021: Digital Market Place Knowledge Leads to Business Success with Naresh Vissa

Regardless of what your business is, you can be a doctor starting your own practise, you can be an accountant setting up shop, your own tax advising shop or whatever CPA type of company you want to start. But I think having an understanding of the digital market place is the first stop in starting your business.

#00:00:56-9# Neil: Hello everybody, Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mindset, the committment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Naresh Vissa. But before I do, I am going to give you a little bit of trivia to think about, Clifton Fadaman said, ‘I tried to use the questions and answers as a armateur on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Naresh, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:47-4# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Thanks so much Neil, its a pleasure to be on and I am ready.

#00:01:51-1# Neil: Great. Naresh Vissa is an author of a number one best-selling book ’50 shades of marketing’ whip your business into shape and dominate your competition. And he is also the author of the number one best-selling book, ‘pod-cast nomics’ the book of podcasting to make you millions. Naresh is the founder and CEO of Krish Media and Marketing, a full-service online digital media and marketing consultantancy and agency, and Naresh has also been featured in US Today, Yahoo, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Huffington Post, Business Week, MSN Money, Business Insider, India Today, Hindu Stand Times, and other domestic and international media outlets. Naresh, can you please provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life, to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

#00:02:51-6# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Absolutely Neil, so I grew up under a family that really really valued education, so education always came first over anything else whether it was sports, athletics, extra curriculars, business, even making money, education kind of trumped all. And so the idea was to get as good an education as possible, continue with graduate studies, and then get a good job at a company and then stay with that company, have a nice stable salary and have a family and live happily every after. And thats really the norm with a majority of people in developing nations, and also in the United States of America. Now I did kind of honour most of that recipe. I stayed in school, I went on to get a masters degree, but at the same time, what I did was I started my first business when I was an undergraduate student in college and it was a consulting services based business, where back then radio was so very prevalent, pod casting wasn’t as big as it was today, as it is today, so I was doing alot of radio work for different financial radio stations and radio shows, around the United States of America. CNN radio ended up becoming one of my clients and I worked with a bunch of different shows. But as I said, I did this on the side while I was still in school so I never dropped out of school, I never compromised my studies, I went on to get a masters degree, and because of my experience, I was hired by probably the largest and most successful private and independent financial marketing and financial publishing company in the world. They were probably top three in the world, so getting that work experience, learning about the online and digital industries, which is all fairly new, I talked about terrestrial radio before which is now near dead, but getting that online and digital experience which is now where business and the economy is heading. That gave me the tools, that gave me the experience, to set up my own legitimate long-lasting business. So I left that company after about a year and a half of starting a division for them. Started Krish media marketing which you mentioned in the introduction, and then have started a couple of start-ups, or I should say several start-ups since then as well with different investors, and business partners. Many of them have failed and are no longer in business, one of them I sold my equity stake in. And one of them which is called money-ball economics, we just launched about two months ago, and thats doing extremely well, its a financial publisher, and investment publisher that uses big data analysis to forecast economic data and also individual publicly traded companies. So thats my kind of professional background in a nutshell as well as a little glimpse into how I grew up and how I was raised and my personal background.

#00:06:27-4# Neil: So just one thing, right now how do you actually make money from what you do?

#00:06:33-2# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: So we have Krish media marketing which is my digital consultancy and agency, we work with a variety of existing businesses and companies initially we were working just with the financial industry. We were working with investment publishers, banks, brokerages, broker dealers, hedge funds, real estate firms. And what we were doing is helping these businesses gain more of a digital presence, so that they could accomplish two things, number one, cut costs really through marketing and outsourcement. So to cut costs, and number two, to convert more sales. So we offer services such as outsourcement, recruiting, and then more digital marketing type of services like social media management, affilliate marketing, paper click, google adwords, social media marketing, copywriting etc so a full list of what we do is available like Krishmediamarketing.com. And we also do podcast production, book publishing and really if anything is digital, we have solutions for it. We have about 15-20 contractors worldwide, VC Bollards, designers, web developers, copywriters etc and so yes we offer a variety of services. Now moneyball economics, the business model there is as I mentioned earlier, we are a financial and economic research company, we sell our research to the public, so people can buy our trading advisory, that is what it is. They can buy our trading advisory at a yearly subscription of $99 dollars at the moneyballtrader.com and as I mentioned it is $99 dollars a year to subscribe and every week they receive 2-3 trading alerts, based on have you big data analysis, we tell people exactly where they should put there money in the stock market for the coming 5-10 business days. So thats kind of the business model behind moneyball economics.

