all right welcome back to the daily mastermind george wright the third with your daily dose of inspiration motivation and education and we're joined by a great guest i mean we had we could probably do a couple hours with this show so um we're gonna just try to keep it limited but kasem it's good to have you on the show thanks for having me george i appreciate you listen for those of you that do not know him and there's probably very few of you but uh there may be a few of you that don't know Kassam. He's built seven and eight figure businesses with multiple successful exits, co-founder of a mastermind, as well as many other businesses. He's written three bestselling books, has been known for his work with Google and CRMs and all kinds of other things. But we're here to talk about something totally different today. We're going to talk about, I don't even know where to go with this because I want to limit it to the time that we have. And if you're joining us here today, you're going to be super glad we did, because if you're scaling a business or anything, we're going to talk about staffing. We're going to talk about scaling your business. So before I get into all that, and as you guys probably notice, I'm pretty excited about the topic we're going to have today. So before we get into it, Kostam, can you give everybody your background? Can you just give us a little bit of the layup into what brought you where you are today? Because people probably know you from several verticals as a very, very successful connected person but i want to know a little bit of the backstory for people that are listening i'm a welfare baby uh i haven't been super vocal about that but i was raised by a blind single mother on social security disability in abacurue new mexico i was a wannabe car thief at one point my little brother did six years on a four yard uh i'm the world's greatest failure i'm a high school dropout college dropout like i've just failed at quite literally everything in life and somehow that's really served me. It's not even self-deprecation. I believe very strongly that failure is the most important alchemical endeavor. And I'm autistic enough to where failure never really shattered my ego. I always just looked at it as data. And so I hope that wasn't too, too personal. I think professionally, the thing I'm doing most- No, but you know what? It's funny you say that because I think most super successful people have been failures, but it's not to say that that's what defines you, but it's definitely a gateway, a gatekeeper to success. So I love that you accept that. And obviously your results speak for itself. So yeah, let's go into some of your kind of professional background. I built the number one ranked Google Ads agency in the world. I sold it in 2022 for eight figures. I'm rich now, which is, you know, that was the goal. And it's fun when you give poor people money because we think we become investors, which is more or less what I'm trying to do at the moment. I had the highest performing real estate investment campaign on the planet for about seven years. I own the largest English-speaking Montessori community in the world. So the thing I'm best at, to be Frank George's talent acquisition, I built the number one ranked Google Ads agency without ever running a Google Ads campaign myself end to end in my life. But I went and I found the best Google Ads managers and I put them in place. And I've kind of cracked the code on finding people smarter than me and getting out of their way. And so that's what I'm most passionate about is teaching entrepreneurs how to do that. It's interesting because your journey has taken you through several different business segments and ventures and markets. But through that process, that commonality is talent acquisition and being able to scale a business. We know that that's what's needed. You know, if you're if you're trying to push outside your comfort zone, well, you find people that are great at what they do outside your comfort zone. So talent acquisition, I got to ask you, was this something that throughout the process you felt was a high priority or was this something that you discovered as you were building your business that the key of the who not the how right yeah no it's discovered i discovered it over time as a young man and i think this is true of all young entrepreneurs as a young man i wanted to be the hero you know like i wanted to be the guy i wanted to be the the the person that was solving the problems and swinging the axe and over time i realized that worst case scenario is I could be that person. Like that was actually the worst thing that can happen to you is you are the smartest person in the room. Um, and I started to see what happened to my life when competent people entered my orbit. And it, it, it, what it does is it takes worry down. So the, the analogy I offer people is I've always felt like entrepreneurship feels like I'm pulling a sled up a muddy hill in the rain and the straps of the sled are like digging into my shoulders and I'm bleeding and I'm tired and I'm hungry and I'm cold. And then I hire somebody and hiring them is like throwing them on the sled for them to do whatever little menial job they're going to do. But my sled gets heavier. You know what I mean? And then I hire somebody else and I hire somebody and the sled gets heavier with every new hire. And then on accident, one day I hired somebody who grabbed a strap and started helping me pull. And I went like, oh God, how do I keep doing this? This is amazing. And then when you hire people that pull faster than you, better than you, harder than you, you know, and then you end