe coded this AI tool over the weekend. Great. You just illustrated that whatever it is that you created is now unnecessary in terms of professional services, because it can be created in a weekend. And if you figure that out, so too can your client. The thing to do is, what can AI not do? What are the things that don't scale? That's where the margin is, that's where the money is, that's where the opportunity is and it's hysterical, because everybody's running as far away as they possibly can to all of those things. Dude, answering the phone, a real human being answering the phone. Insane. Jason, the opportunity there is so immense it's difficult to hyperbolize, you know, like, why are we AI and customer service? It's the one place in business that's actually been opened up to allow for real human connection and real human endeavor. And AI allows for the scale and the margin and the growth to fund it, you know, like, why is my business working on finding really adept, very intelligent, very empathic human beings who are fully empowered with the decision making necessary to actually solve problems? Actually solve problems. And when I call I do anybody. I call American Airlines, I call Hilton, I call these massive companies, and I it takes 15 freaking prompts to get to a half alive dipshit that can do nothing for me, who I don't understand and doesn't understand me, you know? And it's it. And that's, that is not where we should be saving money, where, you know, and there's so many, so many opportunities to do what AI can't do. And that's, those are the profit driving endeavors. And you know, that's where I'm focusing my entrepreneurial life, right? And that's, that's the best advice I've got.

Jason Croft  34:58  
Well, yeah. And to your what? Feels right in line with Pareto talent with this is making that case to these businesses to go, yeah, you just saved you could fire half of this department because AI does it now, but don't just well, who? Here's cash now pour that into bringing in a level of talent in your customer service that isn't, you know, oh, I've got to have it, because people are complaining and they call instead. Hey, this is our differentiator. Yep, people are amazed when they call us, right? I mean, Zappos built a built and exited based on that, right? And, and I haven't seen too many companies follow suit,

Kasim Aslam  35:49  
dude. I'm not seeing anybody do it, you know? And that's the and it's not just it's not just customer service, it's not just sales, it's not just support. It's rethinking the fabric of business. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the words that doesn't scale. Ooh, you know that doesn't scale. We're not going to do that doesn't scale. If it doesn't scale, I won't do it. Pre AI is actually a pretty sound thesis, pre AI, if it didn't scale, it was hard, and there were so many things that did scale, and it was like, let's focus on what scales. Post AI, if it scales, AI, can do it if it scales. We don't need you now is it? Does that mean it's not valuable? No, it actually might be so valuable that it's it needs to be a ubiquitous truth across you know, like everything chat GP does, chat GPT does is valuable, and it's not profitable any longer. You know, like I've got a friend Chad. Chad has built 18 number one apps in the App Store. Created the emoji app, he said, 4 billion downloads to his name. He's one of the top app developers in the world. He's a community. He's created 1000 millionaires, really brilliant guy. And Chad was sharing with me, there's, I think there's something, he says, some software application that he looks at, when he's looking at what apps do and how much they make. There are apps that will tell you what kind of plant is in a picture. You take a picture of a plant, and it'll tell you what kind of plant it is and how to feed the plant, and how much light it needs, and whatever, wherever. And there's $60 million a year, I think, being made by these apps, and there's dozens of them, chat GPT does that native, right? So that's all the things that scale, because it's a scalable endeavor. Chat GPT can do native, or perplexity can do native, or sub or or could at some point be built in natively. I would be really, really cautious about all the things that scale. I would start looking at businesses that do not scale. I'd look at endeavors that do not scale like, you know what we're doing right now, what you and I are doing doesn't scale like. You could go and you could vibe code a PLA Well, you just go to you don't even need to vibe code. You. You'd just create a conversation in chat, GPT, between two people on hiring. And then we'll put it in notebook LM, and have notebook LM, pump out a podcast, and that podcast is going to sound that scale. So you could scale the data. You have hundreds of 1000s of podcast episodes tomorrow, massively scalable. And I don't, you know, would anybody listen? I don't think so. This doesn't scale. You sitting here in front of your computer for an hour listen to some you know, self obsessed can't live without attention. Entrepreneur who just wants to spot like, talk for an hour.

Speaker 1  38:30  
Wow, you just described me perfectly. Yeah, that's great, you know, like,

Kasim Aslam  38:33  
that's, this doesn't, this doesn't scale like I, I, and it might be the most valuable thing that we can do for our business. Yeah? Our

Jason Croft  38:42  
business, yeah? Well, and that, and for me, certainly, what I do do for folks is that exact thing. That's why I'm so heavy into that. Call it what you want to personal brand,

Kasim Aslam  38:55  
whatever it is the most important thing for people to invest in. You know, what you know what you know my children doing right now? I swear to God, this is true. I just bought my boys two Chromebooks, uh, one. They're eight and 10, and they are. They're their task today. I need two videos from them. They each need to shoot two videos teaching other people how to use AI. They have to edit the videos with intros and outros. They have to come up with Title descriptions and thumbnails, and we're going to put it on YouTube, because I think the only two skills that are going to be of any value in the future are generating a personal brand and learning AI. And that's it. I don't see an employable endeavor beyond that. And so that's my kids are. Dude, my son gets sent home with homework, which I think is absolutely horseshit, because I sent him a Montessori school and monetary should have her homework. And and he asked me, he goes, Can I use chat GPT for this? I was like, Absolutely. Can you take every other kid in that class and they're all going to learn whatever the homework is teaching them. My boy is going to learn chat GPT, you know. And now let's put our money on on those kids and figure out which of those race horses wins that race, you know?