#00:08:44-9# Neil: Ok thanks for that and can you just talk a little bit about your books because you have got a couple of books there, you have got podcast nomics which is one of your books, so can you tell us a little bit more about that?

#00:08:55-5# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Podcast nomics was my first best-selling book and it is a book all about podcasting, its really a primer all about podcasting, from what a podcast is, the history of podcasting, to how you can get started podcasting, the type of equipment you need, the software you need to get started and then most importantly, how you can market and monetize, make money off your podcast. When I was, I mentioned I was recruited by the largest private financial publisher marketing company in the world. I actually was recruited to start up their online podcasting network and to manage their digital media presence and strategy.

So what we were able to accomplish was we were able to start a 7-figure podcasting network through three primary revenue drivers, the first revenue driver was selling the existing product, so the company was already a company that had several good products and was making a good amount of money off the products. And we used the podcast as almost a lead generator, to sell listeners the existing products. Thats the best way to make money off the podcasts, to sell an existing product to your listeners. The second way we monetize off that division was of course advertising which is the kind of traditional media method of monetization. Now advertising is a little tricky because 21st century advertising is alot more advanced. We know now in the 21st century when we advertise, we can calculate a return on investment, we can track how many people view it, how many people convert, how many people balance. We know exactly whats going on, whereas in the 20th century, it was much harder to track that data. If you were advertising in the newspaper, or on radio, it was much more difficult because there was no internet, there were no websites, and so it made it difficult to track all that data. The third way that we monetize was through premium content, so this is content that we charged for on a subscription level. So of course we had the free content, which is put out through itunes and the rss and the website, but then we came out with special subscription content that kind of had secrets and again this was a financial company, so I guess you can say investing secrets, financial secrets, and so it was a monthly subscription that subscribers paid to receive. So that network has gone on and made alot of money, if you are familiar with James Alteture, he now is on that network. And they got several other people on that nework, but I moved on and have since managed as I mentioned probably more than 35 different podcasts over the past 7 years.

#00:12:05-6# Neil: Yeh ok and you have also written another book, which I have talked about at the beginning, 50 shades of marketing, which has the introduction with Phillip Cotler in it, so can you just tell us a little bit about that book as well?

#00:12:17-4# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: The genesis of 50 shades of marketing, the subtitle is ‘whip your business into shape’ and dominate your competition. The genesis came about because I realised when I went out on my own, that the traditional corporatism, is becoming obsolete. The need for office space, especially when it comes to white collar type of work, the need for office space, the need for meetings, so many things that are done in an office, in my opinion, I don’t even think its an opinion, its really just becoming a fact. But its becoming very very obsolete, and when I started Krish Media Marketing, I was working with all sorts of corporations, companies that had offices, that had beaurocracies and were very stringent on showing up to the office on time and wearing a dress code and doing all these things. And what I realised is a lot of these companies were missing the big picture, the big picture the important thing of a product or service that has been sold, thats really what is most important. Not whether an employee is in his seat at 9oclock in the morning. So I started butting some heads with several of my clients, who were very very resistant to the online and digital world, they were very resistant to market online to even have a simple website, they just thought it was irrelevant, they thought the online and digital world is for young people who don’t have any money and won’t spend anything. And thats just the furthest thing from the truth, that was the genesis of 50 shades of marketing, because I wanted to write really again another primer on the online and digital market place, and I wanted to lay out strategies and principles for business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers of all type, I wanted to lay out all those things for them so that they could apply them to their own situation to their own businesses.

#00:14:30-9# Neil: Ok thank you for that, what do you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:14:36-1# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Every day is a different day. Every month is a new month, and to be an entrepreneur, its definately a rollercoaster type of ride, you have some awesome months where you get really big checks or deposits coming to your bank account, but then you have some really really crappy months where you have no idea if you will even make enough money for rent, so its definately a roller coaster of a ride, I enjoy what I do because publishing and media has really been my interest and my passion since I was a kid, now the subject matters have altered so when I was a kid, I didn’t care at all about finance or economics or any of that stuff, but I still did care about media and news and publishing and things like that. So being able to work every day with my business partners, my investors, my client and solving their problems, and seeing the results, seeing them increase their sales, make more money, growing a business from scratch, building it and growing it from scratch, from zero subscribers to 50 to 100 to 1000. Its really an awesome thing to see, and its incredible experience, I also the most important characteristic of being an entrepreneur, especially a digital one, is that I have a lot of control, I wouldn’t say that I have full control, but I have alot of control in freedom in my life. So to give you an example, I live at home, I work at home, I do everything at home, my meetings are at home, I’m talking to you right now, on skype from home, I live on a beach in Tampa Bay Florida. The beach has wifi, I do lots of work from here, I write my books from here. There is just an incredible amount of freedom, I make my own schedule, I can sleep in if I want, I can go out at night, and come home late if I want. As long as I get my work done then I am on top of my stuff, so that freedom and that control that I have over the people who work for me, over my businesses, its really a great feeling, but I did mention you never really have full control though. Its almost impossible to have full control, and so thats what makes the journey a roller coaster type of ride.

