How an 8-Figure Founder Hires World-Class Talent on a Budget with Kasim Aslam – EP 211

Justin Donald: What is up, Kasim? So good to have you back on the show.

Kasim Aslam: Justin Donald, can I tell you a quick story?

Justin Donald: Please do.

Kasim Aslam: So, I had you come speak at my mastermind, which I'm eternally grateful for, and I have had more positive feedback on your talk than any guest we've had in two years.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. It's not a compliment, dude. It's an accusation like it pisses me off because I talk a lot, you know? And nobody likes me as much as they liked you. So, whatever you're doing, whatever you're talking about, you're doing something right.

Justin Donald: Well, thank you. I appreciate you sharing the kind words. It means a lot. I loved sharing the stage. I loved your community because you just have awesome people, just hungry, scrappy entrepreneurs doing cool things in the world, so dialed in and focused on their business as they should be. But we all know that when that happens, it becomes hard to actually manage the other things in life and really important stuff like passive income, building wealth, and not just building it but like exponentially compounding it, like multiplying it, right? And so, I love being able to come in and share this message with entrepreneurs because they just receive it, they just hear it, and they're ready to make some moves. And, you got...

Kasim Aslam: Well, so many of them, they keep going back to the roulette table and going all in.

Justin Donald: Yeah.

Kasim Aslam: You know, so they make money. They're 2X-ing, 3X-ing, 4X-ing, and then they're going back all in. And I think they need to hear, "Hey, how about you carve some of that out and put it somewhere a little safer than, you know," because we've all seen it, too. I've got buddies. I've done it myself where you can get zeroed out pretty quick if you're not being strategic and being careful.

Justin Donald: Well, the problem is the media cycle and social media, it covers all the wins and the successes, but you're not seeing the losers. And so, you see these titans like Elon Musk that takes all of his money and rolls it into PayPal, then from there, rolls it into SpaceX. And so, you see this, you're like, "Wow. This guy's just crushing it." But he's the 1%, right? He's less than 1%. I mean, everyone out, you've got 99% plus who lose it like they roll all their money into the next venture or in several ventures and they lose it all.

Kasim Aslam: Dude, you know what we need? We need a social media channel where people only share their failures.

Justin Donald: That's right. By the way, a lot of great learning there. I mean, I love learning on other people's dime but at the same time, the lessons that I have learned the best are the ones that actually cost me the most.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah.

Justin Donald: Right? Like, when things are going great, you don't learn the same lessons and you can actually get some ego or it's like, "I'm pretty darn good at this. Look at this last result, right?" So, it's like the opposite of what you want.

Kasim Aslam: The best thing that ever happened, I was 20 years old when I started my business. I made way more money than a 20-year-old should make. And I bought the house on the hill and the idiot's car and I was always picking up the check. And I came from a very poor family. So, nobody taught us how to use money. And at 22, I was working for banks. I was building banking software. The economy collapsed around my ears, house foreclosed, car repossessed, like living in a heroin den because my little brother was a heroin addict at the time in this little apartment, patrolling Costco for free tryouts to eat like no money. And I thought at the time, I was like, "This is the worst thing to ever happen to me."

But, Justin, it was the best thing that ever happened because it taught me what money really is, you know, the fuel to business. And it happened early. I was 22 years old, I had to rebuild, sat in a gas tub or bath of full gasoline lighting matches for a while. But you know, you get over that and, gosh, what a wonderful, beautiful lesson that I'm so, so, so grateful for.

Justin Donald: Yeah. You know, it's amazing when you can take a traumatic event or what in the moment feels like the worst thing that ever happened but you can actually make it a great event. You can actually find the gift in it, see the silver lining in it. And that's beautiful. That's a beautiful story. And, yeah, it's what helped shape us and define us. You know, it's like if you didn't have that experience, would you have actually accomplished all the cool stuff you've accomplished in life? You do a lot of it, right? Because that's how you're wired but would you have actually had the drive, the tenacity, like all the things to get to the outlier status that you have gotten to?

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. I think everybody has to fall flat on their face hard once and it's better to just get it out of the way early, you know?

Justin Donald: Yeah, for sure. Well, we are talking off-camera here a little bit ago and just catching up because we're friends first. And I love talking to you. I love, I mean, you and I are on the BetterLife Tribe board.

Kasim Aslam: That Brandon never shows up to.

Justin Donald: Right. Right. Yeah. I guess everyone else is doing the heavy lifting here.

Kasim Aslam: Good for him. He's got it figured out.

Justin Donald: He's figured it out. But you know, the cool thing, I mean, Brandon Turner is this amazing guy and check out his podcast episode, for those of you that are tuning in here today. It was a great session. But Kasim and I, we just have such great conversation. I thoroughly enjoy your perspective, going on deep dives into things, rants. You and I can both rant with the best of them on the things that we know a lot about. And, yeah, there's a lot of overlap in interests but there's not a lot of overlap in expertise, which makes it really fun to spend time together.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, I appreciate that, man. I love learning from you. I got to tell you, my two years in your mastermind and I'm trying not to pander, dude, but I'll just offer the truth and everybody can trust my heart posture. I got a big bucket of money and I'm not an investor and I didn't know how to be an investor. And I swear to God, you not just you saved me and you saved me five years and you shot me five years forward. All the asset classes, literally 100% of the asset classes I'm invested in now with maybe like one exception came from everything I learned in your mastermind. And then your rules, the ten rules like, man, that was just such a paradigm shift and such a change.

