LIVE From South College - "Real World Toolkit" with Business Influencer Chris Contreras & Alumni Services

In Episode 33 of the Live From South College podcast, host Kathleen Stockham interviews Business Influencer, entrepreneur and investor Chris Contreras. They discuss the importance of financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and leveraging AI in today's job market. Chris shares insights from his journey, emphasizing the significance of maintaining good credit, taking calculated risks, and the evolving role of AI in business and job hunting.

Keywords

financial literacy, entrepreneurship, AI in business, credit management, job market, South College, planning post grad, South College Alumni Services

Takeaways

• You can do whatever you put your heart and mind to.
• Maintaining good credit is crucial for business success.
• Entrepreneurship requires taking calculated risks.
• AI is transforming job hunting and business operations.
• Financial literacy should be taught in schools.
• Micro purchases can add up and impact finances.
• Delegation is key to scaling a business.
• Understanding your financial situation is essential.
• Leverage AI for resume building and job searching.
• Start your business early to gain market validity.
• South College Alumni Association is a great resource you during and after your time with us.
• Career Services are provided to all south college graduates.

Options

• Unlocking Success: Real World Toolkit with Chris Contreras
• Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship with Chris Contreras
• Navigating AI and Business with Chris Contreras
• Chris Contreras: From Finance to Entrepreneurship
• Building a Business Toolkit with Chris Contreras
• Chris Contreras on Credit and Career Success
• Entrepreneurial Insights with Chris Contreras
• AI's Role in Modern Business with Chris Contreras
• Chris Contreras: Lessons in Leadership and Growth
• Real World Strategies for Success with Chris Contreras

Sound bites

You can do whatever you put your heart to. Maintaining good credit is crucial. Entrepreneurship requires calculated risks. AI is transforming job hunting. Financial literacy should be taught. Micro purchases impact finances. Delegation is key to scaling. Understand your financial situation. Leverage AI for job searching. Start your business early.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction and Guest Background
• 00:00:00 Importance of Financial Literacy
• 00:00:00 Entrepreneurship and Taking Risks
• 00:00:00 AI's Impact on Job Market
• 00:00:01 Chris's Personal Journey and Insights

Got a question? Have some feedback? Email us at SouthCollegePodcast@south.edu or come visit us at www.south.edu.  Follow us on social media too.  The Live from South College Podcast is your source for all South College activity including new student information, deeps dive’s into our 100+ programs, and concentrations,  “Tools of the Trade,” and even Live on location from all of our campuses! Great interviews with Faculty, Staff, Deans and hear from South College students and alumni in their own words. From Certificates all the way to Doctoral degrees, catch up with “Live from South College” for the lighter side of helping your dreams find direction. 

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT – Real World Toolkit with Business Influencer Chris Contreas & Alumni Services 

Kathleen Stockham (00:41)

Welcome to the Live From South College podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Stockham. The Live From South College podcast is your source for all South College activity, including new student information, deep dives into our 100 plus programs and concentration, tools of the trade, and even live on location from all of our campuses. Great interviews with faculty, staff, deans, and hear from South College students and alumni in their own words.

from certificates all the way to doctoral degrees, catch up with live from South College for the lighter side of helping your dreams find direction. So the purpose of this broadcast is to bring our listeners information on key programs and real talk from our guests about directions you can take in your education and in your life after graduation. Well, today culminates all of that together in a, well,

interesting little meatloaf of planning, advice, direction, and lessons from one of the premier minds of real life. He has seen it all and done it all.

A first generation American after his parents moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic, he comes from a long line of well acclaimed family members, including his father who taught himself English and practice medicine. A mother who was an architect and his grandmother who was the first female to run a bank in the Dominican Republic. For my guest, deciding between medicine and business as a student eventually led him to choose finance and he has worked

for leading large scale customer and business operations at Univision, NBC, Snap, and so many more. He has now branched into his own business and is a very successful entrepreneur and investor. It is my pleasure to welcome Chris Contreras to the podcast.

Christopher Contreras (02:39)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for our conversation today. And I welcome the background that you provided for everyone to get to know me better. But I'm going to provide a little bit more with the questions that we will discuss about today. So super, super excited about our conversation.

Kathleen Stockham (02:54)

No, that's awesome. Well, for disclosure's sake, we've known each other probably about 10 plus years now as I was actually a client of yours at one of your chief customer officer roles at a media tech company. And now it has been exciting to watch you completely bloom into this true business influencer where you were laying the foundation for leaders of all ages. So let's get into this. Tell us a little bit more about your background and all of the unique experience you've had.