#00:17:17-0# Neil: So what is it that drives you?

#00:17:21-6# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Again, I think it comes back to the freedom and control, I’m not a very good employee. I struggle alot with bureaucracy, I struggle alot with being told what to do, and so the autonomy that I have, over my work, thats what kind of drives me. Because almost everything that I do now, professionally, personally, socially, almost everything is something that I want to do, it is something that I would be doing anyway whether I was getting paid for it or not. So thats what gets me up in the morning, thats what really gets me going, its not a job, I tell most of my friends, I don’t have a real job, I do alot of different things, but I don’t have a real job.

#00:18:08-4# Neil: Mmm I have heard other people say that and it is something that I can relate to very much. So how do you relax when you are not working in your business? and you are not writing books and you are not relaxing on the beach working in your business, so however you do it? ha ha

#00:18:23-6# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Well I am a very great proponent of mental, spiritual and this was really taken from the 7 habits of highly effective people by Steven Covey. I am a big proponent of having mental health, spiritual health, physical health and emotional health and so I have been focusing alot over the past couple of years, on mental health meaning exercising the brain because after people are done with school, and they start working a job, even though they are working the job, the brain might actually start to atrophy and when you are in school at least you are always on your toes, studying for exams, learning concepts, you know going from class to class. It keeps the mind pretty sharp, so to mentally stay fit, I think its very important to at least what I do, I read alot of books, not the news, I don’t actively read the news at all,but I read alot of books, and I watch alot of kind of educational movies, documentaries, things like that, and then I also do a lot of writing, so not just writing books you know, business type of books but I do some more self-transformations, personal improvement type of writing and what that does is it exercises the mind tremendously, it really it leads to more ideas, it really gets you thinking and it exercises the brain,

#00:20:05-7# Neil: Yeh

#00:20:05-7# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: So thats mental health, the next thing would be physical health. I think its incredibly important to stay physically in shape not just for health reasons but also because being physically active helps you mentally and spiritually and emotionally. So I spend about three to four days a week either working out or going for a run or playing tennis or playing basketball, or playing beach volleyball, being here in Florida thats very popular. So I get a fairly good amount of exercise,

#00:20:40-4# Neil: You said three to four days a week? Do you mean hours or days?

#00:20:44-1# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Yeh when I say days I mean three days of the week I probably won’t do anything.

#00:20:52-0# Neil: Right, I see what you are saying, yeh

#00:20:53-8# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I’m not spending 24 hours a day doing these things for three or four days a week. So I will spend maybe two hours, during these three or four days, playing these sports, so I am not very good at any of them but hey its good enough to hit a few balls or shoot some hoops and run around and get some exercise. Its definately a huge stress reliever, that keeps me focused on what I need to do, and also it takes me away from the stresses of being an entrepreneur. The other area of spirituality, I would consider myself to be fairly religious relatively speaking, just relatively speaking but spirituality is not about religion I think two things, just giving thanks is a very big deal, and actually just one thing, giving thanks. You don’t have to give thanks to a specific individual or imaginary person, or maybe real person, just being thankful is enough for spirituality in my opinion and doing that every day whether its after you wake up or in my case its after I shower, or before you go to sleep. Being thankful for the things that you have, the day that you had, its definately a worthwhile experience that helps you stay grounded. Now travel is very important when it comes to spirituality because when you travel outside of your comfort zone, you are able to see the rest of the world, you are able to see other situations from a different perspective, and it gives you just a new light on what else is out there, so I definately recommend that people travel for the experience, because in my opinion, experiences are way more valuable than anything tangible, than anything material, and the last thing I mentioned is emotional health, and all that simply is being around people who I mentioned earlier that now I am in a situation where I rarely do things that I don’t want to do, I am trying to almost exclusively do things that I do want to do, and when it comes to emotional health, it means being around people who you want to be around, not being around people who are going to bring you down or hurt you in any way, or anything like that. So those four areas, I started working on them about two and a half years ago, and they have kind of become a part of how I live my own daily life as an entrepreneur.

