How To Manage a Full-Service Agency

Introduction
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[00:00:00] Naresh Vissa: So Naresh, it's great to have you on the show today. tell my audience a little bit about yourself. I was reading your bio, you seem to have a fascinating story. So maybe you can share thatI 

Starting Krish Media Marketing
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[00:00:10] Naresh Vissa: started my company, Krish Media Marketing, in 2013, so it's actually almost exactly 12 years ago. I was working full time. In corporate, I worked on Wall Street for a little bit. I was an equities analyst, a financial analyst, and then I worked for probably what was still is the The largest financial marketing company in the world in Baltimore, Maryland.

So I worked there for a little bit, got some excellent experience in online and digital marketing, specifically on the financial and investment side. So then I left that company, like I said, in 2013, We didn't say I started Krish Media Marketing, my online and digital media marketing agency, because I was doing it on the side.

I just never incorporated the business, but I took over that side hustle full time. And now we're, here we are 12 years in, still in business. And it's allowed me to learn a lot about business, e commerce, technology, but it's also the best part is it got me involved in the real estate industry, because like I said, I came from.

Wall Street, and many of my clients were real estate companies. So I learned about real estate investing, and in 2017, bought my first investment property in Scaled, and also started a second company called Krish Capital, which is a real estate investment, sales, and marketing company. So, uh, those are my two primary businesses, Krish Media and Marketing and Krish Capital.

And my two niches are online and digital media and marketing, as well as Real estate.

[00:01:46] Jim Banks: I

Expanding Services and Full-Service Debate
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[00:01:46] Jim Banks: don't mean this to sound critical, but I've, I've always been a bit skeptical when people say we're a full service agency, but certainly reading your bio, it seems like you are as close to full service as I think I've probably ever seen. So what, why do you decide to, rather than, uh, niching down as Americans would say, why haven't you gone sort of full service and full blown doing as much as all things to everyone? 

[00:02:10] Naresh Vissa: necessarily say that I do all things to everyone. When I say full service, we do a lot. We don't do a hundred percent. We don't do everything. We don't do mobile app development, for example, but my company's website, you can visit at krishmediamarketing. com And just really quickly, I'm going to just share what we, A lot of what we do, not even all of what we do.

And then I'll let you decide whether we can call it full service or not. So this is the bulk of our, of our revenue. Actually, it's podcast production. It's online public relations, reputation management, SEO, design and development that includes web development. Like I said, it does not include mobile app development.

We do not do that. We do online special events, copywriting, email marketing, book publishing, expert booking and recruitment, marketing strategy, product launch. And management, project management, affiliate marketing, business development, lead generation, pay per click, AdWords, social media marketing. So that's, that's a list of services that we offer.

It sounds like a lot, but I've built, when I started my company, it was just me and I only offered. Like you said, to niche down, I only offered two or three services when I got started in 2013. And then in 2015, I realized that my clients keep asking for more that I didn't do. So that's when I went out, found people to hire, to partner with, and to grow the business.

So that's why. It's not that I had this strategy of being full service, being all in one. That's what my clients wanted. And initially, I would just Send them over to other companies that I knew and get nothing back in return. And then I said, why am I doing that when I can just do it myself, do it myself, meaning not learn all these things, but hire people who could help me out.

[00:04:04] Jim Banks: Because 

[00:04:04] Naresh Vissa: Well,

[00:04:04] Jim Banks: whatever, right?

Whatever they kind of end up choosing is their discipline, right? Usually it's because they, they like it. It's something they, they're good at. I mean, that certainly was my sort of experience. I started off trying to do all things to everyone and then realized that I was probably not very good at SEO, better than most people, but still not very good.

Um, but really had a great passion and strength in paid media. So like, you know, uh, PPC,

[00:04:47] Naresh Vissa: you bring up a good point. You bring up a good point. And the, the ironic. The other aspect of this is that I'm not personally really good at anything. Those two or three services that I initially offered, those were the, like, the three things that I was really good at. I was good at copywriting. I was good at email marketing.