So, I really appreciate that. I imagine I'd still have a little money, but I wouldn't have the money I have without going into the furnace that was that group. Because, dude, your crew, they're nuts. Like, do you want to talk about? I mean, I heard people geeking out over like interest rates and financial arbitrage, and just words I didn't understand. And I'm like, "You guys are insane. I'm going to sit next to you."

Justin Donald: It's fun when you have people I can geek out over tax strategy and the things that most people find boring. But when you're saving real money, there's excitement. You should be excited if you're taking money that could go to the government but instead, you're keeping it in your family's pocket or you're putting it towards a business or organization or charity that is really meaningful to you. So, thank you. Thanks for the kind words and thanks for the endorsement and testimonial. It means the world to me and I love that you've been able to make some good moves.

And I love that we've been able to help educate a lot of people, not just by providing them the deals that we do, but actually teaching them what goes into investing and how to think about things and how to balance your portfolio, how to have an asset allocation like the billionaires have, how to vet deals like top performing investors do, and how to create the passive income to have part of the assets actually kicking off cash that you can use today versus waiting for retirement.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. Deals that cash flow is really big. That was one of the big lesson I learned from you. The other big lesson I learned from you, I feel so silly saying this, but when I get term sheets or when I got term sheets prior to or PPMs or whatever they call it, just a fancy *ss PowerPoint presentation they send, I thought that was written in stone. I'm like, "Okay. This is the deal. And it's either yes or no." I didn't realize you could like change the rules and you can be like, "I don't want to do this. I don't do this. I want to do this, and I only do this deal if you do this."

And now you can move mountains, right, because you've got a lot of people behind you and you can move a lot of buying power but even on my little deals, little stuff I do, just the knowledge that when you send me terms, I get to tweak them because the terms are more important than price, generally speaking. So, that was like and it was fun to watch you do that too. It was fun to watch that people come in and pitch and then generally they'd hop off the call and then you tell us all like, "Okay. Here's why I won't do this deal." Like, that was really cool. It was like watching a coach tell you why he's making the play he's making. So, I really appreciated that.

Justin Donald: Thanks a ton. Well, I mean, obviously, it has been a blast having me in the community and you add a lot of value. So, you're not just someone that like sits there and sucks up information and you're taking. You're a person that comes in and says, "Hey, here's where I know a lot. Let me help out. Let me share my creative genius." And you know a lot about a lot of things. And so, you offered our community tremendous value, especially since we believe that there's outlier type of opportunities in the niches that you know well, that you've been in business in, that you've had an exit from, that you've started another business in, which we're going to get to all that here today. I'm excited about it.

Something cool, though. We were talking offline about some trips that are coming up and before we get into one of the rants that we got into that we each kind of like shared some info on, one of the things that I'm doing this weekend, I literally leave in two days, is I'm taking my daughter on a daddy-daughter trip to San Diego. And we're going to go to Legoland and we're going to do SeaWorld. We're doing all the stuff. It's going to be awesome and I'm so excited about that. However, please share with everyone where you're taking your kids on their next trip because this makes me look like, you know, I feel like I'm winning and I'm doing some great stuff. You've got this epic trip and I'm like, "Man, I got to think bigger."

Kasim Aslam: Well, we'll see whether or not I survive and they survive, right? This is my first time I've flown with my children internationally solo. We're going to London in two days. We leave Thursday morning and then we're five days in London and we're doing the whole thing. Like you said, Kyoto Park, obviously, Buckingham Palace. We can't do the Harry Potter studio. They're sold out through the end of November. I know! I was so bummed. The zoo, the London Zoo's the oldest scientific zoo in the world. I just found out.

Justin Donald: By the way, real quick, anyone listening, anyone watching this, if you have connections for that Harry Potter exhibit, reach out to Kasim.

Kasim Aslam: You would make my seven-year-old's world.

Justin Donald: Let's hook him up.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah.

Justin Donald: We've got a pretty resourceful audience, so I hope someone can kind of come through on this.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, I'd be super grateful. That's awesome, Justin. Look at you already pulling the string. This is what you do. This is what he does with his deals. He's like, you know, that's so funny. And then after London, we're going to Bucharest, Romania. I'm speaking at the GPeC Conference, and it'll be the first time my children have ever seen me keynote.

Justin Donald: So cool.

Kasim Aslam: I'm excited about that. And I don't know.

Justin Donald: So, that's the pivot from like dad to whoa, international speaker expert at many things. I think that's going to be a really cool moment for them and kind of like an aha for just like who their dad really is.

Kasim Aslam: Well, I was sitting next to my son at a birthday party once and he's talking to these kids and you know how like little kid conversation is sort of awkward and sporadic? Sammy tells this kid, he goes, "You know, my dad's kind of famous." And then there's a reasonable pause and he goes, "Well, he's on YouTube." And I wish he knew how low that bar was or maybe I'm glad he doesn't know how low that bar was. But, yeah, it'll be fun to kind of posture and brush my shoulder off in front of my boys. I'm excited.

Justin Donald: Well, I remember posturing. I remember, you know, I can't remember exactly what it was, but just the conversations. It was probably in elementary school. And kids were like, "Well, my dad could do this," and I'm like, "Well, that's nothing. My dad can do X, Y, Z plus something else," right? Or, "My dad's stronger than your dad." And so, I always remember bragging about my dad. And so, I've actually heard a few moments where my daughter, Ana, is bragging about me. And it's really kind of a fun full circle because, in front of me, she won't give me that satisfaction.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. No, I'm chopped liver to my boys right now, but, you know, maybe...

