How To Hire Top Talent To Make Without Micromanaging With Kasim Aslam

Hiring the right people can make or break your business. Too many entrepreneurs struggle to find top-tier talent, often settling for employees who require constant oversight rather than those who truly elevate the company. In this episode, I sit down with Kasim Aslam, a serial entrepreneur who has built six- and seven-figure businesses by mastering the art of hiring and delegation.

Kasim shares why most hiring strategies are broken, how to spot the difference between a commodity worker and a game-changer, and why entrepreneurs often fail at scaling—not because they lack resources, but because they don't know how to delegate effectively. We also dive into the Corridor Principle, a powerful framework for taking action before you're “ready,” and why failing fast is actually the key to long-term success.

Plus, Kasim reveals his process for finding and training executive assistants who not only take work off your plate but actually drive your business forward. If you’re tired of feeling like hiring is just adding more to your workload, this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss.

Connect with Kasim Aslam:
If you’re looking for high-quality executive assistants who will help you scale instead of adding more work to your plate, Kasim has built a solution just for you. Visit Kasim.me to learn more, check out his daily YouTube vid

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Chapters

• 0:00 From Failure to Founder
• 4:08 The Power of Growth & Adaptation
• 9:23 Hiring the Right People
• 16:08 Scaling Through Delegation
• 24:16 Take Action, Not Just Notes
• 30:36 Fail Fast, Learn Faster
• 37:06 Habits of High-Level Leaders

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:37

I'm so excited today to have Qasim Aslam on the podcast. Qasim has built five, seven and eight-figure businesses, with two successful exits. He's the co-founder of Driven Mastermind, the top marketing mastermind in the world. He's written three best-selling books, including you vs Google, which was ranked number one internationally for both marketing and advertising. He's the creator of Digital Marketers Paid Traffic Certification and was named one of the top 50 digital marketing thought leaders in the US by UMSL. He's also the co-founder of Pareto Talent, a company that is dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs by providing exceptional executive assistance from Latin America. Kasim, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show. Dr William, thanks for having me Appreciate it.

Kasim Aslam: 1:31

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:47

I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Intro/Outro: 2:00

Failed at everything. I'm the world's greatest failure. I was, uh, supremely unemployable, um, both technically and temperamentally. Um, I got in a lot of trouble as a kid and ended up running away from that trouble. Uh, I lived in albuquerque, new mexico, was an amateur but aspiring thief, and I just got in way over my head at one point, and so I called my dad, who I didn't really know very well, and I told him you know, I'm sort of in the thick of it, and he moved me out to Scottsdale.

Intro/Outro: 2:34

And if you've been to Albuquerque and you've been to Scottsdale, you know it's a Mars and Venus situation. This is very, very, very different environment. And I tried working for him. He had a rug and furniture store and that was horrible. I hated it. I hated working with my dad. I love my dad. I hated working with him. And so I struck out on my own and that was my start was I just knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to go to college. I dropped out and failed at that. I didn't want a job because that sucked, and I didn't want to work for my dad. And so entrepreneurship wasn't a decision, it was a default, it was just the only thing that was left to me as far as productive endeavors are concerned and I can't say I did it well. I definitely took the long way, but that was the beginning.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:13

Wow, how did you get from there to where you are now? Because I got to tell you. We get a lot of requests to be on the show and when I got yours and I was checking you out, I thought this guy's, this guy's the real deal. And the more I learned, the more I loved about your story, because you are so open and honest with the failure, like you've already said, and yet look at where you've come. How did said, and yet look at where you've come. How did? How did you get from albuquerque, for being a kid in trouble, to the costume that we know now?

Intro/Outro: 3:50

hi zen. I think it was one percent improvement. You know there was no flip switch, rip the band-aid off. I had the tiger song playing montage moment. It was just very iterative and I think the thing that I did really well is just stay committed to change and to growth. Going back to my dad, he had these old tony robbins discs like that's how old I am these old tony robbins cds awaken the power within, or uh, whatever it was. And I just started really, you know, I had this opportunity to reinvent myself and I took it really seriously and I don't think that ever changed. You know, there was just a very strong willingness to look in the mirror, try to identify what was wrong and then fix one thing, and that was. That's been supremely impactful.