up with multiple sleds that you own, but you aren't pulling like, dude, what a unbelievable gift. And I, I bumbled into I forced got my way through life, I bumbled into it backwards, blindfolded. But then I think I spent 20 years... That might be a little excessive, I'm probably exaggerating. At least 15, though. I spent 15 years studying talent acquisition, delegation, peak performers. And I'm obsessive with the topic because it's the key differentiator. If you meet me or get to know me, I look mildly homeless. I'm not any smarter than anybody listening to this podcast, but I've been wildly successful. Frustratingly successful. Frustrating for people that look at me like, dude, I'm smarter than you, I wake up early than you, I'm harder than you. Yeah, well the thing is, if you are allowing yourself to be subject to an output wholly dependent upon how much you can lift, I don't care how strong you are, as soon as any two people are up against you unless you're a world champion bodybuilder. And even then, any two people are going to be able to outlift just about any single person, especially when we're talking about moving a couch, right? You can't move a couch by yourself. Right. So the better you get at the multiplicative endeavor of bringing in talent and preferably talent that's better than you. That's the thing that I have come to discover is I've really embarked on this journey and this will be shaming and hopefully people will forgive me for shaming them because I think it's true for most entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, myself included early on, are afraid of competence. They're actually afraid of somebody who's smarter than them, better than them, going to see something they don't see. They want and need to be the smartest person because if they're not, then it's like, oh gosh, they're going to steal my business, steal my clients, run away with the glory. I think that the flawed arithmetic in that thinking is the fact that most people are not entrepreneurial. Douglas Backman has this great book. It's what we named our mastermind after. It's called Driven. He talks about the epigenetic phenomena that is entrepreneurism. 10% of the human population is broken. We are flawed. You and me have screws loose in our brain. It has to do with the chemical cocktail that fires when you're either in pursuit of or have achieved a goal. It's dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin and it's two up one down it's the same chemical cocktail with love most people 90 percent of humanity experiences this chemical cocktail when they've achieved a goal i did it flag in the mountain go me feel great that's the farmer brain those are your employees there's not it's not a pejorative when i say that there's nothing wrong with it as a matter of fact they're normal 10 of us we only we only experience that chemical cocktail in pursuit of the goal right and when we achieve it in a weird idiosyncratic sad twist of fate we don't get it bro we get depressed yeah i've never been sadder than when i sold my business and became a decamillionaire top athletes top most successful people it's so crazy because you're right and i think anybody listening to this is going to hear that they're going to say man you know what um but but here's the challenge what what has served you to get to you where you are might be that you were the one that you were the person, that you were the aggressor. I'm curious to ask you because I feel like there's a tipping point for most people. They get to a point in life where they're like, I can't pull this sled anymore, man. I need help. And they stumble into it like you did, right? And then they start to say, wait a minute, I don't want to be the person. I can't even take a break without being overwhelmed. So for you, and maybe this will answer the question, was there a point that made you pivot and realize that that was the stuff? Usually I find entrepreneurs get to a point where they're like I can't handle it anymore. And by default, they bring somebody on. And what do you do to slowly move that mindset? Because it's chemical, it's mental, it's everything where you're saying to yourself, I got to be the one because if it's up to me, if it's going to be, it's up to me, right? And I got to make it happen. But you know damn well you can't scale your company if it's you doing it all and you're the one. So did you personally have a thing or a pivot point that made that happen? And when you're talking to people, especially like mastermind related, How do you get them to shift there sooner? That's such a good question Because you're exactly right There was an inflection point where I just broke I had a financial goal I wanted to make $250,000 To me, you know, poor kid Albuquerque Welfare Baby, $250,000 Are you kidding me? That was all the money I ever need And I knew I wanted more after that But I thought once I get that I be happy And I hit and I never been more miserable in my life Because I own this business I hated I had these clients that I'd made. And I had this business partner that treated me like... It's hard to describe our relationship, but it wasn't very positive. And this person would go and sell clients on anything they'd buy. So we basically lied through our teeth, because they'd go through and say, like, oh yeah, we can do that. And then rely on me to be the fulfillment house. And I'm staying up late. I'm getting up early. I have no life. I'm being squeezed on both ends. I feel like I'm in the trash compactor in Star Wars. But I'm making the money. I had one key performance indicator in my life, which was I wanted to make this amount of money. And so