Christopher Contreras (03:24)

Well, thank you so much. Yes, we've known each other for 10 years. So the fun part that I usually start this conversation with is everybody listening is probably going through the same mindset that I was 21 years ago. I was in college. I graduated with my first major in biology. I took my MCATs, wanted to go to med school. My second major was in finance. And here I am 24 years later.

And I've worked in technology companies as a chief customer officer. That's where I met you at the second state where we worked as a client partner relationship. And then most recently in the last two years, I started my own consulting practice and I've branched out to build my own company and service the small business sector to try to compete against larger businesses. So it's been a full 360. I started

from a kid who went to public school in the South to running an entire global organization and multiple technology companies. So anybody who's listening to this, honestly, you can do whatever you put your heart to and your mind to. There's really no blocker but yourself. I put myself in a bunch of uncomfortable positions and I'm excited to kind of share some of those with you.

Kathleen Stockham (04:37)

I love it. Well, the title of this episode is Real World Toolkit, when you and I discussed this a little while ago. So that means things like resumes, public speaking, finding a job, but it's also financial planning, which is something most people don't think about and navigating through tough environments and even looking ahead to different directions like entrepreneurship. So let's try and unpack all of that and understand where our listeners can go when they graduate. Fire away.

Christopher Contreras (05:05)

Yeah, so one of the first things that I realized and I realized it young because luckily my parents, like you mentioned, were immigrants and they had to bootstrap themselves through everything and every experience. And one of the things that they entrusted at me from a young age was you have to take care of your credit. If I'm the first person you're listening to about this, let me be the last because it should stay stuck in your mind forever.

In my journey, leaving, you know, big corporate companies to start my own businesses, I've realized the importance of having good credit. I've been able to fund the entire inception of my business, the marketing, the engineering, the platform, the data structure and everything with 0 % cards on the business side that don't impact my personal credit.

And all that comes from the premise of I maintain my credit in a good standing. I was responsible with my purchasing. I was responsible with ensuring that I'm building my credit history. And I didn't realize until then how important it was. And that's kind of been the shift and focus of my one of the areas of my consultancy is helping young entrepreneurs start their businesses without having to go seek funding. So like, if you go to

any like charter in any city you have, you probably have a charter program that is you go and pitch your business and someone will invest in your business for 30, 40%. But you can do that without having to have somebody run or be part of your business. You can go to the banks and get that access to that capital and test with what enough runway to make that happen. So besides having the hammer,

in the screwdriver in your toolkit, the financial piece is one of those that I've seen be an automatic unlock for anybody who's looking to start their own business or also scale their existing business to new heights.

Kathleen Stockham (06:55)

Yeah, I love that because, I have two kids of my own who are now out of college, but they were just bombarded with credit card offers. they make it really, they make it sound simple, I think, to this particular generation, you know, to get a credit card, use it, it's your lifestyle, you can sort of buy your way into fun and good times. And your point about understanding credit scores, credit ratings, the importance of paying

bills on time and the impact that it can have for you down the road cannot be underscored enough. It's unfortunate that it's not a class that is mandatory or that financial understanding is not a mandatory class regardless of what you major in in college. And so when you get out to the real world as an adult,

These are tough lessons to learn. I think for all my listeners, as you are listening to Chris, it cannot be underscored enough how important it is to pay attention to your credit score and finances. So let's talk about entrepreneurship for a little bit. Entrepreneurship is exciting. It's enticing to step out on your own. I did it. I own my own business and it was glorious and scary at the same time.

What is the key secret in your mind about finding success as your own boss?

Christopher Contreras (08:16)

So I will start and will be 100 % transparent. It is scary. Especially if you come from an existing 20 plus years working for highly impactful businesses where you've had a salary and you know through hell or high water that you're over performance and your ability to kind of be a good performer will always have a salary attached to it.

