Business & Entrepreneurship with Dustin Steffey & Naresh Vissa

Hello chop nation Dustin Steffey here, Jaden and I are both excited and wanted to share some big news with you all. As of right now, voting is open for the People's Choice Awards and chopping with fire is up for nominations for Best Overall business podcast, and Best Overall podcasts. If you all could please help us out and go to www dot pod cast awards.com. That's www.podcastawards.com. We will also conveniently have that link in our episode descriptions for the month of July for each of you to be able to click on for easier access to register. Again, Jaden, and I can't thank you all enough for supporting our show and allowing us to continue to bring you guys quality content. So if you guys could please help us out as we go down the journey to try to get a People's Choice Award. Please go ahead and go to that website and register today.

Hosted by Dr. Dustin Steffey co hosted by Jaden Norvel. This is chopping fire the number one business and self development podcast on Apple podcasts finds at www.choppinwithfire.com. Without further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello, and welcome to an episode of chopping with fire. You're joined with your host today Dustin Steffey, unfortunately, Jaden had some business to attend to so y'all are stuck with me. Uh huh. Um, with that being said, I did want to bring up a couple of things before we delve into very special guests that I'm bringing on. First and foremost, this is the last week of voting for the Podcast Awards. If you guys haven't done so already, and you like us, please go to www dot Podcast Awards. And that's with an s plural.com. Go ahead and hit the green button that says nominate it'll have you created an account. And then we are under the categories of Best Business Podcast and Best Overall podcast. If you deem us worthy of those, please head on over and get your votes. And so we can move forward and see if we did well. Also, we we have our home charity cystic fibrosis. Normally Jaden explains it. But basically with cystic fibrosis, it is a lung disease that impairs breathing. We support that local charity, if you guys can go to C, F f.org. Forward slash donate, we would greatly appreciate any nomination that you can donate to help support this tremendous cause. With that being said, I do want to move into our special guest, we have brought on someone that is super experienced within the entrepreneurship world has written multiple books has just a tremendous amount of experience with how to build business, how to be successful, how to market, how to create cool names for books I might add, which we'll get into that later. Um, with that being said, I am here to introduce nourish vissa Hello, buddy, how are you? Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be on looking forward to the discussion. Awesome. I am looking forward to it as well. It has been a while since we've had a true entrepreneurship discussion. And I think that you are going to bring the heat with this. I love bringing the heat. I'm all about the heat. Yeah, me too. With that being said, how about you tell us a little bit about yourself? I mean, I got to know you. But let's have everyone else get to know you a little bit.

Yeah, well, we got to know each other a little bit. Let me just rewind it back a little bit. I am the founder and CEO of Christian media marketing. It's a full service digital online and digital marketing agency. You mentioned that in the introduction. Now, a lot of the viewers who can see me they might be wondering, okay, how long have you been in business? How did you get started? I actually got some great corporate experience I got experience with CNN radio or CNN Clear Channel Communications. Walsh on on Wall Street working on Wall Street on a bulge bracket bank equity analysis and then at a probably the largest at the time. And even even now today, it's a much bigger company now but even at the time, it was one of the largest financial publishing financial marketing companies In the world. So I, like I said, got great experience, I had a good education. I mean, I have degrees under my belt, undergrad master's degree, I stopped there at masters, I just didn't find it relevant to get a PhD. And so yeah, I got some degrees, and then all wet. And I don't want to say and then always on the side, starting in 2008, I was still a college student, I started just freelancing. And I never thought that the freelancing would turn into crisp media marketing, or, you know, a full fledged business never, never dreamed of that never thought of that it was just a way to earn some side income. Because I truthfully, always thought that I was going to end up working in Wall Street or being some kind of corporate guy. In 2013, I left my full time job to, to pursue the the side hustle the side business. And it's like I gave myself a 20% Raise. Because immediately when you are a business owner, you save on taxes. And you get all sorts of deductions that you don't get when you're an employee, a regular w two employee. And then secondly, I was making more money. And I was completely working from home as well. I started that business from my apartment, my condo in pretty much downtown Baltimore. And I remember a lot of my friends family being like, you're working out of your apartment to make money. I was like, yeah, and now here we are nine years later. Almost nine years later, what No, actually and a half years later, here we are. And it's Chris media marketing is stronger than ever. It's allowed me to save, to invest to reinvest into other asset classes, like real estate, stocks, etc. Chris media marketing has been my bread and butter. And I really enjoy what I do. That's why I'm, I've been in business for nine and a half years. Because I love what I do. It's fun. It's engaging. It's not work to me, like I mentioned, it's a full service online and digital marketing agency Krish, media marketing.com, KR, is h media marketing.com? A common question I get is how did you start? How did you grow it? How did you start it? Like did you know you always wanted to do this? And like I said, it's no, I was just freelancing on the side. And then I was just able to build my clientele like build, build, build, build. And and even when I started the company in 2013, Incorporated and all that I was still in Build Mode. I'm still in Build Mode today. So that's a little just backstory about how I got started and how I grew my business.