it forced me to really analyze my buy box. My business mentor taught me this when I started to make my exit. He sat me down and he goes, you cannot forget that terms are more important than price. Because I'll give you a billion dollars right now for any functional profitable business. I'll give you $1 billion, I swear to God, and I'll put it in writing. And then you say, okay, great. And then my follow-up to that is, well, I'll give you a dollar a day for a billion days. Those are my terms. And now all of a sudden you realize like, oh goodness. And I had set the price for success, but I hadn't set the terms. And when I started to reevaluate my terms, it really called into question some of my sacred cows. So for example, for a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't realize it, but the terms they've set for themselves is, I want to be the hero. I want to wear the cape. I want to get the glory. Okay. But this is what you're sacrificing to do that. And if you put all of the terms on paper, on the page, you start to renegotiate the terms with yourself first. Yes. And I ended up meeting a young man. His name is John Moran. And John was the most proactive, hardest working, most integrous human I've ever known. And interestingly, he was my client. His father owned a company and I'd been brought on as a contractor slash vendor. And John was the worst client I've ever had. I remember distinctly, there was this one, I owed them something. I was building like software for them. And I was outsourcing everything at the time. And I owed them a deliverable. And I knew I wasn't going to make it, you know, and it was like Friday. And I felt like if I can just get to Monday, you know, so I was ignoring them and the fact that I owed them this thing. And I got an email from John saying, Hey man, just following up on the thing that you owe us. And I didn't answer his email. And then I got a text message and I didn't answer the text. And then I got a phone call and I didn't answer the phone call. And I'm just like, I'm just going to hide long enough to get to the weekend to where I can get this damn thing done. And I'm sitting in my office. And next thing I know, I hear rapping on, on the, the, the door, which is locked and I peek around the corner and through the glass I can see there's John Moran knocking on my door. He drove 35 minutes down from their office to mine just to like hunt me down and he was really kind. He's like, hey man, just checking on that thing. And I'm like, dude, I don't have it. I've been ignoring you this whole time. So what's interesting about that story is their business ended up being taken down by a bad investor and John went and got a job, which I always thought was shocking because he'd be such an adept entrepreneur. And so I started calling him like, Hey man, what if you came and worked for me? And this was the first time I'd ever gone after top talent ever. Normally I was trying to find the person that I could pay the least. Interestingly, he was making very good money at his job, but it was also something of a, you know, he's a dad, he's got a little girl at the time. He has two now. And, uh, it was, he was really burning the candle at both ends. It was a grind for him. Yes. Yeah. So he's making the money, but he doesn't have the time. And I knew the pressure point. So I'd call him every three to four weeks. I just like, Hey man, how's it going? You know, what have you thought about coming to work for me? And he kept telling me, he's like, dude, you can't afford me. Like these guys are paying me very well. And we, he and I talked about what he needed and I really truly could not afford him. And I finally caught him on just the right day. And he's like, what's the most you can pay me? And I showed him my PNL. I was like, dude, this is what I'm paying myself. And I will give you all of it. You get 100% of what I'm paying me, but that means we have a 90-day ramp. And we have 90 days to make this shit work so that you and I can get to a point to where we're both making some amount of money. He quit his job, took the chance, and the rest is history. We built the number one rent Google Ads agency together. I ended up giving him equity in the company because he was so valuable. I own 90, he own 10. He's a multimillionaire now. I'm a boy it speaks to it speaks to the fact that what you're saying you actually lived and did because at the end of the day you found the talent and grew the business and it's it's crazy to me because people have heard in the entrepreneurial space all the time you know Dan Sullivan talks about all the times like who not how right but what they don't think about is from the lens of what you're focused on because you know it really is we're chasing the price not the terms I loved what you just said there because the terms are more important than price like I wrote that down and highlight it, triple highlight it, because we always chase the result rather than the cause and the roots of the fruits, right? We want the result, but we don't want to. And it is people and scalability and talent that get you there. And you know, the long road is, and I've been there, you trying to figure out the talent to get there. That's the long road. The shorter road is find the talent. And so I love what you're saying here. It's funny because before we started the show, if you're listening to this, I was talking to, I was talking about like, what do we want to talk about? What's the topic? And it could have gone anywhere we went and it went to talent acquisition. And at first I was kind of like, okay, you know, there's VAs and talent and this and that. But what struck me