February 25, 2025 • 40 mins
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 videos, and grab a free copy of his upcoming book on hiring. Trust me, this is a game-changer for any entrepreneur looking to grow!
Books Mentioned:
You vs Google – Kasim Aslam
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
- Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.
- Special Offer:
Get your FREE copy of Catalytic Leadership: 12 Keys to Becoming an Intentional Leader Who Makes a Difference.
Connect with Dr. William Attaway:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. William Attaway (00:00):
I'm so excited today to have Qasim
Aslam on the podcast.
Qasim has built five, seven andeight-figure businesses, with
two successful exits.
He's the co-founder of DrivenMastermind, the top marketing
mastermind in the world.
He's written three best-sellingbooks, including you vs Google,
(00:20):
which was ranked number oneinternationally for both
marketing and advertising.
He's the creator of DigitalMarketers Paid Traffic
Certification and was named oneof the top 50 digital marketing
thought leaders in the US byUMSL.
He's also the co-founder ofPareto Talent, a company that is
dedicated to empoweringentrepreneurs by providing
(00:43):
exceptional executive assistancefrom Latin America.
Kasim, I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks for being on the show.
Dr William, thanks for havingme Appreciate it.
Kasim Aslam (00:53):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the
podcast designed to help leadersintentionally grow and thrive.
Here is your host author andleadership and executive coach,
dr William Attaway.
Dr. William Attaway (01:10):
I would love to start with you sharing a
little bit of your story withour listeners, particularly
around your journey and yourdevelopment as a leader.
How did you get started?
Intro/Outro (01:22):
Failed at everything.
I'm the world's greatestfailure.
I was, uh, supremelyunemployable, um, both
technically and temperamentally.
Um, I got in a lot of troubleas a kid and ended up running
away from that trouble.
Uh, I lived in albuquerque, newmexico, was an amateur but
(01:45):
aspiring thief, and I just gotin way over my head at one point
, and so I called my dad, who Ididn't really know very well,
and I told him you know, I'msort of in the thick of it, and
he moved me out to Scottsdale.
And if you've been toAlbuquerque and you've been to
Scottsdale, you know it's a Marsand Venus situation.
This is very, very, verydifferent environment.
And I tried working for him.
(02:05):
He had a rug and furniturestore 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 ownand 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 atthat.
I didn't want a job becausethat sucked, and I didn't want
to work for my dad.
And so entrepreneurship wasn'ta decision, it was a default, it
(02:25):
was just the only thing thatwas left to me as far as
productive endeavors areconcerned and I can't say I did
it well.
I definitely took the long way,but that was the beginning.
Dr. William Attaway (02:36):
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 beon the show and when I got yours
and I was checking you out, Ithought this guy's, this guy's
the real deal.
And the more I learned, themore I loved about your story,
(02:56):
because you are so open andhonest with the failure, like
you've already said, and yetlook at where you've come.
How did said, and yet look atwhere you've come.
How did?
How did you get fromalbuquerque, for being a kid in
trouble, to the costume that weknow now?
Intro/Outro (03:13):
hi zen.
I think it was one percentimprovement.
You know there was no flipswitch, rip the band-aid off.
I had the tiger song playingmontage moment.
It was just very iterative andI think the thing that I did
really well is just staycommitted to change and to
growth.
Going back to my dad, he hadthese old tony robbins discs
(03:36):
like that's how old I am theseold tony robbins cds awaken the
power within, or uh, whatever itwas.
And I just started really, youknow, I had this opportunity to
reinvent myself and I took itreally seriously and I don't
think that ever changed.
You know, there was just a verystrong willingness to look in
the mirror, try to identify whatwas wrong and then fix one
(03:57):
thing, and that was.
That's been supremely impactful.
Before we started recording, Imentioned 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 trustsme with little people.
I'm just so grateful to Godthat they're still alive.
I get bills in the mail and I'mlike you want me to pay this.
(04:22):
You know what I mean.
There's just so much about lifethat'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 haveyet to integrate the idea that
there's a solidity to myexistence.
There's not a lot about me,that's not malleable.
I think I have a core nucleiccenter.
(04:43):
That's principle driven, I hope, and then beyond that, you know
, it's all, it's all up fordebate, it's all up for
modification and change, andthat's been, that's been really
helpful.
Dr. William Attaway (04:55):
You know, I would argue that that
commitment to grow and to adaptand to change is responsible for
so much of what you'veaccomplished, and to change is
responsible for so much of whatyou've accomplished.
I've talked to a lot of leaderswho are sometimes they're in
their early 20s and you'd thinkthey were made of concrete.
They're just not interested inchanging, they're not interested
in adapting at all.
(05:15):
This is what is, this is whatwill 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 (05:27):
To my detriment.
Sometimes I think I can get alittle too focused on what can
change and not focused enough onwhat should be solidified or
strengthened.
That's fair.
And more often than not I thinkit's served me more than it's
hurt me.
It's so funny when people aredescribing me, I get the's
served me more than it's hurt me.
So you know it's so funnyPeople I get.
(05:49):
When people are describing me,I get the word humble all the
time.
People are like you're sohumble 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 andI'm like I'm not really.
You got it wrong.
I'm actually.
I don't feel like I'm thathumble.
I think people mistake mywillingness to be receptive to
where I might be wrong or how Imight change as humility.
(06:09):
But there's a lot about me thatI'm like, I'm pretty proud of.
You know what I mean.
Like I, I'm sort of like maybeyou and I define humility wrong,
but I'm grateful to have hadthe opportunities I've had.
I've hit it out of the park acouple of times and I have a
healthy self-image along thatlevel of analysis and so I think
(06:30):
that my humility is mistook.
I'll take it because it makesme accessible.
Dr. William Attaway (06:34):
I imagine I don't think humility is really
running yourself down or being adoormat.
A lot of people think humilityis being a doormat.
It's not.
I think it's exactly what youjust said.
It's a healthy perspective onwho you are and the gifts and
skills and talents that youbring.
That's humility.
That's a healthy perspective.
(06:54):
I heard it said once humilityis not thinking less of yourself
, it's simply thinking ofyourself less.
I really love that and I thinkthat is what people see in you.
It certainly characterizes ourconversation so far that we've
talked.
I mean you are focused on whatcould be.
You are focused on what couldbe, not only in the businesses
(07:16):
that you run, but in the peoplethat you lead.
I think that is acharacteristic of real,
authentic humility.
That's well said.
I appreciate that that's acharacteristic of real,
authentic humility.
Intro/Outro (07:25):
That's well said.
I appreciate that.
That's a good perspectivechange for me.
Dr. William Attaway (07:30):
So you have , I mean, five businesses, that
you have Actually six now.
Intro/Outro (07:35):
I need to update my bio.
Yeah, so Pareto Talent just hita million.
It's a million gross rev runrate.
So we haven't hit a milliongross rev, but as of January
2025, we're at a million grossrev runway and we're on a
meteoric rise too.
So I would anticipate thatbeing pretty significantly
improved by the end of this year, so that's the newest thing.
Dr. William Attaway (07:54):
So talk about that for a minute.
What is Pareto all about?
Intro/Outro (07:57):
It's my favorite thing I've ever done.
It's also the least scalablebusiness I've ever been involved
in.
I love people with everythinginside of me.
The least scalable businessI've ever been involved in.
I love people with everythinginside of me.
It's the reason I've beensuccessful in business.
Every human is such a miracleand the way that we're taught to
hire and train and managepeople is exactly wrong, and
(08:17):
it's from almost every direction.
I mean every academic study ofmanagement, I think, is exactly
wrong because we're taught asbusiness owners to try to treat
people like they're commodities.
We talk about them like they'recommodities, we hire them like
they're commodities, we tradethem like they're commodities,
we, you know like, grow them,ascend them, get rid of them,
and the human being is not acommodity.
(08:38):
You take the same two humansborn in the same hospital, from
the same doctor, live in thesame city, went to the same
school, had the same upbringing,got the same degree, took the
same job, and they're stillgoing to be so, so, so, so, so,
so different.
And I've known this for longerthan I've put words to it and
(08:59):
it's the reason that I'm quite abit more successful than I
deserve.
To be honest with you, drWilliam, it's because everybody
else is trying to do itthemselves.
I made it a habit of finding amiracle, putting them in the
driver's seat of whateverendeavor it was that I was
trying to accomplish and thengetting out of their way.
Kasim Aslam (09:12):
And flash forward.
Intro/Outro (09:14):
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, businesslessand having massive existential
crises about who I am and what,what's next, and and the thing
that kept coming back to me andit was actually a friend that
pointed this out is how, howmuch I love and get lit up by
(09:36):
finding really amazing people.
So we thought like, well, crap,why don't we just make that the
business?
That's what we did.
Did I find talent in LatinAmerica and there's reasons that
we focused on Latin America.
Talent is available everywhere,but in terms of English
proficiency, cultural alignmentand then time zones, just
practically speaking, latinAmerica ends up being a real
solid hotbed.
So I find talent in LatinAmerica.
I train them to be qualityexecutive assistants quality
(10:02):
executive assistants.
We chose the role of executiveassistant by design and it's
because your executive assistantis.
It's actually a flywheel foridentifying talent.
Your EA should never be your EAfor very long.
Really, what you're doing isyou're taking a really smart,
intelligent human who's proventhemselves as industrious and
you're testing them againstdifferent things.