I was good at the podcasting stuff, whether it was a production or the front end production, the back end production. That's what I was good at. But I'm not good at all those other things. That you brought up, but

[00:05:18] Jim Banks: I mean,

[00:05:19] Naresh Vissa: know people, I know people who are, and I, and I know people who hire us, who subcontract out to us, they're like SEO companies, for example, and they'll subcontract to us.

Because they only do SEO, and they're very good at that, but they say, Hey, I'm not good at X, Y, and Z. So they'll, you know, come to us to do the work. And those people, some of these companies are just like one man shops. They just have no interest in growing, or in managing people, or recruiting, or Or doing sales and business development.

I like the, I'm actually, I think I'm good at being a manager because, and we can talk about that later, but, but I like,

[00:06:05] Jim Banks: to, um, to kind of manage the relationship with a client. So even though you, you are getting. Support from other people. Ultimately, the buck stops with you as far as all of the deliverables and everything else, right? Still, your agency is on the hook for it, 

And it's obviously, you have to make sure that the partners that you're enlisting to help, one, have the expertise, but

[00:06:25] Naresh Vissa: I'm the face, you can call it the face, I'm the face, the spokesperson of the business. So to get updates on projects, you come to me for payments, you come to me and, and the people who work under me.

[00:06:36] Jim Banks: program. Uh,

Outsourcing and Global Talent
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[00:06:37] Naresh Vissa: are mostly independent contractors overseas. I used to have people here in the United States. I know this is not, uh, like, um, an America first, like, you know, pro America type of thing, but that's actually, at the end of the day, where the arbitrage is.

It's not in the high quality services that we offer or anything. Like, the reason why I've been in business for 12 years now is because of that arbitrage of, uh, We're able to charge, not U. S. rates, we're able to charge a discount on U. S. rates, so, so we have low costs, low pricing, but, uh, my overhead is, is much lower because of the overseas contractors who I employ, and I pay them well, but that's how much, that's the gap that there is between And especially with the recent inflation that the U.

S. has seen, the wages have gone up even more compared to these other countries that I outsource to.

[00:07:34] Jim Banks: Yes, it's interesting you say that, I mean, Like my very first agency which I set up in 2000, which I sold it 2006, I actually sold it for four million dollars. And one of the things that I did was I realized very early on that there was again, as you say, there was the ability to you to leverage, more cost effective resource to do some of The day to day things that would, it would make sense to outsource, but rather than just going, right, I'm going to outsource it.

I mean, I outsourced some of my work to, um, to a team in India. The, the guy who ran it was a good friend of mine. I knew him very well, right. But I flew over to India. I spent like, I think a week on site. Um, I sat in an office, you know, with, with all of his team. Um, I was basically employing seven people to do the work.

he said, is it all right if I put more people in the room? I said, sure, why not? Right. So I ended up like, I think I trained about 35 of his staff to kind of do the work that we would typically do or had done here, um, in the UK. Um, and he ultimately ended up selling his business for 10 times as much money as I sold my business for, right?

Because what he was able to do was he was able to capitalize and provide expertise to, Um, all the sort of big sort of banks and financial institutions in India, right, who were looking for help, and he had, like, all the people fully trained, well, kind of, versed in, in, kind of, managing paid ads, um, and, you know, he was able to, kind of, completely corner the market, and, for me, again, I was very transparent with the clients that I work with in terms of, this is how we, the process that we go through.

I think transparency is probably one of the most important things. I think a lot of, as you mentioned there, some people outsource or subcontract to other people, right, and it sometimes can become a little bit like Chinese whispers, you're like, well, I don't really know who's actually managing this on a day to day basis, which was why I asked you the question of, are you the person where, where the buck stops?

Because ultimately, if there's any questions, queries, complaints, they go through you rather than going to a third party that probably doesn't have as much skin in the game as you do.

[00:09:25] Naresh Vissa: Yeah, and, and look, the, I think it's good in the sense that there's a reason why people are outsourcing. You brought up India. A lot of my people are in India and the Philippines, other nations as well. There are pluses to this and part of those pluses include here in the United States, the talent just isn't as great.