is, no, we're talking about talent. We're not talking about staffing. And as we evolve this conversation, I can see why now that is like literally the message you're so passionate about because it drives all the other businesses and things that we have but i do think it takes a mindset shift and and you're right to say it's a chemical thing it's not just oh okay i see everyone gets good talent that makes the business work if it were that easy i think a lot of us would be doing it so what do you think holds people back from going after top talent we're taught and so i'm an obsessive reader i have I have 3,000 books in my home. And I think I canonize my favorite authors. I'm saying that as an obligatory... You owe me both, brother. Yeah, right. Like there are people that I just, I hate to say this, but I worship. It's an obligatory statement because I'm about to denigrate them. If you pull any business book off the shelf, and I'd love for any listener to challenge me on this, any business book from the greats, Maxwell, Covey, Dalio, doesn't matter. we are taught to treat people like commodities. It's in every MBA, every process, every EOS system. They basically say, create the process, create the assembly line, create the business, create the mechanism, and then find an easily replaceable human being, cookie cutter. So you can control. Yes, yes, you nailed it, dude. And then swap them out if they don't work. And the thing about commodities, If you have an ear of corn, okay? Corn's an easy commodity. I have an ear of corn. Let's say you and I swap our ears of corn. Yeah. Neither of us are better or worse off than we were moments ago. What if you have a CPA and I have a CPA? Dude, if I lost my CPA, my financial, what if you have a violin instructor and I have a violin? What if you have a wife and I have a wife? You know what I mean? Like people are not commodities by literal definition. And yet we're taught to treat them like commodities, hire them like commodities, manage them like commodities, and fire them like commodities. Here's the problem with commodities. here's how you buy a commodity. If you're smart, you try to get the most for the least. And so you go to the market trying to get the most for the least. Here's the thing about peak performers. Contrary to commodity thinking, peak performers are winners. Winners want to win. How do we keep score money? So peak performer wants to be paid the most. But you tell an entrepreneur, because people ask me, well, how do I get peak performers? The answer, pay more. And then, dude, people instantly just walk. You are out of your damn mind. Uh-huh. Yeah. We'd make more if we did it, but we don't have the money to do it. And we don't know where to go. Yeah. And I'll make it worse, George. You ready to make this even more repellent? Yeah. Here's what I tell people. I tell them you have to pay 10% more than the high watermark. Here's what they hear. They hear 10% more. It's not what I said. 10% more than the high watermark. So imagine for a moment that a role that you're hiring for pays $75,000 to $100,000 to use napkin math because I'm a high school dropout. Every entrepreneur on the planet that's been taught to hire people at commodities is trying to pay $74,900 for that $75,000 roll. They're trying to get the absolute most for the absolute least. And then I say, pay 10% more than the high watermark. And they hear that and they think, okay, 10% more than $75,000. No, no, no, no. 10% more than the high watermark of a $75,000 to $100,000 roll is $110,000. And now everybody's like, you've lost me. I can't, I won't, I shan't, you're stupid, etc. This is the arithmetic that needs to be integrated. And this is a fact, and it's going to sound like hyperbole and exaggeration, but my ask is try it once in your life. And it's the most important revelation you will ever have. When you pay 10% more than the high watermark, you don't get 10% more in response. You don't get 30 or 50 or 100% more. You get five times, 100,000 times. That's the Pareto distribution. When I sold Solutions 8 for eight figures, John Moran managed 40% of my revenue. That's the credit. I had 80 employees. One guy managed 40% of my revenue. That's the Pareto distribution. So you're going to have your peak performers are responsible for the majority of your output and you can index towards that output. So when you pay a little more, because let's be honest, from 75 to 110 is a little more. If you're going to get somebody who's going to that yield three times, five times, 10 times, 100 times your quote-unquote average employee. But most businesses, here's the craziest part that just blows my mind, dude. It infuriates me People come in and they see that distribution And because you have some Goldman Sachs Ivy League educated wizard Number cruncher Yeah number cruncher You see existential crisis on the spreadsheet and they think like, oh, distribute the risk. So what do they do? They take a John Moran, a literal genius, and they spread his clients across who? The average employees. There's a reason he's a peak performer. There's a reason he gets the yield he does. There's a reason that he manages because he's the best. So they are engineering average. You take a hierarchical system, take any hierarchy, hierarchies are shaped like pyramids. What happens when you flatten the hierarchy? You take off the top of the pyramid, the most productive part of the hierarchy gets shaved right off. And that's when you end up with quicken loans and these garbage. That's why the bigger a business grows and the more bureaucratic it gets, the worse it gets because you shave off the product distribution, you shave off the