Justin Donald: Totally. Oh, yeah. And often, you know, it's the seconds, right? Having, well, I don't know how it is in your family but I think my daughter, Ana, is like, you know, she always says she loves us equal. It's so nice.

Kasim Aslam: I believe it when I see it.

Justin Donald: I'm pretty sure that she's picking her mom over dad but we do a lot of fun stuff that mom doesn't quite do. So, I'm going to win in a number of categories. But, yeah, I mean, it is just fun for your kids to see who you are outside of just being their parents, their father. So, I love that you're doing this. I remember when, you know, our good friend John Ruhlin started bringing his girls to some of his messages. And we lost a good soul. In fact, I'm putting out an episode on it and the loss that we will have because of him being taken away. But he's in a great place. He's in heaven. He's having the time of his life right now. But he started doing that and I'm so glad he did because his girls were able to see him in a different light. And now they don't have that opportunity. So, I love that you're doing that.

Kasim Aslam: Can I tell you my John Ruhlin story?

Justin Donald: Yeah, please.

Kasim Aslam: I got divorced recently.

Justin Donald: Sorry.

Kasim Aslam: One of the hardest things I've ever done.

Justin Donald: I know.

Kasim Aslam: And Ruhlin found out. And he reaches out to me and he has, you know those... Have you seen those mugs he has made?

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, they're amazing.

Kasim Aslam: Amazing. These custom... If you're listening, these custom mugs that are built to identify somebody's life story and kind of this linear fashion and it's artisan crafted. So thoughtful, so amazing. He has a mug made for my ex-wife and she gets this mug and she and I are in great terms. I still love her. She still loves me. It just didn't work out for whatever reason. But it was interesting because the segue in that relationship was hard and it was, dude, it was that mug. It was this handmade clay mug that it bridged the gap. It catalyzed the conversation. It allowed for, you know, and I gave her this mug. It was like, "I still love you and I still think you're amazing and this is how I see you," but I couldn't say those things. I'm not, you know what I mean? Like, it was, I don't know anybody else or anything else that could have done that. And everybody I know that knows Ruhlin has a story like that.

Justin Donald: That's right.

Kasim Aslam: You know, like that dude, you want to talk about a ripple effect, man. Like, oh my goodness. I'm so sad he's gone, obviously. But if you think about like The Gap and The Gain, how much we gained while he was here.

Justin Donald: That's right.

Kasim Aslam: Goodness gracious.

Justin Donald: I'm a better man, better father, better entrepreneur. Just better. Better at so many levels. Better gifter, of course, because of my friendship with John.

Kasim Aslam: What was his thing? Did he ever FaceTime you?

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah.

Kasim Aslam: What was that? Why is this the weirdest...

Justin Donald: That was his thing. He just wanted, you know. He wanted to be different than everyone else and he'd rather have a face-to-face visual and audio conversation.

Kasim Aslam: The only other person that ever used to do that, she was like my 14-year-old niece. I'd be like, "Bro, what are we doing here?" It was great. And that massive smile just swallowed his whole head, you know, like...

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, what a fun guy he was.

Justin Donald: So much fun. Well, I'm excited to release an episode that's my tribute to him and our friendship because we were, I mean, we were friends for, gosh, I've known him for 24 or 25 years. We met when we were 18 years old.

Kasim Aslam: No way.

Justin Donald: Yeah.

Kasim Aslam: I heard a story about you, Justin, that before you weren't allowed to join Cutco yet. You were 17 and everybody else was 18, so you'd come and deejay to parties is what I heard. Is that true?

Justin Donald: This. I feel like... No, that's Hal. I think that is Hal.

Kasim Aslam: Oh, is that Hal? Okay. Hal couldn't join.

Justin Donald: I keep getting confused. Yeah. Because I'm like I definitely didn't deejay, and I definitely got off to a quick start with the company. But I love his story. You know?

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. Well, I'm sorry I conflated those two. I had to go back and review my notes. Yeah.

Justin Donald: Oh, that's alright. Hey, conflate me with Hal all the time. I did very well. I did well on the sales side and paid for all my college and then I did well on the management side. And that's where I really found my stride building systems and infrastructure and even just org charts and leadership development and the way that you work with people. Yeah, that's really where I cut my teeth.

Kasim Aslam: Well, if you don't mind me asking, where did you make your seed capital to start investing? Was that salary money or was that like, where did that come from?

Justin Donald: It came from Cutco income.

Kasim Aslam: Wow. So, that's hard. Like, you made your money $1 at a time. That's the way.

Justin Donald: That's right. Well, I started investing when I was 18 with the money I made selling. And I remember just starting to put it away early on, trying to make a little bit more than what I needed. And then every year after that, I invested more money than the year before it. And that just kind of grew and grew and grew. And then at a certain point in my career, I got to the point where I was able to invest half of what I was making for a very long period of time, and that made a huge difference.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. How did you know to do that? At 18 years old, I would have been snorting it.

Justin Donald: Well, I had someone that shared with me that you want to get your money working early because of compound interest. So, I just, I did. I just started early, and luckily it stuck. Like, someone said the message. It only took one time of me hearing it and I was like, "This seems like a really good idea. I should probably do it." And then I just did.

Kasim Aslam: We're all exposed to that message but so few people actually take it and do the work, you know. Like, good for you for executing. How great is that? What a great trajectory to set yourself on to.

Justin Donald: Pretty crazy. Yeah. And I guess it's one of those things where it's like if I found interest in that early on, no surprise, I love what I'm doing today, right, where I get to invest, I get to teach people how to invest. We get to help people create and compound it. What I like to tell people, we multiply wealth and that's so fun.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. How do you reconcile the losers? I've heard Naval Ravikant say this. He's like, "I hate giving people buy advice because, A, I got to call them every morning and tell them whether or not we're selling. B, if it ever goes down, they blame me." So, I'd be like anxious and nervous. Like, how do you position that in your mind? What's the framing?