And of course, the cost is a lot more, so why would you pay more for talent that isn't as good? And I'll give you some examples. If you were to go to India, so like, I haven't gone in a while, but when I used to go, I went every year from 2015 to 2019. I went every single year. And they have billboards and advertisements everywhere.

You go anywhere. And you see on the walls, on the billboards, on the cars, it's saying SEO Services, Web Design, Web Development. You don't see that here really at all. When you're, when you see the billboards, you don't see SEO Services or Web Design or IT or Backend Tech or, or, uh, even some really niche VBA, Visual Basic, C Java, you name it.

It's everywhere. And that's because they have so many people who can do it. Whereas here in the United States, if you could do that, that's a six figure starting salary. If you could do any one of those things at a, at a company, that's a six figure starting salary. And the point that I'm making here is that there are a lot of people who can do it there, and they're competing against each other.

That's why the prices are, are driven down. And I can ham the company. My work or our work to my teams overseas and literally hand the work, you know, at the end of a business day at let's say 4 p. m. Eastern. And when I wake up or start my work day at 9 a. m. Eastern, the next day, everything is done. The work is everything is done and it's very good, efficient.

It's very good quality, efficient. Whereas I've worked with teams here in the United States and. What would take my team overseas, let's say two or three business days, would take my teams here in the United States two or three weeks for double figures times the cost. So that's what I mean by, look, I'm very pro American.

I think America has a lot of potential, but the United States is severely lagging when it comes to, this is tech at the end of the day, we can call this Tech, Information Services, IT, these are the services, and the United States is still lagging behind these other countries, and it's not just because of higher pay. 

[00:12:02] Jim Banks: Yeah, and again, I think it was quite interesting that, everyone just assumes, that because you're paying Less money that the quality of the output is like less, And for me, that was never the case, I always found that the quality was much better, 

Um, and you

[00:12:18] Naresh Vissa: Never the case.

[00:12:19] Jim Banks: it's, it's proportionate, right? I mean, like a good salary in America. even here in the UK, if you're based in central London, you probably need to earn twice as much money as somebody in some rural location, right, in order to cover your rent and mortgage payments and things like that.

Right. And I think that's where the arbitrage side of things, with countries like India, the Philippines, the one that really got it going for me initially was Ukraine. we used to use Ukrainian developers. They were really good for PHP and that sort of thing.

Um, and then they realized that they were probably worth far more than we were paying them. So they increased their rates to be on a par with what we would pay if we were outsourcing the work to, a development team in America. Right. And it's just Why would I go to Ukraine if I can get somebody in the States for the same money?

I'll just get somebody in the States, I think in some respects that was, they priced themselves out the market, at that particular point in time. I mean, don't get me wrong, Ukrainian developers were still amazingly good, I still keep in touch with a lot of the people I used to work with

Pricing Strategy and Business Growth
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[00:13:16] Naresh Vissa: let's talk about pricing because this is really important. When I started my company, I got some really bad advice and pricing is really important to any digital marketing business or any business in general. When I got some really bad advice, which I took to heart. Which was, hey, price, charge as much as you can.

Just charge the highest price that a customer is, can pay. Not even is willing to pay, but can pay. So that's what I ran with, and I made a quick, you can call it a quick buck, over a period of two years. I, I made the quick buck, so what I quickly realized, not quickly, but what I realized is, The retention was lower and no matter how much work we did or the quality of our work, the client always felt like they're being shortchanged and they wanted more.

No matter, no matter what, we would do everything that they asked. We would do everything perfectly, high quality, everything. But they felt like, Hey, I need more, or I feel like I'm not getting enough for what I'm paying. And it actually led to a lawsuit. So after that legal experience. I said, I need to change the strategy of my pricing strategy so that it's low cost and the way that I make my money is through volume and through upselling.

So, I changed my pricing strategy so that it was, like I said, low cost to get people through the door and that's how I grew my clientele. And I offered referral programs and I give discounts and I even sometimes give away free services because my strategy is, Low cost, high quality. I mean, there, there's nothing better than that type of strategy for a client.