Intro/Outro: 4:39

Before we started recording, I mentioned that I'm about to turn 40 years old and so weird man, because I do not feel 40. I don't feel like a grown-up. I have two children. I don't know why anybody trusts me with little people. I'm just so grateful to God that they're still alive. I get bills in the mail and I'm like you want me to pay this. You know what I mean. There's just so much about life that's just such a, and on some levels that's not good at all, but on other levels I think it's really served me that I have yet to integrate the idea that there's a solidity to my existence. There's not a lot about me, that's not malleable. I think I have a core nucleic center. That's principle driven, I hope, and then beyond that, you know, it's all, it's all up for debate, it's all up for modification and change, and that's been, that's been really helpful.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:33

You know, I would argue that that commitment to grow and to adapt and to change is responsible for so much of what you've accomplished, and to change is responsible for so much of what you've accomplished. I've talked to a lot of leaders who are sometimes they're in their early 20s and you'd think they were made of concrete. They're just not interested in changing, they're not interested in adapting at all. This is what is, this is what will be, this is how I am, and there's no room for growth, there's no teachable spirit at all. You seem exactly the opposite.

Intro/Outro: 6:05

To my detriment. Sometimes I think I can get a little too focused on what can change and not focused enough on what should be solidified or strengthened. That's fair.

Intro/Outro: 6:16

And more often than not I think it's served me more than it's hurt me. It's so funny when people are describing me, I get the's served me more than it's hurt me. So you know it's so funny People I get. When people are describing me, I get the word humble all the time. People are like you're so humble and you know they'll bring me up on stage and ah, kasim, he's so humble and it's funny because I hear that and I'm like I'm not really. You got it wrong. I'm actually.

Intro/Outro: 6:38

I don't feel like I'm that humble. I think people mistake my willingness to be receptive to where I might be wrong or how I might change as humility. But there's a lot about me that I'm like, I'm pretty proud of. You know what I mean. Like I, I'm sort of like maybe you and I define humility wrong, but I'm grateful to have had the opportunities I've had. I've hit it out of the park a couple of times and I have a healthy self-image along that level of analysis and so I think that my humility is mistook. I'll take it because it makes me accessible.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:12

I imagine I don't think humility is really running yourself down or being a doormat. A lot of people think humility is being a doormat. It's not. I think it's exactly what you just said. It's a healthy perspective on who you are and the gifts and skills and talents that you bring. That's humility. That's a healthy perspective. I heard it said once humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's simply thinking of yourself less. I really love that and I think that is what people see in you. It certainly characterizes our conversation so far that we've talked. I mean you are focused on what could be. You are focused on what could be, not only in the businesses that you run, but in the people that you lead. I think that is a characteristic of real, authentic humility. That's well said. I appreciate that that's a characteristic of real, authentic humility.

Intro/Outro: 8:03

That's well said. I appreciate that. That's a good perspective change for me.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:07

So you have, I mean, five businesses, that you have Actually six now.

Intro/Outro: 8:12

I need to update my bio. Yeah, so Pareto Talent just hit a million. It's a million gross rev run rate. So we haven't hit a million gross rev, but as of January 2025, we're at a million gross rev runway and we're on a meteoric rise too. So I would anticipate that being pretty significantly improved by the end of this year, so that's the newest thing.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:31

So talk about that for a minute. What is Pareto all about?

Intro/Outro: 8:34

It's my favorite thing I've ever done. It's also the least scalable business I've ever been involved in. I love people with everything inside of me. The least scalable business I've ever been involved in. I love people with everything inside of me. It's the reason I've been successful in business.

Intro/Outro: 8:45

Every human is such a miracle and the way that we're taught to hire and train and manage people is exactly wrong, and it's from almost every direction.

Intro/Outro: 8:58

I mean every academic study of management, I think, is exactly wrong because we're taught as business owners to try to treat people like they're commodities. We talk about them like they're commodities, we hire them like they're commodities, we trade them like they're commodities, we, you know like, grow them, ascend them, get rid of them, and the human being is not a commodity. You take the same two humans born in the same hospital, from the same doctor, live in the same city, went to the same school, had the same upbringing, got the same degree, took the same job, and they're still going to be so, so, so, so, so, so different. And I've known this for longer than I've put words to it and it's the reason that I'm quite a bit more successful than I deserve. To be honest with you, dr William, it's because everybody else is trying to do it themselves. I made it a habit of finding a miracle, putting them in the driver's seat of whatever endeavor it was that I was trying to accomplish and then getting out of their way.

Kasim Aslam: 9:50

And flash forward.