#00:23:43-1# Neil: Can we talk about entrepreneurial role models, do you have any?

#00:23:47-6# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: There are several role models, one of my, its not a specific person, but I really enjoy the immigrant story, because here in the United States, which is really a nation of immigrants, there are so many amazing stories of people who came to this country, I mean you hear it all the time, people came to this country with $20 dollars in their pocket, they didn’t know anybody, they started a business, and years later they found it, they made money, they got by and they did very well. In my case, in my own family, it was a little different, one thing that my father had when he came to the country was a very strong education that he got in India from one of the best colleges in India and he came to the United States to pursue his higher education, so even though he came here with next to nothing in his pocket, he had the education next to him. He had the education stood by him, and that is how he was able to get a job and then years after that start his own company and then start another company. So he is definately a role model of mine, but really it is just the immigrant story of people coming here, some of them didn’t even know how to speak English. And being able to succeed in this country, and to give back, its just very very phenomenal.

#00:25:21-3# Neil: In fact, its the same here actually but Brian Tracey says if you want to be successful, you have got to want it like an immigrant, I think that is one of the things he says, I don’t know if you have heard that?

#00:25:32-4# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I have heard it, I have read some of Brian Tracey’s books, he has come out with a lot of good ones and I think I read that somewhere, it might have been in a blog or

#00:25:39-6# Neil: I might have misquoted that slightly but I am sure it was something like that but yeh. Ok can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur? Can you talk about the what difficulties you had to overcome when you started your business?

#00:25:56-5# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: So the starting the beginning of my entrepreneurial career was actually the easy part, things got hard I would say a year into my businesses, and the reason why things were smooth early on, is because a. I was in school when I started my first business, so I knew, oh well it was a service business, so I knew if I don’t have any clients or business coming my way I can always graduate and get a job somewhere. So I did not really face much pressure while I was in school doing my business thing. Now when I completely went on my own, I was done with school, I was no longer at a company, I was just 100% on my own, the transition was very simple, and getting started was much easier than I ever thought it would be. In fact I was kind of shaking my head, like I don’t know why so many entrepreneurs say it is so hard, and this and that and it is largely because when I was working full time, I was running a business on the side. So when I left the company, I was able to take my side business and make it full time,

#00:27:12-8# Neil: Ok

#00:27:12-8# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: So as soon as I left my company, its almost like I gave myself a 20% raise, from what I was making at the company to what I was doing with Krish media marketing, that was the first company. Now the problems however arose about a year in, my first year was great, I thought this was too easy, I was living the dream in Maryland, not too far away from DC. But the first problems came in a year in because my biggest client was in the precious metals industry, and if people follow anything about the precious metal space, they have taint over the past three years. They have gone nothing but down, nowhere but down over the past three years or so, so anyway the industry is facing alot of pretty much entire commodity space right now, still experiencing alot of cuts. I lost my biggest client, and then a few months after that, my biggest client, thats someone else, we got into a lawsuit, I don’t know how things are in Europe or in Britain but in America lawsuits are very common. That was my first big lawsuit, I was in really small lawsuits before but this one was 6-figure lawsuit, we had lawyers involved, bullying each other, people saying all sorts of things about me, me saying all sorts of things about them, them threatening me with all sorts of things and that actually de-railed alot of my business, just mentally and emotionally. I was out of it for months because I had no idea if this thing was ever going to get settled, if it went to court, I would have to spend alot of money on my lawyers travelling, because my client was located across the country. It was just a state of I don’t want to say purgatory but intense pressure and it was my first experience being a part of something like that. Now the experience was very worthwhile, when it was all said and done, we settled and it was almost like I got a mini law degree after going through that experience. And it taught me a lot about the legal profession, and really the amount of disruption that its going to face over the next decade or two. It has, the legal profession here in the United States has not necessarily faced much disruption, but its coming and I learned that from my experience as well.

#00:29:47-4# Neil: Mmm hmm

#00:29:47-4# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: So that is just an example of some of the difficulties that you face as an entrepreneur, you will never anticipate any of this stuff, I mentioned earlier, you have some great months, you have some terrible months, you just never know. You never know, but it takes a certain type of personality to go through with it and to I guess take that risk and I don’t want to call it a risk because again when I got started I wasn’t taking a risk because I started on the side, while I was working full time.