And that, that really extended the life because there was a legitimately a period two, three years into my business where I thought I might have to shut this down and, or, or I might have to like get a full time job. when I changed that pricing strategy, things just really turned around.

[00:15:13] Jim Banks: So it would be remiss of me not to have you on. 

Podcasting Journey and Insights
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[00:15:16] Jim Banks: I mean, you're, you're a multi, you've written multiple books. Um, I think like when I looked at Amazon, you had seven books that you've written. Um, I don't know if you wrote all of them on your own or co authored some of them, but, certainly seven that I could see on your Amazon, profile. 

a lot of those books have been around, around podcasting, I'm curious to, to understand. I know that you, you had your, your podcast, which you set up. It looks like you set, set it up right about the time that COVID happened, right? So, was that kind of like intentional or just, you just 

[00:15:46] Naresh Vissa: That was intentional. That was intentional, but let me go all the way

[00:15:49] Jim Banks: Yeah.

[00:15:50] Naresh Vissa: 2008 when I got into AM FM radio. My background initially was in, in not digital media, but in traditional media. So we're talking, AM, FM, Radio, Journalism, TV, Print, Magazine, Newspaper. One of my majors was in Broadcast and Digital Journalism.

Uh, and I brought up the Wall Street stuff. I also have degrees in Accounting, Finance, Business Management. But, but talking about the The writing and the podcasting. So I did have a degree in that. I did get some experience working for CNN and for Clear Channel Communications. And I started up at that financial media and marketing company, the, in, in Baltimore, I started up really what was the first known online financial radio network.

Now you see all sorts of. Podcasts and online networks. So back then in 2011, I started that up. And by early 2013, it was a seven figure enterprise. So I was, so I basically figured out how to podcast, how to podcast effectively and how to monetize podcasting. So that was one of the first services that I offered when I started Christian Media and Marketing in 2013.

It was podcast production, podcast services. And in 2014, I wrote the book Podcastnomics, which was my first book, podcast. I've written five books. Uh, maybe my name's attributed to some other books, but I've primarily written five books. And, and Podcastnomics was my first book. It became a bestseller, a number one bestseller on Amazon.

It's still my highest selling book. Today, out of all the five books, but I didn't start my own podcast that I hosted until 2020, March 2020 is when I started the work from home show. I'm the host of that. So we had five seasons of that show. And we now it's just a one off, like we might, I might publish an episode here and there.

But it was initially in 2020, three days a week. Then in 21, we scaled back to one day a week, and then last year, 2024, it became almost a monthly show, so just one a month, and now it's just one off whenever we get an interesting guest or an interesting episode topic to talk about, we'll publish something.

So that's my background in podcasting. I highly, I'd love to offer your listeners a free copy of Podcastnomics. It might be a little bit dated because it's almost 11 years old. But at the time it was actually a breakthrough book on podcasting because there weren't too many books on podcasting back then in 2014.

In fact, most of the country, most of the world didn't even know what a podcast was in 2014. So I, it, I came out with that book at really the perfect time because 2015 is where we saw an inflection point in podcasting where people started, where podcasting gained a massive option.

[00:18:38] Jim Banks: So just, do you think, so, again, I'm always I was trying and look and see at what point at what sort of stage we are right and as you say there was like an inflection point right clearly Covid pushed a lot of people into podcasts I was blown away I think the stats said that most podcasts don't get past three episodes right which I thought was like incredibly It is, and obviously, I've been doing this podcast for just over a year and a couple of months.

And for me, it was, again, I wanted to do interviews. Doing interviews is so much harder than doing solo stuff. Doing video is so much harder than doing audio, right? So, but again, I think the thing I'm curious to know what your thoughts are is, YouTube has clearly set out their stall as being a podcast and there's definitely a lot of purists that say podcasts are audio only and, video doesn't get a look in.

I know Spotify have just given podcasters the ability to do video, so it's almost like they're trying to compete. What are your thoughts? I mean, is a video podcast a podcast or is it like a YouTube channel?