Intro/Outro: 9:51

I've built all these businesses. So when I sold my last business, it was a big exit. I had an eight-figure exit. So I'm now rich, businessless and having massive existential crises about who I am and what, what's next, and and the thing that kept coming back to me and it was actually a friend that pointed this out is how, how much I love and get lit up by finding really amazing people. So we thought like, well, crap, why don't we just make that the business? That's what we did.

Intro/Outro: 10:18

Did I find talent in Latin America and there's reasons that we focused on Latin America. Talent is available everywhere, but in terms of English proficiency, cultural alignment and then time zones, just practically speaking, latin America ends up being a real solid hotbed. So I find talent in Latin America. I train them to be quality executive assistants quality executive assistants. We chose the role of executive assistant by design and it's because your executive assistant is. It's actually a flywheel for identifying talent. Your EA should never be your EA for very long. Really, what you're doing is you're taking a really smart, intelligent human who's proven themselves as industrious and you're testing them against different things.

Kasim Aslam: 10:54

And you give them 10 things to do.

Intro/Outro: 10:55

And here's what's funny about it is if you give somebody a smart, industrious person, if you give them 10 things to do and here's what's funny about it is, if you give somebody a smart, industrious person, if you give them 10 things to do, they're going to suck at two of them. They're going to do six. Just fine, check the box. They're going to do two better than any human has ever done those two things. And here's what we're taught by the business world at large is to go focus on the two things they suck at and say we're going to get you there, kiddo, and here's a performance improvement program and we're going to put you through coaching. And you're going to shadow johnny, because johnny's good at this. And I'm like, how about we not only stop making him do those two things, but what if we go? Took those two things that they're better at that and anybody in the world, and we make that their job?

Intro/Outro: 11:31

My first ea became my director of social. My second ea became my director of automations. My third ea became my cto, managed entire exit, became one of my best friends and is now my business partner in ProtoTalent. He trains all my EAs and it's never not proven true. For me, again, it requires the a priori assumption is that you're dealing with people that are actually motivated, and I have a whole system of fly traps we can talk about to find those people. But man, when you have being an entrepreneur is always to me, has always felt like I'm pulling a sled up a muddy hill in the rain by myself and the straps are digging into my shoulder and they're cutting into my skin and I'm bleeding and I'm tired and I'm lonely and I'm cold and I can feel the muscles in my legs giving out and every time I hire somebody I throw them in the back of the sled and it makes it heavier. Every business owner I know has this sled. They're pulling up and every new hire is just more work, more time, more supervision, more management. When you start hiring Pareto talent the real leverageable talent 80, 20, the 20 that do the 80 it's like somebody stands next to you, grabs a strap and starts to help you pull and the thing that will change your life is when they pull harder and faster than you do and all you have to do is get out of the way and so like yeah, I've built six million and multi-million dollar businesses, but I kind of haven't. I have found people who have built these. Dude, I built the number one ranked Google ads agency in the world. I've never run a Google ad campaign myself and in my life I wouldn't know how to. I built, I had the number one, ranked, the number one performing real estate investment campaign on the planet, before I ever invested in real estate or did lead generation. I just found this. I have the largest community of Montessori schools in the English speaking world. I'm not a trained Montessori and I don't own a Montessori school.

Intro/Outro: 13:27

I can do quite literally anything through people. It's finding the people. It's going back to Dan Sullivan's who's the who? I think that's Dan Sullivan. People are a miracle man and entrepreneurs and business owners. We think about them in the exact opposite terms. You know, it's just. I am so sick of it. All right, it's just so hard to find good help these days and if you want something done, do it yourself. When people say that, I know exactly who you are. I know exactly. You're the person trying to pay less and get more and squeeze people and you're the type of person that makes people sign non-competes and doesn't allow their employees to have side hustles.

Intro/Outro: 14:02

And I'm like you know, I talk to people because when I staff, I staff out of Latin America, and people are like oh no, I tried outsourcing. That didn't work. And I'll dig in a little bit and I'd ask you, if you're you know the listeners, to do this too, next time somebody says I tried outsourcing. That real curious really. What, what, what did you outsource what? What was the task? And they're like well, I needed somebody to sit behind a computer for eight hours a day and do data entry, while I screenshotted their desktop, track their keystrokes and let them take 115 minutes. You know I'm like, what human, what real hue could function. And then, how long would you last doing that job? You know like how about you pay more than anybody's willing to pay them. You let them work from home on a semi-flexible schedule, you give them meaningful work and then you get out of the way and you see what happens. Good golly, miss Molly, you know what I mean. And so that's what we've done at Pareto. I want staff for groundwork. I get people all the time like, oh, we need callers, do you now? Best of luck to you slave labor? We're not doing that. I'm not the modern day equivalent of the freaking coal mines, you know? Oh, I need data entry. All right, best of luck to you. Ai is going to be able to do that.