Want to congratulate you? Because it seems like through the nine and a half years, I believe is what you said Correct? Nine and a half through that another step through that? There was a recession, there was a lot of different things. And you're still doing decently well. Yeah, well, I want to I want to, I want to state this.

I consider Chris media marketing to be a lifestyle business. It is not an Ogilvy large marketing agency. It is not a corporation, it is really a small business. Guess it's not just me, it's like I run the company. But I have people who helped me with all the various services that we offer, because it's just not possible for one person to do everything. Especially if you go to our website, Christian media, marketing.com Christian media marketing.com, you can see all the different services, it's just not possible for someone to be good at every single one of those things. So yes, I have contractor independent contractors who helped me. But with that being said, You're absolutely right to be in business for nine and a half years, is quite an accomplishment. And I've been in business for nine and a half years. I never really thought about it that way. But if you told me in 2013, hey, is this business going to be around 10 years from now? And is it still going to be making a you know, a good living for you? I would have probably said I you know, maybe I'll go back get a full time job after six or seven years or whatnot. That's not what happened. I just stuck with it. And the greatest part about it I mentioned earlier, I get to work from home and that I'm also the host of a podcast called The Work From Home show because of the success that I've had with Christian media marketing. But the greatest part about it is the freedom the freedom to travel the freedom to have my own schedule, the Freedom now to be a stay at home father to two children. That's pretty, pretty awesome. I didn't plan it out that way. I didn't envision it to work out this way. But I've been able to travel all around the United States I've been able to visit. Really since 2013, I was taking a trip every month. That's how often I was traveling, whether it was within Maryland, where I was living, or getting on a plane going to different places, I mean, pretty much every month until, until like, January 2020. So that was like pandemic year, pretty much every month, I was going somewhere enjoying life, still making money doing business. And so it was great. And now that's I've transitioned from the whole traveling, attending parties, weddings, you know, all sorts of social functions. Fun times. That's now I've transitioned from that to just taking care of my kids taking care of my family.

You had brought up something that I actually wanted you to clarify a little bit on. As soon as you broke from a corporate job to working for yourself, you said you opened up a bunch of you pretty much paid yourself a little bit more, because you opened up a bunch of tax advantages do you want to? Without without, like getting super personal? Obviously, do you want to kind of discuss that a tiny bit?

