So without further ado, Richard Blank,
I've made some assumptions.
Tell me about your vision.
My vision is to pay it forward.
How many dinners can you eat?
I'm fine.
And so one day, Jackson, the golden jewels lose its luster.
My vision now at 52 years old, I have nothing to prove.
I have my run.
It's still going on, but it's really about
building up others and doing it the old school way
that I learned in Northeast Philly.
I call the balls and the strikes.
I size you up.
I balance.
Give you those suggestions.
And if you're coachable and you're willing to be mentored,
then I will pay it forward that way.
And I'll do it with your linguistics, as you know.
Being bilingual bears the mark of higher education.
And not like what Hollywood does,
there's some incredible call center agents
that retain clients, can get up sales referrals.
Save companies, build companies.
It just doesn't have to be stocks and sweet steaks
and things like that.
And so when I first came here in August of 2000,
I saw the most incredible, vibrant speakers
in these call center environments.
And I gravitated towards it.
It still seemed renaissance to me.
People were proud of what they invested in
and were willing to show it.
And I guess when you surround yourselves with people
that can shed anything else and just have a conversation,
that's the core of relationship building.
So when people speak in other languages,
regardless of the stage that you're at,
it really is a bond that we all have in this world.
And if you have something advanced, you assist.
If you're behind, you get helped.
And so it's one of those things that I had a lot of
positive reinforcement Jackson along the way,
which got me here.
Wow, there's a lot of wisdom unpacking that.
I'm gonna go back to the very first thing you said.
I hope you take it well,
because it's gonna keep coming.
I can feel that.
So one of the people listed in the sponsorship up here,
his name is James Bond.
Literally, that's his name.
And James wrote the book Brain Glue,
which Jack Canfield claimed is,
he said if any entrepreneur would be an idiot
not to buy this book.
That's a big claim by Jack there.
But when I got to know James,
I said, tell me about your vision.
And his response was,
have you ever seen that movie Pay It Forward?
He said, I love that movie.
He said it right on my mic.
Oh my gosh.
I was like, I love that movie.
I was about the kid's age when I saw it.
And so too funny.
That concept is what you gravitated towards.
We just put that up here a couple days ago.
So alignment of timing is something I don't take for granted.
I almost want to talk about where the vision came from, but,
I want to know where you're going.
So let's talk about that.
Where are you going with the vision?
You got this call center, I'm assuming in Costa Rica.
I don't know how many people work for it currently,
but what do you see yourself
and what do you see that community expanding to
on the horizon?
Two things, I see it more virtual,
which means I can expand faster.
I don't need to find more locations.
I'll still have my headquarters, which I own.
We're currently at 150 seats, celebrating our 17th year.
It's been a run in a competitive industry.
But where do I see things going?
Well, this younger generation, they prefer virtual work.
So what I'm used to is I'm used to the virtual world.
What I'm used to, because I collect pinball machines
and arcade machines, I used to have a great game room
and I used to walk the roads.
We don't have that much anymore.
You kind of lost that synergy.
It's more, as I say, it's virtual.
It works.
I was able to survive COVID and I'm very grateful.
There's a huge difference between a painting and a print.
When people were here,
they could really feed off of the energy.
There's a lot of high fives.
I loved it and that got taken away from me.
And so I'm a relic of the old school 80s movies
where we didn't have phones.
We had to talk to each other and be cool.
And also today, this younger generation, which is fine,
they're used to chat, emails and texting,
which means that they need to increase
their soft interpersonal speaking skills.
It's not like laziness, it's just lack of practice
compared to the opposite for us back in the day.
And so what I need to do is readjust.
I need to get rid of some bad habits
and start them on, as you say, locator,
portavolles, intermedio.
We need to have them love the art of speech
where you put your phone down, speak,
and talk to somebody and increase your rhetoric.
And so I find it's the art of speech.
It's something that is being reduced
because of more AI, which is gathering,
but they can't reduce.
They can't replace the empathy that two people can have.
They can bring us to the 10 yard line.
We're putting the ball in the end zone when it comes to that.
So I see my industry being more custom made,
niche market, just towards a certain company
where if you press zero, you get the concierge department.
It's almost like a kiosk.
I don't wanna wait in line.
I'd rather use the money machine and get my cash quick
or self-serve.
I don't need to have the whole bells and whistles.