Intro/Outro: 15:02

We find it takes a thousand applicants to produce one trained EA and then we place them with an entrepreneur. I just heard one of my best friends, john Roman, 72 hours ago, said I cannot imagine life without her about his EA. And, man, when you hear that, you're like, nailed it, because now I'm helping. I'm not just helping the ea, I'm helping the entrepreneurs, my two, two of my favorite people in the whole world, people in emerging nations, entrepreneurs the two groups of humans that I have such a heart for to be able to match them together.

Intro/Outro: 15:30

And it doesn't always go well, you know, like there's, we've had explosions and blow-ups and things just fail and, generally speaking, to be honest with you, it's the, the entrepreneurs, not the EA. People don't know how to delegate their micromanaging, their expectations are so unreasonably high. It's so funny, dude, when I see people come to me with these job descriptions and they're like oh, I need somebody who knows video editing, media buying, content creation, customer service and is going to be able to. I'm like who is this? Elon Musk? What are you trying to do here? What I'm not saying, those people don't exist, but they're probably working for themselves. Like, why would I, the superhuman, come work for you?

Intro/Outro: 16:06

you know, like you eat all those things so funny yeah, but anyway, that got a little preachy, but that's what I'm doing and it's not. It's not a scalable endeavor, which I I like, because I think that scale is actually a dirty word at this point in the entrepreneurial narrative. But golly, is it fun and what's cool about is it. Lets me see, you know, all I have is you know, we've staffed almost 50 EAs now, so I have 50 high-end entrepreneurs and I get to see everything they're asking their EAs to do, and it leads me to further opportunity.

Intro/Outro: 16:33

We started a, an agency just for go high level, because all of our entrepreneurs needed high level help. And I'm like, why don't I have an easy button here? I might start an agency podcast booking, because 20% of my entrepreneurs are having their EAs help them do outreach for podcast booking. So, while it's unto itself not a very scalable business, it's kind of a metal detector in a lot of ways and it helps me see what else might work. And then I'm growing all my own labor, so I'm figuring out these opportunities and then I just hire I'm my biggest client, I've hired more EAs than anybody and I hire a person that I think is going to be really good at this, and then I put them on this business and you know, sometimes it takes off and sometimes it doesn't.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:24

That was an absolute masterclass in how to lead people as individuals, and I just want to call this out and I really hope our listeners have a pen and paper or something they're taking notes with because you keyed in on something that we talk about all the time leader, your job is to lead your people as actual 3D human beings, not as cogs in a machine. When you do that, that is going to be reflected on the bottom line, because when you lead people as a human being and they feel known and seen and heard, they lean in. When you invest in them and you want to give them a path forward, a trajectory upward in their career and in their life, and you want to see them thrive in all spheres of their life, they lean in Higher retention, higher engagement. What does that result in on the bottom line? Right, every time. Right. That's what you're talking about, and I love that.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:26

You are building Pareto in such a way that you are providing people who are skilled, who are trained, who are, in the words of Lencioni, the ideal team player. They're humble, hungry and smart and they lean in. They're like, hey, let me help pull this sled, and that's. That's going to be amazing. So you've already built this. I mean, this is a matter of what a year the program has been I really.

Intro/Outro: 19:53

It was q3 of last year that we started staffing so we started training prior to that, but our real staffing hit q3 of last year. So I mean we're recording this in february 2025, early feb. I mean we've been around for it's not six months yet.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:11

So this is a new venture and you have had so many new ventures in your life so far. Like a lot of people listening, they're newer entrepreneurs, like what advice would you give them, as you're starting something new, but it's not your first time? Maybe for them it is.

Intro/Outro: 20:28

Kick the ball. So here's the problem from my perspective, and everybody has their own. You know, the problem with taking advice right is, it's free and it's worth what you pay. Here's what I see in the entrepreneurial world. I see millions of people in the bleachers watching with pad and pen, listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading books. There's nothing wrong with those endeavors. By the way, they're critical. You, I mean. Look at both of our backgrounds. I have 3 000 books in my home. I'm a voracious reader, but it's not enough. I see millions of people in the bleachers watching, but they will get on the field and there's something called the corridor principle. I think the corridor principle is the most important principle for a young or early stage entrepreneur to know and understand. The corridor principle says you can't identify opportunity until you're on the field.