#00:30:20-9# Neil: Ok and did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business? I think you have touched on this already so I think I know what you are going to say but

#00:30:30-5# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: No, in my situation I didn’t necessarily have some doubts but I mentioned earlier that I have shut down several start ups. And I did have pretty much every single start up that I shut down. I was very doubtful before I started it, its just I was kind of convinced by either investors or partners,  like oh no you gotta do it, this is the next hot thing, like you are leaving money on the table. And I had my doubts, and I listened to the other people, I went through with them and they ended up getting shot down. Now I have kind of learned my lesson to go with not necessarily my gut, but to go with the facts, and its easy to get the facts and data now because of the digital world, because of the internet, but now that the businesses that are still standing today are the ones that I believed in from day one, in fact I was the one doing the convincing, with partners or investors, so those are really the doubts I have had when it comes to the start-ups that I work on.

#00:31:37-2# Neil: And what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:31:42-3# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I mentioned earlier about listening to other people, and taking their word for things, I don’t want to say that they are not trustworthy because they are not, they are just wrong and its very important to just make mistakes, because if you don’t make the mistakes then you are never going to learn, and being an entrepreneur is a learning experience always, always a learning experience. Even if you have 40 years of experience as an entrepreneur, the world is changing so much, and 20 years from now the world is going to be completely different than what it is today. Just thinking like what the world was like 20 years ago. So making mistakes is ok, the biggest mistakes that I have made, you know I think I have been fortunate in that I have not made huge huge blunders. I have lot alot of money, with dumb investments that I have made, and you know, hey you learn from those, I have wasted alot of time, on dumb kind of sweat aquity that I have put into different projects. And you learn from those mistakes, but you just keep moving forward and learn from those mistakes. Now I also, I mentioned earlier, I read alot of books and really specialty blogs, not newsblogs but like specialty type of blogs. And so I read alot about other people, I think every day I read something about someone else’s failure, and you learn alot by reading from other people’s failures. So many of these books and interviews and I am sure you have brought people on your show, they talk about their successes, all the good things that are happening, all the great things but reading about other people’s failures will its helped me mitigate the chances of making the same mistakes that they made.

#00:33:45-6# Neil: Yeh ok, well some great counter-intuitive advice that you have given there. What are some of the things that you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who haven’t yet taken the first step of the entrepreneur’s way?

#00:33:57-1# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I think the first thing that people need to understand is that we now live in the 21st century digital economy. And so regardless of what your business is, you can be a doctor starting your own practise, you can be an accountant setting up shop your own tax advising shop or whatever CPA type of company you want to start. But I think having an understanding of the digital market place, is the first step in starting your business, because everything is going digital. The way people shop, the way people conduct business, the way people communicate, relationships, currencies, they are going digital and you need to understand the market place, you need to understand the opportunities that are in this digital market place, because if you don’t you will be leaving money on the table. So I highly highly recommend that people learn as much as they can about the opportunities that exist in the digital market place. My book ’50 shades of marketing’ is a very good start and there are several other resources that will help you learn some more. But I think thats the first step. The second step is you have to have some sort of competitive advantage, in many cases that competitive advantage it could be living in a certain location, it could be expertise, it could be that you are an amazing cook at something, you make amazing food or you are an expert on a certain subject matter, but you must have some kind of competitive advantage to get started, I think those two areas understanding the digital market place, and then having an expertise, if you have those few down solid, then the third thing that you will need is the contacts, which can be made, you I mentioned earlier the immigrant story, most of the immigrants who move to other countries, they don’t know anyone when they get their businesses started. But they made their contacts, it takes time, it takes years to do that, it doesn’t happen overnight but the first two things are kind of the fundamentals, the first two areas I mentioned, those would be the fundamentals and then the kind of networking aspect can come after.

#00:36:32-1# Neil: Ok can we just move along the journey of your entrepreneurial journey here, and look at the actual when you set up your business. Do you think that culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:36:46-4#  Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I don’t think so because the culture is actually determined as the business evolves, the culture is going to take the personality of the founders always. That is what it is going to be, but when you are first getting started, it is really just going to be the founder and his partners, so there is not much of a culture and in the digital market place, the culture is not as defined, rather the culture is I would say almost a bit fragmented or disconnected, which I found to be even more efficient rather than having a set bible, I know some companies they publish culture books, like 100-page culture books, this is what we stand for, this is what we do. I don’t think that is the best way, I brought up earlier corporatism and kind of the beaurocracies that come with it, I think that is an archaic way of running a business, particularly in the digital age where you can outsource so much, and get things done much more quickly with less beaurocracies, less hierarchy. So I am not a huge fan of corporate cultures, I think decades from now, that entire profession and industry, is going to be extinct.