Kasim Aslam (10:16):
And you give them 10 things to do.
Intro/Outro (10:18):
And here's what's funny about it is if you give
somebody a smart, industriousperson, if you give them 10
things to do and here's what'sfunny about it is, if you give
somebody a smart, industriousperson, if you give them 10
things to do, they're going tosuck at two of them.
They're going to do six.
Just fine, check the box.
They're going to do two betterthan any human has ever done
those two things.
And here's what we're taught bythe business world at large is
to go focus on the two thingsthey suck at and say we're going
to get you there, kiddo, andhere's a performance improvement
(10:39):
program and we're going to putyou through coaching.
And you're going to shadowjohnny, because johnny's good at
this.
And I'm like, how about we notonly stop making him do those
two things, but what if we go?
Took those two things thatthey're better at that and
anybody in the world, and wemake that their job?
My first ea became my directorof social.
My second ea became my directorof automations.
My third ea became my cto,managed entire exit, became one
(10:59):
of my best friends and is now mybusiness partner in ProtoTalent
.
He trains all my EAs and it'snever not proven true.
For me, again, it requires thea priori assumption is that
you're dealing with people thatare actually motivated, and I
have a whole system of fly trapswe can talk about to find those
people.
But man, when you have being anentrepreneur is always to me,
(11:23):
has always felt like I'm pullinga sled up a muddy hill in the
rain by myself and the strapsare digging into my shoulder and
they're cutting into my skinand I'm bleeding and I'm tired
and I'm lonely and I'm cold andI can feel the muscles in my
legs giving out and every time Ihire somebody I throw them in
the back of the sled and itmakes it heavier.
(11:45):
Every business owner I know hasthis sled.
They're pulling up and everynew hire is just more work, more
time, more supervision, moremanagement.
When you start hiring Paretotalent the real leverageable
talent 80, 20, the 20 that dothe 80 it's like somebody stands
(12:05):
next to you, grabs a strap andstarts to help you pull and the
thing that will change your lifeis when they pull harder and
faster than you do and all youhave to do is get out of the way
and so like yeah, I've builtsix million and multi-million
dollar businesses, but I kind ofhaven't.
I have found people who havebuilt these.
Dude, I built the number oneranked Google ads agency in the
(12:26):
world.
I've never run a Google adcampaign myself and in my life I
wouldn't know how to.
I built, I had the number one,ranked, the number one
performing real estateinvestment campaign on the
planet, before I ever investedin real estate or did lead
generation.
I just found this.
I have the largest community ofMontessori schools in the
English speaking world.
(12:47):
I'm not a trained Montessoriand I don't own a Montessori
school.
I can do quite literallyanything through people.
It's finding the people.
It's going back to DanSullivan's who's the who?
I think that's Dan Sullivan.
People are a miracle man andentrepreneurs and business
owners.
We think about them in theexact opposite terms.
You know, it's just.
(13:08):
I am so sick of it.
All right, it's just so hard tofind good help these days and
if you want something done, doit yourself.
When people say that, I knowexactly who you are.
I know exactly.
You're the person trying to payless and get more and squeeze
people and you're the type ofperson that makes people sign
non-competes and doesn't allowtheir employees to have side
hustles.
And I'm like you know, I talk topeople because when I staff, I
staff out of Latin America, andpeople are like oh no, I tried
(13:29):
outsourcing.
That didn't work.
And I'll dig in a little bitand I'd ask you, if you're you
know the listeners, to do thistoo, next time somebody says I
tried outsourcing.
That real curious really.
What, what, what did yououtsource what?
What was the task?
And they're like well, I neededsomebody to sit behind a
computer for eight hours a dayand do data entry, while I
screenshotted their desktop,track their keystrokes and let
(13:51):
them take 115 minutes.
You know I'm like, what human,what real hue could function.
And then, how long would youlast doing that job?
You know like how about you paymore than anybody's willing to
pay them.
You let them work from home ona semi-flexible schedule, you
give them meaningful work andthen you get out of the way and
you see what happens.
Good golly, miss Molly, youknow what I mean.
And so that's what we've doneat Pareto.
I want staff for groundwork.
I get people all the time like,oh, we need callers, do you now
(14:14):
?
Best of luck to you slave labor?
We're not doing that.
I'm not the modern dayequivalent 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 dothat.
We find it takes a thousandapplicants to produce one
trained EA and then we placethem with an entrepreneur.
I just heard one of my bestfriends, john Roman, 72 hours
ago, said I cannot imagine lifewithout her about his EA.
(14:38):
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 favoritepeople in the whole world,
people in emerging nations,entrepreneurs the two groups of
humans that I have such a heartfor to be able to match them
together.
And it doesn't always go well,you know, like there's, we've
had explosions and blow-ups andthings just fail and, generally
speaking, to be honest with you,it's the, the entrepreneurs,
(14:59):
not the EA.
People don't know how todelegate their micromanaging,
their expectations are sounreasonably high.
It's so funny, dude, when I seepeople come to me with these
job descriptions and they'relike oh, I need somebody who
knows video editing, mediabuying, content creation,
customer service and is going tobe able to.
I'm like who is this?
Elon Musk?
(15:21):
What are you trying to do here?
What I'm not saying, thosepeople don't exist, but they're
probably working for themselves.
Like, why would I, thesuperhuman, come work for you?
you know, like you eat all thosethings so funny yeah, but
anyway, that got a littlepreachy, 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 dirtyword at this point in the
entrepreneurial narrative.
(15:43):
But golly, is it fun and what'scool about is it.
Lets me see, you know, all Ihave is you know, we've staffed
almost 50 EAs now, so I have 50high-end entrepreneurs and I get
to see everything they'reasking their EAs to do, and it
leads me to further opportunity.
We started a, an agency just forgo high level, because all of
our entrepreneurs needed highlevel help.
And I'm like, why don't I havean easy button here?
(16:04):
I might start an agency podcastbooking, because 20% of my
entrepreneurs are having theirEAs help them do outreach for
podcast booking.
So, while it's unto itself nota very scalable business, it's
kind of a metal detector in alot of ways and it helps me see
what else might work.
And then I'm growing all my ownlabor, so I'm figuring out
(16:24):
these opportunities and then Ijust hire I'm my biggest client,
I've hired more EAs thananybody and I hire a person that
I think is going to be reallygood at this, and then I put
them on this business and youknow, sometimes it takes off and
sometimes it doesn't.
Dr. William Attaway (16:38):
That was an absolute masterclass in how to
lead people as individuals, andI just want to call this out and
I really hope our listenershave a pen and paper or
something they're taking noteswith because you keyed in on
something that we talk about allthe time leader, your job is to
(17:06):
lead your people as actual 3Dhuman beings, not as cogs in a
machine.
When you do that, that is goingto be reflected on the bottom
line, because when you leadpeople as a human being and they
feel known and seen and heard,they lean in.
When you invest in them and youwant to give them a path
forward, a trajectory upward intheir career and in their life,
and you want to see them thrivein all spheres of their life,
(17:29):
they lean in Higher retention,higher engagement.
What does that result in on thebottom line?
Right, every time.
Right.
That's what you're talkingabout, and I love that.
You are building Pareto in sucha way that you are providing
people who are skilled, who aretrained, who are, in the words
of Lencioni, the ideal teamplayer.
(17:50):
They're humble, hungry andsmart and they lean in.
They're like, hey, let me helppull this sled, and that's.
That's going to be amazing.
So you've already built this.
I mean, this is a matter ofwhat a year the program has been
I really.
Intro/Outro (18:07):
It was q3 of last year that we started staffing so
we started training prior tothat, but our real staffing hit
q3 of last year.
So I mean we're recording thisin february 2025, early feb.
I mean we've been around forit's not six months yet.
Dr. William Attaway (18:25):
So this is a new venture and you have had
so many new ventures in yourlife so far.
Like a lot of people listening,they're newer entrepreneurs,
like what advice would you givethem, as you're starting
something new, but it's not yourfirst time?
Maybe for them it is.
Intro/Outro (18:42):
Kick the ball.
So here's the problem from myperspective, and everybody has
their own.
You know, the problem withtaking advice right is, it's
free and it's worth what you pay.
Here's what I see in theentrepreneurial world.
I see millions of people in thebleachers watching with pad and
pen, listening to podcasts,watching videos, reading books.
(19:05):
There's nothing wrong withthose 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, butit's not enough.
I see millions of people in thebleachers watching, but they
will get on the field andthere's something called the
corridor principle.
I think the corridor principleis the most important principle
for a young or early stageentrepreneur to know and
(19:27):
understand.
The corridor principle says youcan't identify opportunity
until you're on the field.
You can't identify opportunityuntil you're on the field.
So if you're in the bleachers,I don't care how many podcasts
you're watching, how many videosyou watch, how many podcasts
you're listening to, how manyvideos you watch, how many books
you read, I don't care how,from an academic perspective,
(19:47):
how effective you are.
You'll never see the realopportunity until you step on
the field.
Here's the really difficultpart.
You ready it gets worse whenyou choose to step on the field,
odds are statistically 100times out of 100, the
opportunity you see isn't where.
So where you choose to step inthe corridor will never, you'll
never going to make the rightdecision.
(20:08):
Right, it's Henry Ford learnedthe assembly line working at a
sausage factory.