Well, I didn't even know. At the time, I just didn't even know the benefits that I was getting. I just simply started the company. And then it was my I think it was my father. He was like, Oh, you need to incorporate company. And I was like, why would I do that? You know, like, once I can just use my name. And he was like, well, you'll see number one. It's the branding, it's you're no longer yourself. It's everything is under the company, brand name, the company brand, that's a big deal. Now they're not dealing with you, the person now they're dealing with the company that's going to improve your brand. And number two is now you can have your own company expenses, and you can deduct all sorts of famine. I had an accountant at the time. And and basically the advice was, the first advice was, are you really in this over the for the long haul? And for the long haul? It was, you know, are you going to do this for longer than three years? And I said, Yeah, I think so. So. So that was number one. It was okay. Are you dedicated to this? Are you serious about it. And when I had a meeting with the accountant before I, I incorporated, they said, you know, let's take a look at how much you've made, like over the past month or over the past two months. And they saw it and they were like, Yeah, this is I mean, this is business type of money that you're making. So we highly recommend that you incorporate. And, and there all sorts of deductions that you get on the corporate space, or in the corporate space that you that you just can't deduct, as a as a regular person. I was like, What do you mean? Like, what can I deduct? And they're like, Well, if you're, you know, going somewhere, if you're traveling, like you travel a lot, if you're going somewhere and you're talking business, you're going to a conference or you're visiting a client or whatever, like that's all deductible. Like the meals, the the transportation back then there wasn't even Uber, like Uber was brand new, but it was like taxis, all that they're like, that's all deductible. And then they show me they're like, you know, we can deduct this, this, this, this, this this, and, and they're like, look, then you pay yourself this after, you know, this amount, just like small amount after it's all said and done. It's like, you don't even have to pay really too much in entirely. I mean, you got to pay the Social Security, you got to pay what you have unemployment and all that, but they're like, outside of that you're good. So I was like, Oh, wow, that people don't take that into account. People always talk about oh, I make X amount of dollars, which is their gross paycheck, but they don't say, my net salary, after, you know, eating meals and paying for travel and, and paying all these taxes and social security and health care and all this, you know, my net salary. On paper, they might say, Oh, I make 200,000 a year but you live in New York City, and you deduct all of that. And it's really like you're making $50,000 a year or maybe even less than that. So so it's it's you just have so much advantage so much leverage by getting into business incorporating and I've got a second business, it's a real estate investment company. And I invest in single family homes, and that company's doing pretty well and I think it's going to eventually overtake Chris Media Marketing. But that's another company where real estate is a very tax favored asset on like stocks or bonds. Real estate is like super, super taxpayer, it's crazy how tax favored it is. Whereas if you had to have a high paying job, I mean, you're losing so much that the more you make, the more you lose. Whereas the more real estate you buy, the less you pay in taxes, for example. So those two things, you know, having business entities, and, and then of course, real estate, just save so much money on taxes. And so going back to your original point, it's people don't think about this, when they're starting a business, they don't think about that. And that's, again, like I preface this by saying, that's not what I was thinking about, because I didn't even know about all this, but I've come to realize this six, seven years down the road, like Holy smokes, you know, like it save a lot of money by being in business for yourself incorporating and managing your books properly. And, and getting a professional accountant to file your returns and make sure that you're getting all the deductions that that you're owed.

I think I think it's great. And I think it's something good to highlight, because I know when I went into business, so we have this podcast, obviously, we have my consulting business, and then I am in the corporate world as well, right now, when I look at it, my first thought that crossed my mind wasn't the tax advantages or anything along those lines, it was, how can I break my nine to five and kind of chase something that I want to do, and kind of pay myself for it. But it's good for us to discuss these things. Because these are things that most of us don't really think about. Speaking of things that we don't think about, you've come up with some pretty good tips within entrepreneurship, I wanted to highlight a little bit I figured you you would love to kind of talk about your, your five, your five key tips within entrepreneurship.

