Naresh Vissa - Entrepreneurship Mindset Hacks to Create Financial Freedom

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This episode is brought to you by GAIN THE PASSION Coaching and Consulting. Visit gainthepassion.com To find out more about our coaching, consulting, training and speaking services. Welcome to GAIN THE PASSION with hosts Todd Foster, Alyssa Stanley and Kelley Skar.

Kelley Skar: 0:22

Alright, thanks a lot Naresh for joining us really appreciate your time today, man.

Naresh Vissa: 0:26

No problem. Looking forward to the discussion. Haven't had three people come at me one all at one time before.

Kelley Skar: 0:32

Yeah, well, it definitely won't be a one time unless Todd wants to jump in and interrupt like he typically does. Why don't you give us the Coles Notes version on Naresh and you know what you've done and where you're at and why you're here?

Naresh Vissa: 0:43

I founded and run a digital marketing agency. I'm also a real estate investor and real estate investment coach. So I not only invest in myself, but I help other people invest to free of charge. So maybe I can share later how people can get free real estate coaching. And I'm also a stay at home dad. So right now have one kid and have another kid on the way and really, really embrace this idea of taking care of your family and not giving up the career because for whatever reason, there's been this misnomer that you have to pick one or the other or one parent has to pick one or the other. But we try to, to preach on my podcasts to work from home show work from home show.com That it is absolutely possible to earn a living from home and be a family person as well be a stay at home dad or mom or whatever it might be.

Todd Foster: 1:46

So I have a couple of questions for you. Number one, I'm going through your bio here and it looks like it looks like what my brain normally feels like lots of tabs open many things that you've done in the past. You took as many as 27 credit hours a semester at Syracuse. Is that correct?

Naresh Vissa: 2:01

Yeah. Where did you find that bio? Maybe it's on my website.

Todd Foster: 2:05

It's on page. It's on page eight of Google. It's amazing what you can find on page eight.

Alyssa Stanley: 2:09

I was gonna say he's like a Google fanatic.

Naresh Vissa: 2:11

Okay. Yeah, because that was that was like my 20 That was like my graduated from graduate school bio. Where I talked about credit hour now. It's like, I'm, I'm an old man. Now. I forgot what credit hours even mean?

Todd Foster: 2:26

So when it comes down to time management, though you think of it as a college kid, I had a tough time managing six credit hours a year, let alone 27 in one semester. How did you do that?

Naresh Vissa: 2:35

I love that question. I love it. And I was thinking about it the other day. Because I think succeeding. And all just succeeding in general is all about mindset. So let me give you an example. One person can take 27, one student can take 27 credit hours, and be miserable. And say, this is daunting. I'm going to be in class five days a week, I'm going to be doing homework all weekend, and my life is over. And another person can take the same 27 credit hours and go in with the mindset of I can't wait to go to class and learn and do my homework and do all these things. Same result, lot want to say the same results. But same classes, same schedule, but completely different mindset. And so I think in life, it's all about mindset, it's all about how you look at the situation. So when I look at this pandemic, for example, and you you brought up when we were talking before the you hit the record button that you spoke at an infectious disease conference, and I'm very connected to the medical community. I'm married to a doctor, I come from a family of doctors, and I've heard all different sides about being a doctor, the workload, the schedule, et cetera. And I've found that the doctors who I respect who I follow who I read, I read their books, I listen to their podcasts, these are the doctors who love what they do. And they have the mindset of, hey, this is this is not a job. I'm not getting tired or exhausted from treating COVID patients or whatever it might be. And these are people some of these doctors who we've had on our podcasts, who who I followed, like one guy out of Houston, who may have been at this conference, who knows maybe he actually he probably wasn't because he was most well known for working something like 390 Something days straight from March 2020 to you know, April 2021. And the day that he took off was because he had to like take his kid, like go to his graduation or something. And either People like that personally where I live, who are infectious, an infectious disease doctor who is very hesitant on private practice. And he loves working, he loves researching, he's an author as well. So again, but then on the other side, you have this burnout within the medical industry, where everyone from top to bottom is leaving. And this is because they had the mindset of, hey, I want to get this job because it pays this paycheck. And instead of, hey, I want to work in the shop, because I'm passionate about it, or because I love it or because I'm interested in it. And those are the people, the ones who went into it for the paycheck. Those are the ones who ended up leaving the space or quitting or scaling back their hours in the middle of the of the pandemic. And so at the end of the day, to go back to your question, as you take 27 credit hours, I ended up with a three nine GPA that that semester, when I was in college, I believe the average was like 21 or 22 credit hours that I took every semester over the four year period. And it's just all about mindset, it's all about, you know, was I forced to do this, because my parents made me No, in fact, my student advisors, they made me stop by mental because you can't take 27 credit hours, you can't really take more than 19 at most schools without paying a hefty fee. And they say, Oh, we've never had that problem, because students don't want to take more than, you know, 18 credit hours or 19 credit hours. And so I was able to get the school to pay for those additional classes. But they said you must stop by like health services, and talk to a therapist and get your head checked to make sure you're able to do this because they were like, you're gonna fail, you're gonna do poorly, you're going to do badly. This just doesn't make any sense. Is that alright? Fine, I'll go do it. And I told the therapist, I said, look, let's just get right, your note or whatever. And let's move on with life because I'm going to do this. And I'm going to prove all you people wrong. And I ended up doing that.