But from the outside, lookingin to everybody in Henry Ford's
(20:32):
life before he startedmanufacturing cars, they're like
oh, what a failure.
They stood back and didsausages.
You know what I mean.
So right now, today, if youwant 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'sa learn and go to home depot.
I really mean this, by the way.
Go to home depot.
Buy yourself a bucket, asqueegee and a mop.
(20:53):
Start cleaning windows.
And I'm not kidding, I'm notbeing hyperbolic.
I live in phoenix, arizona.
There's not a commercialbuilding near my home that
doesn't need clean windows.
It's the easiest sell in thewhole wide world.
Now I'm not telling you thatwindow washing is going to be
your millionaire idea, becauseit's not, but you're going to
step out onto the field.
You're going to learn thingslike marketing, sales,
fulfillment, billing,bookkeeping, operations, time
(21:15):
management.
You're going to all the things,all the nuts and bolts of
businesses that actually reallydismantle you, all of us waiting
for the big idea.
It's not the big idea, it's not.
I have gone through six poolguys.
I cannot find a pool guy inScottsdale, arizona because it's
such a.
It's just this cesspool ofbottom feeders.
(21:35):
They all charge the exact sameamount it's $125 to $150 a month
and it's impossible to get themto show up regularly to
actually clean the filter, totell 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 onmy door and say it's 250 bucks a
month, it's almost double, butyou will never worry about this
(21:58):
again, guaranteed.
Are you kidding me?
What I wouldn't pay.
You know what I mean and that'savailable, I think, in every
business, in every industry.
It doesn't need to be sexy.
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.
(22:18):
And as you're knocking on doorsand washing these windows,
you're going to be sitting insomebody's office washing the
window, overhearing a phone call, and somebody is going to say
like, oh, I just can't findanybody to clean my pool.
And you're going to think like,well, that's interesting, but
you're in the corridor, you'reon the field, you're actually at
play.
Go get out onto the field.
If you don't want to do ityourself, go work for somebody
(22:39):
who's on the field.
Go work for a small businessowner or an entrepreneur.
Learn the ropes.
Entrepreneurship is unlikeanything else.
You can't figure it out atQuicken Loans.
Kasim Aslam (22:48):
You know what I mean.
Intro/Outro (22:48):
You're just not going to, you're not exposed to
that ethos and I've seen thenine to fivers that try to
become entrepreneurs.
Partnered with one recently whoI love him dearly and deeply.
He's an amazing human and hisconnection to reality is so like
he kept wanting to do likeimpact reports and he was
(23:10):
building these huge, reallyrobust plans and I'm like, dude,
this isn't the way this, youknow, 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 thequarterly goal, which feeds the
monthly sprint, which feeds theweekly thing.
I'm like, bro, we are going tojust shoot, I'm going to kick
this ball and I'm going to chasethe ball and you know, like
(23:30):
that's.
It sounds stupid, but it's notAll the people you're surrounded
when you enter theentrepreneurial environment.
One of the things that's mostfrustrating really intelligent
people is you look around andthink like I'm smarter than all
these folks and they're moresuccessful 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 theywant to plan.
(23:51):
The people that are successfulentrepreneurs they're almost
children.
You know what I mean.
They're impulsive and they'rekind of selfish in certain ways,
because they want what theywant and they're willing to try
and they just go out and theyjust kick the freaking ball and
then they miss, but they chasethe ball and it's a little bit
closer to goal and they kick itagain.
(24:11):
And then they miss, but theychase it and it's a little bit
closer to the goal and they kickit again and then they miss.
Go watch soccer.
Soccer is the best analogy forentrepreneurship ever, because
90% of the time you're nottrying to score, you're just
trying to get the ball closer tothe goal.
My seven-year-old's obsessedwith soccer, by the way, so I
spend a lot of time watchingsoccer, which is where this
analogy comes from.
Forgive me if that was too muchof a departure, but that's my
advice.
Dr. William Attaway (24:31):
Oh yeah, no , I think that's brilliant.
You know, it's so much easierto adjust course on a plane
that's in the air than onethat's at a dead stop on the
ground Dude.
Intro/Outro (24:40):
Yes, that's a much better, better analogy.
You actually have to be inthere in order to really learn
what it is that you're doing.
Yeah, you can adjust and pivotand 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 forour flight path.
You know what I mean?
It's like just get up in theair, I know, yes, when, just
(25:04):
kicked in.
I need, to course, correct.
Dr. William Attaway (25:07):
Exactly so.
This is a different way ofthinking for a lot of people who
are listening.
I'm curious what has informedhow you think about this?
Have masterminds played a partin this?
Communities you've been a partof?
What is it that has helped youto develop this particular way
of thinking about business?
Intro/Outro (25:25):
Well, I've failed at so many businesses and the
thing that's really interestingwhen you look at failure, I've
always been wrong with myguesses.
I've never guessed right.
One time I will go into abusiness knowing, oh, this is it
.
This is the thing, we're goingto crush it, and then you go to
market and you're like I waswrong.
(25:46):
And at Solutions 8, I had thenumber one Google Ads agency in
the world.
I had thousands of businessesgo through my shop.
We spent hundreds of millionsof dollars in ad spend and what
I learned really quickly wasit'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 aresuccessful fail forward.
So if you really put yourselfin that flywheel, you quickly
(26:12):
get to the point of fail fast,don't fail intentionally.
Fail forward, but fail fast.
And it also means you don'thave to build everything,
because if you know you're goingto fail, it's minimal.
What is it?
Minimal viable product, Justthe absolute minimum.
For me to know what about thisworks and what's going to fail.
(26:32):
You build just this little,teeny, tiny, strenuous rope
bridge and then, once you getfrom one end to the other, then
you strengthen the rope a littlebit with sticks and then, once
you can put people back andforth from one end to the other,
then you strengthen the rope alittle 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 andthen find out like, oh crap, we
(26:54):
actually don't want to go fromhere to there, we want to go
from there to there and now wegot to dismantle the whole, the
whole, whatever.
So just fail forward and failfast and you know I mean it's,
it's now.
I hope nobody takes this thewrong way.
I'll sell stuff before it'sbuilt.
I'll sell a community, an idea,an offer.
I'll just go market it and I'llsee who responds to what and
(27:15):
what questions they have andwhat objections they have.
I had a client when we wererunning ads.
They owned a collection ofdental offices and I don't know
how many they had.
It was like 60 some odd dentaloffices, but they wanted
hundreds.
And the way they chose how toplace their new dental office
they had it was like 60 some odddental offices, but they wanted
hundreds.
And the way they chose how toplace their new dental office.
They had a guy who worked forhim.
We'll call him hank.
Hank was this old timer thatused to work for franchises.
(27:37):
Hank would.
They would literally fly hankto a city and hank would drive
the city.
And hank just had a nose forthis.
It's a sixth sense.
And he'd be like we're gonnaput our new dental office on the
corner of fifth and broadwaybecause whatever, and there was
some data to it, you know, likegrowth data or whatever, but it
was.
It was more or less shootingfrom the hip.
I told him I was like you guys,100 of your new patients are
(28:00):
from google ads.
What if we ran google ads?
What if we took the five or 10or 15 corners that you want to
put a dental office in?
We ran ads as though we had adental office.
It costs $250,000 to $500,000 tobuild out these dental offices
because of all the equipmentthat is required.
Why don't you take 10 grand,test $1,000 in each of these
(28:24):
corners and figure out what yourlowest cost per acquisition is?
Lowest CPC is where the mostcompetitors are.
Save yourself potentiallymaking a really bad decision,
because if you put it on thewrong corner now, you got to
spend exponentially more inadvertising.
I think that that paradigm,that approach, that's what's
missing from the entrepreneurialworld, because that's not
textbook, right, the textbook isthe business plan and we're
(28:45):
going to sit here and we'regoing to build it out on paper
and measure twice, cut once andI'm like all right man, there's
a reason that me and all theother dummies are super
successful in minting money andall these.
You know, god bless me forsaying this.
I'm going to get so spitefulright now.
My business was purchased by aprivate equity backed
organization and it's all likeGoldman Sachs Ivy League.
(29:07):
You know just not that there'sanything wrong with that and
they're not entrepreneurs, youknow what I mean?
Cause they come in and they buyit and then they have all these
great ideas that are just goingto improve that and they've
grown up from 200 clients to 130clients and I'm like, all right
, you know, best of luck to you.
Uh yeah, man, just kick theball.
Kick the ball.
Dr. William Attaway (29:25):
That's.
That's fantastic.
You know your team and yourbusinesses and everything you're
involved in needs you to leadat a higher level today than you
did five years ago, and thatsame thing is going to be true
five years from now.
What do you do to stay on topof your game?
How do you level up yourleadership skills?
Intro/Outro (29:43):
I think the most important thing any of us can do
is commit to habituated actshow you spend your acts, what,
how you spend your days or howyou spend your life.
So I think that focusing onyour personal habits, this gets
a little far.
You know there's people cantake this a little too far and I
know that there are now justthe jokes about the
entrepreneurs waking up three inthe morning and doing an ice
(30:04):
bath and then wrestling a sharkand, you know, taking the teeth
out of an alligator or whatever.
And the reason it's a cliche isbecause it's true doing an ice
bath and then wrestling a sharkand you know, taking the teeth
out of an alligator or whatever.
And the reason that it's acliche 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%.