#00:38:12-0# Neil: Do you not, I am just listening to what you are saying there and I just wonder what you think here but if you have a very big business though, you have to define something in it, otherwise it is very difficult to maintain consistency of the service that you deliver, do you not think?

#00:38:29-2# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Yes so again, the culture and this happens all the time, you hear if you talk to a corporate drone, he will tell you how many times that a company that he has been working for, for 30/40 years has changed culture, and so I just feel like defining a set culture. Its very difficult to make it long lasting because companies are always churning out, ceos are shuffling in and out, regardless of how big the company is, so two good recent examples would be apple and microsoft. Microsoft had a certain culture in the 80’s when Bill Gates founded it and it was the personality was based off him. They have had a couple of ceos since then, and the culture, if you just type in Microsoft culture, there are tons of articles that you can probably read, about the changing of culture, how the changing of culture has led to the stock prices demise and now Bill Gates is back with Microsoft as chairman of the board you know to get things back on track. So the point I am trying to make is you can define your culture, as a ceo you can define your culture and come out with your booklet and make people read it and all that, but I just don’t think it is ever going to be long-lasting and the same thing with apple, Steve Jobs, there was a certain culture that he did not necessarily implement, it took the personality of him, he was a very strange fellow, and then when he passed away a new ceo came in and the culture changed, quite a bit since he left, the innovation has changed since he left, so the point I am trying to make is there will always be culture even if you don’t define the culture, the culture will develop, it will happen, that is just the case, its the law of human nature. But I am not a fan of laying out the culture in a formal constitution and making people act a certain way, and do certain things and all that, I just don’t think you should be worrying about that too much as an entrepreneur, especially when you are just getting started.

#00:40:50-5# Neil: Ok, knowing what you know now? is there anything if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:41:00-7# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I actually would have gotton involved in business more or entrepreneurship when I was younger, so even going back to high school, if I got that experience, I think I would have shortened the learning curve, in addition, I was very very clueless about, then again it is because the digital economy is still growing, but when I got started I did not know anything about online marketing, digital marketing, contractors, things like that. Now outsourcing and these websites like upward.com fibre.com people who I have met overseas, who I met through message boards and forums, having all these contacts and connections who I found digitally, has really stream-lined my business processes, its cut costs, its cut the cost of doing business, its cut the cost of starting business tremendously and five years ago, I didn’t know any of this stuff, any of this stuff at all. Again, its a mix of not getting the experience, but its also because the digital economy and the digital market wasn’t as developed as it is today.

#00:42:23-2# Neil: Yeh ok. Thanks for that and how much, just going back to something we have touched on already but how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

#00:42:34-3# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I am actually not a fan of the gut, I have read alot you read all sorts of things of people saying ‘follow your gut, follow your gut,’ so I mentioned earlier in my start-up, its called money-ball economics, and really what we do, is we publish research that is completely data driven, whereas 99% of our competitors of the other financial research companies, financial advisories, that publish research that is based on the gut, and so I used to completely go with my gut, and this was years ago, just a couple of years ago, and I just realise that making data-driven decisions, making more informed decisions, makes more practical sense than going with your gut, so I am not a fan of the gut, if you have a chance to somehow get access to information, really information, expertise, knowledge, data on decisions that you are making, trust that over your gut.

#00:43:51-8# Neil: Interesting that you say that because I was just thinking back to what you said earlier about some of your start-ups that did not work and you did actually say at that point that your gut had told you that it did not feel right at the time, so maybe you need to tune your gut a little bit here. Ha ha ha ha.

#00:44:06-6# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Well I don’t think I said my gut didn’t support or my gut told me not to do that, I think instead what I said was I wasn’t too interested in that largely because and I didn’t mention this earlier, but the data that I did have access to was telling me otherwise. I had people in one ear telling me this is going to be the next big thing, but then in the other ear, I actually had google trends, google analytics, showing that this is a bubble or that this is not going anywhere right now, until there is some kind of significant enhancement or regulation pass, this is not going anywhere, but I went with the other ear simply because I had these other people convincing me. And I kind of just did not want to let them down.