Kelley Skar: 7:05

What was the why behind it Naresh? Like, was there? Did you have something to prove? Did you? Like did you want to prove? Did you have some sort of an idea on mindset? And this was like proving a theory? Or, like, why? What was the big? Why, I guess is the question.

Naresh Vissa: 7:19

Yep. Another excellent question. So a couple of things. Number one, I graduated with three majors, and two different programs. And from an honors program, so with honors, so this honors program requires you to do conduct a lot of research and come out with a thesis and presented like a PhD type of thing. So it was not a personal thing it was I wasn't trying to prove anything, I was just trying to get three different majors. And these were all majors that were practical, hard skills. Initially, I went in as a double major finance and broadcast and digital journalism. And then after speaking to some people who had more experience, they were like, Look, if you're going to do finance, you should also do accounting, because accounting is good to know. And it's good to it's a good degree to have in your back pocket. So that's when I added the third major. And I said, okay, in order to graduate within on time, you know, four years, this is what I have to do that I have to take all these classes in order to graduate on time. And so that's what I that's what I did. It was purely for those majors. And I learned a lot in the process. Look, if you have children, my kids are young, or my kid is young. But if you have children, we're going to go off to college, my advice would be, don't just go there and drink a lot of beer and have a good time. That's something you should definitely do as well. But you're looking back, a college campus has so many resources, and you want to take advantage because you're paying for these resources. And so many people go through reputable colleges, and they spend their parents money. And they just drink beer for four years and do a lot of other things. Let's put it that way. But you want to you want to get your money's worth. And and the way I saw it was, this is a chance for me because I thought at the time from day one college, I'm done learning, which is not true at all. But I said I want to learn as much as possible. Take as many classes as I can be exposed to as many ideas as possible, because I know it's only going to help me with whatever I do.

Alyssa Stanley: 9:42

I want to talk about mindset. I think to our listeners, it's no surprise that that's my jam. I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for mindset. So where do you think you got your kind of resilience and go get a mindset because I can assure you not every college freshman goes in saying I want to take as many credit hours and learn as much as I can.