[00:19:43] Naresh Vissa: A video podcast can be a podcast if there is an audio format of it. So, if you're just coming out with TikTok videos or Instagram videos, that's not a podcast. Even YouTube videos, that's not a podcast. The point of a podcast is for It's an audio file. At the end of the day, a podcast is You take an audio file, you take AM, FM radio, put it into an audio file that you can listen to in your car, while you're cooking, or while you're sweeping the floor, then it becomes a podcast.

So the important thing with podcasting is there has to be an audio format. And many of these YouTube videos today don't have the audio portion of it. You actually, you have to actually go on YouTube and listen to it. Turn on the video. So no, those are not podcasts and you are at a huge benefit by having audio versions of your video, because once you have the audio versions, you can put that into, let's say a Spotify or a Libsyn or a podcast hosting provider, and they can spit it out to Amazon Music and Amazon Prime and Alexa and.

Spotify, and TuneIn, and Stitcher, and Pandora, and all these other networks and platforms where people can listen to podcasts. The point of a podcast is to listen. So I think it's important to have both audio and video. We're doing video right now. And I'm sure you're going to have an audio version as well, but it's important to do both.

The more places you can be, the greater the chance that you can, that you will gain more visibility. Now, I personally, I prefer to listen because I brought up those things earlier when I'm cooking or sweeping the floor or driving, I can't be watching something and I prefer not to watch something. It's just a pop in my, my earbuds or my, my Bluetooth headset and just,So it's important to be everywhere because everyone's different.

Some people prefer video. They prefer just turning on a video on their phone and watching something. So it just really depends. 

[00:21:37] Jim Banks: I'm a little bit of a, I try to make sure, again, I'm not lazy insofar as I don't just upload the same video file and then post the same audio onto, my hosting platform, right, but I do have that capability. But what I'm trying to make absolutely sure is whenever I'm doing a video interview, right, that we don't, I'm not sharing screens.

And I'm not saying, well, one, this screen is this, because that's really would be It wouldn't work on audio, right? Whereas I think, our conversation that we're having now would work in video. People want to watch the video, right? But equally, if I was walking, let's say I went out for a walk, right?

I could be watching the video at home when I'm sitting around having a cup of coffee, right? And then go out the door, put my headphones in, and then I could just toggle it and switch to audio only. And it will pick up more or less where I got to in that particular episode. So I can continue that.

So again, if I go into the car to get the Store or something like that, right? I don't have to have the video on to get the experience, And I just, again, I'm curious to see because I think a lot of people that may have made their money as a podcaster, they made it on the back of downloads.

And I've talked to a lot of guests that I've had, And I said, look, I probably subscribe to maybe 50 to 100 podcasts a month. Over the years, right? And I've got auto downloads for virtually all of them set on, if downloads is the metric that matters, right? Yes, I'm downloading 50 to 100 episodes, probably a week, 

But the reality of it is, I might only listen to two or three of them, And, if you're a sponsor, Should you be looking at something other than downloads now? what's the the landscape now as far as monetization of podcasts for, from that perspective?

Monetizing Podcasts
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[00:23:14] Naresh Vissa: Well, part of the reason why I wrote the book Podcastnomics, the nomics part, is the, uh, Business side of it, the monetization side of it. And there are really three or four different ways that you can monetize a podcast. Number one is through advertising, which I don't necessarily recommend because if a podcast has a dependent on advertising from day one, it's going to fail.

It's, it's going to take you years and years to get sponsors and advertisers. So it should be a part of your strategy, just not immediately. Number two is being a loss leader. To sell an existing product or service. So a lot of businesses start podcasts because let's say they're a CPA tax company, they start a podcast and the end goal is to attract an audience, attract.

Listeners, viewers, so that they can sell their CPA tax services. That's actually the best way to, to make money off podcasting, because if you have an existing service or product to sell, then, boom, the podcast is your lead generator. Another way is to, another way to make money is to sell other people's stuff.