When I moved into the entrepreneurship experience over the last 28 months now, I realized that you have to take a bet on yourself. And I think anybody listening to this conversation, anybody can be an entrepreneur. The difference between someone who does it and someone who doesn't is that they take a risk. And that risk has to be calculated. You have to have an understanding of what your business plan looks like. That doesn't mean you have to have it soup to nuts. You have to have at least

50 % viability to your go-to-market strategy, whether it is you're a bake shop and you're looking to open up a local gluten-free bakery in your neighborhood. That's a great idea. Do some research. Understand the audience, especially in the area you live in, to understand if there's enough throughput there to make that a viable business. It doesn't really take a lot. With the advent of AI, you can do a lot of market research within seconds. So you and I,

who are a little bit more seasoned ⁓ is the proper term. ⁓ I would say refined. We're more refined. Everybody else will say we're old, but look, I think old is a new young, so I'll take that and go and run with it. But we had to go and actually call and market research ourselves. So it was a lot harder to start your own thing 15 years ago, 10 years ago than today. You have folks who are starting

Kathleen Stockham (09:41)

Is that a way to saying old? Vintage.

Christopher Contreras (10:04)

SaaS companies, know, software as a service businesses by building an app, leveraging AI, and then making $100, $200,000 in recurring revenue a month. It's wild. So an entrepreneur today has so much more flexibility. And if you're not considering, or at least thinking through what you could be doing to supplement your income, then another takeaway besides the financial literacy is start thinking about what life would look like if you started your own business. And

document that somewhere. Actually, one of the recommendations that I do have is you use a voice to text to chat GBT and create like a GPT that just is your thoughts on a daily basis drop. You know, I've always thought that I could build an app or I can do a company that can help with X, Y, and Z. It'll do research in the background for you so that when the push comes to shove, you already have a set of ideas kind of formulated. It's been stress tested with some market data.

and you let the AI do the work for you. It's not going to share it with anybody else because it's your own personal GPT. And that's one of the things that I'm so excited and I'm vigorous about with folks who I'm speaking to on a daily basis.

Kathleen Stockham (11:13)

Okay, I have like a million things in my head. I keep a work diary. I always have and I just put in notes about the day and things that are good things that are bad and I use that to sort of keep track and I also I'm a bit of a feedback queen. So it's all a for me to capture feedback and some information that I want so that tip about recording your thoughts on chat GPT. That's brilliant. Definitely going to start that back to entrepreneurship.

I think the other thing that you're 100 % right when I started my business there was no chat GPT. You know there was none of this and so I definitely had to do all the market research really kind of hitting the streets and doing a lot of internet research and the one thing that I definitely was was prepared I at least I thought it was prepared for You've got to really take a hard look at sacrifice.

You know, obviously a steady income. If you have, quit your job to start a business is something you got to think about the endless hours. And you have really got to have a no quit, no give up mentality. And whatever fire is in front of you, you've got to be able to walk through it and keep going because, you are obviously the only thing that's keeping yourself from being on the streets or being OK. And in my case, I was a young mom.

And my husband and I had a dream. ran after it. We worked really hard. We put a ton of hours in. But you know what? I also missed cheerleading competitions. I missed baseball games. You know, my kids didn't necessarily have a great quality of life at that time because we were always working. And when we weren't working, we were concepting and we were working on business and we were thinking about expansion. We were doing all these things. So For any entrepreneur and again just coming from a place of honesty do a full 360 of your life and everything that's in it right this minute and then begin to take that donut and push everything off the donut that you know you're not going to be able to do anymore. That could be vacations. That could be a lot of things, so that's just a little tip from the corner.

Christopher Contreras (13:22)

Yeah.

Well, hopefully it doesn't scare folks away, but it's an honest perspective because you do dedicate a lot of time. But then I think one of the realities that I've noticed in the last 28 months in running this consultancy and two other businesses is the delegation is an imperative part of your success. And it's the same thing at a big company, at a small company.

is the moment you are the leader, in this case, the founder, the co-founder, like you have a set of responsibilities. And then once you start scaling, you have to start releasing some of those responsibilities onto your team so that they also grow in scale. And then you feel confident when you do take that vacation that someone has your back. And I recommend this to anybody, whether you're working a nine to five or you're working on your own business, the beginning sucks, but

The reward at the end of it is very positive, but it will only continue to be positive if you start scaling in the right way. And you start enabling the folks that are supporting CAS to the success of the business, who potentially are probably 80 % of the reason the business is succeeding, because they're the ones working it on a daily basis in the trenches. Reward them, make sure that they are aware of what you know, expand their leadership capabilities.

I give them visibility into the financials. Right now, my business, everybody knows the financials. My P &L is public. I'm not hiding anything. So what that does is it creates trust across the board. So from the person who does data entry all the way to the person who sells to my business partners, everybody knows exactly what the business is as of today. So there's no excuse.

Kathleen Stockham (15:04)

Yeah.