Naresh Vissa: 10:06

Two things the people you surround yourself with, I shouldn't say three things, the people you surround yourself with, how your parents read, or the standards your parents set for you. And number three, I guess you can say religion. So I'll break each one of these three, down. When I got to college, I made friends with people who were high achievers, these are people who to date even more than me on paper, we probably did the same. But I still call them to this day, because I'm just like, Dude, you're so much better than me. Like, you're so much more accomplished than me. You're just crushing life and everything that comes with life. And those were the, that's now today, when we were in college, they were still superstars. And I knew freshman year, wow, like this guy is going to push me to, to be better to be my best self. So that's number one, the people who you surround yourself with, I think it was Jim Rohn. Who who said, and this is really cliche, but Jim Rohn said something like you are the average of the three people you spend the most, who you spend your most time with. And it's absolutely absolutely true. I think it's more than three people, I think three people at any given time. So you could spend, you know, three people you spend the most time with in school, the three people who you spend the most time with at home, three people who you spend the most time with on the phone. So yeah, you do end up becoming the average of that. And the beauty of technology like podcasts like yours is people can now spend time with people like you and me through my podcast podcast, we hear podcasts. So if you're listening to this, and you're like, Oh, the people who I hang out with are losers, and therefore I'm a loser because Jim Rohn said, so no, you can get out your phone and be a part of of a good group that you want to be a part of. So that's number one, people who you surround yourself with number two, the standards were set pretty high, in my personal situation, just a personal thing. The standards are set pretty high, because I'm a younger brother. And my older brother is just since he was five or six years old, he was just way ahead of the curve. And in most things, at least most academically oriented things. Now professionally, he's way, way, way ahead of the curve. But it was growing up in an environment where my parents encouraged excellence, they encouraged results. And they did what they needed to do. So that we could find till we could gain skills and find our passions, you know, putting us on different activities, whether it's athletics or academics, or whatever it might be, it was we're going to put you in these things, and you're going to take them seriously. And you're going to do well at them. And if you don't do well at them, or if you don't take them seriously, then we're not going to put you back in these things. So they would put us in things like piano and violin, which I didn't really care much about. And I obviously did not become good at them, I did not have any interest in in them. And so therefore I stopped doing those things. But I pursued the things that I did like, and so that's another that's another way to hone in on what you're good at and to pursue those things, which is what I did when I was in college. It's been such a long time. So I've talked about college. But anyway, and then the third thing religion. So I think this is very important not being religious, but having a philosophy to live by. And so I happened to get it from my religion. And it's this philosophy of what in Hinduism, which I'm a practicing Hindu is the philosophy of dharma, d H A R M A, and it contains it consists of two primary principles, the number one number one is attaining knowledge. So there you got it right there, you know, why are you taking all these credit? Well, because in the hermetic philosophy, the idea is to never stop attaining knowledge, the knowledge attainment doesn't stop after you get your degrees. Knowledge attainment is a lifelong journey. And you continue to live a dharmic life and you will eventually attain what's called Moksha and eventually nirvana. So it's this idea of constantly seeking knowledge and being curious about the world being curious about each other and questioning and all of that good stuff. And then the second concept behind karma is that you live you take principle number One, and you live according to principle number one, and you don't expect any results back, you do it because you want to do it because this is how you are living life. So you're not taking that class with the intention of just getting an A, you're not, you're not going to that meeting, because you're trying to land $500,000 deal or contract, there's something beyond the money beyond the grades. You need to be pursuing your everyday actions, your everyday life, because of that purpose because of that meaning, not because of some quick result, or material possession that you're going to get in return.

Kelley Skar: 15:49

Yeah, well, it sounds to me like you've just kind of described karma, right? Like you get in, you get in your you take what you what you put in, I mean, I'm not going to, if somebody asked for my help, I'm not going to think to myself, well, well, how am I going to benefit from helping this person? Right? That isn't how it works, right. And so I love that description. I loved how you described that.

Naresh Vissa: 16:10

Karma is a extremely. So that's also from our religion, same idea, same concept. The difference is, karma has more to do with an individual act, like you said, if somebody asks you for help, are you going to help that person, if you if you were to take a collection of karmic acts, which literally should be millions over the course of a lifetime, if you're living a dharmic life, now we're talking about dharma. So you can look at the collection of karmic acts as living the life of dharma. And that's what I'm talking about more so.

Kelley Skar: 16:43

Well, I love this conversation. But I do want to shift it just a little bit. I'm in the in the write up that you gave us you'd mentioned moving from being an employee to to an entrepreneur. And so in talking about mindset, we understand that there's a certain imply was an employee before I was an entrepreneur as well, I think a lot of people probably were and so how did you how did you make that move from being the employee where you know, you're told what to do, you're told when to do it, you're told how to do it, you know, making that move from from that type of mindset to being the entrepreneur where it's now you've got to figure everything out. Now, you're telling yourself that this is how I do it, this is when I do it. And you know, like that sort of thing. So how what was the what was the kind of path that you took to to shift that mindset.