So, you have a guest on, the guest plugs their book, the guest plugs their products or services, you work out an affiliate arrangement to sell their stuff, that's another way to make money. It doesn't even have to be a guest, it can be another company. You can refer people to a different location, a different company.

So that, those are the three primary revenue drivers for podcasting. Of course, there are other Tertiary, if you want to call it, revenue drivers, like donations. I know people use this Patreon and they, they're able to get funding through donations and just paying people, paying stuff. That's a way you can make money, but I say you should do it all.

you should literally, you should do it all. But the most effective in my experience, and this is backed by, by academic journals, the most effective way to make money off podcasts is to sell an existing product or service to your audience. www.

[00:25:20] Jim Banks: something that. So, yeah. has a fairly simple solution, right? And I know a lot of people are going, I've got to go and find sponsors. And it's really hard. I don't know. I'm not a good salesman and so on.

Right. And, and as you say, like, I remember, um, I was listening to that. There's, um, a guy who used to work for Think Media. He kind of branched out on his own called Omar El Takrori. Um, he's, is, is podcast called The Department. Right. And, and, you know, he, he kind of posted this, this, um, uh, podcast episode and it blew my mind because he basically said, you know, One of the things you should do is, like, every single episode that you have, right, should be sponsored by your own brand, right?

So, if you have product, services, or things that you're promoting, right, then there should be something in there that is a, you know, whether it's a five day challenge or, you know, a free audit or whatever it might be. That's something that you can kind of build into your own brand. Sort of framework as far as the podcast itself is concerned, right?

You know, so every single episode should have a sponsor, even if you don't have a sponsor sponsor in the traditional sense of somebody paying you an amount of money for a host read ad or wherever it might be, but every single episode Uh, podcast episode that you have, um, should have something in there.

And I mean, like virtually all of my early ones, there's nothing in there about the company, like I run an agency. So the, the, the podcast, if you like is my side hustle. Right. But I, I've, I know I've picked up clients on the back of. You know, um, the fact that I have a podcast, right, so that, that in itself is, is validation that, to the point you made, uh, but it's, it's amazing how many people don't do that.

They don't actually promote things that they do themselves, right, which, again, I think is, is probably the, the easiest, lowest hanging fruit that there is for, uh, anyone that's actually a podcaster.

[00:27:02] Naresh Vissa: You're absolutely right about that. And like I said, my background is in media journalism. I came from AMFM and I'll admit I'm now out of the podcasting space. I wrote Podcastnomics. It's, it's grown so much since 2014. When that book came out. Now you have Wall Street, you have Silicon Valley getting involved, not just starting their own podcasts, but investing literally billions and billions of dollars into this form of content.

This is now a very hot form of content. And in the United States, now the new Trump administration has made it an initiative to really bring To give podcasts and independent content creators the same visibility that the legacy media like Fox and ABC and NBC and CNN that, yep, whatever you want to call them, they now get the same access, the same visibility.

The, the same level of respect in the press rooms and the briefing rooms as all those legacy media. And I think that's great because I've been an advocate for podcasts since 2010 or so. I've been a huge advocate of podcasts and it's how I've been getting a lot of my Content and information for 15 years now.

So I was ahead of the curve, but now if you talk to anybody under the age of 40, I don't want to say anybody, but if you talk to at least 70 to 80 percent of people under the age of 40, they'll say the same thing. I get my, my content from independent media, like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X. And they'll actually specifically pinpoint the podcast.

So it's, I think this is great what the administration did. And I think the podcast, like I said, that one of the first chapter, it wasn't the first chapter, but one of the first chapters I had in my book podcast was titled the death of radio. And really what I meant by that was the death of. Mainstream news media or traditional legacy media because podcasting now anybody can do it.

Yes, you're going to have a lot of people who fail. Like you said, the average podcaster podcast, like three episodes, and then they quit. But the ones who do make it, there's more than ever, you can open the Apple podcast app, see how many are there. And the ones who made it to the White House. They're not discriminating against anybody.

You could be a sports podcaster and make it to the White House if you satisfy the downloads and listens and hits and social media following, et cetera, et cetera. It's all about success.