Nope, totally love that. The last thing I'll say about entrepreneurship on the good side, there is nothing more satisfying than unlocking the door of your own business. There is no more gratifying feeling in the world of knowing that you don't have to answer to anybody. You can make the rules and you can break the rules on your own as the case may be. You want to close up early, know, whatever it is, you have that control. And again, it's intoxicating and it's awesome, but man, it's scary.

Let's switch, let's go back to job hunting for a little bit. So AI has turned everything upside down and there's a lot of conflicting opinions about where and how to use AI for job hunting. What is your advice and opinion on?

Christopher Contreras (15:51)

So there are a couple of factors and this is a good one because my focus right now has shifted a little bit in my consultancy and helping small businesses kind of continue to scale with the leveraging AI for a couple of areas of their business. And I actually did a video and we'll tag my socials when we post because I share a lot of good nuggets on the eye and the trends and like what folks are seeing. And I did a video because my daughter is six years old. She's turning seven. She just started first grade. So

We're in the beginning of her education and I was losing sleep like two weeks ago and I was like, what world is she gonna walk into in 16 years? I'm thinking about today and how fast things are changing. I have no idea what that world's gonna look like in 16 years, but what I do know of what that world could be or could leverage, it's gonna be definitely something that requires

a specific skill set that all of us should be leveraging on a daily basis. know, and my mindset where AI is right now, it's, it's kind of removed a lot of like, the tedious grunt work that folks potentially were hiding behind those roles for 15, 20 years. I used to call them because I was in operations. So I used to do a lot of lean Six Sigma. I'm a green belt in Six Sigma.

When I was at NBC, we would look at all of the operational processes and look at the roles that just had like remedial tasks. Think of this as, and you can remember this, Kathleen, back in the big company days, is like you had literally one person that all they did was data entry, something that a seller would send them. And that role was legitimately like a cog. So if that wasn't done, then the whole process on the post-sale side, the onboarding,

the selling proposition for that client was held up because of that one person. So what does that one person do is create a bottleneck so that they have job security. And AI, what it's doing, it's kind of molding itself into these repetitive tasks so that it highlights the areas of the business that folks should be focusing on. And you should hire college educated students in recent grads, college educated, tenured, experienced employees.

And that's the focus. like, think right now what you're seeing in the trades is like Facebook is firing, 1500 staff members thanks to AI. But if you actually look under the hood and you look at the roles, data entry, like those small roles that are, were used to be entry points for recent graduates, but then they are now shifting. They're shifting those roles into automation. But then the folks who are graduating,

have to figure out like what paths do they wanna go into these businesses to start getting the exposure that they need. So one advice that I have for anybody who's trying to leverage AI for job hunting is having AI like kind of curate your resume. So, and I say this from a lens of every company is getting thousands of resumes on a daily basis. There has to be a differentiator and that differentiator is putting yourself in the resume

more than just the words that is stated. So if the role is a sales role, let's say for example, a junior sales role and your resume looks like everybody else is, I went to Penn State, I went to South College, I went to University of Miami and I'm looking for my first role, I'm really eager to go here, blah, blah, blah. That sounds cool. Awesome. You can write a resume. Talk about the skillsets that got you to the point of that conversation. What differentiates you between the South College student and the Penn State student?

To be honest with you, nine times out of 10, I'll pick the student from South College. Why? Because they have grit and they're focused on getting something that's gonna materially impact their lives versus the majority of these bigger programs and schools. And I'm speaking fully transparently. They usually are brought in there because their family members went to school. No offense to those schools at all, no offense. But I'm giving you the perspective of like, that's the kind of umph you wanna leverage AI to throw in.

and differentiate you more than anything else. So using it for resumes and the other piece is using it to help you find jobs. There's a lot of rumors and it's rumors that are factually based now. So they're murmurs, I guess, that chat GPT is gonna open up a job program within their chat GPT instance. like it's gonna take over what LinkedIn is doing on the job posting, but it's gonna be a lot more curated and connected.

to the businesses that are in their enterprise sector. So you'll be on the lookout because there's gonna be a lot of access to folks who have technical exposure, leveraging AI right now. If you're in school, you're leveraging AI, you're using it on a daily basis, you're learning about it, put it on your resume. Put it on your resume today.

Kathleen Stockham (20:40)

There.