Everybody wants the Rocky moment, Everybody wants the movie
(30:25):
montage.
No such thing, it doesn'thappen.
But I wake up at 4 o'clock inthe morning every single day and
that's you know.
I hate to say this because itsounds so arrogant, but the
truth is is you just can't beatme.
You know, if you take me andyou take any other human and all
other things are equal.
You know, we start with thesame premise same money, same
connections, same whatever.
But I'm waking up at four andthey're waking up at six.
(30:47):
I win, Because from four to sixis 10 times as productive and
effective as six to eight.
Yes, it just is.
You know, like it just is, andthat's not the only thing that
you can habituate.
As you build these habits, youget to habit stack and as you're
leading people, what'sinteresting is they start to see
that too, and then they followsuit and you build a culture and
(31:11):
an ethos around these habits.
So I think that investing inhabits is the most important
thing for an entrepreneur,because your business is a
reflection of you.
I have felt that very strongly.
There was a gentleman that Iencountered recently.
His business was purchased bythe same people that purchased
my business, and so I had a twoyear earn out and I had to stay
on, and so did he, and he was areally nice guy.
I really liked him.
He was a genuinely good person,I felt.
But a couple of the people thatworked for him weren't.
(31:33):
They were kind of.
You know, there was somebackstabby things going on
internally and I kept having tocome to him and be like, hey,
buddy, what's you know?
And he'd chuckle it off and belike, oh well, that's just
Brenda, and it rubbed me thewrong way until I realized no,
that's you, this is yourbusiness.
Buck stops with you, You're theleader, that's you and I think
(31:57):
that's true across the board,Like you're going to plant your
flag somewhere and say I'moffering this service, I'm doing
this thing.
Anything that happens within theconfine of that ecosystem is
you, and I think the more youcan habituate positive action,
the more that's going to bereflected in your staff and
interestingly oddly, weirdly inyour clients.
You're leading your customerstoo, and that took me a really
(32:18):
long time to learn.
I always thought you knowcustomer's always right, they're
the boss.
I follow them.
You know like it was when wegot really good at Solutions 8,
we got to a point to where wehad a huge waiting list and
people were literally begging usto take us as clients.
My business partner at Solutions8 is still like that John Moran
smartest Google ads mind in theworld.
He's the reason that we werewhere we were and who we were.
(32:40):
People beg John to take theircampaign, but they'll pay him
literally anything.
He charges $2,500 an hour andthey're still beating down his
door, and then the only reasonhe's not increasing his hourly
is because he feels soembarrassed.
He's that good and it requiresus to lead.
A customer comes in and says Iwant you to run ads and then
I'll say I'm not running yourads because you're not answering
your phone and I can tell inyour call tracking metrics that
(33:03):
your hold time is too long andyour answer time is too short.
And we're going to be.
We're going to fail, and it wasunreal to me.
When we started taking thatapproach, people became even
more desperate to work with us.
You know, and it's because you,you, you raised the bar and
yeah.
Anyway, again, I've gotten realpreachy on this one.
Feel free to cut it all up.
Dr. William Attaway (33:23):
This is great man.
Seriously, you are a perpetuallearner and I think this comes
through.
It's come through so much inthis conversation and previously
.
I'm curious, like, out of allthe books that you've read and I
see the shelves behind you outof all the books that you've
read, is there one that has madesuch a difference that you
recommend it frequently?
Intro/Outro (33:45):
Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
I really love the Power of Now.
It's based off of you know, hesays as much it's based off of A
Course in Miracles, which iskind of Christian mysticism.
So it can repel people, youknow, depending on where you
land from a semantic perspective.
I like the idea that thepresent moment is all we really
(34:10):
have.
A very close friend of mine saidrecently that all anger comes
from the past and all fear comesfrom the future, and I was like
that resonates, that feels real.
And if you can come into thismoment and where I am right now
and where you are right now,there's something about it that
(34:31):
truly is.
And I'm going to use a word,again back to the semantic
arguments that could berepulsive, so I'd ask the
listener to replace the wordwith another one, if there's one
that resonates.
But there's something aboutthis moment that's divine and
and I don't even mean thattheologically per se, I mean
that, like you feel it on a, ona practical, material level, you
(34:52):
feel something transcendentthat's almost impossible to
articulate and the power of nowmade that more real for me than
anything else.
And I know there's a lot builtaround that, you know.
I think that's the.
It's at the epicenter of mostEastern philosophy, but I think
(35:12):
because the power of now camethrough a Western lens.
I was raised Southern Baptistand so it just had an ability to
connect with me more thanreading the Tao Te Ching.
Not that there's anything wrongwith those books, it's just
that's the one that checked thebox.
So that's the book that Iprobably have revisited more
than any other.
If you want one that's notquite as esoteric.
(35:33):
I really like Stephen Covey'sSeven Habits too.
I think that's a great one, andyou know it's all just
principle-centered, reallyreally well-written and
well-structured.
I really love Covey.
He was quite the gem.
Dr. William Attaway (35:44):
True.
You know, I have not read theother book and now I want to
read this.
I mean a person.
Now I want to read this personof faith and this really
resonates the way you weredescribing that.
I think a whole lot of peoplelive either in the past or in
the future and they're not inthe present, and this is
reflected so often by how weinteract with other people.
Right, we're thinking eitherabout something that we
(36:07):
shouldn't have said or somethingthat we want to say next, but
we're focused on ourselves.
Yeah.
Intro/Outro (36:13):
Guilty as charged.
If you want a faith-basedversion of the power of now,
have you read Richard Rohr, yes,yes.
So Richard Rohr, I think, has adeep respect for Eckhart Tolle
and he actually said in one ofhis books, I think in Universal
Christ, he's like I'd love totalk to him and I think he
reached out to him and theyweren't able to make that
connection.
But Richard Rohr made the pointthat Eckhart Tolle was saying
(36:36):
what Catholics have been sayingfrom the very beginning the real
, real Catholicism, catholic,meaning universal, right,
universal, yeah, and it waseither an immortal diamond or
universal Christ.
So I think there's some deepresonance there.
Yeah, and Eckhart, I don't wantto say sterilizes it, because
that doesn't do it justice buttakes it out of a faith-based
(36:57):
realm.
So, depending on who you are asa listener, I think that power
of now is going to be broadlyaccessible.
Because he uses languaging,that's a little more accessible.
You know there's an evocationof 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 alignmentbetween what they were offering
(37:18):
us.
that, I think, is really it'sworthy of some meditation, and
both of them throughout you knoweverything that they're ever
quoted as saying seem to bereferencing the now.
Dr. William Attaway (37:30):
Well, I'm going to think about that for a
while.
You know, I believe and havetaught for a long time that all
truth is God's truth.
Hmm, hmm, bringing that intothis because I think that's a
very big piece of truly being aleader that moves into a
(37:54):
catalytic space that makes adifference.
Kasim, I could talk to you foranother hour.
This has been such a phenomenalconversation that has touched
on so many things.
I know our listeners are goingto want to find out more about
Pareto, about you, and continueto learn from you and all that
you're doing.
What is the best way for themto do that?
Intro/Outro (38:16):
Go to kasimme K-A-S-I-MM-E.
I shoot a YouTube video almostevery day, and so, if you don't
mind me sprecking the bushybabble, I pontificate quite a
bit, and that's where all mycontent is going now, and then
all my hot links are there too.
Join my mastermind, or hire anEA, or you know, I'm writing a
(38:39):
book right now called hire, andI'm giving away the farm on my
hiring process.
Uh, your, your listeners canhave it for free.
I've, quite literally for free.
It'll be on Amazon, but I'mjust going to.
You know it'll be my gift, sothat it's with the editor now.
That should be done in a coupleof weeks.
Dr. William Attaway (38:51):
My goodness , that's incredibly generous man
.
Thank you, we'll have thoselinks in the show notes.
That sounds great.
Thanks for having me onAppreciate you, doug.
Look, I so appreciate your timeand your generosity in sharing
so freely and so openly todayIncredibly helpful for me and, I
know, for our listeners.
Thank you so much.
Intro/Outro (39:08):
No, I had a blast.
I loved your questions.
I think you cracked me openmore than most people do, and I
do quite a few podcasts, soappreciate you having me on.
Dr. William Attaway (39:14):
Thanks for joining me for this episode
today.
As we wrap up, I'd love for youto do two things.
First, subscribe to thispodcast so you don't miss an
episode, and if you find valuehere, I'd love it if you would
rate it and review it.
That really does make adifference in helping other
people to discover this podcast.
Second, if you don't have acopy of my newest book,
(39:36):
Catalytic Leadership, I'd loveto put a copy in your hands.
If you go tocatalyticleadershipbookcom, you
can get a copy for free.
Just pay the shipping so I canget it to you and we'll get one
right out.
My goal is to put this into thehands of as many leaders as
possible.
This book captures principlesthat I've learned in 20 plus
(39:57):
years of coaching leaders in theentrepreneurial space, in
business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church
.
You can also connect with me onLinkedIn to keep up with what
I'm currently learning andthinking about.
And if you're ready to take anext step with a coach to help
you intentionally grow andthrive as a leader, I'd be
(40:19):
honored to help you.
Just go tocatalyticleadershipnet to book a
call with me.
Stay tuned for our next episodenext week.
Until then, as always, leaderschoose to be catalytic.