hierarchy and dude, you can index towards these people. Every human being is a miracle. It's a religious truth that you have to believe in if you're not religious. We're these ultra smart, hyperproductive, super apes rolling through space on these rocks, solving problems and creating shit that we can't even begin to wrap our heads around. Dude, it's amazing. And these people are available to you to hire. And most of them, here's the craziest part. John Moran, smartest guy I've ever known, best guy I've ever worked with. After his dad's company went down, he went and got a job until I poached him. Guess what he did after we sold Solutions 8. What did he do? He went and got a job. Wow. He could make $2 million. He and I sat down and did the math. He can make $2 million a year freelancing, being a business. He doesn't want to be an entrepreneur. Most people don't. That's an innate thing. Yeah, it really is. And by the way, for those that are listening to this, that kind of heard us gloss over this. Now I've mentioned it. So I know if you're listening to the podcast, you know, talk to him about the Pareto effect. Define that for him. So people that haven't heard of that before because we've thrown that Pareto distribution out. Pareto effect. Yeah. So it's the 80-20 rule you might have heard it referred to. It's an Italian economist whose name was Pareto and like all, what would you call them, academics, they like to name things after themselves. Yeah, for sure. It's crazy because it's true in every organic ecosystem. Yes. So like 20% of the cows produce 80% of the milk. 20% of the criminals commit 80% of the crimes. 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue. 20% of your employees are responsible for 80% of your productive output. And what's crazy, what's more interesting is it's fractal, meaning it's true at every level. So if you have 1,000 employees, that would mean that 200 are responsible for 80% of your total output. But zoom in on those 200. If you have 200 employees, that means that 40 are responsible for their output. Zoom in on the 40. Eight are responsible for that, all the way down to 1.6, responsible for, roughly speaking, 40 some odd percent of the total output of a thousand employee organization. One person is responsible for like 40. I've done the math because it's in my book. 40 percent of it. And again, it's true at every level of analysis. Well, and it's not just a mindset. It's not just a system. It's science, man. It really is. Right. Yeah. It's economic. It's genetic. It's epigenetic. Yeah. Every organic ecosystem, the Pareto distribution is true. And it's not technically 80-20. Really what it is, is the majority of your output is the result of the minority of your- Yeah. So it's a few of the many. And sometimes, man, I've seen situations and instances where it's like 1% is responsible for 99%. percent yeah you see that in ad spend all the time i had a hundred million dollars in ad spend under management for years and you would see it's always just one piece of it that does it it's funny the reason i wanted to double down on that is because i think a lot of people one of the reasons i want to bring this out in our show and our daily mastermind is it is there are success principles success does leave clues there are universal principles and until you really dissect them which is why i really am glad you got into credo talent you're really focused on this now because it's one thing to say, all right, go hire more good talent. It's like saying, okay, I got to do more of the 20% because that's going to make me more money. But when you really get down into it, you don't realize the catastrophic and positive effects that can happen because like you'll talk about with, there again, you know, Dan Sullivan, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, like they talk about, it's not about doing more of the 20. It's about making the 20 or 80 and doing more out of the box. Dude, I love that phrase, make the 20 or 80. I'm going to steal that from you. That's so good. You could do a lot more. Now you're doing 80% of things. No, it's if you want to redefine things. And so I'm saying this because there's people listening to this in their business that are like, I got to level up. And they're thinking, how do I grow? How do I next level? How do I go more? If they really understand the principle, that's where you have quantum leaps. That's where you go out and you don't say, okay, can I afford one more? Can I go get somebody? And like you just said, not 10% above the average. It's the concept. if you're going to go, you need to go 10% above the top, right? So I like the way you think with that. And I think people need to realize that you've got to understand the principles behind things that are happening. So this led you to Pareto Talent, which I think is amazing. And you've got a new book coming out, which I wish we could go deep dive into. But the beautiful thing about you is you don't need the money. So it's like you make this book available. Tell me about your book. Tell me about the systems, the process templates and stuff you put together around. because I know I'm asking you a lot here, but I want to know about the book, but it's because the question people are asking is, in their mind right now, is they're saying, how do I find, attract, or keep that talent? Because the fear of not doing it is also matched once they do it with the fear of that person leaving or wanting to go somewhere else and I got to keep them happy and other than maybe putting systems in place that inspire and motivate them to build and grow within. So how do you attract, find, and keep? And I'm