Episode Transcript
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Begin your journey of inspiration with us today.
Welcome to another episode of the United States of Small
Business Podcast. I'm your host, John Quick, and
today we have the extraordinary opportunity period from guest
Naresh Visa, Founder of Christ Media and Marketing and Narish
is a media and marketing and publisher entrepreneur with a
proven track record of improvingbottom lines for leading
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publishers, corporations and media firms.
He also is the author and best seller of podcast Anomics and 50
Shades of Marketing. Join us as we dive into Narish's
journey, his insights on successful product launches and
his expert advice on leveraging digital marketing to grow your
business. Stay tuned for an episode packed
with valuable knowledge and inspiration.
So without further ado, Naresh, welcome to the United States of
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Small Business Podcast. Thanks a lot, John.
Looking forward to the conversation.
Well, this would be fun to hear a little bit about your story
and folks can hear how they can get a hold if they're
interested. But first take me back to what
made you start your marketing and media company in the 1st
place. Tell us that story.
Well, I got a decent amount of corporate experience.
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Not decades and decades worth ofexperience, but I had enough.
I'd say about four or five yearsof corporate experience to where
I knew I needed to start my own business.
I was just not cut out to be a corporate guy or I and, and also
I didn't want to live that lifestyle as well.
So I started a side hustle. It would, I wouldn't call it a
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side business. I started a side hustle that
long before I even started working in corporate when I was
a college student. That's when I started this side
hustle. And then as I progressed
through, if you can say the corporate world, I, I worked for
some pretty well known big companies, places like Clear
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Channel Communications, CNN, whojust hosted a big debate last
night, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Agora Publishing, Stanto,
you name it. Like I, I, I got some really
good solid corporate experience from real corporations, not from
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some small mom and pop businesses.
And it was great experience. I was still running my side
hustle while working at these companies.
And I reach a point in my side hustle to where I was
comfortable leaving the corporate world for one year,
for one year and say, all right,let's pursue this side hustle.
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That one year has now turned to 12 1/2 years.
Oh, sorry, 11 1/2 years. So it's been going really well.
I've been able to grow that sidehustle, turn it into a business
that is now Chris Media marketing and that's giving me
opportunities to get involved inother areas as well.
That's awesome. So I'm sure that you're juggling
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the side hustle and the full time career was quite daunting
at times. What advice would you give to
somebody who's trying to do the same thing and maybe hasn't
started yet because they're scared to start?
Everybody has to do both. My my advice is you must start a
side hustle. You can't, you should not quit
school or quit your day job to pursue that side hustle.
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You need to do both concurrentlyat the same time.
And then you can leave whatever it is your, your job, your day
job, then you can leave it once that side hustle build up built
up. I've seen so many people who
said, Oh, I have this idea. I'm going to quit my job and
pursue it. Bad idea, bad, bad idea.
You want to be doing both. And look, I was in my mid 20s
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when I did this when I started Chris media marketing.
I was in my late teens when I started my side hustle.
So if you're, I had the benefit of time and where I was in life,
because when you're in your, let's face it, when you're in
your late teens and early 20s, mid 20s, that's the time to be
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experimenting, to be exploring, to be doing all sorts of stuff.
Now I'm in my mid 30s, I know what my, if you want to call it
unique selling proposition or competitive advantages, I know
what they are. So I'm not doing a lot of mixing
and matching and experimenting because of the work that I put
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in in my 20s. That's awesome.
So tell me what Chris media marketing does.
I mean the name kind of speaks for itself, but what what are
what is your niche? Are you working with small mom
and pop businesses? Are you working with huge multi
billion dollar companies? Something in between?
Tell us what your services are and what what do you, what do
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you guys kind of stick to? Yeah, definitely not the large
corporations anymore. Definitely not the multi billion
dollar companies, not even 9 figure companies.
We work with small and medium sized businesses, SMBs.
We work with mom and pop individuals.
We do anything and everything online and digital.
Christian mediamarketing.com is where you can see all of the
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services that we offer KRISH mediamarketing.com From web
design, design and general logo designs to web development,
search engine optimization, leadgeneration, online and digital
sales, you name it. The list goes on and on and on.
Digital strategy, marketing management, digital media,
podcast production, book publishing, ebook publishing,
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audiobook, the whole deal. So that's what Chris media and
marketing does and like I said, we work with anyone and
everyone. Mostly we've niched.
I don't want to say we're completely in in this niche, but
we've niched into the real estate industry where we're
working with real estate clientsbecause I came from that
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financial world. My first clients were financial
clients, financial publishers, financial media companies,
financial marketing, banks, brokerages, hedge funds, you
name it. And then about five years ago
niched into real estate. So we basically help sell
residential properties completely online and digitally.
Now that's not 100% of what we do.
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That's just the bulk. We still work with doctors,
lawyers, accountants, like I said, regular mom and pop
individuals on those different areas, but real estate has
become a large niche within our our operations.
Good for you. Well, you also wrote in a book
called Podcast Anomics. What made you write the book and
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tell us a little bit about it? I wrote the book in 2014, so
we're on 10 years now, which is pretty wild.
The book was a primer on podcasting.
It's still out today. It's on Amazon, Audible,
barnesandnoble.com. It is a primer from soup to nuts
on podcasting. The history of podcasting, how
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to start one At the time it was almost revolutionary.
It did. The sales were extremely strong
and the the feedback, the critiques were very, very good.
It's my best selling book that I've written.