Justin Donald: It's the most uncomfortable thing that I deal with. It is the thing that I like the least. And what I try to tell everyone is if you are going to invest anywhere on your own, with a group, with the smartest people under the sun, wherever, you're going to have losers. You're going to have deals that go bad. And it doesn't matter how it looks on paper. It doesn't matter if it checks all the boxes. It doesn't matter if it passes your due diligence. There's always something out of your control and usually a lot of some things. And there's just always operational risk. There's always market risk. There's always like black swan event risk, you know.

But if you can figure out how to learn the lessons from those losses, that's where you really build strength and character and a real competitive advantage. Because think about it this way, like I've made a ton of mistakes, just tons, but I have rarely made the same mistake twice. And so, now the mistakes I make are maybe less, they're less consequential. It's like less of a negative impact. Whereas early on, the mistakes that I made, I mean, they hurt. Yeah, it was like getting punched in the gut and having to take time to recover. So, I always want people to know, like in our community and, by the way, we have an incredible track record in Lifestyle Investor for the deals we've done.

Kasim Aslam: Oh, I know that. I've seen it.

Justin Donald: There's no doubt we're going to have deals go bad. There's no doubt that that's just part of the game but the vast majority of the deals we've done have gone very well, and I'm really proud of that. But I let everyone know you're a big boy or a big girl when coming in and you have to do your own due diligence. There's only so much we can do. And I'm not always right and our team's not always right. And even the teams that we outsource that help us do our due diligence, we spend about $200,000 to $300,000 a year on our due diligence today, and they may miss some things. But with all of us collectively looking at it and with all 125 members looking at it, we're probably going to do better than if we were just on our own.

Kasim Aslam: I have a crazy idea. You might have already thought of this. You know what we need?

Justin Donald: What?

Kasim Aslam: We need a Justin Donald GPT.

Justin Donald: Well, we have built one.

Kasim Aslam: I knew it! Damnit! Yeah. It's only available for the members, though, isn't it?

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, we're actually making one public facing and then we've got one internal facing.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. Because all this sh*t you're talking about dude when you're like, you know, every new lesson, you just load that up in the GPT and then you start asking it. You're like, "Is this a good deal?" And be like, "Actually..." Does it talk like you though? Did you give it personality, Justin? Because if you didn't, I'm going to be pissed.

Justin Donald: It doesn't talk like me yet. We're working on it. We're working on it.

Kasim Aslam: All right.

Justin Donald: But we do have a really cool product that we built with a partner here in Austin, and there's another partner that we're looking at to build some more products, and we're actually building out a due diligence AI where we can drop deals in. And based on our criteria, it's going to let us know what we think of that. I mean, that's going to be powerful. So, I'm thrilled about that.

Kasim Aslam: I'm pumped about that too. That's brilliant. How much fun dude. AI is nuts.

Justin Donald: It's crazy. It is going to take over the world. It already is. There are so many applications and there's a company I'm looking at and I can't even say the name right now, but like this company is revolutionizing things in just a much like today I think everyone's kind of big on like the OpenAI, the Cohere, the Anthropic, Perplexity. I mean, those are kind of like the big names. There are some companies coming out that are doing things that are light years ahead of those companies. And even from like just quantum computing, quantum mechanics. Like, there is a whole another data set, a whole another world, a whole another reality that AI is going to play in that I think your average person hasn't even considered yet. And so, I'm working on investing in one of these companies right now.

Kasim Aslam: That's not even exciting to me. That's just terrifying. You know what I mean? It's just like because I'm amazed by AI now. Like, I talk to ChatGPT daily and I'm blown away. So, to hear you say that I'm just like, "Oh, God," you know. This is going to sound horrible. I'm so glad I got rich pre-AI. Dude, I don't know if I could do it after because I made my money. I'm an idiot, you know. I'm professional services, like, right? Like, you give me a dollar and I'll do the thing and I just scaled that. But like with AI, AI does all the things that I know how to do, so I don't know. Gosh, you know. Thank goodness is all I'll say.

Justin Donald: Well, here, this is a great transition because when we had talked before, I’m trying to remember, we had thought maybe you had just had your exit. And we probably didn’t get into many of the details because it was new, it was fresh. There was a lot of stuff you probably couldn’t have talked about back then, but you had a really nice eight-figure exit.

You are now a decamillionaire, which is incredible. Congratulations. I mean, that’s like less than 1%, right? So, you’re like moving into the top, like half percent of people, which is unbelievable. And then having those dollars that can compound over time, the more money you have, the more it compounds, the greater opportunity it is to create more wealth.

But I’d love to talk about the business that you had and sold. And then maybe, actually, there’s a bunch of things we can get into. So, let’s talk about the business that you sold and where that’s at. Let’s talk about the new business you’re starting, and let’s talk about what you did with the proceeds of the business and what has worked and what hasn’t worked.

Kasim Aslam: I love that. That’s great.

Justin Donald: So, let’s start first with the company.

Kasim Aslam: If I go down rabbit holes that are irrelevant, Justin, just real me and K, because I don’t want to bore your listeners.

Justin Donald: Oh, gosh, you couldn’t bore anyone.