Sometimes time is of essence.
So I accept that.
It's, remember like the buggy whip industry
or people that were afraid of the industrial revolution
or the steam engines.
Well, just like Anthony Quinn and Zorba the Greek,
I'm not saying my ship is sinking,
but I am willing to put my arms out and start dancing.
You know?
Because we're not the beta and VCRs anymore.
I mean, you see things changing.
And today my thing was the essence of the human contact
of people having to be here and having preventative measures
so they don't burn out and really being able
to go onboard them and do side-by-side and shadowing.
It was a pure environment.
You got the best out of somebody.
And right now I'd be lucky to get 60% out of that,
the same sort of fidelity and passion.
It works, but it's just been adjusted.
And I don't think it's our favor.
People get lonely when they work at home.
Correct.
We're gonna have some fun.
We're gonna start mastermind about virtual workspaces.
I'm gonna reveal a number of the truths that I've learned
over the last 14 years.
I've been working from home since 2010.
I think you're gonna write a few notes in relation to that
that you absolutely love.
And I'm looking for your counter examples as well.
You'll help me, I'll help you.
On the audience will benefit.
So we have a very vibrant work culture
and we do happen to all be remote.
It was not like that in 2010.
It was a very difficult process to understand
how do you build a work culture
when you don't see each other on a daily basis
and you don't have those camaraderie events.
When you're in an office and you can hear somebody
in a cubicle that just got yelled at,
one cubicle over from you and cursed out,
you can easily go, whoa, Richard, you okay over there?
What happened?
High five.
And energy is restored instantly
because you have that protection.
You have that, or they make fun of you,
be like, I would have yelled at you louder.
But there's this rapport that exists.
When you're on your own and on an island,
you don't have that type of recovery.
And that's just one example.
Example number two, life becomes a
what did you do for me today culture
because nobody wants to stick around on Zoom meetings.
No, no more meetings.
Let's just get off and be fast.
So here we were, business partners, a year into it,
going to the National Restaurant Association show.
I ran a restaurant software firm at that time.
And we got to that conference.
Man, we still loved each other.
We were still friends.
We could hang out and enjoy each other's company,
but the next year, same thing happened.
We hadn't really seen each other in a year.
But every time we would get together,
the relationship would start to restore a little bit,
but it just felt like there's something wrong.
Well, when I moved to video power marketing,
we made some adjustments.
We decided that one, we would make sure to bring
the team members anytime we went to a speaking engagement
and we went to four per year.
So basically just a quarterly retreat,
making sure everybody got together.
And at the quarterly retreat,
day one was an opportunity to get settled in
and prepare the day two, full day two was we would do,
everybody could prepare 15 to 45 minute topics.
We have a little internal expo with the team.
Everybody got a leadership opportunity though.
But the rest of the day, we would go and explore Vegas
or we would go explore something else.
We would just spend time together as a culture.
The next day, everybody would have their own time
to do the same while Jake and I
would go and rock the conference.
So Jake and I would go rock the conference.
He'd go to VIP meetings and stuff,
but the team would get reinvigorated
every time we did these little get togethers.
Nowadays at First Class Business, every Friday,
we do what's called level up calm down.
Level up calm down is our office break room.
So at 12.45 p.m., which is enough time
to take care of any fires or any problems on the day.
12.45 we come in and nobody's allowed
to talk about problems.
Nobody's allowed to talk about fires.
There's something going on and burning alive, we don't care.
It's not the time to talk about it.
We can wait an hour and 15 minutes.
Sometimes karaoke breaks out.
Sometimes we're talking about the cultures
of Peru versus Columbia versus Mexico.
Sometimes we're not as on track with productivity.
Sometimes we just talk about team celebrations.
What did so and so do today?
Always led by the newest person first.
We want the newest people to speak first.
I learned that from Jeff Bezos.
It gets them to open up their shell
and feel like they have space to contribute.
And then by the time we're done at 2 p.m.,
nobody's quite quitting.
Everybody's back off to the races reinvigorated.
Usually with a chuckle, usually happy as can be
because we took some time to really get to know each other.
And then of course throughout the week,
I'm there making sure that all the people
who serve our clients, are you happy?
Do you like what you're doing?
Do you not like what you're doing?
How can we make it better?
What do you need to learn?
What areas of doubt do you have or concern?