Intro/Outro: 21:21

You can't identify opportunity until you're on the field. So if you're in the bleachers, I don't care how many podcasts you're watching, how many videos you watch, how many podcasts you're listening to, how many videos you watch, how many books you read, I don't care how, from an academic perspective, how effective you are. You'll never see the real opportunity until you step on the field. Here's the really difficult part. You ready it gets worse when you choose to step on the field, odds are statistically 100 times out of 100, the opportunity you see isn't where. So where you choose to step in the corridor will never, you'll never going to make the right decision. Right, it's Henry Ford learned the assembly line working at a sausage factory. But from the outside, looking in to everybody in Henry Ford's life before he started manufacturing cars, they're like oh, what a failure. They stood back and did sausages. You know what I mean. So right now, today, if you want to be an entrepreneur, I'm not telling you not to learn. That's hubris, but it's a learn. And Go to Home Depot, but it's a learn and go to home depot. I really mean this, by the way. Go to home depot. Buy yourself a bucket, a squeegee and a mop. Start cleaning windows. And I'm not kidding, I'm not being hyperbolic. I live in phoenix, arizona. There's not a commercial building near my home that doesn't need clean windows. It's the easiest sell in the whole wide world. Now I'm not telling you that window washing is going to be your millionaire idea, because it's not, but you're going to step out onto the field. You're going to learn things like marketing, sales, fulfillment, billing, bookkeeping, operations, time management. You're going to all the things, all the nuts and bolts of businesses that actually really dismantle you, all of us waiting for the big idea. It's not the big idea, it's not.

Intro/Outro: 23:11

I have gone through six pool guys. I cannot find a pool guy in Scottsdale, arizona because it's such a. It's just this cesspool of bottom feeders. They all charge the exact same amount it's $125 to $150 a month and it's impossible to get them to show up regularly to actually clean the filter, to tell you the truth about what's going on. So I'm constantly. Every time one just falls off, I replace them with another. I wish somebody would knock on my door and say it's 250 bucks a month, it's almost double, but you will never worry about this again, guaranteed. Are you kidding me? What I wouldn't pay. You know what I mean and that's available, I think, in every business, in every industry. It doesn't need to be sexy.

Intro/Outro: 23:53

Go find a repulsive business, but do it well, so, so, so, right now, today, bucket, mop, squeegee, go start knocking on doors and asking to wash windows. It's not going to make you rich, but it'll teach you business. And as you're knocking on doors and washing these windows, you're going to be sitting in somebody's office washing the window, overhearing a phone call, and somebody is going to say like, oh, I just can't find anybody to clean my pool. And you're going to think like, well, that's interesting, but you're in the corridor, you're on the field, you're actually at play. Go get out onto the field. If you don't want to do it yourself, go work for somebody who's on the field. Go work for a small business owner or an entrepreneur. Learn the ropes. Entrepreneurship is unlike anything else. You can't figure it out at Quicken Loans.

Kasim Aslam: 24:33

You know what I mean.

Intro/Outro: 24:34

You're just not going to, you're not exposed to that ethos and I've seen the nine to fivers that try to become entrepreneurs. Partnered with one recently who I love him dearly and deeply. He's an amazing human and his connection to reality is so like he kept wanting to do like impact reports and he was building these huge, really robust plans and I'm like, dude, this isn't the way this, you know, because he came from this corporate background and in, where everybody's afraid to make a decision and you have to have, like you know, the. The. The annual plan feeds the quarterly goal, which feeds the monthly sprint, which feeds the weekly thing. I'm like, bro, we are going to just shoot, I'm going to kick this ball and I'm going to chase the ball and you know, like that's.

Intro/Outro: 25:17

It sounds stupid, but it's not All the people you're surrounded when you enter the entrepreneurial environment. One of the things that's most frustrating really intelligent people is you look around and think like I'm smarter than all these folks and they're more successful than me. There's something to that. There's something to that. Really intellectual people, really bright people, have a hard time with it because they want to plan. The people that are successful entrepreneurs they're almost children. You know what I mean. They're impulsive and they're kind of selfish in certain ways, because they want what they want and they're willing to try and they just go out and they just kick the freaking ball and then they miss, but they chase the ball and it's a little bit closer to goal and they kick it again.