Kasim Aslam (40:33):
Thanks for listening to Catalytic
Leadership with Dr WilliamAttaway.
Be sure to subscribe whereveryou listen to podcasts so you
don't miss the next episode.
Want more?
Go to catalyticleadershipnet.
I'm so excited today to have Qasim
Aslam on the podcast.
Qasim has built five, seven andeight-figure businesses, with
two successful exits.
He's the co-founder of DrivenMastermind, the top marketing
mastermind in the world.
He's written three best-sellingbooks, including you vs Google,
(00:20):
which was ranked number oneinternationally for both
marketing and advertising.
He's the creator of DigitalMarketers Paid Traffic
Certification and was named oneof the top 50 digital marketing
thought leaders in the US byUMSL.
He's also the co-founder ofPareto Talent, a company that is
dedicated to empoweringentrepreneurs by providing
(00:43):
exceptional executive assistancefrom Latin America.
Kasim, I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks for being on the show.
Dr William, thanks for havingme Appreciate it.
Kasim Aslam (00:53):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the
podcast designed to help leadersintentionally grow and thrive.
Here is your host author andleadership and executive coach,
dr William Attaway.
Dr. William Attaway (01:10):
I would love to start with you sharing a
little bit of your story withour listeners, particularly
around your journey and yourdevelopment as a leader.
How did you get started?
Intro/Outro (01:22):
Failed at everything.
I'm the world's greatestfailure.
I was, uh, supremelyunemployable, um, both
technically and temperamentally.
Um, I got in a lot of troubleas a kid and ended up running
away from that trouble.
Uh, I lived in albuquerque, newmexico, was an amateur but
(01:45):
aspiring thief, and I just gotin way over my head at one point
, and so I called my dad, who Ididn't really know very well,
and I told him you know, I'msort of in the thick of it, and
he moved me out to Scottsdale.
And if you've been toAlbuquerque and you've been to
Scottsdale, you know it's a Marsand Venus situation.
This is very, very, verydifferent environment.
And I tried working for him.
(02:05):
He had a rug and furniturestore 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 ownand 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 atthat.
I didn't want a job becausethat sucked, and I didn't want
to work for my dad.
And so entrepreneurship wasn'ta decision, it was a default, it
(02:25):
was just the only thing thatwas left to me as far as
productive endeavors areconcerned and I can't say I did
it well.
I definitely took the long way,but that was the beginning.
Dr. William Attaway (02:36):
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 beon the show and when I got yours
and I was checking you out, Ithought this guy's, this guy's
the real deal.
And the more I learned, themore I loved about your story,
(02:56):
because you are so open andhonest with the failure, like
you've already said, and yetlook at where you've come.
How did said, and yet look atwhere you've come.
How did?
How did you get fromalbuquerque, for being a kid in
trouble, to the costume that weknow now?
Intro/Outro (03:13):
hi zen.
I think it was one percentimprovement.
You know there was no flipswitch, rip the band-aid off.
I had the tiger song playingmontage moment.
It was just very iterative andI think the thing that I did
really well is just staycommitted to change and to
growth.
Going back to my dad, he hadthese old tony robbins discs
(03:36):
like that's how old I am theseold tony robbins cds awaken the
power within, or uh, whatever itwas.
And I just started really, youknow, I had this opportunity to
reinvent myself and I took itreally seriously and I don't
think that ever changed.
You know, there was just a verystrong willingness to look in
the mirror, try to identify whatwas wrong and then fix one
(03:57):
thing, and that was.
That's been supremely impactful.
Before we started recording, Imentioned 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 trustsme with little people.
I'm just so grateful to Godthat they're still alive.
I get bills in the mail and I'mlike you want me to pay this.
(04:22):
You know what I mean.
There's just so much about lifethat'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 haveyet to integrate the idea that
there's a solidity to myexistence.
There's not a lot about me,that's not malleable.
I think I have a core nucleiccenter.
(04:43):
That's principle driven, I hope, and then beyond that, you know
, it's all, it's all up fordebate, it's all up for
modification and change, andthat's been, that's been really
helpful.
Dr. William Attaway (04:55):
You know, I would argue that that
commitment to grow and to adaptand to change is responsible for
so much of what you'veaccomplished, and to change is
responsible for so much of whatyou've accomplished.
I've talked to a lot of leaderswho are sometimes they're in
their early 20s and you'd thinkthey were made of concrete.
They're just not interested inchanging, they're not interested
in adapting at all.
(05:15):
This is what is, this is whatwill 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 (05:27):
To my detriment.
Sometimes I think I can get alittle too focused on what can
change and not focused enough onwhat should be solidified or
strengthened.
That's fair.
And more often than not I thinkit's served me more than it's
hurt me.
It's so funny when people aredescribing me, I get the's
served me more than it's hurt me.
So you know it's so funnyPeople I get.
(05:49):
When people are describing me,I get the word humble all the
time.
People are like you're sohumble 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 andI'm like I'm not really.
You got it wrong.
I'm actually.
I don't feel like I'm thathumble.
I think people mistake mywillingness to be receptive to
where I might be wrong or how Imight change as humility.
(06:09):
But there's a lot about me thatI'm like, I'm pretty proud of.
You know what I mean.
Like I, I'm sort of like maybeyou and I define humility wrong,
but I'm grateful to have hadthe opportunities I've had.
I've hit it out of the park acouple of times and I have a
healthy self-image along thatlevel of analysis and so I think
(06:30):
that my humility is mistook.
I'll take it because it makesme accessible.
Dr. William Attaway (06:34):
I imagine I don't think humility is really
running yourself down or being adoormat.
A lot of people think humilityis being a doormat.
It's not.
I think it's exactly what youjust said.
It's a healthy perspective onwho you are and the gifts and
skills and talents that youbring.
That's humility.
That's a healthy perspective.
(06:54):
I heard it said once humilityis not thinking less of yourself
, it's simply thinking ofyourself less.
I really love that and I thinkthat is what people see in you.
It certainly characterizes ourconversation so far that we've
talked.
I mean you are focused on whatcould be.
You are focused on what couldbe, not only in the businesses
(07:16):
that you run, but in the peoplethat you lead.
I think that is acharacteristic of real,
authentic humility.
That's well said.
I appreciate that that's acharacteristic of real,
authentic humility.
Intro/Outro (07:25):
That's well said.
I appreciate that.
That's a good perspectivechange for me.
Dr. William Attaway (07:30):
So you have , I mean, five businesses, that
you have Actually six now.
Intro/Outro (07:35):
I need to update my bio.
Yeah, so Pareto Talent just hita million.
It's a million gross rev runrate.
So we haven't hit a milliongross rev, but as of January
2025, we're at a million grossrev runway and we're on a
meteoric rise too.
So I would anticipate thatbeing pretty significantly
improved by the end of this year, so that's the newest thing.
Dr. William Attaway (07:54):
So talk about that for a minute.
What is Pareto all about?
Intro/Outro (07:57):
It's my favorite thing I've ever done.
It's also the least scalablebusiness I've ever been involved
in.
I love people with everythinginside of me.
The least scalable businessI've ever been involved in.
I love people with everythinginside of me.
It's the reason I've beensuccessful in business.
Every human is such a miracleand the way that we're taught to
hire and train and managepeople is exactly wrong, and
(08:17):
it's from almost every direction.
I mean every academic study ofmanagement, I think, is exactly
wrong because we're taught asbusiness owners to try to treat
people like they're commodities.
We talk about them like they'recommodities, we hire them like
they're commodities, we tradethem like they're commodities,
we, you know like, grow them,ascend them, get rid of them,
and the human being is not acommodity.
(08:38):
You take the same two humansborn in the same hospital, from
the same doctor, live in thesame city, went to the same
school, had the same upbringing,got the same degree, took the
same job, and they're stillgoing to be so, so, so, so, so,
so different.
And I've known this for longerthan I've put words to it and
(08:59):
it's the reason that I'm quite abit more successful than I
deserve.
To be honest with you, drWilliam, it's because everybody
else is trying to do itthemselves.
I made it a habit of finding amiracle, putting them in the
driver's seat of whateverendeavor it was that I was
trying to accomplish and thengetting out of their way.
Kasim Aslam (09:12):
And flash forward.
Intro/Outro (09:14):
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, businesslessand having massive existential
crises about who I am and what,what's next, and and the thing
that kept coming back to me andit was actually a friend that
pointed this out is how, howmuch I love and get lit up by
(09:36):
finding really amazing people.
So we thought like, well, crap,why don't we just make that the
business?
That's what we did.
Did I find talent in LatinAmerica and there's reasons that
we focused on Latin America.
Talent is available everywhere,but in terms of English
proficiency, cultural alignmentand then time zones, just
practically speaking, latinAmerica ends up being a real
solid hotbed.
So I find talent in LatinAmerica.
I train them to be qualityexecutive assistants quality
(10:02):
executive assistants.
We chose the role of executiveassistant by design and it's
because your executive assistantis.
It's actually a flywheel foridentifying talent.
Your EA should never be your EAfor very long.
Really, what you're doing isyou're taking a really smart,
intelligent human who's proventhemselves as industrious and
you're testing them againstdifferent things.
Kasim Aslam (10:16):
And you give them 10 things to do.
Intro/Outro (10:18):
And here's what's funny about it is if you give
somebody a smart, industriousperson, if you give them 10
things to do and here's what'sfunny about it is, if you give
somebody a smart, industriousperson, if you give them 10
things to do, they're going tosuck at two of them.