[00:29:36] Jim Banks: Yeah, I think it's quite, again, I think it's interesting, I think, um, some stats came out quite recently on this sort of podcast can jump in top 150 places. podcasts in the US for 2024. You know, and again, when you, when you kind of look at it, a lot of people would look at it and get very disheartened, right?

Because, you know, I think probably 80 percent of all the kind of top podcasts were either news, comedy, or TV. or True Crime, right? Those, those, those three sort of categories seem to dominate the, uh, the kind of the listings in terms of the top 150 podcasts, right? But what you tend to find is that a lot, a lot of the sort of the more specialist or, or smaller ones, they are very, very good at building communities, right?

So a lot of them have kind of built communities on the back They're podcast viewership, listenership or whatever. So they're selling merchandise and they have paid membership programs and they have like, you know, live events that take place outside of the actual podcast. They use the podcast to promote the fact that those live events take place, right?

So, you know, again, I think, I think, you know, people need to sort of, um, get out of the, the, stop trying to compare and benchmark themselves to, uh, HubSpot, you know, Podcast Network, uh, Proposition, because, again, you're never going to compete with them, they don't, they've got much deeper pockets, right, to try and sort of aspire to be that top hundred Joe Rogan experience or whatever it might be.

Again, you're just not going to be Joe Rogan, right? So, um, so again, just try and be the best you that you can be, right? And try and find your, find your way, right? I mean, I've, I, I started out, I mean, I really, for the first probably 15 episodes I had, I don't even think I looked at any stats at all. I couldn't care, right?

I mean, for me, it was much more about You know, tripping up, falling over, learning what to do, how to, how all the, how all this stuff worked, right, whereas I think I've got a much better understanding of it now, and, and, you know, I think to your point, I mean, you probably were like that back in, what, 2014, so as a service, you can, you can take away some of those, you know, trip wise that everyone would be tripping over to try and do it themselves, right?

It makes more sense. I mean, I know a lot of people We'll, you know, try and sort of bumble away, do it themselves, you know, I'm probably in that camp, right, whereas probably I should say, you know, I'm going to get somebody to kind of edit my podcast and somebody to kind of do some of that, that, that work on on the sort of back end.

Right. And I'll probably get to it eventually. It's just I enjoy it. I mean, it's something I'm quite passionate about. And for me, The podcast itself has never been about the making money. It's about helping other people, right? And that's, that's my, my main aim in having it, right? So I don't want to spend money because I'm not making money.

Otherwise I'm kind of like taking money away from the main business. And that's not really kind of the

[00:32:39] Naresh Vissa: Anything you do in life, from starting a digital marketing agency, any business, to podcasting, you need to have a passion for it and you need to, you need to do it as if. You're doing it for free. So even when you're starting a business, you need to do it as if you would still do it if you were doing it for free.

If you wouldn't do it for free, then don't do it. And I know a lot of podcasters were like, Oh, I'm going to start this and I'm going to get all these listeners and I'm going to sell all these services and I'm going to get all these advertisers and I'm saying you're jumping the gun. Do you actually have that passion first?

Because if you don't, then you're not going to succeed.

[00:33:15] Jim Banks: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's sort of like. If you're not passionate about true crime, right, then saying you're going to sort of set up a podcast about true crime is just a complete and utter waste of time, right? It's just

AI in Content Creation
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[00:33:27] Naresh Vissa: Well, there, there are hacks like this, which I don't agree with because I know people who didn't get anywhere on book writing for Amazon. So what will happen is people will find this is a hack that a lot of these marketers share in their. Private, secret, mastermind courses, or groups where they say, Hey, this is trending on Google right now.

Last week, let's just say, artificial intelligence was trending on Google, and this China deep seek was trending on Google. So even if you know nothing about Google, AI or DeepSeek, you just, you just write a book about, uh, you know, AI and DeepSeek and you quickly publish it on Amazon because it's going to catch onto the trend and you're going to sell a lot of copies.