Intro/Outro: 25:57

And then they miss, but they chase it and it's a little bit closer to the goal and they kick it again and then they miss. Go watch soccer. Soccer is the best analogy for entrepreneurship ever, because 90% of the time you're not trying to score, you're just trying to get the ball closer to the goal. My seven-year-old's obsessed with soccer, by the way, so I spend a lot of time watching soccer, which is where this analogy comes from. Forgive me if that was too much of a departure, but that's my advice.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:17

Oh yeah, no, I think that's brilliant. You know, it's so much easier to adjust course on a plane that's in the air than one that's at a dead stop on the ground Dude.

Intro/Outro: 26:26

Yes, that's a much better, better analogy. You actually have to be in there in order to really learn what it is that you're doing. Yeah, you can adjust and pivot and you will. Right, that's part of it, right, you can't not or you crash. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's right. Yeah, exactly yeah. We don't do annual planning for our flight path. You know what I mean? It's like just get up in the air, I know, yes, when, just kicked in. I need, to course, correct.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:53

Exactly so. This is a different way of thinking for a lot of people who are listening. I'm curious what has informed how you think about this? Have masterminds played a part in this? Communities you've been a part of? What is it that has helped you to develop this particular way of thinking about business?

Intro/Outro: 27:11

Well, I've failed at so many businesses and the thing that's really interesting when you look at failure, I've always been wrong with my guesses. I've never guessed right. One time I will go into a business knowing, oh, this is it. This is the thing, we're going to crush it, and then you go to market and you're like I was wrong.

Intro/Outro: 27:32

And at Solutions 8, I had the number one Google Ads agency in the world. I had thousands of businesses go through my shop. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spend and what I learned really quickly was it's not just me that's wrong, it's everybody. They're wrong about the product, the market, the offer, the customer, the price, everything. And the ones that are successful fail forward. So if you really put yourself in that flywheel, you quickly get to the point of fail fast, don't fail intentionally.

Intro/Outro: 28:00

Fail forward, but fail fast. And it also means you don't have to build everything, because if you know you're going to fail, it's minimal. What is it? Minimal viable product, Just the absolute minimum. For me to know what about this works and what's going to fail. You build just this little, teeny, tiny, strenuous rope bridge and then, once you get from one end to the other, then you strengthen the rope a little bit with sticks and then, once you can put people back and forth from one end to the other, then you strengthen the rope a little bit with stone. You know what I mean. Then we go to metal, then we go, but people will build this huge, robust, amazing thing and then find out like, oh crap, we actually don't want to go from here to there, we want to go from there to there and now we got to dismantle the whole, the whole, whatever. So just fail forward and fail fast and you know I mean it's, it's now.

Intro/Outro: 28:50

I hope nobody takes this the wrong way. I'll sell stuff before it's built. I'll sell a community, an idea, an offer. I'll just go market it and I'll see who responds to what and what questions they have and what objections they have. I had a client when we were running ads. They owned a collection of dental offices and I don't know how many they had. It was like 60 some odd dental offices, but they wanted hundreds. And the way they chose how to place their new dental office they had it was like 60 some odd dental offices, but they wanted hundreds. And the way they chose how to place their new dental office.

Intro/Outro: 29:19

They had a guy who worked for him. We'll call him hank. Hank was this old timer that used to work for franchises. Hank would. They would literally fly hank to a city and hank would drive the city. And hank just had a nose for this. It's a sixth sense. And he'd be like we're gonna put our new dental office on the corner of fifth and broadway because whatever, and there was some data to it, you know, like growth data or whatever, but it was. It was more or less shooting from the hip. I told him I was like you guys, 100 of your new patients are from google ads. What if we ran google ads? What if we took the five or 10 or 15 corners that you want to put a dental office in? We ran ads as though we had a dental office.

Intro/Outro: 29:58

It costs $250,000 to $500,000 to build out these dental offices because of all the equipment that is required. Why don't you take 10 grand, test $1,000 in each of these corners and figure out what your lowest cost per acquisition is? Lowest CPC is where the most competitors are. Save yourself potentially making a really bad decision, because if you put it on the wrong corner now, you got to spend exponentially more in advertising. I think that that paradigm, that approach, that's what's missing from the entrepreneurial world, because that's not textbook, right, the textbook is the business plan and we're going to sit here and we're going to build it out on paper and measure twice, cut once and I'm like all right man, there's a reason that me and all the other dummies are super successful in minting money and all these. You know, god bless me for saying this. I'm going to get so spiteful right now. My business was purchased by a private equity backed organization and it's all like Goldman Sachs Ivy League. You know just not that there's anything wrong with that and they're not entrepreneurs, you know what I mean?