They're going to do six.
Just fine, check the box.
They're going to do two betterthan any human has ever done
those two things.
And here's what we're taught bythe business world at large is
to go focus on the two thingsthey suck at and say we're going
to get you there, kiddo, andhere's a performance improvement
(10:39):
program and we're going to putyou through coaching.
And you're going to shadowjohnny, because johnny's good at
this.
And I'm like, how about we notonly stop making him do those
two things, but what if we go?
Took those two things thatthey're better at that and
anybody in the world, and wemake that their job?
My first ea became my directorof social.
My second ea became my directorof automations.
My third ea became my cto,managed entire exit, became one
(10:59):
of my best friends and is now mybusiness partner in ProtoTalent
.
He trains all my EAs and it'snever not proven true.
For me, again, it requires thea priori assumption is that
you're dealing with people thatare actually motivated, and I
have a whole system of fly trapswe can talk about to find those
people.
But man, when you have being anentrepreneur is always to me,
(11:23):
has always felt like I'm pullinga sled up a muddy hill in the
rain by myself and the strapsare digging into my shoulder and
they're cutting into my skinand I'm bleeding and I'm tired
and I'm lonely and I'm cold andI can feel the muscles in my
legs giving out and every time Ihire somebody I throw them in
the back of the sled and itmakes it heavier.
(11:45):
Every business owner I know hasthis sled.
They're pulling up and everynew hire is just more work, more
time, more supervision, moremanagement.
When you start hiring Paretotalent the real leverageable
talent 80, 20, the 20 that dothe 80 it's like somebody stands
(12:05):
next to you, grabs a strap andstarts to help you pull and the
thing that will change your lifeis when they pull harder and
faster than you do and all youhave to do is get out of the way
and so like yeah, I've builtsix million and multi-million
dollar businesses, but I kind ofhaven't.
I have found people who havebuilt these.
Dude, I built the number oneranked Google ads agency in the
(12:26):
world.
I've never run a Google adcampaign myself and in my life I
wouldn't know how to.
I built, I had the number one,ranked, the number one
performing real estateinvestment campaign on the
planet, before I ever investedin real estate or did lead
generation.
I just found this.
I have the largest community ofMontessori schools in the
English speaking world.
(12:47):
I'm not a trained Montessoriand I don't own a Montessori
school.
I can do quite literallyanything through people.
It's finding the people.
It's going back to DanSullivan's who's the who?
I think that's Dan Sullivan.
People are a miracle man andentrepreneurs and business
owners.
We think about them in theexact opposite terms.
You know, it's just.
(13:08):
I am so sick of it.
All right, it's just so hard tofind good help these days and
if you want something done, doit yourself.
When people say that, I knowexactly who you are.
I know exactly.
You're the person trying to payless and get more and squeeze
people and you're the type ofperson that makes people sign
non-competes and doesn't allowtheir employees to have side
hustles.
And I'm like you know, I talk topeople because when I staff, I
staff out of Latin America, andpeople are like oh no, I tried
(13:29):
outsourcing.
That didn't work.
And I'll dig in a little bitand I'd ask you, if you're you
know the listeners, to do thistoo, next time somebody says I
tried outsourcing.
That real curious really.
What, what, what did yououtsource what?
What was the task?
And they're like well, I neededsomebody to sit behind a
computer for eight hours a dayand do data entry, while I
screenshotted their desktop,track their keystrokes and let
(13:51):
them take 115 minutes.
You know I'm like, what human,what real hue could function.
And then, how long would youlast doing that job?
You know like how about you paymore than anybody's willing to
pay them.
You let them work from home ona semi-flexible schedule, you
give them meaningful work andthen you get out of the way and
you see what happens.
Good golly, miss Molly, youknow what I mean.
And so that's what we've doneat Pareto.
I want staff for groundwork.
I get people all the time like,oh, we need callers, do you now
(14:14):
?
Best of luck to you slave labor?
We're not doing that.
I'm not the modern dayequivalent 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 dothat.
We find it takes a thousandapplicants to produce one
trained EA and then we placethem with an entrepreneur.
I just heard one of my bestfriends, john Roman, 72 hours
ago, said I cannot imagine lifewithout her about his EA.
(14:38):
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 favoritepeople in the whole world,
people in emerging nations,entrepreneurs the two groups of
humans that I have such a heartfor to be able to match them
together.
And it doesn't always go well,you know, like there's, we've
had explosions and blow-ups andthings just fail and, generally
speaking, to be honest with you,it's the, the entrepreneurs,
(14:59):
not the EA.
People don't know how todelegate their micromanaging,
their expectations are sounreasonably high.
It's so funny, dude, when I seepeople come to me with these
job descriptions and they'relike oh, I need somebody who
knows video editing, mediabuying, content creation,
customer service and is going tobe able to.
I'm like who is this?
Elon Musk?
(15:21):
What are you trying to do here?
What I'm not saying, thosepeople don't exist, but they're
probably working for themselves.
Like, why would I, thesuperhuman, come work for you?
you know, like you eat all thosethings so funny yeah, but
anyway, that got a littlepreachy, 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 dirtyword at this point in the
entrepreneurial narrative.
(15:43):
But golly, is it fun and what'scool about is it.
Lets me see, you know, all Ihave is you know, we've staffed
almost 50 EAs now, so I have 50high-end entrepreneurs and I get
to see everything they'reasking their EAs to do, and it
leads me to further opportunity.
We started a, an agency just forgo high level, because all of
our entrepreneurs needed highlevel help.
And I'm like, why don't I havean easy button here?
(16:04):
I might start an agency podcastbooking, because 20% of my
entrepreneurs are having theirEAs help them do outreach for
podcast booking.
So, while it's unto itself nota very scalable business, it's
kind of a metal detector in alot of ways and it helps me see
what else might work.
And then I'm growing all my ownlabor, so I'm figuring out
(16:24):
these opportunities and then Ijust hire I'm my biggest client,
I've hired more EAs thananybody and I hire a person that
I think is going to be reallygood at this, and then I put
them on this business and youknow, sometimes it takes off and
sometimes it doesn't.
Dr. William Attaway (16:38):
That was an absolute masterclass in how to
lead people as individuals, andI just want to call this out and
I really hope our listenershave a pen and paper or
something they're taking noteswith because you keyed in on
something that we talk about allthe time leader, your job is to
(17:06):
lead your people as actual 3Dhuman beings, not as cogs in a
machine.
When you do that, that is goingto be reflected on the bottom
line, because when you leadpeople as a human being and they
feel known and seen and heard,they lean in.
When you invest in them and youwant to give them a path
forward, a trajectory upward intheir career and in their life,
and you want to see them thrivein all spheres of their life,
(17:29):
they lean in Higher retention,higher engagement.
What does that result in on thebottom line?
Right, every time.
Right.
That's what you're talkingabout, and I love that.
You are building Pareto in sucha way that you are providing
people who are skilled, who aretrained, who are, in the words
of Lencioni, the ideal teamplayer.
(17:50):
They're humble, hungry andsmart and they lean in.
They're like, hey, let me helppull this sled, and that's.
That's going to be amazing.
So you've already built this.
I mean, this is a matter ofwhat a year the program has been
I really.
Intro/Outro (18:07):
It was q3 of last year that we started staffing so
we started training prior tothat, but our real staffing hit
q3 of last year.
So I mean we're recording thisin february 2025, early feb.
I mean we've been around forit's not six months yet.
Dr. William Attaway (18:25):
So this is a new venture and you have had
so many new ventures in yourlife so far.
Like a lot of people listening,they're newer entrepreneurs,
like what advice would you givethem, as you're starting
something new, but it's not yourfirst time?
Maybe for them it is.
Intro/Outro (18:42):
Kick the ball.
So here's the problem from myperspective, and everybody has
their own.
You know, the problem withtaking advice right is, it's
free and it's worth what you pay.
Here's what I see in theentrepreneurial world.
I see millions of people in thebleachers watching with pad and
pen, listening to podcasts,watching videos, reading books.
(19:05):
There's nothing wrong withthose 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, butit's not enough.
I see millions of people in thebleachers watching, but they
will get on the field andthere's something called the
corridor principle.
I think the corridor principleis the most important principle
for a young or early stageentrepreneur to know and
(19:27):
understand.
The corridor principle says youcan't identify opportunity
until you're on the field.
You can't identify opportunityuntil you're on the field.
So if you're in the bleachers,I don't care how many podcasts
you're watching, how many videosyou watch, how many podcasts
you're listening to, how manyvideos you watch, how many books
you read, I don't care how,from an academic perspective,
(19:47):
how effective you are.
You'll never see the realopportunity until you step on
the field.
Here's the really difficultpart.
You ready it gets worse whenyou choose to step on the field,
odds are statistically 100times out of 100, the
opportunity you see isn't where.
So where you choose to step inthe corridor will never, you'll
never going to make the rightdecision.
(20:08):
Right, it's Henry Ford learnedthe assembly line working at a
sausage factory.
But from the outside, lookingin to everybody in Henry Ford's
(20:32):
life before he startedmanufacturing cars, they're like
oh, what a failure.
They stood back and didsausages.
You know what I mean.
So right now, today, if youwant 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'sa learn and go to home depot.