imagining this is all types of things that you talk about in your book. It's in the book. You can have the book for free. It's thehirebook.com. The core thesis, let's say you don't want to read it. The core thesis of the book is it's the same mechanism that we use in sales, but just reversed for hiring. So the first piece is you have to be attractive to peak performers. if you go to monster.com right now or job whatever, any job posting site and read the job descriptions, they sound like prison sentences. Like you shall comply with all rules and regulations or you'll be flogged naked in front of your peers. You know what I mean? It's just like, who, what? I don't know if people actually read job descriptions anymore because it's like, did that get generated in chat? It's like, wow, everybody else. Garbage. So if you're attracting peak performers, number one, pay more. Number two, be a fun, awesome place to work. You know what I mean? like give people what they want because a peak performer can go anywhere. Now here's what happens is if you really are, if you're making an offer, people can't refuse, which is why I say it's a sales funnel. You're going to have a ton of people enter the top of your funnel and you're going to get overwhelmed. So the system that I'm giving people, and this truly is free, by the way, there's no ascension. There's no bait and switch. Yeah. There's no course. Like there's nothing on the other end of this. It's all of it's free. I built a system that I call that I refer to as is fly traps. So just to give you a couple of really minute examples, the top of my job description reads, if to apply, your subject line should read, actually read the instructions. And any subject line that doesn't say actually read the instructions gets automatically filtered out. It doesn't even land in the inbox for the EA that's reviewing the submissions. Now that's a really strong signal for somebody to actually read the freaking instructions, because when they read the instructions, you'll see things like, please submit your resume as a PDF link with this naming convention. Now, I don't care that it's a PDF and not a Word document. I don't care that it's a link, not an attachment. But if you're going to be a remote employee, I want to know that you can pay attention and follow very simple instructions. You don't do that, you're filtered out. And so there's a bunch of little fly traps like that, just in the submission process. And then there's soft skill fly traps. If I don't like your formatting, filtered out. If I don't like the way that you communicate, filtered out. And it's not me reviewing this, it's an EA with my instructions. Easy, easy instruction to offer. And then's the fun part. We're taught to hire people based off of resumes and interviews. Resumes tell you nothing. Interviews tell you nothing. So instead, I follow up. Let's say you applied for a job, George. I'd say, George, I really appreciate you following all the instructions. Thank you so much. I've been hiring people for 20 years, and I know enough to know there's an interview is going to be worthless to me until we work together. How about this? I will pay you in advance for two hours of your time if you'll commit to a trial project. If you agree, send me your PayPal link. And then depending on where I'm hiring geographically, I'll make sure that the amount of money is commensurate to what two hours is worth. It's not going to make everybody rich. But if you're in the Philippines paying people 20 bucks an hour great money, you know, so say hey for 40 bucks Will you do a trial project for me? Here's the fun part They send me their PayPal address or wise or pain or whatever the the geo supports I send them the money in advance and then I don't send them the project And you think like well, wait a minute But now let's say I have 10 people that I want to test. I spend $40 times 10 is 400 bucks And you think well gosh, that's expensive Is it is four dollars expensive to figure out who's proactive who's gonna walk on you? Who's going to steal? Yes. So then I just wait. And what will happen inevitably is you get ghosted by a couple. And then people a day or two later say, hey, you never sent me the trial project. I've had emails a month or two later saying, hey, you sent me money and you never sent me the project. I'm like, yeah, I'm glad I didn't hire you. Yeah, two months later. Right. So then they send me the follow-up email. Love it. I'll send them a trial project. The trial project is consistent with whatever role I'm hiring for. So if I'm hiring a graphic designer, it's a design project. If I'm hiring a project manager, it's a project management project. But I'll do other things like I'll send them, you know, hey, you have to log into this Box account. I'll send them the wrong username and password. But I won't tell them. And then I'll say, hey, based off of the scope of work, when do you think this is gonna be done by? Let's say it's Monday and you tell me it's gonna be done by Friday. But on Thursday night, I get a frantic email from you saying the password doesn't work. Little things like that, fly traps, because again it a sales funnel in reverse You offering more than anybody ever willing to offer 10 the goal is to find the talent right The goal is not just to hire You actually hiring It's so funny. You're hiring for two skill sets. You're hiring for the skill set that is the job. Competency, right? And you're hiring for peak performance. The type of person who runs through walls, finds a way around, solves problems, goes under. Which you will never know until you don't know. Unless you test for it. Yeah, until three months