Kasim Aslam: Well, I don’t know. I’m going to give it my best shot. I sold, I built the number one ranked Google ad agency in the world. My M&A advisor thinks we’re the largest Google ad agency, largest dedicated Google ad agency, and there’s nobody that tracks that. But we got to 200 clients, a hundred million dollars in ad-spend under management, 80 employees.

Most agencies get to about 30 clients to put it in perspective. So, we scaled really well. And we had an unsolicited offer, which is interesting. Actually, I’ll say that differently. We had 50 unsolicited offers. People were coming out of the woodwork to buy agencies, and it was because liquidity dried up post COVID. Ecom and SaaS companies started peeling back because they didn’t want to sell while liquidity was dry. And so, agencies were a recurring revenue model that M&A, pegs, all the people knew how to evaluate kind of, and they’re downstream. They’re not as, you want SaaS, and if you can’t get SaaS, you want ecom.

And agencies weren’t really relevant at all until we were in this weird stalemate environment where sellers didn’t want to sell, buyers didn’t want to buy. So, everybody went to kind of like the little leagues. It’s like when the NFL goes on strike and everybody actually watches the XFL, that’s what that was.

So, I had this agency that, dude, just right place, right time, really. And we’re doing 2 mill in EBIT. And agencies traded at 6-8X. Everybody do the math. And I love talking about it, but that’s all, more or less public. And so, we sell.

And here’s what’s interesting is I talked to a guy named Reuben Hendell. Shout out to Reuben, by the way, because he was such an amazing advisor to me and never asked for anything in return. Reuben was– he’s one of the top M&A guys for agencies in the world, but he only deals with big companies. He wouldn’t deal with me. And Reuben goes, “Just wait. If you can get to 5 million EBIT, I can get you a 13x.” So, I’m like, I’m not a math scientist, Justin, but that’s $65 million. I went to ask Google and that was quite a bit more than I was getting. Quite a bit more. And yet, the horizon for agencies looked finicky to me, so I cashed the check. And dude, here’s the thing that I’ll say to listeners.

Justin Donald: That’s smart. So smart.

Kasim Aslam: I’m so glad. I’m so unbelievably, because $65 million on an Excel spreadsheet, turns out you can’t spend that. And if you don’t yet have what John Goodman calls, I think the movie is called The Gambler, but he calls it your Fortress of Solitude, right? If you don’t have just the early stage, like I’m good forever, and you have that opportunity, cash the check. You know what I mean? Like, take the chips. So, super thrilled I did that.

Justin Donald: You can’t lose taking chips off the table. You can’t lose cashing in on a win. And I wish more people would see it versus letting it ride. And if you’re going to let it ride, take chips off the table and let a small percentage ride. But that is the best play because you don’t know what is going to happen with interest rates, what’s going to happen with liquidity, what’s going to happen with the economy, what’s going to happen with the agency model as a whole, what’s AI going to do to agencies, right? There’s just so many unknown variables that if you get a win that sets you up for life, or at least for a good portion of life, just take it.

Kasim Aslam: I drive a 40-year-old Honda, Justin. I’m holding on to what I got.

Justin Donald: I have seen it.

Kasim Aslam: I forgot that. You almost got to driving it, but there wasn’t enough room. I sold my agency with 200 clients.

Justin Donald: Prelude. It’s a Prelude.

Kasim Aslam: A Honda Prelude, 1987 Honda, greatest car for me. 1987 Honda Prelude. I got it on Bring a Trailer. Its five speed manual, drives a Google cart. So much fun.

Justin Donald: Love it.

Kasim Aslam: When I sold my agency, I had 200 clients. Nine months later, it had 130.

Justin Donald: Oh, my goodness.

Kasim Aslam: It wasn’t the acquiring entity’s fault. AI showed up months late and all of a sudden, people started bringing in house, bringing in full funnel agencies. Attribution came hard. The model, like a meteor hit the model, and I got off four seconds before it hit. It was crazy.

And I didn’t know that. I knew, I thought I had three to five years. I kept saying that. I was like, I think I have three to five years. It turns out I had six to nine months. I had no idea. Just lucky man. Just luck, luck, luck, luck, luck.

Justin Donald: Well, the other thing about that is it’s like there’s a grind that’s out there to get to where you need to be. And if you put in the time and the hours and you get that to where it needs to be, there’s no guarantee it gets better, even though it could, even though it looks like it could. But even in, like, for example, real estate, and I’ll use my industry because I’m heavily weighted in mobile home parks, the rule of thumb is that you get it to the point that you want to sell it and then you sell it because the reality is once you have it optimized, the only way that it’s likely going to go is back down.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, the returns are incremental that way.

Justin Donald: So, you just work so hard to get it to its peak. You may not know it’s its peak, like in your instance, you thought maybe it might be, maybe it’s not, maybe I could get 65 million. But you wisely said, “What if this is the peak? Let’s take some chips off the table.” And I love that. I think that when you get to a point where you’ve optimized pretty well and you’ve put in a lot of hard work, get the win, take the win, because if it comes crumbling down, you have to do all that hard work over again, if the economy changes, if the market changes, if business in general changes, if...

Kasim Aslam: Well, it’s not an if, right? Like, the flood is always coming. That’s always going to happen, especially now. With AI and just how fast things move, it’s like, gosh, man, if you have a swing, take it.

Justin Donald: Yeah, 100%. Now, what I also see is people like you, founders, entrepreneurs with a big exit, it’s fascinating because you’re the wealthiest you’ve ever been. You’ve got more cash in hand or more cash, digital dollars that you’ve ever had. But sometimes, it’s weird, but you can get into this scarcity mindset around money and not having enough and feeling like it’s dwindling down or that you’re using it to fund your life. And you’ve got to, my opinion, quickly figure out how to have a portion of it or all of it create cash flow so you’re not spending it down. I’m curious what that was like for you. Did you have anything around like feelings of scarcity around money, having a ton but seeing it maybe dwindle down till you figured out the passive income piece?