That's amazing. There's some breaking news right there. I did not know that. And that is kind of exciting and a little scary at the same time because it pretty much blows away all the norms. For those of us back in the day who used to get the Sunday paper for one ad. So that's that's insane. I am definitely going to keep a lookout for that. That's incredible. So since we're talking about.

this younger sort of demographic, let's take yourself back. Let's take Chris back to that 22 or 23 year old self, know, fresh out of school, the whole world out in front of you. What would you do differently today at that time in your life?

Christopher Contreras (21:23)

Wow, that's a good question. So man, I had so much ambition at the time. My goal, and I'll tell you honestly, my goal when I graduated, I was like, I gotta move to New York. I gotta experience the big city experience and expose myself more. It took me like two years or three years to get there. But I did it. But if I go back in time, would say be more, put myself in more uncomfortable positions. I would say my first five years,

right out of college, was, played it safe. I'm a hard worker. I'm a hard worker. I've been working since I was 15 years old. I worked at a Carvel. So I made ice cream cakes for a year and a half. And I've been working, my whole, from my whole life pretty much since I was an adolescent in that nature. So I knew that the grit that I had was going to get me an open doors that someone else couldn't open, but

I was reserved those first five years. didn't try and expose myself more to more things, not try to one up anybody or try to be better than anybody else. What I'm saying is put myself in positions, take on projects that I potentially wasn't the most equipped for, but I could be a supporting cast, which is totally fine. And if I would have done that, I probably would have been in more senior level roles earlier in my career.

But I was very young in my first senior level where I was VP before I was 27, which doesn't seem like it's young. But when you're graduating at 22, 23, that's only four years removed. And everybody else in my VP level at the company I was at, was at Univision at the time, was in their 40s. So like, they looked at me like this kid doesn't know anything. But I'm telling you, the grit and the putting yourself that year, the year before I got promoted,

I put myself in every uncomfortable position and then I realized, man, I should have done this earlier. And I didn't because I was more afraid, to be honest with you.

Kathleen Stockham (23:16)

Yeah. Wow. All right. So there you have it for the under 30 crowd. There is some stellar advice there. I love that. I have many more questions, but we'll move along.

So let's move on. It seems like being financially prepared for adulthood or even a career change is something most are not prepared for. In fact, they don't really teach financial planning as we discussed earlier in home economics anymore in high school, where you learn how to balance a checkbook or even credit card responsibility as we mentioned. There's lots of financial experts out there, but what is your no nonsense advice?

Christopher Contreras (23:52)

Yeah, no, look, financial literacy is, I would say the difference between this country being having 70 % or more of their population be profitable in their household versus it not. And it's because it's a disservice in the earlier education system to not focus on it. Honestly, just one year in high school, it could be the senior year before you graduate. If you take a financial literacy class.

instantly it changes the perspective and the mindset. I would say that my no nonsense advice is if you can't, if you can't pay off what you're buying earlier in your life, in this case, you're in your twenties, you have your first big, big boy or big girl credit card, and you're going to go buy, I don't know, a watch or, you know, a purse or tickets to an event or something. If you can't pay that off in the next 30 days, just reserve it. Wait, wait till you're ready.

You know why? Because it's a snowball effect. And I'm speaking from experience. I've come from wanting to splurge. I've worked really hard my entire life. I'm working, I'm making money. But those little purchases are the killer in anybody's checkbook. And you know wat makes it even more, more present for me is that Amazon is one of the, I would say, the biggest components in the statement. You can buy

anything and everything you want on Amazon. The problem with that is, is There are about 15 to 50 micro purchases you can make in a month on Amazon that would be something that you would consider not to do in any other setting.

Like if you were to buy, if you were to realize that you spent $3,500 on Amazon in a month versus spending $3,500 on a watch, you would probably rethink that purchase a little bit more. But since you're making 15 to 50, a hundred dollars, $50, $25 purchases, it all adds up. So my feedback is if you can't pay it off in the next 30 days, just wait. I'm like, then you can splurge once you get your bonus, once you have enough capacity in your savings.

and splurge every once in a while, but don't make it a habit because it's a slippery slope. Those credit cards, come due every month. The interest rates that are 0 % and they entice you, they run out. You have to have a plan to ensure that you always have what? The cash at your disposal.

Kathleen Stockham (26:16)

Yeah, I'm making a note to myself right now to make sure that my husband does not listen to this episode because you literally sound exactly like him because we have had that conversation. Amazon on your iPhone is incredibly seductive. It's so easy. Tap, tap, tap. It's on its way. Your point about micro purchases.

is a very, very good one. I am holding up my hand. am guilty. Shame, shame, and more shame. But dead on.