Naresh Vissa: 17:29

I didn't have your traditional corporate employee type of job, I worked on Wall Street, I worked for a large medium sized business, which is an our corporation got some great experience, like you read out in the bio earlier at companies of different sizes. And my, my first job out of graduate school, was at this medium sized business, I was a director. And I don't I wouldn't call myself an employee. I was not an employee of the company, I was an intrapreneur of the company, because they asked me to start up a brand new division that they had no experience on, it actually surprised me. I was like, Oh, I'm going to be told what to do. And I'm going to follow orders. And they recruited me, gave me a great compensation benefits package and said, Alright, this is yours, you, you just you just figure it out. And I was actually disappointed because I was very young at the time. And I was like, I have no idea what's I just have no clue. I don't even know what the company does. I don't know how the company functions, how it operates. And now you'd want me to do this. Wow, like, so that quickly taught me that I needed I was not your typical employee who was just at a cubicle and doing the same thing over and over again. That was a great exercise and great experience. So that when I left my full time job to pursue Krishna, media and marketing, which is my digital marketing agency, I was able to hit the ground running with that same intrapreneur mindset. The only difference was I was not beholden to a boss. I didn't have to deal with any author, I had a lot more freedom and autonomy over my personal life, my work life. And instead of working for one company, I could now really work for many different companies or clients. So that's how I made the shift. It was easier for me I think somebody who has been bogged down in corporate for decades and decades, it's going to be much harder to make that transition because they probably didn't network within the industry as well. They didn't exercise what I like to call the idea muscle they that or we can call it mental, mental health, mental strength. They didn't exercise those mental muscles. And they're just going to struggle a lot more than somebody who's an intrapreneur leader within a within a company Whether it's a big company or a small company,

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Todd Foster: 20:12

Have you always been a leader naturally? Or did you gain that skill as you grew older?

Naresh Vissa: 20:17

I never wanted to be a leader, I still don't want to be a leader. I think it's something where I just pursue what I want to pursue, and I want to do well at it. And then people just kind of follow that I never said, I want to be a leader. And people will tell me that, oh, you know, do you want to become a politician in the future? And I say, heck, no, that's, that's not. That's not who I am or what I want to do, I want to do what I want to do. And if people follow me that this actually comes from Buddhist philosophy, where Buddha before he even started Buddhism, he said, I want to leave Hinduism. And this is how I want to live my life according to these principles. And so he lived his life according to those principles. And he meditated for years and years. And people saw him and they're like, this guy lives a very interesting life of barely eating any food. And just meditating and being at peace with himself and giving up he was a prince, he gave up that life of royalty, he gave up his marriage, he gave up his children gave up family, everything. And it was never his intention to start a religion or a movement. He said, This is just how I'm going to live life. And then people follow. They were like, that's a really interesting way to live life, I want to do the same thing. And before he knew it, he had, meanwhile, 10s of 1000s of followers before he died, and then it became a major world religion. That's how I see it myself, I don't see myself as a leader, I just see myself as somebody who wants to do well, who wants to succeed and who wants to pursue what I think I'm good at and what I'm interested in.

Alyssa Stanley: 22:11

In all the things that you have done. You're a father, you run a marketing company, you're also an author. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Because it already seems like your plate is so full, and then I read that you're an author of two best selling books. What is that, like?

Naresh Vissa: 22:29

So everything is is connected. It's not like I'm doing like completely disjointed things. So I'm an author of what I'm good at, which is books on business books on online and digital marketing, ecommerce, the authoring the podcasting came from, again, what does our company we do a lot of copywriting, we do a lot of content writing, I have a degree in broadcast and digital journalism. So it's always been a passion of mine, working in the media. So these are not disjointed by any means. I've always loved writing, and I'm working on my next few books. So how do I find the time to do it all? writing to me, is all about inspiration. So when I find inspiration like I did this morning, and yes, I am going to release some books on parenting and fatherhood, eventually. But I got inspiration this morning. And I wrote a knocked out, you know, maybe 500 to 600 words. And that's how I write my books. I whenever I get inspiration, I knock out the writing. So tell us a little bit about the books that you've written.