#00:45:11-2# Neil: Ok alright thanks for clarifying that. Life is made of constant change whether we like it or not, in fact some people say the only constant is change. Naresh, how do you keep up with change?

#00:45:21-9# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Thats a very good question, and this was kind of ingrained in me very early on, before I even became an entrepreneur, and I remember reading, it was actually the rapper JZ who and I am sure someone said it before him, but he said to that as a human being, because of the amount of change that we face, regardless of where we live, how we grew up, we are going to face change. And so he said, ‘you need to learn how to become water, because when you are water, you are always changing containers, you are always changing shape. But when someone drinks you, you still taste the same.’ So I think it is important that people, they need to develop those characteristics and have the ability that, that water has. They need to develop those because it will help you, it will help reduce your stress levels, it will help you manage multiple issues and projects at one time, personal and professional, so that is the only thing I would say its to don’t too high during the highs, don’t get too low during the lows, don’t get angry or whatever about small things, dumb things, just be water and live life to the fullest.

#00:46:59-3# Neil: So don’t be steam. ha ha ha

#00:47:01-6# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: yes. ha ha ha.

#00:47:02-8# Neil: Ok so can you tell us what your favourite books are, or your favourite book is on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:47:18-5# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Well I actually explained it earlier, the seven habits of highly effective people by Steven Covey, that is I think, the best book for anyone, so yes its good for business, but its also great for self-help and self-improvement. The other book that its a religious text, its an ancient hindu scripture called the bhagavad gita.  Now even though its considered a religious text, its really a philosophical text,

#00:47:53-2# Neil: How do you spell that?

#00:47:53-2# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: its bhagavad gita, and thats considered the, its equivalent the muslims have the koran, the christians have the bible, jews have the tora. This is considered the official book of hinduism. And again its a philosphical text and alot of the principles in that text, I have applied to my own life. So alot of things that I have said in this interview for example, they have kind of become ingrained in me because I read them in the gita years years ago.

#00:48:39-0# Neil: Ok thanks for that. Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things, such as driving your car or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Naresh, what I would like to do now is I would like to talk about the future a little bit, so what one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:49:17-8# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I would want to start more businesses so this is somewhat of a loaded question, but I believe that if you look at all these successful business people, and who you really might know, one common thread that you will notice among almost all of them, is they own real estate. They own property, so I don’t own any property yet, I don’t own any real estate yet, but its an area that I want to get into. Living is a necessity, living in shelter is a necessity, so there is always going to be demand, for residential real estate, I brought up earlier the digital economy,which is going to disrupt the commercial real estate based on it already has. But having a home to live in, to bathe in, to eat dinner at the table, to eat dinner on, thats a necessity that is going to stay, you can’t digitise that. You can’t digitise that. Its going to stay forever, so if I knew that my businesses would never fail, I would definately want to use a lot of the money that I make from them, to start a residential real estate business, and I would want to continue to grow my businesses, my goal is not to start businesses and sell my stakes, or sell the businesses. I want to grow them, I am very very aggressive in my tactics and my growth strategy, I want to grow them, I want to hire people, I want people overseas, I want them to become almost like a machine, I want them to become so automated and so like a machine, so that I can take a step back, and just let them run on their own.

#00:51:14-8# Neil: Ok thanks for that, and what skill if you were excellent at it would help you the most to double your business?

#00:51:26-5# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Thats, I think this goes back to online marketing and understanding the digital market place. So the better you can become, at understanding this, the more success you are going to have, in your business, so of course in my business which is completely digitally oriented but even a physical business, like a restaurant or a bar or a club. If you understand that, I think it will make you extremely extremely successful.

#00:51:57-0# Neil: And in five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:52:09-4# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Well I can’t really answer that question because of the customers and suppliers and partners and all that, they could say whatever they want about us, all I can say is I hope its good stuff, I hope the work that I do, I try to be as honest as I can, I try to be as open and transparent as I can, when dealing with our clients, vendors, affilliates, partners, investors, I can control the things that are under my watch, but what other people think about me or my business, thats completely up to them, and their opinion.

#00:52:44-8# Neil: Yeh I understand that, I think the idea of that question really was that you, paint a picture of what you would like them to say, so I understand what you are saying but obviously you drive your business with an intention of creating a certain level of happiness with your customers. So I was trying to get that out of you there. Do you not think that is something that you would want to do?

#00:53:08-3# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Yeh well I think thats a goal of every business owner, I want to be successful, I want to treat the customers right, I want everyone to be happy,so that would be great.