Kasim Aslam: I had the benefit of, I had built a couple of businesses, so I built and sold Solutions 8, But I had two other businesses that were already churning mailbox money, like six figures. So, it wasn’t, like, I could live off of that forever. So, it was such a godsend, dude. It was such a blessing because it gave me the chance to just sit and breathe. So, I’ve got my little bucket of money and I’ve got my mailbox money from these other little entities. And dude, it was Brandon Turner, actually. I met Brandon right when I made my exit. Steve Sims introduced us. Do you know Steve?

Justin Donald: I know Steve. I had him on the show. He’s awesome. I love Steve. Hysterical. And a real wow guy, yeah.

Kasim Aslam: Oh, dude, yeah, his stories are crazy. Actually, you’re going to Hong Kong, you should look up Steve. He knows Hong Kong.

Justin Donald: Okay. It’s a good idea.

Kasim Aslam: He lived there, I think, for 20 years or something crazy. But Brandon, I made my exit, and Brandon’s like, “Take a year off. Don’t do anything. Don’t build, don’t create, don’t, whatever. Just take a year off.” You can invest obviously, but don’t start the next business and think what I did because that was my inclination. Like, oh, if you go with a hammer, everything’s nail. And I was like, I have this money. I’ll just go start another, do that.

And instead, I took the year off. I joined your mastermind. And dude, thank God I did that. I have to– I mean, again, try not to pander, but everybody, when you make, when they know you have money, you become a prey animal. And folks came at me with the most outstanding, and I don’t know what I’m looking at. Everything looks like it’s going to be $1 trillion opportunity, and you’re the dumbest human of the person if you don’t invest right now today.

And it was just like, I loved having permission. That’s what you gave me with your blueprint and the 10 rules and then the community. And it was cool to isolate asset classes because like mobile home parks, self-storage, warehouse, those that never would hit my radar, ever, ever, ever, ever, and ever. Everybody is investing all this stuff that feels and sounds fancy, but that stuff is like, it’s so margin thin. So, that’s why I went. I owned some self-storage facilities. Actually, started this, this is based off of your advice. I don’t know if you know this. I started a business with Kevin Rapport, who I think you know.

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah, That’s awesome.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, he and I buy and flip. We haven’t flipped one yet, but we’ve been wholesaling self-storage. We have one in North Carolina, which was a really good get. I did another one, dude. I’m really good at lead generation because that’s what I did at Solutions 8. So, I’ve generated 250 leads for mobile home parks, but none of them are good. So, I’ve generated 250 leads, but they’re under 100 pads.

So, if anybody here is listening that knows how to monetize small mobile home parks, I can mint leads, but I can’t do anything because I don’t know how to value, and valuation of mobile home parks is so hard and they’re all over the country and some of them have septic, which I know is bad, and some of them don’t. And it’s just like that’s been a little disparate and a little hard. So, I’m doing okay with mini storage. I’m not doing great with mobile home.

And then I went and I bought $3 million worth of single-family homes in Fargo, North Dakota because Fargo, North Dakota is the most recession-proof city in the country. And I thought to myself, I don’t even want returns. I want and I’m using other people’s money, right? So, I have debt on all of them.

But I just figure the rents cover the debt service plus, I’m getting the 1% rule. Kyle Reedstrom, a boy hooked me up. So, I’m making something on it. Not a lot, but I love, love, love knowing that a meteor can hit our economic earth. In Fargo, if you ever look at Fargo, Fargo never dies.

Justin Donald: And why? Explain that to people, Fargo never dies.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, so the Fargo economy is built upon producing oil in a way that (a) nobody else can produce it. In quantities, nobody else can produce, and in a region that isn’t dependent upon international affairs. So, Fargo is and will always be viable for as long as oil is viable.

And regardless of what you think about solar, none of those things, like we’re going to be oil dependent for the next 1,200 years. Yeah, we’ve got some time. So, love, love, love the Fargo market. Go check out our boy, Kyle Reedstrom, if you want houses in Fargo, by the way. He’s the one who feeds me on my deals. I hope you don’t mind me.

Justin Donald: No, not at all. I want everyone out here to get a leg up, so that’s perfect. And by the way, for those of you that do have an idea on the solve for the mobile home park leads, here’s what I will say, you can make a lot of money in mobile home parks by rolling up portfolio. So, the bigger institutions don’t want parks that are under 100 pads. But if you’ve got a portfolio of 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, that’s when they get interested.

So, you just have to find. For you, Kasim, you just have to find the people that are willing to buy the smaller pads. But for those of you listening, that’s a great way. Like, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve built a lot of wealth by rolling up these portfolios. I’ve gotten crazy offers over the years. Nothing is crazy as what I got right during and before COVID. But I mean, even today, you can get incredible pricing on that based on what you’re buying, a pretty huge multiple from what you’re buying to what you can get once you’re at scale, once you’re at, let’s call it, a thousand plus.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah. I’d love to find a partner there. I can gen up the leads, work the deals, like all that. Somebody who can do the valuation, and we can put the money together. That doesn’t feel hard at all. So, for whatever that’s worth, I’ll cut you in on that, Justin, if your podcast produces that person, you’re an automatic partner. I think that’s a rule.

Justin Donald: Love it. Hey, let’s produce this.

Kasim Aslam: Not that you need it, but you’ll be honorary equity holder.