Yeah, the five secrets to success, I think if people can understand these fives, I mean, they're not really secrets, because I'm sharing them with you. And they sound like common sense. People don't take them seriously. Number one is focus. Number two is leverage. Number three is value creation. Number four is skills. And number five is ideas. So I'm going to break each one of these down for you. Number one, is focus. If you're going to be running a business or starting a bit, I mean, really in anything, whether you're playing sport, or watching TV or whatever it might be focus, we think of focus as Okay, let's be focused, let's like pay attention and soak up as much as much as we can. That's important. So you want to be dedicated. But focus is also paying attention to the things that matter. That's what fo that's the important part of focus. So I'll give you an example. Let's say you're a basketball player. I know you told me before that you went to University of Arizona, a pretty big basketball school. Let's say you're a basketball player. And you are really, really good at shooting threes. Right? So that's your bread and butter, like, like you've made it big because you're able to hit threes, right? Well, all of a sudden, if a coach comes in and says, Hey, you know what, all you do is shoot threes, I want you to post up down low. But that's not your game, you're not a big like, you're not a big person, you're not, you don't have I mean, you're just like a little guy who just shoots threes. That's what your forte is. But as coach comes in, says, Nope, you got to go down to the post now. And now you're focusing on the post? Well, you're putting in the same amount of time, the same amount of effort, but you're focusing on the wrong, the wrong skill, the wrong thing. And it's a complete waste of time. And what I've learned in businesses, you need to figure out what the strength is, that could be your strength, that could be the business shrink, that can be a campaign that you're running, and which social media channel is working the best or which marketing channels working the best. You need to figure out what's working best and focus only on that. Because when it comes to marketing, like you brought up, I'm the author of multiple marketing books, when it comes to marketing. There are a million different ways to market something, literally their million different ways that ways that I can't even think of. And so if you're focusing on the wrong areas, you're missing out. And I've noticed, I've worked with a ton of businesses that were focusing on the wrong channels or focusing on the wrong things and I stepped in I said, Look, hire me as a consultant. I'll I'll show you how to really do things. And that's what happened. They hired me and boom, I was able to focus on what matters and they could see the results, they could see the numbers just just skyrocket, just go up. So that's what I mean by focus. Number two is leverage. Now leverage is something that you have to build up. The way you build up leverage is through all these other. The other four secrets that I'm mentioning, leverages is, is the idea that you build yourself and your brand up to the point that your clients need you or your potential clients need you. You don't need them, you don't need to go door to door, you want them contacting you, you want them, giving you the raise before you and ask for it. That's what leverage is. And so you want to build up leverage. So in many people did during the pandemic, we saw a great resignation, because so many workers built up leverage to where they could either negotiate their contracts or negotiate their salaries, or it was, hey, I'm out here, if you're not going to need my price, I'm quitting because I've got other things, I've got better job offers, I've got other ventures and projects to work on that that make money too. So that's, that's leverage. Number three is value creation. So you have to provide value, I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs or people failed entrepreneurs, who think they can just come out with like, some mobile app, and it's gonna skyrocket and they're gonna become like the next, you know, Kalanick, who founded Uber? No, that's not how entrepreneurship works. You have to provide value, whether you're providing a service or a product that has to provide value, people have to feel like, okay, it's worth it to pay this person or to pay for this product. So make sure that you're constantly providing value, because if you're providing value, even in, let's say, like, I'm in the service space, if you're providing value, people are going to come back to you, they're going to tell each other, they're going to tell their friends, hey, you know, this person providing value, I had a really good experience, and you're gonna get clients that way. And customers that way, number four, skills. This is incredibly important. Today's economy, I think 2030 years ago, you could get by without skills. I know a bunch of older people in their 60s and 70s, who made great careers without much skills, because they went to some school, they got some degrees, master's degree or whatever. And it was like, boom, you've got a job for life. We don't live in that type of economy anymore. Today, if you need skills to get hired, and you need skills to stay employed, and that goes for entrepreneurship, to be an entrepreneur requires many skills. And so if you want to stay in the game, you absolutely have to sharpen your current skills and gain new skills. I can break this down even more, because I've got, I've got children, I saw that you have a child in your car. And I think it's important when you're telling young people, there are some skills that every person needs to have, if they if every person has the skills, they will never have a problem succeeding in their career, no matter what their profession is, they can be a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer. But if you can master these things, reading, writing, speaking, and technology, reading, writing, speaking and technology, so what I mean is, reading is so important to just staying up to date on your profession on what's going on on just just being a well rounded person. Writing is so and but how you write will determine whether you get that job or whether you get that client if you don't write well. If you come across as an illiterate, you're just going to struggle through anything even like dating, right? If you're like texting somebody through like a dating app, or whatever, and you can't write properly are going to be like as tight as has like a second grade education level. Like I don't want to date him. So that's writing, I talked about reading, then they're speaking of course, like how you and I are speaking, this is probably the number one way that people gain. First impressions. It's true. They they do meet someone for the first time and how you speak to them, how you carry yourself during that first one minute, two minutes is going to determine their opinion of you. That's just how it works. You can tell just by talking to somebody for one minute, you can tell how educated they are like what kind of family they come from, like how their upbringing was. That's literally how long it takes. So So speaking is is key is and if you can be like I don't want to say professional, but if you're comfortable speaking, talking to people getting in front of a getting in front of an audience, giving a speech giving a lecture. That's huge. That's huge. And then the last thing is technology. So we live in a tech technological world. There's nothing you can do now. of significance without the use of technology. So when I say technology, it's not just the the basic stuff, you know, using computer email typing, that's just a basic, it's he, it's the ability to adapt to technology. So a new app comes out, download it and use it, a new gadget comes out, maybe it can help your business is the ability to use technology is a big, big. I mean, it's probably the reason why Krishna media and marketing has been in business for so long, because so many companies didn't really know, this whole internet thing and websites and social media and online marketing, they just, they just didn't stay up to date. And that's where that's the need that Chris media marketing filled. But what I'm saying is, even if you're a doctor, accountant, whatever, you know how to use technology, if you're able to integrate that whatever you're doing, you're just, that's just going to make you so much better.