I've written five books. Actually, that's the first one
that I wrote. So I'm proud of that book.
I think it's done really well and it's now 10 years old.
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It's a bit outdated, but the thebasic principles are timeless.
That's awesome. So how have you seen podcasting
change or evolve since you've written the book?
Well, I first got involved in podcasting in 2008.
That's the first time I heard what a podcast was.
A podcast is simply an audio file.
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It it's, it's not an audio file of music, but an audio file of
imagine talk radio being put into an audio file.
That's what a podcast is. At least in 2008, that's what
the definition was. So I saw a podcasting from what
the heck it was to the iPod coming out to Apple podcast
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coming out. It used to be just the iTunes
store and Apple Podcast came outin 2012 with the new iOS device.
As the iPhone has grown and market share, so too has podcast
listening. I saw it all and so I initially
started out in the radio space. AMFM radio helping produce
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business radio shows on on AM radio and worked on podcasts
there. It was very old school.
And then I've seen the growth asmore podcast companies like
Lipson and Anchor and Spotify has gotten involved and Pandora
and the the list goes on. Amazon's now involved Audible,
the list goes on and on and on. So I've seen it from the
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beginning to where it is today. 2014, when that book came out,
Podcast Comics was an inflectionpoint because that was the year
podcasting went mainstream, largely because of the first
mainstream podcast called Serial.
That was one of the top two mostlistened to podcasts of all
time. And at the time, it was the the
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breakthrough for podcasting. My book came out about a week
before the Serial podcast was released.
And that helped a lot with sales.
And that jump started the idea that, hey, there's an
alternative way to consume content.
It's not just watching videos onthe Internet or turning on the
TV, but or even listening to theradio.
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It's podcasting. This is a a real industry and
it's here to stay. And that book played a major
part in that process. That's awesome.
So one of the things that your company does is kind of help
somebody in the digital space, whether it be making websites or
leveraging new branding or customer acquisition.
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What kind of advice would you give to a small business owner
on why it's important to have that online presence and be well
versed in the digital space or at least have somebody doing it
for you? What kind of advice would you
give to somebody? We help companies with their
podcast, we help launch them, we'll start them up and do all
sorts of consulting to get them up and running.
(11:38):
The online and digital space is more important than ever before.
If you're not online or if you don't have a digital presence,
you are going to be left behind.That's how customers, that's how
clients are finding folks. Whether it's through reviews on
Google or Yelp or just having a website, these are areas that
you should be in. You should have reviews so
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people can write reviews up about you.
You should be on these platformslike Yelp and Google so people
can find you and make and, and, and you should take these
seriously too. It's not just a matter of being
there. You want good reviews.
You want to encourage people to write reviews.
You want that website. You want a good website.
You want people to go somewhere where they know you're a real
legitimate business. This is not the the 20th
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century. We're in the 21st century today.
If you think about online dating, for example, imagine
somebody sending you a message with no profile picture and no
bio, but they send you a message.
You would think it was spam. You would think that this is
some bot from Philippines or or overseas.
The same goes for business. A business that doesn't have
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that presence, that doesn't havethat website, If you're going to
depend on a physical location orword of mouth, well, you're
leaving business on the table. So that's why it's very
important to have an online and digital footprint.
That's awesome. Well, 15 minutes here has gone
by in a flash. Do you have any last minute
thoughts before we head off? And also please share how people
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can find you, where they can find you, all your links and
social media and stuff like that.
Yeah, well, there are four areasthat people really need to focus
on in today's economy. It's not really about marketing,
it's really just about starting a small business and how to
start it, and how to continue running it to create something
sustainable #1 is value creation.
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You want to start a business that creates value?
I can talk for 30 minutes about this, but I'm just going to
share these quickly #2 is focus.You want to be focusing on the
right aspects of the business. You don't want to be focusing on
the wrong aspects. You want to focus on the 80% of
the business that's, that's producing the most amount of,
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of, of revenue, or that's the most important #3 is leverage.
So you want to build up leverage.
How do you build up leverage? By doing the other two things.
You focus on the right things and you provide value to where
people come to you and say, Hey,I want to work with you.
Because once you have leverage, you can grow.
You can dictate terms #4 is skills.
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This is more a personal thing than a business thing, but you
want to develop as many skills as possible, whether it's
reading, writing, speaking. Technology is probably the most
important skill in today's environment.
If you're able to use technologyand adapt to technology,
especially with coming AI, you're not going to be left
behind. You you'll adopt much better and
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#5 is ideas. You should always be ideating.
You should always be innovating.So just think of ideas every
day. Write down ideas, exercise that
brain, play some chess, read. That's how you get ideas.
Ideas are so important. So focus on these five areas.
Focus, leverage, value creation skills and ideas.
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You're going to be fine. Check out my website at
chrismediamarketing.com, KRISH, mediamarketing.com, Get on my
mailing list at nourishvisa.com.And thank you so much, John, for
the interview today. Well, thank you so much,
Nourish, for joining us here on the United States, A small
business podcast for folks. Maybe that just caught the tail
(15:15):
in here. I want to encourage you to go
back and listen to the whole thing.
You get some great tips and tricks for why it's important
for a business to be online And,and, and if you're a podcast out
there, you'll hear of a great book.
You should go pick up podcast Anomics written 2012 or 14 and
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you know, right, really, really before podcast became huge.
So I'll be interested to read that as well.
We hope everybody has a phenomenal rest of their week.
And until next time, I'm John Quick from the United States, a
small business podcast. Thank you so much.