Christopher Contreras (26:45)

And

we all suffer from it. That's the beauty of big technology companies. They have a lot of engineers that all they do is understand the human nature of wanting to purchase and how easy and accessible it is. that's no shame to their game. That's why they're a technology company. But it's up to us to resist that urge, especially when...

It's exactly the product that we were talking about five minutes ago with your husband, with your friend, with your girlfriend, your brother. And all of a sudden it's in front of you on Amazon. Like it's wild, but it's there.

Kathleen Stockham (27:19)

Yes,

and somewhere Dave Ramsey is smiling right now, so there you go. So you do a lot of great videos on LinkedIn, and I know because I see them, the advice is always solid and definitely thought provoking. What led you to do these amazing video vignettes?

Christopher Contreras (27:29)

Okay. ⁓

Honestly, I talk to small business owners, entrepreneurs, college students. was actually, I just came back from my alma mater. went to the University of Miami and I give back every fall semester. They have an MBA program the second year, the final year of the MBA program for the students where they get connected. It's an entrepreneurship class. They get connected with an active business and I'm the executive coach that helps three students.

fix a problem at that company, a real problem, not a fake problem, like a real problem. And a lot of those students get hired by these companies. So I take a lot of responsibility in that. And that led me to start kind of showcasing a little bit more under the hood of like what it is to be an entrepreneur, some of the mindset stuff that I personally do myself. And I like to share that with everybody else, whether it helps one person or it doesn't, or it helps a friend. If you see it and you send it to them,

That's ultimately the goal. goal is for me not to become like the wizard of small businesses or the, what is it called? the expert in this space. It's to share and showcase what I'm seeing and learning and doing in real time. I've shifted a lot of my videos to be more about how I'm testing AI for certain factors of the business. And to be honest with you, it's been super helpful because I'm already using these tools and testing them.

So I'm just exposing everybody to that. So they either are interested in it and then can they can get exposed and learn a little bit more. And it's just conversation starters for them to be able to kind of root themselves on the understanding that there's a lot of tools out there. There's a lot of things that they need to know. Like when you open up your own business, what's the proper structure, whether it's an LLC, an S corp or C corp. Like I talk about like ensuring that you set up a bank account.

win the first 30 days, start aging the business. All these factors help you get access to what? Capital, but then also help age your business, which in this environment, when you're an entrepreneur, you definitely want to seem like you've been doing this for a long time. The longer you procrastinate to open up that business, the longer it's going to take for you to get the validity in the business because a lot of it has to do with just age and time in market. Whether you're making a dollar or not, start that business, open up that LLC.

because as it starts aging, it gives you a little bit more power when you're going out to market. So that was the goal of doing these videos and sharing it with the world. And I'm like, you're going to see a lot more cool stuff. You know, I run a podcast as well where we meet other business owners. But to be honest with you, this has been my focus, I would say from a content perspective over the last six months, like 100 % of my focus is just sharing what I'm seeing on a daily basis.

Kathleen Stockham (30:20)

Yeah, and I think it's great. So how can our listeners find you on social media?

Christopher Contreras (30:25)

Yeah, here's the fun part. I had my personal social media page, which is called Captured in Chris. It's an app, but it's a private page. That's my personal. I've had that Instagram since 2008. Yes, I'm that old. ⁓ One of the first Instagram users. I grew that page two years ago to 100,000 plus followers myself. So then I made it a

a prerogative at the end of April, the beginning of May to start a new page. And that's the page that folks can follow me on. It's called at scaling with Chris. It's my name. ⁓ And that page in what under in three and a half months has already surpassed, I think, 3,400 followers. And that's just growing. This is it's a slow beat of the drum. My goal is not to get to a million or anything like that. But the whole premise of that page is to showcase what it is to build your own brand.

what it is to build your own business, what it is to scale your own business and some of the technology behind that I'm exposing folks to. Those are the kind of the four tenants. And I share on a daily basis, a post about a tool or something I'm seeing, something I'm feeling so folks can follow that journey and hopefully learn, as they're kind of building and scaling, they can reach out to me there as well. I man it myself. So I respond to everybody who messages me. It is a lot of work.