Intro/Outro: 30:58

Cause they come in and they buy it and then they have all these great ideas that are just going to improve that and they've grown up from 200 clients to 130 clients and I'm like, all right, you know, best of luck to you. Uh yeah, man, just kick the ball. Kick the ball.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:11

That's. That's fantastic. You know your team and your businesses and everything you're involved in needs you to lead at a higher level today than you did five years ago, and that same thing is going to be true five years from now. What do you do to stay on top of your game? How do you level up your leadership skills?

Intro/Outro: 31:29

I think the most important thing any of us can do is commit to habituated acts how you spend your acts, what, how you spend your days or how you spend your life. So I think that focusing on your personal habits, this gets a little far. You know there's people can take this a little too far and I know that there are now just the jokes about the entrepreneurs waking up three in the morning and doing an ice bath and then wrestling a shark and, you know, taking the teeth out of an alligator or whatever. And the reason it's a cliche is because it's true doing an ice bath and then wrestling a shark and you know, taking the teeth out of an alligator or whatever. And the reason that it's a cliche is because it's true In the entrepreneurial world. You asked me how it is. I got to where I was going. It's Kaizen. It's 1%.

Intro/Outro: 32:08

Everybody wants the Rocky moment, Everybody wants the movie montage. No such thing, it doesn't happen. But I wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning every single day and that's you know. I hate to say this because it sounds so arrogant, but the truth is is you just can't beat me. You know, if you take me and you take any other human and all other things are equal. You know, we start with the same premise same money, same connections, same whatever. But I'm waking up at four and they're waking up at six. I win, Because from four to six is 10 times as productive and effective as six to eight. Yes, it just is.

Intro/Outro: 32:40

You know, like it just is, and that's not the only thing that you can habituate. As you build these habits, you get to habit stack and as you're leading people, what's interesting is they start to see that too, and then they follow suit and you build a culture and an ethos around these habits. So I think that investing in habits is the most important thing for an entrepreneur, because your business is a reflection of you. I have felt that very strongly.

Intro/Outro: 33:03

There was a gentleman that I encountered recently. His business was purchased by the same people that purchased my business, and so I had a two year earn out and I had to stay on, and so did he, and he was a really nice guy. I really liked him. He was a genuinely good person, I felt. But a couple of the people that worked for him weren't. They were kind of. You know, there was some backstabby things going on internally and I kept having to come to him and be like, hey, buddy, what's you know? And he'd chuckle it off and be like, oh well, that's just Brenda, and it rubbed me the wrong way until I realized no, that's you, this is your business. Buck stops with you, You're the leader, that's you and I think that's true across the board, Like you're going to plant your flag somewhere and say I'm offering this service, I'm doing this thing.

Intro/Outro: 33:51

Anything that happens within the confine of that ecosystem is you, and I think the more you can habituate positive action, the more that's going to be reflected in your staff and interestingly oddly, weirdly in your clients. You're leading your customers too, and that took me a really long time to learn. I always thought you know customer's always right, they're the boss. I follow them. You know like it was when we got really good at Solutions 8, we got to a point to where we had a huge waiting list and people were literally begging us to take us as clients.

Intro/Outro: 34:20

My business partner at Solutions 8 is still like that John Moran smartest Google ads mind in the world. He's the reason that we were where we were and who we were. People beg John to take their campaign, but they'll pay him literally anything. He charges $2,500 an hour and they're still beating down his door, and then the only reason he's not increasing his hourly is because he feels so embarrassed. He's that good and it requires us to lead. A customer comes in and says I want you to run ads and then I'll say I'm not running your ads because you're not answering your phone and I can tell in your call tracking metrics that your hold time is too long and your answer time is too short. And we're going to be. We're going to fail, and it was unreal to me. When we started taking that approach, people became even more desperate to work with us. You know, and it's because you, you, you raised the bar and yeah.

Intro/Outro: 35:04

Anyway, again, I've gotten real preachy on this one. Feel free to cut it all up.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:09

This is great man. Seriously, you are a perpetual learner and I think this comes through. It's come through so much in this conversation and previously. I'm curious, like, out of all the books that you've read and I see the shelves behind you out of all the books that you've read, is there one that has made such a difference that you recommend it frequently?