Jason Croft  39:58  
Oh, yeah, I. And I've been amazed with my boys of watching over the years this, this new generation, who, even my oldest 10 years ago, watching him on his own go in, didn't it was frustrating, because he didn't want help from dad, right? I kind of do this for a living, you know, I could help you with it, like, no no, and go in and make videos like YouTube videos. He watches stuff, and he's not the kid who's look at me and drama and all, you know, like, not that kid. And it just so easily jumped in turn on camera, hit record. And it is, it's, you know, my youngest now, really in the drum putting, you know, this acting lesson up on Tiktok, and just on their own, that fearlessness, I just, I just love it, because it is so valuable.

Kasim Aslam  40:53  
It's yeah, and I think people want to hear from people, be with people, talk to people, commune with people, like we've lost community. And AI is doing this really interesting thing. It's kind of freeing us up to swing back in that direction, dude, in 20 years, we won't have screens. It's weird to think about, you know, like you and I grew up basically in a world that was seen first through the screen, and I don't think that's going to be true for our children's children.

Jason Croft  41:29  
Meaning, what, like, implant virtual, like, what do you what do you mean? No,

Kasim Aslam  41:33  
I mean, what the hell do I know? But as I as I read and I study the the collective thesis from, you know, the eggheads who know, the question becomes, why would you need access to a screen? If I can talk to my AI mechanism, whatever that is, I've got a little pin on my lapel. Any question I ask gets answered. Any information that comes in can be projected onto my hand, you know, like, what's the what would the purpose of the screen be an email now, instead of me sending is now just like even, even the conduits, there would be no difference between email and SMS and messenger and WhatsApp. It would just be like, Oh, Jason had a question, and most of the questions that you have are probably answered by pre designation, right? And then, like, I don't know, man, I mean, outside of watching a movie, even that, I think is going to change massively. I don't know why we'd be looking at screens. There's anyway that's that gets more productive prognosticative than we need to. But, yeah, the whole world,

Jason Croft  42:42  
that's the fun stuff. But that's, that's the thing too. Of like, that's what baffles me so much about the employees who are so fearful of AI and all this like, to your point earlier, because, like, how can you possibly, in 2025 sit here and to anything that is put in front of you, go, Yeah, I don't think that's gonna be possible. Like, how you there's nothing you can say that to know, how can you not go, like, yeah, I can see that, yeah.

Kasim Aslam  43:13  
What an amazing time to be alive, man. I think the Mayans were pretty damn close, you know, like, from 2012 to 2025, that was the it's a blessing in so many ways. I'm actually really optimistic about a, I think, a long enough timeline AI certs, you know, cures all of humanity's ills. I think in 100 years, AI will be the best thing that's ever happened to us. But in 50 years, it's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be a lot of growing pains.

Jason Croft  43:44  
Yeah, yeah, interesting. Well, this is awesome. This has been fantastic. I know we went down a few different rabbit holes, which is, that's the fun part again, that's the non scalable part. That's the Yeah, that's the new scale stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I highly recommend everyone out there go and jump, if you've got any business at all. And, I mean, I think there's value in somebody out there looking for a job read this book, because there's so many insights. Of like, oh, that's, yeah, that would make me Pareto talent, right? That would make me a, you know, a superhero. In the eyes of these folks, I think it's, I think it's strong. Tell us how you know who you think should go and grab this and how they can do that and reach out to you. Yeah,

Kasim Aslam  44:33  
they can have the book for free and go to the higher book.com. The higher book.com you get the, not just the book for free. You also get cheat sheet, worksheet templates, a job board, like everything that you needed follow step but you're if you follow the framework in my book, I think you're about 14 days away from the greatest hire you're ever made. It's free. There's no upsell, there's no course on the back end, there's nothing I'm trying to push people into. And that's. A The only thing they can do is if somebody hires somebody using my framework, if they're willing to tell their story and tag me on social, I'll give them a free five day course that'll turn their new hire into a battle ready rock star. That's the only additional ask, and it's not money. It's just tell other people how well this worked for you. The Bush book officially publishes in September, and so your audience would be getting a really sneak peek, let's say, and that's it, man, I want my you know, my goal in life is to help people in emerging nations find more meaningful work and and I think this is the best way to do it. So go to the higher book.com. Book is yours, and I'd love to know people's feedback. I appreciate you having me on the show. Jason, thank

Jason Croft  45:41  
you. Fantastic. Thanks so much. Yeah, I appreciate you, brother, and we'll see you all next time. Thanks for joining us on strategy in action. Remember true industry leaders don't chase opportunities. They attract them. Want to build your own market gravity. Visit media leads co.com See you next time you.