I really mean this, by the way.
Go to home depot.
Buy yourself a bucket, asqueegee and a mop.
(20:53):
Start cleaning windows.
And I'm not kidding, I'm notbeing hyperbolic.
I live in phoenix, arizona.
There's not a commercialbuilding near my home that
doesn't need clean windows.
It's the easiest sell in thewhole wide world.
Now I'm not telling you thatwindow washing is going to be
your millionaire idea, becauseit's not, but you're going to
step out onto the field.
You're going to learn thingslike marketing, sales,
fulfillment, billing,bookkeeping, operations, time
(21:15):
management.
You're going to all the things,all the nuts and bolts of
businesses that actually reallydismantle you, all of us waiting
for the big idea.
It's not the big idea, it's not.
I have gone through six poolguys.
I cannot find a pool guy inScottsdale, arizona because it's
such a.
It's just this cesspool ofbottom feeders.
(21:35):
They all charge the exact sameamount it's $125 to $150 a month
and it's impossible to get themto show up regularly to
actually clean the filter, totell 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 onmy door and say it's 250 bucks a
month, it's almost double, butyou will never worry about this
(21:58):
again, guaranteed.
Are you kidding me?
What I wouldn't pay.
You know what I mean and that'savailable, I think, in every
business, in every industry.
It doesn't need to be sexy.
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.
(22:18):
And as you're knocking on doorsand washing these windows,
you're going to be sitting insomebody's office washing the
window, overhearing a phone call, and somebody is going to say
like, oh, I just can't findanybody to clean my pool.
And you're going to think like,well, that's interesting, but
you're in the corridor, you'reon the field, you're actually at
play.
Go get out onto the field.
If you don't want to do ityourself, go work for somebody
(22:39):
who's on the field.
Go work for a small businessowner or an entrepreneur.
Learn the ropes.
Entrepreneurship is unlikeanything else.
You can't figure it out atQuicken Loans.
Kasim Aslam (22:48):
You know what I mean.
Intro/Outro (22:48):
You're just not going to, you're not exposed to
that ethos and I've seen thenine to fivers that try to
become entrepreneurs.
Partnered with one recently whoI love him dearly and deeply.
He's an amazing human and hisconnection to reality is so like
he kept wanting to do likeimpact reports and he was
(23:10):
building these huge, reallyrobust plans and I'm like, dude,
this isn't the way this, youknow, 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 thequarterly goal, which feeds the
monthly sprint, which feeds theweekly thing.
I'm like, bro, we are going tojust shoot, I'm going to kick
this ball and I'm going to chasethe ball and you know, like
(23:30):
that's.
It sounds stupid, but it's notAll the people you're surrounded
when you enter theentrepreneurial environment.
One of the things that's mostfrustrating really intelligent
people is you look around andthink like I'm smarter than all
these folks and they're moresuccessful 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 theywant to plan.
(23:51):
The people that are successfulentrepreneurs they're almost
children.
You know what I mean.
They're impulsive and they'rekind of selfish in certain ways,
because they want what theywant and they're willing to try
and they just go out and theyjust kick the freaking ball and
then they miss, but they chasethe ball and it's a little bit
closer to goal and they kick itagain.
(24:11):
And then they miss, but theychase it and it's a little bit
closer to the goal and they kickit again and then they miss.
Go watch soccer.
Soccer is the best analogy forentrepreneurship ever, because
90% of the time you're nottrying to score, you're just
trying to get the ball closer tothe goal.
My seven-year-old's obsessedwith soccer, by the way, so I
spend a lot of time watchingsoccer, which is where this
analogy comes from.
Forgive me if that was too muchof a departure, but that's my
advice.
Dr. William Attaway (24:31):
Oh yeah, no , I think that's brilliant.
You know, it's so much easierto adjust course on a plane
that's in the air than onethat's at a dead stop on the
ground Dude.
Intro/Outro (24:40):
Yes, that's a much better, better analogy.
You actually have to be inthere in order to really learn
what it is that you're doing.
Yeah, you can adjust and pivotand 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 forour flight path.
You know what I mean?
It's like just get up in theair, I know, yes, when, just
(25:04):
kicked in.
I need, to course, correct.
Dr. William Attaway (25:07):
Exactly so.
This is a different way ofthinking for a lot of people who
are listening.
I'm curious what has informedhow you think about this?
Have masterminds played a partin this?
Communities you've been a partof?
What is it that has helped youto develop this particular way
of thinking about business?
Intro/Outro (25:25):
Well, I've failed at so many businesses and the
thing that's really interestingwhen you look at failure, I've
always been wrong with myguesses.
I've never guessed right.
One time I will go into abusiness knowing, oh, this is it
.
This is the thing, we're goingto crush it, and then you go to
market and you're like I waswrong.
(25:46):
And at Solutions 8, I had thenumber one Google Ads agency in
the world.
I had thousands of businessesgo through my shop.
We spent hundreds of millionsof dollars in ad spend and what
I learned really quickly wasit'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 aresuccessful fail forward.
So if you really put yourselfin that flywheel, you quickly
(26:12):
get to the point of fail fast,don't fail intentionally.
Fail forward, but fail fast.
And it also means you don'thave to build everything,
because if you know you're goingto fail, it's minimal.
What is it?
Minimal viable product, Justthe absolute minimum.
For me to know what about thisworks and what's going to fail.
(26:32):
You build just this little,teeny, tiny, strenuous rope
bridge and then, once you getfrom one end to the other, then
you strengthen the rope a littlebit with sticks and then, once
you can put people back andforth from one end to the other,
then you strengthen the rope alittle 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 andthen find out like, oh crap, we
(26:54):
actually don't want to go fromhere to there, we want to go
from there to there and now wegot to dismantle the whole, the
whole, whatever.
So just fail forward and failfast and you know I mean it's,
it's now.
I hope nobody takes this thewrong way.
I'll sell stuff before it'sbuilt.
I'll sell a community, an idea,an offer.
I'll just go market it and I'llsee who responds to what and
(27:15):
what questions they have andwhat objections they have.
I had a client when we wererunning ads.
They owned a collection ofdental offices and I don't know
how many they had.
It was like 60 some odd dentaloffices, but they wanted
hundreds.
And the way they chose how toplace their new dental office
they had it was like 60 some odddental offices, but they wanted
hundreds.
And the way they chose how toplace their new dental office.
They had a guy who worked forhim.
We'll call him hank.
Hank was this old timer thatused to work for franchises.
(27:37):
Hank would.
They would literally fly hankto a city and hank would drive
the city.
And hank just had a nose forthis.
It's a sixth sense.
And he'd be like we're gonnaput our new dental office on the
corner of fifth and broadwaybecause whatever, and there was
some data to it, you know, likegrowth data or whatever, but it
was.
It was more or less shootingfrom the hip.
I told him I was like you guys,100 of your new patients are
(28:00):
from google ads.
What if we ran google ads?
What if we took the five or 10or 15 corners that you want to
put a dental office in?
We ran ads as though we had adental office.
It costs $250,000 to $500,000 tobuild out these dental offices
because of all the equipmentthat is required.
Why don't you take 10 grand,test $1,000 in each of these
(28:24):
corners and figure out what yourlowest cost per acquisition is?
Lowest CPC is where the mostcompetitors are.
Save yourself potentiallymaking a really bad decision,
because if you put it on thewrong corner now, you got to
spend exponentially more inadvertising.
I think that that paradigm,that approach, that's what's
missing from the entrepreneurialworld, because that's not
textbook, right, the textbook isthe business plan and we're
(28:45):
going to sit here and we'regoing to build it out on paper
and measure twice, cut once andI'm like all right man, there's
a reason that me and all theother dummies are super
successful in minting money andall these.
You know, god bless me forsaying this.
I'm going to get so spitefulright now.
My business was purchased by aprivate equity backed
organization and it's all likeGoldman Sachs Ivy League.
(29:07):
You know just not that there'sanything wrong with that and
they're not entrepreneurs, youknow what I mean?
Cause they come in and they buyit and then they have all these
great ideas that are just goingto improve that and they've
grown up from 200 clients to 130clients and I'm like, all right
, you know, best of luck to you.
Uh yeah, man, just kick theball.
Kick the ball.
Dr. William Attaway (29:25):
That's.
That's fantastic.
You know your team and yourbusinesses and everything you're
involved in needs you to leadat a higher level today than you
did five years ago, and thatsame thing is going to be true
five years from now.
What do you do to stay on topof your game?
How do you level up yourleadership skills?
Intro/Outro (29:43):
I think the most important thing any of us can do
is commit to habituated actshow you spend your acts, what,
how you spend your days or howyou spend your life.
So I think that focusing onyour personal habits, this gets
a little far.
You know there's people cantake this a little too far and I
know that there are now justthe jokes about the
entrepreneurs waking up three inthe morning and doing an ice
(30:04):
bath and then wrestling a sharkand, you know, taking the teeth
out of an alligator or whatever.
And the reason it's a cliche isbecause it's true doing an ice
bath and then wrestling a sharkand you know, taking the teeth
out of an alligator or whatever.
And the reason that it's acliche 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%.
Everybody wants the Rocky moment, Everybody wants the movie
(30:25):
montage.
No such thing, it doesn'thappen.
But I wake up at 4 o'clock inthe morning every single day and
that's you know.
I hate to say this because itsounds so arrogant, but the
truth is is you just can't beatme.