But to be honest with you, I find a lot of value and Kathleen, you know me. used to, so I've, come from customer success. So like my, my entire adult life has been built around helping businesses scale and helping my customers businesses scale with the tools and solutions. I've been inordinately passionate about helping people since I was a kid. My younger brother has Down syndrome. I was a special Olympics coach for 20 years. So I've been

in the mix of wanting to help people since I was a young kid. And right now, doing this content, sharing all these learnings, sharing my pitfalls, what I failed in the last 28 months will hopefully help someone not have to trip on those same speed bumps, but also be able to succeed in their life as well.

Kathleen Stockham (32:34)

Yeah, I love it. And here's a real time review. I follow you. I think your videos are amazing. I learned something. Plus you always have something colorful on which is nice because it holds my attention. So just a little fashion shout out there. Very nice. But these these videos are quite good. So please look him up. You will learn a lot. trust me you will continue to tune in. All right. So closing thoughts. What are your top three things you recommend to everyone?

Christopher Contreras (32:44)

Hehehe

Kathleen Stockham (33:02)

to do right now as it relates to post-graduation actions to land that job.

Christopher Contreras (33:08)

First and foremost, like I mentioned earlier, is if you're not using AI because you're afraid or you just think it's too arduous or hard, please, please, please start getting accustomed to leveraging it, whether it's chat GPT, Claude, or even any of the Google solutions. Just play with them and see which one you fit. I personally, I use chat GPT. Is it the best for every use case? No, but.

It's the one that I've gotten accustomed to, right? Some folks like Claude, some folks, it just, it depends on your use case. And like I mentioned earlier the number one use case that I would recommend you start using it for is the voice to text. So like you can literally speak to, Chad, GBT or Claude or whoever, and just have it, just say your thoughts. I'm about to graduate in six months. I really, really want a job in finance. I'm just using example. I want a job in nursing. and I want to understand like,

What are the next steps for me? What do I need to ensure I accomplish between now and June? For example, I'm just using a random example. And it can go and do the research. I want to be, I don't know, a neonatal nurse in the Tennessee area in Chattanooga. Give me the hospitals nearby and what their current job offerings are and what are the requirements. It can actually do all that and then you can kind of interplay that with what you have. All of a sudden, you've created a map. ⁓

to get that job in the future, eight months in advance. That's one piece. The second recommendation I want everyone to do is, going back to the beginning is ensure that you understand where your financial situation is today. I'm not talking about student loans. You can defer those, that's fine. I'm talking about your physical credit score and your credit profile. If you're in the 500s or low 600s, I'm like, ensure that you reach out to someone.

I can point you in the right direction. If you message me, we need to get that rectified so that you have endless capacity when you go and either do your own thing or go to work after you graduate. Or guess what? Go to get an apartment. It's becoming even harder to get a rent nowadays because you have to have not only the income for 13 X, the amount of time that you're going to stay there, but they look at your credit profile and they make judgments off of it.

And it's crazy, but it's the reality of the world we live in. It is your number one barometer of how financially stable you are. And then the third and last thing I would recommend is ensure that you know, and that like, I'm not saying like, you know, fast forward 10 years, ensure that you know exactly what you're interested in moving into. So you could be studying general studies, you could be focused on nursing, but what type of nursing do you want to get into as you do your rounds,

You go through the program, you kind of start solidifying the areas that you want to be focused on. Start putting those thoughts down, write them on paper, go again and put them on chat GPT. All those things will help crystallize the focus point for you. And I think honestly, if you just give it half the effort and leverage AI for the other half, you're going to be exponentially in a better position when you graduate than when you are today and you're not doing any of these three items.

Kathleen Stockham (36:18)

⁓ man. Okay. Yes. Now I have like a hundred other questions, but I know we're running out of time. What do you do in your spare time? If you have any.

Christopher Contreras (36:27)

I know do have spare time. I've recently started, a fitness journey to try to get back into, optimal shape. I just turned 41, two weeks ago. So, I'm just trying to be more present for my wellness. Cause like you said on the top and it's true when you start your own business, you, everything goes, gets pushed to the wayside. And I, it's not that I realized that I had pushed it off. I just knew I did. And it was a conscious decision.

But I go to the gym. I spend a lot of time with my daughter. She's learning how to read books and pages. we spend time every night reading for 30 minutes. She's really interested in it. I'm happy she is because when I was her age, I was just playing outside all the time and reading was the last thing. Not that I didn't like reading. It wasn't part of my household regimen. But she naturally became really interested in it.

I just think it's a cool skill. So I try to spend as much time with my family in my downtime because I spend the rest of the time scaling this business. that's two short things that I do in that time frame.

Kathleen Stockham (37:28)

I love that. Alright, so I ask everybody this question, what kind of student were you in school?