Alyssa Stanley: 23:47

What is the purpose behind them, you know, other than marketing, it feels like you have a lot of knowledge. And, and I kind of want to take a minute and talk about knowledge and wisdom because there I think there is a difference in sharing knowledge and sharing wisdom. Knowledge, I feel like is Google knowable, you can find it, you can go to college for it. Wisdom is something that I think right now the world is craving. And it it I tend to wonder how much wisdom and knowledge you have mixed in these novels.

Naresh Vissa: 24:18

So writing any of the books, whether it's TRUMPBOOK or PODCASTNOMICS, or 50 SHADES, whatever it might be writing anything. If you're in gainfully employed, and we had a guest on our podcast, talk about this. And I'll talk about that a little bit more. But you are restricted in the people say Oh, freedom of speech, know that there is no such thing as freedom of speech. When it comes to going into an office and collecting a paycheck. You do what you are told. And if you don't do what you are told, you're out, that's how it works. That's how it's always worked. There was and people anyone who's worked anywhere even as a low level cashier at a McDowell. Animals will tell you there is you don't go to McDonald's and flip burgers and in the middle, start kneeling because of some political initiative that you want to share with the customer, the people are going there to get their burgers and skip their fries. Okay. They don't care about what's going on in Ukraine or Uighurs in China, they, they, they don't they, you might because of some other reason, but they don't, they're there to get their burger, and to eat, and go home. So I want to bring this up. Because when you do work in a corporate environment, it is very difficult to start that side business, it is very difficult to write that book, it is very difficult to have a free and open thinking mind because you are restricted by your employer, mentally, not just on paper, but mentally you are restricted. And so when you go out on your own, you'll realize when you have to figure out how to make your own money, you have to become creative and how you're going to market yourself and promote yourself, you are going to realize, not just realize, but you're going to just create freedom for yourself. The reason why people go into business for themselves like it's it's torture going into business for yourself. It really is you have to be a masochist, to deal with the ups and the downs and the horrible clients and the horrible people. I mean, why would anyone want to do this to themselves when they can just go work a job and collect a paycheck every two weeks.

Kelley Skar: 26:31

If anything, like you said you're a masochist. If you're if you decide that you're going to be an entrepreneur, right? Because if anything, you're gonna work probably twice as hard than than what you were working when you were in that job working your 9 to 5, 40 a week, right now you're gonna be putting in 60 7080 hours a week. And it's like, okay, well, when does the freedom start to play into this?

Naresh Vissa: 26:50

People go into business for themselves, they start companies, because of the freedom Yes, money can be a byproduct of that freedom eventually. And you can that money can create even more freedom and nice things. But it's the freedom, the freedom to stay at home and be a stay at home dad the freedom to create my own schedule and take calls at a certain time of the day or the freedom to just hop on a plane and go on vacation on a whim notice, you can absolutely do that. I've learned that investing is the easiest way to create financial and overall freedom. If you're just going to go work your job or even start your own business and be dependent on the income that you get from that business. You're just constantly going to be working. And I'm seeing it firsthand. Now just personal family type of situations where people had great jobs, they did all the things that they were supposed to do. And you get well into retirement you live longer, the harder it is to take care of yourself physically and even financially. And the best way to set yourself up for retirement is if you do have that corporate job or if you do have your own business, you set up a 401 K and you max out every year you max out and you don't have the money just sitting in there. You had you should invest it in good high quality stocks or real estate or something that is going to appreciate because I'm here to tell you that cash flow investments will pay you money. And they over a long I mean, I'm 35 years away from even considering retirement. So over a 35 year period, they are going to appreciate there's a 99 If they do not appreciate the world has already come to an end so people can reach out to me if they visit my website, nareshvissa.com. And there's a contact button there. You can just contact me through there and say Hey, I heard you on the podcast and I want to take you up on your free real estate investment coaching. I can absolutely do that and you'll never pay it you'll never pay me a dime ever. On the social media side that has more to do with my company Krish Media & Marketing which is a digital marketing agency. The website is krishmediamarketing.com. It's not just social media that we do. That's just one of many many different services that we offer. We do web design, web development, affiliate marketing, email marketing, copywriting ebook publishing book publishing audiobook I mean all types of book publishing podcast production, the list goes on and on and on. You can see all the services we offer at krishmediamarketing.com.

Voiceover: 29:37

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