You know, if you take me andyou take any other human and all
other things are equal.
You know, we start with thesame premise same money, same
connections, same whatever.
But I'm waking up at four andthey're waking up at six.
(30:47):
I win, Because from four to sixis 10 times as productive and
effective as six to eight.
Yes, it just is.
You know, like it just is, andthat's not the only thing that
you can habituate.
As you build these habits, youget to habit stack and as you're
leading people, what'sinteresting is they start to see
that too, and then they followsuit and you build a culture and
(31:11):
an ethos around these habits.
So I think that investing inhabits is the most important
thing for an entrepreneur,because your business is a
reflection of you.
I have felt that very strongly.
There was a gentleman that Iencountered recently.
His business was purchased bythe same people that purchased
my business, and so I had a twoyear earn out and I had to stay
on, and so did he, and he was areally nice guy.
I really liked him.
He was a genuinely good person,I felt.
But a couple of the people thatworked for him weren't.
(31:33):
They were kind of.
You know, there was somebackstabby things going on
internally and I kept having tocome to him and be like, hey,
buddy, what's you know?
And he'd chuckle it off and belike, oh well, that's just
Brenda, and it rubbed me thewrong way until I realized no,
that's you, this is yourbusiness.
Buck stops with you, You're theleader, that's you and I think
(31:57):
that's true across the board,Like you're going to plant your
flag somewhere and say I'moffering this service, I'm doing
this thing.
Anything that happens within theconfine of that ecosystem is
you, and I think the more youcan habituate positive action,
the more that's going to bereflected in your staff and
interestingly oddly, weirdly inyour clients.
You're leading your customerstoo, and that took me a really
(32:18):
long time to learn.
I always thought you knowcustomer's always right, they're
the boss.
I follow them.
You know like it was when wegot really good at Solutions 8,
we got to a point to where wehad a huge waiting list and
people were literally begging usto take us as clients.
My business partner at Solutions8 is still like that John Moran
smartest Google ads mind in theworld.
He's the reason that we werewhere we were and who we were.
(32:40):
People beg John to take theircampaign, but they'll pay him
literally anything.
He charges $2,500 an hour andthey're still beating down his
door, and then the only reasonhe's not increasing his hourly
is because he feels soembarrassed.
He's that good and it requiresus to lead.
A customer comes in and says Iwant you to run ads and then
I'll say I'm not running yourads because you're not answering
your phone and I can tell inyour call tracking metrics that
(33:03):
your hold time is too long andyour answer time is too short.
And we're going to be.
We're going to fail, and it wasunreal to me.
When we started taking thatapproach, people became even
more desperate to work with us.
You know, and it's because you,you, you raised the bar and
yeah.
Anyway, again, I've gotten realpreachy on this one.
Feel free to cut it all up.
Dr. William Attaway (33:23):
This is great man.
Seriously, you are a perpetuallearner and I think this comes
through.
It's come through so much inthis conversation and previously
.
I'm curious, like, out of allthe books that you've read and I
see the shelves behind you outof all the books that you've
read, is there one that has madesuch a difference that you
recommend it frequently?
Intro/Outro (33:45):
Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
I really love the Power of Now.
It's based off of you know, hesays as much it's based off of A
Course in Miracles, which iskind of Christian mysticism.
So it can repel people, youknow, depending on where you
land from a semantic perspective.
I like the idea that thepresent moment is all we really
(34:10):
have.
A very close friend of mine saidrecently that all anger comes
from the past and all fear comesfrom the future, and I was like
that resonates, that feels real.
And if you can come into thismoment and where I am right now
and where you are right now,there's something about it that
(34:31):
truly is.
And I'm going to use a word,again back to the semantic
arguments that could berepulsive, so I'd ask the
listener to replace the wordwith another one, if there's one
that resonates.
But there's something aboutthis moment that's divine and
and I don't even mean thattheologically per se, I mean
that, like you feel it on a, ona practical, material level, you
(34:52):
feel something transcendentthat's almost impossible to
articulate and the power of nowmade that more real for me than
anything else.
And I know there's a lot builtaround that, you know.
I think that's the.
It's at the epicenter of mostEastern philosophy, but I think
(35:12):
because the power of now camethrough a Western lens.
I was raised Southern Baptistand so it just had an ability to
connect with me more thanreading the Tao Te Ching.
Not that there's anything wrongwith those books, it's just
that's the one that checked thebox.
So that's the book that Iprobably have revisited more
than any other.
If you want one that's notquite as esoteric.
(35:33):
I really like Stephen Covey'sSeven Habits too.
I think that's a great one, andyou know it's all just
principle-centered, reallyreally well-written and
well-structured.
I really love Covey.
He was quite the gem.
Dr. William Attaway (35:44):
True.
You know, I have not read theother book and now I want to
read this.
I mean a person.
Now I want to read this personof faith and this really
resonates the way you weredescribing that.
I think a whole lot of peoplelive either in the past or in
the future and they're not inthe present, and this is
reflected so often by how weinteract with other people.
Right, we're thinking eitherabout something that we
(36:07):
shouldn't have said or somethingthat we want to say next, but
we're focused on ourselves.
Yeah.
Intro/Outro (36:13):
Guilty as charged.
If you want a faith-basedversion of the power of now,
have you read Richard Rohr, yes,yes.
So Richard Rohr, I think, has adeep respect for Eckhart Tolle
and he actually said in one ofhis books, I think in Universal
Christ, he's like I'd love totalk to him and I think he
reached out to him and theyweren't able to make that
connection.
But Richard Rohr made the pointthat Eckhart Tolle was saying
(36:36):
what Catholics have been sayingfrom the very beginning the real
, real Catholicism, catholic,meaning universal, right,
universal, yeah, and it waseither an immortal diamond or
universal Christ.
So I think there's some deepresonance there.
Yeah, and Eckhart, I don't wantto say sterilizes it, because
that doesn't do it justice buttakes it out of a faith-based
(36:57):
realm.
So, depending on who you are asa listener, I think that power
of now is going to be broadlyaccessible.
Because he uses languaging,that's a little more accessible.
You know there's an evocationof 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 alignmentbetween what they were offering
(37:18):
us.
that, I think, is really it'sworthy of some meditation, and
both of them throughout you knoweverything that they're ever
quoted as saying seem to bereferencing the now.
Dr. William Attaway (37:30):
Well, I'm going to think about that for a
while.
You know, I believe and havetaught for a long time that all
truth is God's truth.
Hmm, hmm, bringing that intothis because I think that's a
very big piece of truly being aleader that moves into a
(37:54):
catalytic space that makes adifference.
Kasim, I could talk to you foranother hour.
This has been such a phenomenalconversation that has touched
on so many things.
I know our listeners are goingto want to find out more about
Pareto, about you, and continueto learn from you and all that
you're doing.
What is the best way for themto do that?
Intro/Outro (38:16):
Go to kasimme K-A-S-I-MM-E.
I shoot a YouTube video almostevery day, and so, if you don't
mind me sprecking the bushybabble, I pontificate quite a
bit, and that's where all mycontent is going now, and then
all my hot links are there too.
Join my mastermind, or hire anEA, or you know, I'm writing a
(38:39):
book right now called hire, andI'm giving away the farm on my
hiring process.
Uh, your, your listeners canhave it for free.
I've, quite literally for free.
It'll be on Amazon, but I'mjust going to.
You know it'll be my gift, sothat it's with the editor now.
That should be done in a coupleof weeks.
Dr. William Attaway (38:51):
My goodness , that's incredibly generous man
.
Thank you, we'll have thoselinks in the show notes.
That sounds great.
Thanks for having me onAppreciate you, doug.
Look, I so appreciate your timeand your generosity in sharing
so freely and so openly todayIncredibly helpful for me and, I
know, for our listeners.
Thank you so much.
Intro/Outro (39:08):
No, I had a blast.
I loved your questions.
I think you cracked me openmore than most people do, and I
do quite a few podcasts, soappreciate you having me on.
Dr. William Attaway (39:14):
Thanks for joining me for this episode
today.
As we wrap up, I'd love for youto do two things.
First, subscribe to thispodcast so you don't miss an
episode, and if you find valuehere, I'd love it if you would
rate it and review it.
That really does make adifference in helping other
people to discover this podcast.
Second, if you don't have acopy of my newest book,
(39:36):
Catalytic Leadership, I'd loveto put a copy in your hands.
If you go tocatalyticleadershipbookcom, you
can get a copy for free.
Just pay the shipping so I canget it to you and we'll get one
right out.
My goal is to put this into thehands of as many leaders as
possible.
This book captures principlesthat I've learned in 20 plus
(39:57):
years of coaching leaders in theentrepreneurial space, in
business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church
.
You can also connect with me onLinkedIn to keep up with what
I'm currently learning andthinking about.
And if you're ready to take anext step with a coach to help
you intentionally grow andthrive as a leader, I'd be
(40:19):
honored to help you.
Just go tocatalyticleadershipnet to book a
call with me.
Stay tuned for our next episodenext week.
Until then, as always, leaderschoose to be catalytic.
Kasim Aslam (40:33):
Thanks for listening to Catalytic
Leadership with Dr WilliamAttaway.
Be sure to subscribe whereveryou listen to podcasts so you
don't miss the next episode.
Want more?
Go to catalyticleadershipnet.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.