Justin Donald: Well, it’s fun when I can do stuff with friends. And it’s also fun when it’s something that I have some good insight on. So, I feel like I can be valuable in other ways too.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Justin Donald: Yeah. I’ve just learned over the years that if you want to do well, get a whole bunch of people involved, especially people that know what they’re doing in that thing or have expertise in some area because they’re going to see things that you don’t. And so, I’ve just always learned, be generous with who gets a piece of the pie, like defaults on the generous side of things. And not that the motive is what you get back, but you’re going to get back a bigger return, but you just are. If you get the right people in that are just smarter than you, that combining creative geniuses across many different industries, many different sectors, it’s just going to do better than if just you do it.

Kasim Aslam: Yeah, little pieces of big pies.

Justin Donald: That’s right. That’s right.

Kasim Aslam: I love little pieces of big pies.

Justin Donald: Doesn’t get better. That’s cool. So, tell us about your new business.

Kasim Aslam: It’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done entrepreneurially. It’s not scalable at all. When I sold Solutions 8, I sold 80 employees, and they were all international. And I had 40% margins in an industry that aims at 15% because I went and I hired international talent and all my peers. And dude, actually, the entire Western entrepreneurial world still only outsources grunt work. So, like, oh, yeah, I work with people in the Philippines or India or whoever, and then I was like, “What do they do?” Cold calling, data entry, like just garbage.

And then it’s like, well, how’s it going? Not well. And it’s like, of course, it’s not going well. How well would you as a human do if somebody was like, sit in front of this computer for eight hours and do the entry. So, I went the other way. And this is my soapbox, dude, so forgive me for getting passionate.

But there’s as much talent available internationally as there is domestically. But domestically, we can’t compete for that talent as small businesses, generally speaking, because Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook are swallowing, right? I don’t have a fancy conference room in a high rise with $12 croissants. Even if I could match their salaries, I can’t match their benefits or the cachet of working for them.

But if I go international, I can pay many multiples what they’d make domestically, which means I get the top tier talent and I’m the belle of the ball. And so, I ended up with these amazing, amazing, amazing humans. And they’re the reasons that my businesses are so functional and so good.

And so, I was having this conversation actually with a Front Row Dad, Jason Yeh. And Jason’s like, “Dude, you have to do this. This is the thing you need to be doing.” And so, we rolled up a recruiting agency. We find and train talent in Latin America, argentina and Colombia, my two favorite countries for economic reasons that I can get into if you want. And we train them to be executive assistants.

Now, the executive assistant has a role as a Trojan horse because you will never have an executive assistant for very long because you figure out, like, oh, you’re really good at this thing that now just became your job. My first EA became my Director of Social. My second EA became a Director of Automations. My third EA became my CTO, managed all the due diligence of my exit and is now one of my best friends.

So, the idea behind having an EA is you’re giving 10 things, they suck miserably at two, they do six okay, and they crush two. Those two just became their job. You roll them out, you get another EA. And I’m not here to push my recruiting agency, to be honest with you, because I’m out of VAs, Justin, I’ve run.

But what I want people to know, what my life’s passion and work is, is you and me and everybody listening can change the world if we start hiring out of emerging nations because you take somebody who’s dying for an opportunity, like the average Argentinean is making $200 to $300 USD. The average white-collar Argentinean is making $200 to $300 USD because their economy is in freefall. Imagine paying somebody $900 USD if their average is making 300. You’re making three times what your peers make.

They work from home because it’s a remote work. They work on a flexible schedule. They get meaningful work. Their life change, their children lives change, and buying power, the community.

And then think about the entrepreneur that gets that person, overwhelmed, needs help, doesn’t know what it– you know what I mean? Like, it’s such a win-win. It’s such a symbiotic win-win. And I’m seeing it now. I’m housing these EAs with these entrepreneurs, and they’re like, I don’t know what I ever did without these people. And it’s just such an unbelievable, it’s like outwitted, massive leverage returns on a human level. It’s so much fun, dude.

So, if you own a business or even if you don’t own a business, if you’re an investor who needs help, whatever it is, research, due diligence, customer service, monitoring things, I have a personal CFO I hired. He’s a college professor in Argentina. He just manages all my investments and he monitors everything. And he gives me reports. I’ll share the reports with you.

Justin Donald: That’s awesome.

Kasim Aslam: You can find that talent. He’s so smart, Justin. He’s so brilliant. He’s triple PhD brilliant. It’s actually devastating, he said, he should be a C-level executive at Fortune 500 company. He lost the geographic lottery. And this talent is everywhere, Philippines, South Asia, East Asia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Latin America. There’s so many unbelievably talented people.

And God forgive me for saying it this way, but they’re so cheap from a salary perspective, what you get, and then the returns you get if you’re willing to actually treat them like real human beings and incentivize them properly because they don’t have the opportunity we have. God bless, dude, the Western world, we’ve been able to produce, how easy it is to be an entrepreneur.

I’m a welfare baby, bro, like my mom, blind single mother on Social Security disability in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My little brother did six years in prison on a four yard. I’ve from nothing produced a decamillion. Pat on me, like whatever, pat on the back. It’s the country, right? The opportunity that I was given was unbelievable.

My father’s from Pakistan. If I was, I would be a frickin street rat. So, those folks just don’t have what we have. But you can turn them around and you can find people that are like, dude, their nuclear weapons, they’re amazing and they’re available now. So, anyway, I’m so sorry, bro, I moved far.