Intro/Outro: 35:31

Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I really love the Power of Now. It's based off of you know, he says as much it's based off of A Course in Miracles, which is kind of Christian mysticism. So it can repel people, you know, depending on where you land from a semantic perspective. I like the idea that the present moment is all we really have.

Intro/Outro: 35:56

A very close friend of mine said recently that all anger comes from the past and all fear comes from the future, and I was like that resonates, that feels real. And if you can come into this moment and where I am right now and where you are right now, there's something about it that truly is. And I'm going to use a word, again back to the semantic arguments that could be repulsive, so I'd ask the listener to replace the word with another one, if there's one that resonates. But there's something about this moment that's divine and and I don't even mean that theologically per se, I mean that, like you feel it on a, on a practical, material level, you feel something transcendent that's almost impossible to articulate and the power of now made that more real for me than anything else. And I know there's a lot built around that, you know. I think that's the. It's at the epicenter of most Eastern philosophy, but I think because the power of now came through a Western lens.

Intro/Outro: 37:02

I was raised Southern Baptist and so it just had an ability to connect with me more than reading the Tao Te Ching. Not that there's anything wrong with those books, it's just that's the one that checked the box. So that's the book that I probably have revisited more than any other. If you want one that's not quite as esoteric. I really like Stephen Covey's Seven Habits too. I think that's a great one, and you know it's all just principle-centered, really really well-written and well-structured. I really love Covey. He was quite the gem.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:30

True. You know, I have not read the other book and now I want to read this. I mean a person. Now I want to read this person of faith and this really resonates the way you were describing that. I think a whole lot of people live either in the past or in the future and they're not in the present, and this is reflected so often by how we interact with other people. Right, we're thinking either about something that we shouldn't have said or something that we want to say next, but we're focused on ourselves. Yeah.

Intro/Outro: 37:59

Guilty as charged. If you want a faith-based version of the power of now, have you read Richard Rohr, yes, yes.

Intro/Outro: 38:07

So Richard Rohr, I think, has a deep respect for Eckhart Tolle and he actually said in one of his books, I think in Universal Christ, he's like I'd love to talk to him and I think he reached out to him and they weren't able to make that connection. But Richard Rohr made the point that Eckhart Tolle was saying what Catholics have been saying from the very beginning the real, real Catholicism, catholic, meaning universal, right, universal, yeah, and it was either an immortal diamond or universal Christ. So I think there's some deep resonance there. Yeah, and Eckhart, I don't want to say sterilizes it, because that doesn't do it justice but takes it out of a faith-based realm. So, depending on who you are as a listener, I think that power of now is going to be broadly accessible. Because he uses languaging, that's a little more accessible. You know there's an evocation of christ, but there's also an evocation of buddha, which, interestingly, richard rober does that exact same thing too. So those two figures seem to. You know there's an alignment between what they were offering us.

Intro/Outro: 39:04

that, I think, is really it's worthy of some meditation, and both of them throughout you know everything that they're ever quoted as saying seem to be referencing the now.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:16

Well, I'm going to think about that for a while. You know, I believe and have taught for a long time that all truth is God's truth. Hmm, hmm, bringing that into this because I think that's a very big piece of truly being a leader that moves into a catalytic space that makes a difference. Kasim, I could talk to you for another hour. This has been such a phenomenal conversation that has touched on so many things. I know our listeners are going to want to find out more about Pareto, about you, and continue to learn from you and all that you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Intro/Outro: 40:02

Go to kasimme K-A-S-I-MM-E. I shoot a YouTube video almost every day, and so, if you don't mind me sprecking the bushy babble, I pontificate quite a bit, and that's where all my content is going now, and then all my hot links are there too. Join my mastermind, or hire an EA, or you know, I'm writing a book right now called hire, and I'm giving away the farm on my hiring process. Uh, your, your listeners can have it for free. I've, quite literally for free. It'll be on Amazon, but I'm just going to. You know it'll be my gift, so that it's with the editor now. That should be done in a couple of weeks.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:37

My goodness, that's incredibly generous man. Thank you, we'll have those links in the show notes. That sounds great. Thanks for having me on Appreciate you, doug. Look, I so appreciate your time and your generosity in sharing so freely and so openly today Incredibly helpful for me and, I know, for our listeners. Thank you so much.

Intro/Outro: 40:54

No, I had a blast. I loved your questions. I think you cracked me open more than most people do, and I do quite a few podcasts, so appreciate you having me on.

Dr. William Attaway: 41:00

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, Catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 41:36

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Kasim Aslam: 42:19

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.