down the road when you wish you had it, right? Dude, and actually, I believe, and this is where I get in trouble, I believe competency is secondary. I'd rather have somebody who runs through walls and needs to learn graphic design. Because they'll figure it out. Dude, 100%. Yes, yes. So I hire for will, train for skill. And by the time I get to the end of the trial project, depending on if I'm hiring for a sales role, dude, I do some horrible things. I'll have people book time with me and I'll cancel five minutes after the meeting Because I want to figure out if you're on the phone with the prospect Are you gonna like curse me out because I missed that are you gonna follow up? Are you you know I mean like figure out the things that are relevant to the job and test that stress test that When you get to the end of your trial project and I talk about fly traps a lot in the book and I have hundreds of them Yeah, by the time you do the interview, it's a formality because you know who you love and who you don't. And it's not uncommon, especially if I'm on a growth tear, for me to hire multiple people for a single role, because I know I'm going to be able to fulfill. And dude, when you get to the end of a process like this, you have bloodthirsty killers, trained assassins. They're just amazing. And they pull. You want to talk about people that pull the sled for you? I like your process of the sales, because I've never thought of, look, when we talk about bringing on new people, oh my gosh, my mind's immediately like, all right, here we go. Like I had a budget time. I got to find, but if I look at it from the lens of I'm literally training and creating all stars, it's worth that investment of my time because I also know there's a system of some kind to do it. So, um, that's interesting because I also think of, I got to ask you this last question. I know we don't have a whole lot of time because we're going to have to have you back, maybe even on our Academy here. But, um, do you, do you feel like when people bite off this idea of finding talent, the first thing that comes to mind is, oh my gosh, man, this is going to take time. You got to be patient. It's going to take months. Like you mentioned, you kept emailing John, you kept texting him, right? Is that always the case? Or do you feel like with the right systems, you can target, find, and get top talent in what should be an expectation for somebody? It takes three weeks. I've been doing this for two. It takes three weeks for most roles. Now, highly specialized roles, the time increases. It's finding the talent when you have the framework in play. Now, building your framework might take you longer because you have to figure out the trial projects, figure out the fly traps. Once you have it in place, most of that time, by the way, is just giving people time to find the job postings and apply. The fly trap process is really, really, really quick, but it generally takes about three weeks. But if you're looking to build a business and you know you're going to scale and you know you want grow, which means you know you got to have talent. It's worth the investment to have something like this in because this is a ROI for years. And then, dude, you keep the funnel full. When I had my Google Ads agency, I was never not hiring. The thing that will take time is when you bring somebody on, what entrepreneurs do incorrectly is they don't bring people on the right way. First of all, an employee is never going to run faster than they do in the first 90 days, which is insane because what most employers do is they're like, all right, we're going to start aren't you slow and you're going through training and you're shadow Sally. Well, you just set the pace for this racehorse and you, and you set them at 80%. What I do when I bring somebody on is I overwhelm them. I tell them, look, if you have 10 things you can get done in a day, I'm going to give you 11. I don't expect you to do 11, but I expect you to manage my expectation. And I want them going and I want them going fire hose. Yes. The other, the other thing that we do is, and this is just an expectation to understand, especially for any new rule. So if the rule is established, you don't have to worry about this, but if this is your first time hiring for this role, it takes two hours to delegate a 15-minute task, which is obnoxious. Because you look at it and you're like, I could just do this myself, or I have to spend two hours delegating it. But once you've spent the two hours, now let's say it's a task you do every single day. On the fifth day, you're net positive. And then every subsequent day, you never have to do that again. So you have to be prepared for the creation of the delegation process and to actually offer this person enough context for them to be successful. That's what- But it's your lens, right? Because at the end of the day, if you're looking at it from a standpoint, if I could do it myself, you're not looking at the long-term. If you look at it as even within a week, and is this why you would recommend people to start with an EA? In other words, there's a lot of different places to go, But why not just, if you're looking at your efforts and 80% of your effort and you're the one driving the ship or you're the one pulling the sled, if 80% of your effort could be replaced, what could you do? Yeah, dude, you just became my best friend. So this is what I tell everybody all the time. I need like four. I'm obsessed with this narrative. I tell everybody your first hire should be an executive assistant before anything else because you're the least scalable part of your business. Yeah. And so if you hire somebody to just sit there and follow, the thing that's so funny, I had somebody hire an EA from us. He's a really close friend of mine. And he came back and he was mad. And he was like, dude, it takes her four hours to do something that would take me one. And I'm like, okay, what's your billable, dipshit? You know, when you're billing out at $25 an hour, you moron. Like, what are you paying her? You could pay her $500 and still be upside. Like, what are we talking about right now? So yeah, they're never going to outrun you. But also, I think there's another, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I also noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs think, man, my stuff is so unique. But here's what's interesting. 