Justin Donald: I love it. Well, and think about how loyal people are. If you are a change in their life, if you’re paying them two or three times what the going rate is, and for you, it’s still an amazing deal. So, it’s like you get to have this impact and they will forever remember it, which is really cool.

I’ve been working with a team in the Philippines for over 20 years and then just like what you had said about, you had said that your EA has generally moved on to other things. Hopefully, you’re hiring right. I mean, I like to hire EAs that have executive profile so that they can move into other roles. But my very first official EA now runs our entire real estate program and portfolio. And she is so killer.

And then another EA that I had, now is the operations manager for Lifestyle Investor. And so, yeah, it’s really cool to see and it’s actually funny because all of my EAs keep getting promoted to other things. So, I actually need an EA again.

Kasim Aslam: You need an EA, yeah, that’s what you want. That’s what you want to constantly run out of it. There should be a flywheel. I have a whole concept there about, they have to find and train your replacement before they move on. But we’ll coach together on that offline.

Justin Donald: I love it. Well, if you ever get some people back in the pipeline, let me know because I may be your next client or the next person on your waitlist.

Kasim Aslam: I love it, dude. Well, we have a waitlist. If somebody wants an EA, they can go to ParetoTalent.com, but they don’t have to hire from me. Like, this talent is available and accessible. I just make it a little faster, a little easier.

But dude, go, I love Latin America right now. They’re on our time zone. English proficiency is high. Education is high, depending on the country. Argentina, Colombia, Brazil have really strong infrastructure in terms of internet and power. I like Venezuela, but it gets a little dicey just because it’s a little dicey over there.

But dude, those are not the only places. The Philippines is great, india, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. All of Eastern Europe right now is, they’re having a tough go of it, but there are still really talented, really amazing people. So, broaden the international horizons, and I think some really awesome stuff can happen.

Justin Donald: That’s amazing. So, what would you say is the next step for people, if they’re like, hey, this sounds good? And by the way, I did a session in Lifestyle Investor in our mastermind where I just basically said everyone needs an executive assistant or at least at a minimum, a virtual assistant. I don’t care what you do for a living, I don’t care what your role is, but someone that can help you do things in life that buy your time back, especially if you have a lot of responsibilities.

But I’m just saying everyone, and some of the talent, you can hire between $5 and $10 an hour that is very educated. If you just have them for, what, a few hours a week, let’s even call it 10 hours a week, you’re talking about just a few thousand dollars a year. I mean, who wouldn’t offload some things that they’re doing for that price? It’s a no brainer at every level. But if you actually have a lot on your plate, you’ve got to make the shift. So, what would be a good next step?

Kasim Aslam: I think what people should start to do is get themselves delegation ready. Generally, when people’s EA fails, it’s not the EA that fails, it’s the person. They’re not giving them enough work or they’re not offering the feedback they need to offer.

And so, I actually got this piece of advice from another podcast host, start talking to ChatGPT. ChatGPT can do a lot of stuff an EA can do. So be like, “Hey, ChatGPT, write me this email, do this research, figure this thing out,” and once you feel delegation ready, I like what you just said, Justin, like, find a part-time EA. You can do that on Freelancer, Upwork, oDesk, Fiverr, wherever. Those places you tend to find the people who are a little more entrepreneurial. So, I don’t like going there for full-time employees, but if this is your first foray, you’re going to have more competent talent, and that’s the way to dip your toe in.

When you’re ready for an FTE, it’s a bit of a process, job description, get some applications, filter through it. There’s a whole framework I have for that that I’ll give your audience if you want it. I have a YouTube video on how to do it.

Justin Donald: Yeah, we’d love that. And by the way, why should people go to you? What’s your differentiation?

Kasim Aslam: Well, the sales pitch is, at Pareto Talent, number one, we actually train the EAs. They go through a pretty significant bootcamp. They’re trained on all the usual suspect tasks, let’s say, so inbox management, calendar management, communication, ChatGPT, automation, process management, etc.

And we don’t just place and walk away like most recruiting agencies. Most recruiting agencies are like, here you go, best of luck to you, God bless. Instead, we continue to manage and train. And so, we have what we call an assistance mastermind, all the assistance that we meet weekly, they have a Slack channel. If you ask them to do something they don’t know how to do, they’re like, “Does anybody know how to integrate Zapier and Stripe?” And then another EA can go, “Yeah, I’ve got that.”

And then as new AI tools or best practices roll out, we’re constantly honing and training them. And to the point that you made earlier, if you ever lose your EA or they ascend, we have the system in the process built in so that they can replace themselves and train the replacement as they go. So, that’s the value prop. I appreciate you letting me shlep there a little bit, Justin. Thank you.

Justin Donald: Well, I’m your biggest advocate because I wouldn’t be where I am had I not found great people to work with that have helped me in this aspect of my life and different roles in business. So, I mean, we utilize this type of talent personally and professionally. So, I love the work you’re doing. Tell us where we can find more about you.

Kasim Aslam: Kasim.me, K-A-S-I-M dot-me. You can follow me on social. You can have my book for free. You can see Pareto Talent. I’m trying to do a podcast tour right now. So, if anybody has a podcast they want me on or I should be on, I’d love to know about it, but I appreciate you having me on yours, Justin. Thank you.

Justin Donald: Heck, yeah. This has been awesome. It’s always a pleasure talking and hanging, and I can’t wait till we get to hang out again the next time in person. And I love ending every episode I do with a question for our audience. That question is the same or a variation of it every week, and that is this, what is one step you can take today to move towards passive income and financial freedom and really building the life that you desire? So, most people live a life by default, what’s one step you can take to live a life by design? Thanks. And we’ll catch you next week.