So I have a couple of questions for you. Because in in these things that came up, there were some things I was thinking about in Yes, with my daughter, I think about these things a little bit more. Um, one is the fact that it is critical and important that they get their education. As far as like the basics as far as reading, writing, all the things that you have brought up. However, you had an integrated technology into that too. And I don't disagree at all with technology. However, in my opinion, and experience, and you might be able to crush this a little bit, my friend, technology also hinders some of the soft skills that are important for someone to be well rounded. So what I mean by that is, I noticed more often than not individuals that I come across, that aren't well spoken that can't maintain a conversation that do not do well with articulating themselves because they've been so submerged within technology. And all of that being kind of a crutch, that they haven't developed what we call those soft skills. What is your take on that?

Yeah, so the first thing is, is that with technology, it's not mutually exclusive. Technology is not mutually exclusive to all those other skills that you brought up. So that's number one. It's, it's not like, you can only do these three things, three out of these four things, or like you can only be good at like this one thing or these two things. So that's the first thing, it's, this isn't mutually exclusive. You can be good at writing and reading at the same time, you can be good at both of those things and technology at the same time. So that's why I say I've laid out these four, and then I brought up the fifth one ideas, we can just gloss over that for now. But the idea is if you can master these four, then you're good, you're in a good place.

Thank you. I know it's controversial at times to bring out soft skills, technology and all that because everybody's going to have a different opinion. Some people are going to love it. Others are going to disregard it. And others are going to be like me where I'm impartial to it. I know it's important and it's critical. We're in 2022 technology isn't going anywhere, if anything, I'm not keeping up with it sometimes. But I am glad that you were able to kind of answer that. Another thing I wanted to bring up both you and I are extremely educated. We'll call it be that as it may, I made the decision to get my education and further and all the way up to my PhD. You made the decision to get your Masters. How looking back, how critical was it for us to actually really get that education with respect to what we're doing now with entrepreneurship.