80% of what you do, it might be only something you could do. However, you do it so often, you could systematize it. Oh, yeah. Well, and dude, that's the other thing. These people, if you get a peak performer in there, yes, your stuff is unique. Absolutely. You know what? So are they. So is this rock star that you brought on that, by the way, isn't just as good, maybe better. Yvonne Boonen, who's now my business partner. He was my EA for a long time. Everything he did was better. than what I would have done. I just stopped checking his work. I was like, dude, just do the thing. You know what I mean? Just do the thing. Well, I thought about that because the other day I was like, yeah, I could, I could pull up with a client and within five minutes, I know their site, their traffic, what they're doing, how they're doing. But I thought, you know what? I've done it a thousand times, which is why I could be quick, but that means I could actually just systematize it and hand it to somebody. So, well, dude, I got to tell you what, man, we're, we're, this is one of those times where I wish we could go a couple of hours, but I am super grateful. People are going to be listening to this like, man, George was in that podcast all for himself, but it was. I am, but at the same token, I think that there was some serious golden nuggets and truth bombs here people need to really tie into. So, again, the best place for people to connect with you, I'm going to say let's get them to the thehigherbook.com so that they can get these topics and things. But how else can they connect with you? I shoot a YouTube video every single day. You can go to KASIM.me, K-A-S-I-M.me, and it has all my short links, my portfolio of companies, all my socials. I'm doing my best to be nerd famous. So if somebody wants to come and check out the content, I'd appreciate it. You know what, man? I'll never forget it because it's just like awesome, KASIM. You can't mess that up now that you know in the Pareto Talent group this is something I'm going to be using. And I never – like everybody knows on my show I don't sell anything. I don't promote anything, but I have learned a great deal from you. So before we go, though, do you have any last advice for someone? Now, this could be entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, intrapreneurs. It could be somebody scaling their business, and they're like, all right, I get it. Like, I need to go talent now. Like, where do they start, and do you have any, like, specific advice you would give them on what they need to do to shift into this mindset of I need to be a lead magnet for top talent? Yeah, fail. I think we've over-indexed towards education. We've taught entrepreneurs that all they need to do is learn. And so if you're listening to this podcast, first of all, good for you, because Netflix is amazing. And there's some phenomenal media on there, right? That's way more interesting than I'll ever be. And it's not enough. For every hour spent learning, you should spend at least three hours doing. So if you're like, okay, I'm sold. Don't go learn more. You have the information. Go do. Post a job posting. See what happens. And don't be discouraged when it doesn't work. You learn through failure. So just get out there and do. Get messy. You know what I mean? Like break something. Find the reason that it failed 96% of the time, but the 4% that succeeded and then follow that along. Like go index towards action would be my advice. I hope that's helpful. That's amazing advice. It's amazing advice because I think that not enough do we look through the lens of, guys, listen, if you're listening to this, we're talking to a guy who defined himself to a certain degree, not internally, but has one of the biggest failures around world's greatest failure world's greatest failure right um think about that a guy that's built what he's built had the exits he's had has the knowledge and success far above where a lot of you are at there's a significance for that and it's not and i i love to just remind everybody it's never too late to start creating and living the life you were meant to live not just you want to live but you were meant to live but you've got to make changes and take action. And if you do that, you will create it. So I appreciate you being with us here today. I really want, I'm going to put in the show notes links to everything we talked about and custom. Thanks for being here, man. I really appreciate you. I appreciate you having me. And thanks to everybody for listening. I appreciate that. The attention is oxygen. So thank you. I'm going on notice and saying there's going to be a part two to this baby. So listen, guys, thanks for being there. Let me know what you're doing. Not only what you're struggling with, but what you're winning at. I want to celebrate the wins. Once again, this is George Wright III. This has been The Daily Mastermind. Have a great day.