Christopher Contreras (37:33)

I would say I was a type of student, I was always a good student. So I'll answer that by giving you a fun fact. So I went to Miami Sunset Senior High, which is in Miami, in Kendall on the West side. I wasn't close to the beach, it's not extravagant. I was in the inlands, close to the Everglades. So my graduating class was 1,150 students. 1,150 students. I repeat that, 1,150 students.

When the rankings came out my senior year, was a three letterman sport player. So I played basketball, played golf, and I did track. I'm a big guy, so everybody's like, why didn't you play football? I was in more shape back then. ⁓ And my football team sucked. So when the rankings came out, like the top rankings of GPAs, I was number 97 out of 1,150 students. And everybody turned around and goes, Chris, you're smart?

And in my head, the first thing that went in my head is like an expletive word. But I realized that I don't really expose what type of student I am or how smart I am to people because I knew early on with my relationship with my dad that that really doesn't matter. It's how you apply your learning that's going to get you far in life. And to answer your question, I was a good student.

But I was a self-starter. like I really, really, really didn't in college, it was hard for me to go to class because a lot of the professors would just read from the book. And I was just like, I can't do this. I'm like, this is really boring. So I would just read myself, learn and teach myself. I would sit in the library and like, lessons and do all those things. And that's the kind of thing that I kind of got really excited about and focused my time in school.

Kathleen Stockham (39:18)

Yeah, I love that. And that's some wonderful advice. Always enjoy being underestimated. I know it's definitely something that's a tool I have. I love it. I think it's an awesome secret weapon. Let folks underestimate you because they have no idea the hurricane that's about to hit them. And yeah.

I love that. That is awesome advice. Well, I think this episode will go down as one of my best ones. It will definitely get a lot of our current and former students excited and curious about all the possibilities that are out there. Some solid, fantastic advice. It's gold. And in addition, it should definitely inspire even our

non-students out there that just need a shove in the right direction to explore the possibilities. As adults, we always need to remember the only person who can unstuck yourself in the rut that you think you're in is you. And opportunities are out there if you're willing to take risk. Work hard and never give up. And you've heard it from the source here.

follow this man, you will not regret it. I want to thank my guest, entrepreneur and investor, Chris Contreus for being my guest today.

Christopher Contreras (40:29)

Thank you so much for having me.

Kathleen Stockham (40:31)

⁓ Such a joy to have you coming up after the break a little more on postgraduate life and our amazing Alumni Association and all the free tools you have to access when you graduate. Stick around, we'll be right back.

[South College Radio Ad Spot]

Kathleen Stockham (42:21)

Welcome back. As part of the South College experience, we have an outstanding alumni association that provides so many avenues for our new graduates. Career services is a lifelong benefit to all South College graduates. Whether you're looking to enter your first job,

or you're looking to advance your career and climb up the ladder. The Career Services staff is here to assist you. Career services are provided to all South College students, graduates, and alumni. Whether you're exploring potential careers, deciding on what to do after graduation, or beginning your job search, any enrolled student or alumnus may utilize the services through this office. South College's mission

is to help each student and alumni to fulfill personal goals by assisting with resume writing, cover letter creation, job searching, interviewing preparation, networking strategies, career and internship fairs guidance, continual career development and progression, one-on-one coaching and exploration. For the full list of services and resources that are available to you, please visit the Career Services page

linked from the alumni services pages on www.south.edu under the explore south tab.

also have an amazing South College alumni online community found at www.alumni.south.edu. This website is exclusive to South College students and alumni and can help you be a larger part of a big community. Features include networking with other alumni and professionals in your field.

Locating and staying connected with your classmates. Accessing career resources. Sharing your accomplishments and life updates. And staying up to date on campus event news and faculty achievements. Or you can mentor a current student in your field of study. Share and search for job opportunities. And guess what? Joining is free. There are no dues or fees to join. Your benefits are priceless. Connecting and continuing your professional

and personal growth. Join today. Well, that's going to do it for us in this jam-packed episode. I hope you enjoyed it. There was some amazing advice given. With 10 campuses in seven states plus online and CBE, there's a pathway for you at South College.

Hope you enjoyed this latest episode of Live from South College. The Live from South College podcast is a production from South College Marketing. Thanks for joining me. If you love it, give it some stars and you can always send us feedback by emailing us at southcollegepodcast.south.edu. Have an awesome day and let your dreams find direction. See you next time.