So this is it's a loaded question. And I think there's no one size fits all. And it's for solution to to what you asked. There's no one size fits all what I mean by that is for some people you needed like go get a PhD like that's our personality. They need to go into it but I know some other people you know, I know some hustlers were like, you know, college just isn't for you. Like you should just go start a business that like 15 years old, 16 years old, 17 years old and go with that. In my case, a lot of it has to do with like upbringing, how I was raised. It was just never even a topic of discussion. Like like you're going to college like like you're going to like kindergarten first grade second grade because the idea is to get into college into like a good college program. And then even the idea was, and then you go to college and then like, you go to graduate school, like it just, there was never any other way of thinking because you just as a child, I just didn't know any better. I just thought that was the only option. It certainly helped me because I want some reputable schools. And it helped me in the workplace and helped me socially and helped me just kind of get my feet in various doors. But at the same time, we live in a very different world now, then, how things were 20 years ago when I was going through this process, where 1617 years ago, and what I mean by that is, I'm meeting more like high schoolers than ever, who are like working, who are like working full time jobs, or part time jobs, or who are starting their own businesses or freelancing like this was unheard of. Like I said, 15 because the internet was not as mature back then.This was unheard of. But but now it's like anybody can get behind a computer and start a website or start, you know, YouTubing or Instagramming, or tick talking, or doing, you know, online marketing, or whatever it is. So, it's, it's a really good, it's a really good time right now for sure. Because of what's available because of the opportunities that are available. And because of the internet, really. So is like, do I think school is absolutely necessary? I mean, on paper, it looks good. But if we're if you're talking about hey, like, I want to make a lot of money, or like, is it worth the investment, then no, just do the math. Like, I would say the wealthiest people I know. Like, none of them have master's degrees. And very few of them went to like, brand name college, they went to like some community college took a few classes and then you know, got into real estate or like started some other business. So you have to think about what's the point of school is it to make money because if your number one goal is I just want to make money I just want to make like a multimillionaire college isn't for you. Because they don't train you to think that way they train you basically to be a drone to be a sheep and to like work at a company. That's what these colleges even the best colleges out there. That's what they train you to do. So if money is a thing, I'd say don't take college too seriously. If the idea is Look, I just want to get I just want to experience life I like learning I want to experience life I want to meet different people want to learn about a lot of different subjects. Absolutely college college is for you if that's what you want, and so make use of it. But most kids they don't think like the ladder most kids are just like you know, I just want to get one major take as few classes as possible and just party and have a good time. But that's fine too. But that's just very expensive. Unless you get a full ride so I mean, you get a full ride somewhere somewhere good right? You live in Arizona and you get a full ride to University of Arizona have that it stay there for five years get the school get all your tuition paid for it all your expenses paid for stay there for a masters for another two years. Yeah, but have a good time. I say go for it, but make use of everything that's there. On the that's really the key. I think to life in general to entrepreneur, it's make use of everything that's in front of you be resourceful.

I think if you were to pose that question back to me, too, because again, you and I both have paid pieces of paper right, but that we're subject matter experts in our fields. The deal is this in in my generation growing up, it was always frowned upon to not go to college. So in high school, I can remember my teachers, my sophomore and junior year harping on if you don't go to college, you won't be able to make this certain potential of money. And that's, again, a sheep's approach to it. It's hurting all the sheep in to go to school, right. I enjoyed school, I enjoyed my experiences. And if I were to do it all over, I'm I wouldn't make the same decision. Actually, I would probably go to a trade school. I'm probably still specifying in business in my opinion, because I like the business field, maybe more centered around that technology and business like it or something along those lines because we're always going to need it now. When I look at it, some of the most powerful people in the world. We're talking the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, we're talking those people, right? How many of them actually fully went to college? And the answer is simple. None of them. And they still hold the majority of the wealth in our country. That that tells you something right there, in my opinion.