#00:53:21-2# Neil: Ok. We are now at the part of the show where you share your three golden nuggets with us, so Naresh what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:53:34-1# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: So, part of being an entrepreneur we talked about earlier, is the ups and downs that you face, and there are times when you are going through hell, and I remember where there were strings of months where I was worried about not being able to pay rent, I was worried about shutting down my business and being forced to move somewhere or sell my car. Or sell other assets that I had, so I think it was Churchill, you might have heard this quote that Churchill said, during the 40’s I think, he said, ‘if you are going through hell, keep going.’ So there is a tendency that when people are facing the tough times, they can just give up or they say, ‘this is not for me, I am walking away.’ But when they are going through hell which is very different, very different from if your business is failing, and it has no future, thats very different from when you are going through hell. So when you are going through hell, keep going I think is almost a mantra of that, that business owners should definately write down somewhere, they should frame it and keep looking back at it during the ups, during the highs and the lows.

#00:54:53-1# Neil: Thats great, I haven’t heard of that before. And do you have any favourite online resources you can share with us?

#00:55:00-8# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: When you say online resources, do you mean specifically for entrepreneurship or business or

#00:55:09-5# Neil: Yeh just things that you find particularly useful.

#00:55:13-5# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Yeh well I subscribe to several actually, no I don’t anymore, I read not necessarily online but I mentioned earlier, you can get the books online, but I read alot of business type of books, self-help, self-improvement type of books, let me just name a few books for entrepreneurs. The first book is called ‘the long tail’ and its by, his name is slipping my mind, but his name is its called the long tail and it was published in 2008, I would say so its a little older but the principles are timeless. The whole thing is Chris Anderson, I just remembered, but the principles are timeless because it does a great job of laying out the 21st century way of doing business, and the 21st century way of doing business, is not just digital but its also following this long tail. If you look at a bell curve for example, a bell curve will curve up and then it will taper off, and the book talks about the portion that is tapered off. Not that big kind of parabella thats on a graph, instead its the tail, that is where the true value of your business is, on that tailside. So I recommend all business owners read that, and then of course the seven habits of highly effective people, and then my book 50 shades of marketing – whip your business into shape and dominate your competition. Very beneficial resource and in that book, there are more than 30 different resources, and very specific digital commerce areas like affiliate marketing, copywriting, outsourcing, how to do all sorts of different things, publishing a book, podcasting, it lays out a ton of resources there,

#00:57:18-7# Neil: Ok

#00:57:18-7# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: so I would recommend that, I have my own newsletter too, Nareshvissa.com people can get on my mailing list, and I send out some titbits and goodies for entrepreneurs.

#00:57:31-2# Neil: Ok thank you for that, and what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:57:41-1#   Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: I think people should give entrepreneurship a shot. I hear people complain a lot about their jobs and so and so at their office or at their company, doing this, they hate their boss, I think people need to give entrepreneurship a shot because today we live in a great time, I have no idea how entrepreneurs like Bill Gates got started in the 80’s before the internet and before all this technology, but today it is easier than ever to get started on a business. The cost as I mentioned earlier, the cost of starting a business has gone down tremendously, and I think it is worth giving a shot on the side, if you are going to become an entrepreneur, get started on the side first so you can continue to work your full time job, but just do it on the side. You are going to have to give up some nights out at the pub or at the sportgames or whatever it might be. But always start from the side, don’t quit your full time job and then go out and start from scratch. I think that is the quickest way to fail,

#00:58:55-8# Neil: Ok, everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Naresh’s favourite resource or his favourite book, you can find the links on Naresh’s shownotes page, go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Naresh which is Naresh or Naresh Vissa in the search box. Naresh, is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

#00:59:20-8# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Neil I think we covered everything that we can possibly cover about entrepreneurship, about Krish Media Marketing, Moneyball economics, if people want to learn more about any of my businesses, KrishMediaMarketing.com is our digital consultancy and agency, work with businesses of all types, and then moneyballeconomics.com, we have free research that we publish to the public as well so that you can get on our newsletter or mailing list to get our free research and thats about it.

#00:59:50-8# Neil: Ok Naresh thank you for sharing such a huge amount of useful information with us, it really has been great hearing your opinions and you have come up with some great ideas and really given us some insight into what the entrepeneur’s mind thinks and does, so thank you very much.

#01:00:08-9# Naresh Vissa – Krish Media & Marketing: Thanks alot Neil, its been a pleasure talking to you and great questions.

#01:00:13-8# Neil: Your welcome. Thank you.