It doesn't work because trends are very short lived. And also when people are reading, they will know if you just copy and pasted stuff from the internet or from some, some course, you actually need to put your, when it comes to book writing or a podcast, you actually need to know what you're talking about and become an expert on it and.

[00:34:28] Jim Banks: next time, bye.

[00:34:29] Naresh Vissa: um, put some personality into your words, because if you don't do that, then people aren't going to be interested. So I'm not a fan of just following the herd and following the trends and just coming out with a podcast or coming out with a book for the sake of making a quick buck. It never works.

[00:34:45] Jim Banks: Yeah, I thought it was quite interesting. There was a, I watched the BBC News the other day and they had a kind of a piece on, um, like writing, using AI to write books. Right. And, um, I think what they did was they, they sat down and they created a, How to write a bestseller on Amazon using AI, right? And I think when you go to Amazon, there's probably 50 books that kind of almost have exactly the same title, right?

And they probably have exactly the same LLM that was used, right? So the books are probably identical, right? It's just a different cover. And, uh, you know, and the argument that the BBC reporter was trying to make was, Well, Amazon should be trying to police this and blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, I've always kind of said, the community will police it in and of itself.

If a lot of people kind of leave reviews and say it's horrible and give them a one star, then ultimately, that book will find its way to where it deserves to be right. And I think, you know, generally speaking, you know, yes, it's AI, you know, and I know that everyone is is using it more now, right, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing.

I just think it's got to be used in a way that sort of, as you say, doesn't It doesn't get in the way of your personality, your tone of voice, everything else. So if you're good enough at using AI to write your prompts, using your, um, you know, your information, then you could probably write a fairly decent book.

I mean, I'm not particularly good with grammar. I sort of mostly spent my time at school smoking, drinking, hanging out with friends. Rather than studying, right, that wasn't kind of like something I particularly enjoyed. Um, but, you know, but at the same time, I think, um, you know, it's, it's one of those things, I think, because grammar is not my strength, I can write, generally speaking, in my kind of tone, right?

But then what I can do is I can just push it through, you know, an AI tool and just say, you know, make this kind of more grammatically pleasing to the eye, right? But I can still read it and go. Well, I don't really like the way they use emojis and asterisks and, and, you know, exclamation marks and stuff like that, right?

That's not my style, right? But, um, you know.

[00:36:52] Naresh Vissa: Well, we published, we published a book for an author. He specializes in artificial intelligence as applied to recruiting and HR. And because he knows the AI stuff, he wrote two books that were completely AI generated. And I will say Amazon is cutting down. Amazon is cutting down on the AI stuff. They have their own algorithm, their own software that can.

Tell, hey, this is a AI. This is not like a real person who wrote this stuff. That's a debate for another day, but at the end of the day the public will Like you said, the public will determine whether something is good or not good. And to me, whether it's AI or not, it doesn't matter because when I read something and if I like it, I don't care who wrote it.

So it, so, so that, that's, that's just how I feel personally. We'll see how the AI stuff works. I do think there, there does need to be some regulation for sure. Because if you look at. What AI can do, it's really incredible.

Like it, not only is it replacing humans, but there's a lot of bad stuff that can happen with AI, which the government should regulate in the sense that the government regulates. Regular everyday people and the AI is acting like regular everyday people. Therefore the government should regulate, uh, the AI in, in that sense.

So, um, it's definitely the future and I'm excited for, for my kids because they're going to be doing stuff that's way cooler than running a digital media marketing agency.

Conclusion
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[00:38:26] Jim Banks: So Naresh, Thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Links to all your books will be available in the show notes and all of the links to get in touch with you through your agency. It just remains for me to say thank you for being such a phenomenal guest.

I really appreciated your insight into so many different areas of your kind of career so far. So appreciate you coming on. Thanks a lot.

[00:38:48] Naresh Vissa: Thanks a lot, Jim. It was a pleasure. I love talking about these topics. It wasn't dry. I like talking about the macro and the theme. So it was great and looking forward to doing it again sometime.

[00:38:59] Jim Banks: Yeah, absolutely. Take care.