Well, I'm talking about brought up mutually exclusive, right. So none of this is mutually exclusive. It's not like, you can either go to college, or you have to start a business, you can do both. I mean, I brought up earlier I was doing both at the same you can work and go to school, and still have a great time. So this idea of you have to do this or that it's just not true. And I recommend, let's just do it all. Just experience life and do it all the examples of these guys, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and all these people. Look, I don't want to mislead someone who's listening. And they're like, oh, you know what this guy said, I don't need to go to college. So I'm just gonna go to college because I'm because I have a better chance of becoming the next Bill Gates. Just remember this Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, they did go to college, they dropped out, they went to Harvard. So that means they were smart enough, they were good enough to get in and to, to go. So once you're at that level, it's kind of like, look, I can succeed at anything I want to do one life. So but then you can look at a guy like Jay Z, right? He didn't go to any college at all, I didn't get into like Harvey didn't even apply to any colleges. He was in a gang, it was drug dealer. And now he's a multi billionaire. He's doing extremely well. Really good, savvy businessman, right? And you can look at him be like, oh, yeah, he was a drug dealer. He was, you know, gangster, whatever. And look at him. Now. The idea though, is I guarantee you of Jay Z grew up, like under a different family, like if he, if like Obama was his dad, he would have probably ended up at Harvard. And he would have probably ended up being like an investment banker or something, same mind, same brain, just application was a little bit different. So so I just don't want to mislead people who are listening, especially young people. And say, you just don't go to college. You need to assess what your strengths are, what your capabilities are, and then make those decisions accordingly.

Yeah, and same is true for me, I don't want to mislead anyone. I mean, you're talking to people that actually have college under their belt. It isn't about misleading, if anything. I think that this is impactful in the sense that it gives options, you talk a lot about mutually exclusive. And, you know, honestly, a lot of what I bring up is do your research. First, if you think that you can be successful, without going to college, and you can make something of yourself, then maybe that is the decision for you. But if you think that you need to go to college, then kind of do what you were talking about, which I wish I did when I was younger, which was do both do, do as much as you can to set yourself up for success. I think if I have the knowledge now, and then went backwards, 10 years, I'd probably be in a better spot in my in my opinion, my debt would be nearly not as much as it is I mean, to go to college does cost money if you're not getting a full ride scholarship or anything along those lines. College isn't getting cheaper, it's getting more expensive. And so that's a debt that you're accruing is the cost benefit analysis for it worth it. And that's kind of what you all as listeners will assess. That's kind of what we understand as business people as well, too is, is there a benefit to it? If there is and you can make something of yourself great, do it. If not, and you think you can do better without it. Great. Do it like do do what you feel is right. Like don't let one person lead you to a path that you're not certain of always do your research and make the best decision possible.

You're absolutely right. And and now college. I think the whole scholarship thing is is a big deal. And it's you can go you know, undergrad masters, whatever on full rides to reputable places, like your local state school. Look, those hold a lot of value. And I think you'll be better served doing that in today's day and age, maybe 30 years ago, even 20 years ago, you kind of had to go when I say had to go like if you wanted to get that corporate job and just having that brand name school on your resume was a huge deal. But today, I know where did I say in my secrets to success like go to a brand name school. I brought up like skills I brought up, you know, and I broke it down. These are the skills that you should have. And I brought up value creation and ideas and focus leverage, like, nowhere did I say you have to go to Harvard like Mark Zuckerberg did, or whatever. In order to be a successful entrepreneur, or in order to just have a career job somewhere, just try your best go to the best school you can possibly get into you get a scholarship somewhere even better, and, and see where that takes you. But always have an entrepreneurial mindset, at least try to.

And one thing to keep in mind too, and I don't know if you experienced this, my friend, but I know I did in my schooling, they don't teach you everything that you need to know, in the real world to be successful as an entrepreneur. I mean, there was a lot of things that I learned, trial by error, trial by fire, whatever you want to call it, to be where I'm at today, I don't know if it was similar to you. But don't, don't be distraught or discouraged if you don't know something. Because the power of business is in who you network with, and reach out to to be success. It's in reading, and doing research, which in a second will get into your books. It's in really kind of following what you want to do and doing the research as best as you can in that field to set yourself up for success.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one important takeaway is, when you enter a field, you want to become an expert in that field, because you're going to hang around longer than the guy who's just in that field because they're getting a paycheck. So you want to stay up to date on the latest innovations, the latest technology, the latest trends, the big players in the space, like what's going on, you need to really attack this because that's the only way you can truly learn.

I agree. So thank you for bringing up your kind of approach to entrepreneurship. I want to give you the floor to kind of promote your books, I know that I picked up one book that I'm excited to read of yours called 50 Shades of marketing. I was really excited to read that I have not yet so I feel like a terrible host. Because I've been aided with tons of things to read obviously.

it's a 200 Something page book and look 50 Shades of marketing, I highly recommend people check it out. Just go to Amazon type in erase this. You can see all my books there. I write about online and digital. And 50 Shades of marketing is a primer on online and digital marketing. It's came out it's a little older, it came out in 2015, so almost seven years old. But it's got just a ton of information that's super worthwhile, still relevant to today's online and digital landscape. I think anybody who's an entrepreneur who's a manager, who's a marketer, they need to check out pick up a copy of this book.

Yeah, I'm excited to read it. The reason I chose it just full disclosure to our listeners into you. I love the title. I thought the title was awesome. It made me gravitate towards not wanting to read first out of your books.

Well, I put a lot of effort into the titles. At the end of the day of books, front cover is still incredibly important, not just front cover, but the title itself. So the full title is 50 Shades of marketing with your business and to shape and dominate your competition.

Yeah, it's an extremely powerful title. I enjoyed that. Thank you for bringing that up. I want to give you the floor to kind of promote your website, contact information how people can get a hold of you full disclaimer for my listeners. As he's going through this. Please check out www.choppinwithfire.com When this episode does release, he will be under this episode and you can quickly click on any of the links that he's providing right now.

Yep, so the website Chris media marketing K, RI sh media marketing.com. If you go to my personal website and erase this.com, n ar e sh vi SSA, and erase this.com, get on my mailing list and just shoot me an email. Just say Hey, I heard you on Dustin's podcast. And I'll send you back a free copy of one of my books. So like I said, there are five of them out there. We'll be glad to send you a free copy.

For those of you that didn't get that if you subscribe and shoot nourish a message, please take advantage of this awesome deal of getting one of his impactful books because again, the first step to entrepreneurship is you got to continue to educate yourself and continue to read from other like minded entrepreneurs. So please take it advantage of that take advantage of his website and the wealth of knowledge that he is.

Yep, absolutely. And then and then my podcast is the Work From Home show the website is work from home show.com. So it's free podcasts. It's it's been named the number one work from home podcasts by a couple of publications out there. So we're really grateful and thankful for that. We talked about anything and everything working from home from entrepreneurship, starting a business from home working from home to like health and wellness from home exercise you can do while sitting on a chair, etc.

Yep, we are definitely fans of promoting other podcasts. I'm excited for yours, I definitely am going to hit that subscribe button to listen to what you provide on that because it's really fun to listen to other podcasts and see the success of everyone else in my opinion.

It is we that's why we love other podcasts as well. We interview podcasters on our show, and I started the podcast because I myself was a huge podcast junkie and my company Chris media marketing helps other podcasts, get started marketing, etc. So if you guys haven't already, please check out his podcast. All this information I will put into the episode description easily available for our listeners to be able to hop on over. And listen. Naresh, thank you so very much for coming on. It was refreshing to actually talk about business a little bit talk about kind of the ebbs and flows, some strategy strategizing a little bit. Talk about choices. I think the biggest takeaway I got from this whole entire conversation is do your research, make the right choices that you think are the best of your ability and do what you feel is necessary to move forward. You don't have to do it one at a time was another thing that I took from it. If you can do multiple things at once to set yourself up for success faster, do it. Because what else? What else could you do? I mean, I was the one at a time person. And if I could redo it again, I would probably do things a little bit quicker, which would get me on the path of trajectory faster. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Choices are very important. And just do your research, ask for help ask for advice and then make the best decision that that works for you. Absolutely. So again, I can't thank you enough. You're a wealth of knowledge. I really appreciate you and I'm excited for our listeners to gain some valuable nuggets out of this. So thank you for coming on my friend. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Awesome.