So those are some of our secret sauce recipes
for creating environments where our team members,
I mean we are family through and through.
None of us have ever met in person, ever.
We don't have the same luxury
that video power marketing did.
We will one day, but for now, it's all virtual
and I'd give my life for my people 100% and they know that.
I don't have to, thank goodness.
Oh, let's hope it never gets to that point, Richard.
But on your side, what are some of the things
that you're doing for creating a strong culture virtually
since it is a factor that we do need to,
we need to honor given that people want it?
Of course, we could be highly selective prior to hiring.
So we find the right fit, I believe,
in right bus, right seat.
It's not 100% virtual.
They actually have to come into the office one day
to sign paperwork and get interviewed and stuff.
So we might not have the luxury of that much time,
but at least there's some handshakes
when we get to meet somebody.
And then, you know, besides the bells and the whistles,
I ask them to turn the paper over
and give me a coming of age moment
so I can find out when they beat up a bully,
saved a kitten.
I can give you a nickname
and pump you up a little bit on a rainy Wednesday.
And naturally, they're gonna be involved with supervisors
that will contact them via chat
or if they wanna do the video calls.
And the luxury of my industry is the interaction
because when they're on the phone,
we get to do quality control.
So we're listening and grading their phone calls
and discussing that with them.
So A, there's an excuse to speak with them.
B, since it's their recording, it's the mirror.
They can listen to it.
We pause it, say nothing, and they'll tell us what they did.
They missed the marker, forgot to add something,
or just did an incredible job where we're just cheering.
And it's a great reinforcement for them in our industry.
When we are on the Zoom calls,
we sometimes get to see the goodies in the background.
Like my 1961 Rocolo Regis.
People might talk about things like that.
So you see like a stuffed animal on the corner
and you start talking about it.
So it's nice to see what's happening in their homes,
which you wouldn't have seen if they were here.
And just not forgetting anniversaries
and reminding them all the years they've been with us.
And when there's something cool,
we've been doing bowling parties for the Christmas party.
And it's interesting because 80% of my staff
have never bowled before.
They don't hit the bumpers,
but you should see how they're bowling and their styles,
but it's the laughing and fun.
So if I am able to get that sort of time
when everyone's together as a whole company,
that Christmas party's the best.
And so-
Oh man.
Yeah.
That's so awesome.
There's so much life that comes from doing
what you're doing.
And again, no offense to the dentists out there
and the lawyers out there
and all the people who have traditional responsibilities
in North America.
I like the look you just made.
I feel the value of that look.
Cause it's just, there's a different level of rewarding
to experience things like that.
Right?
Go, go.
You went to the future, where's the vision?
And we didn't go about how in God's name I even got here.
I bet you that the majority of your audience
was under an enormous amount of pressure back in the day
to study certain things,
go to certain schools and devote your life and career.
And some people through comfort and connection,
go through that path.
And as you say, doctors, attorneys, that's fine.
I went against the grain.
And since nobody in my family spoke the second language,
they were in law and finance and business school.
I wanted to speak Spanish.
It was the easiest class and the most fun.
And I didn't want to sacrifice that box
that I had to be in for the rest of my life,
just for money.
It's not right.
And you'd be very unhappy.
And so I needed to take that chance.
And so I doubled down by studying that at the university
and then tripled down by coming to Costa Rica
and staying and falling in love with the girl
my dreams marrying and started company.
So you sometimes have to get past certain guilt
and you may need to make selfish decisions.
But as long as it's not hurting anybody
and it's not gonna extinguish the spark that's inside of you,
you need to live with yourself.
And so you could be responsible, test waters
and see how it goes.
But my goodness, if you have a good run,
then you should take it
because it could be a one in a million
and it might never ever happen again.
And then you'll regret it for the rest of your life.
And so I kind of held on and never let go Jackson.
And this is kind of where we are today.
Well, don't get me wrong.
You could be selfish, right?
That could be there.
But I think there's a strong difference too
between selfish and self-serving, right?
And so again, only you know,
and I'm talking to you visionary leaders out there too,
if you're truly being selfish
or you're doing something that actually hurts other people,
right?
Or if you're doing something that is self-serving
that actually impacts and helps a lot of people,
even though other people may blame you or be jealous
or maybe frustrated that they didn't get what they want
out of your life, right?
It's your life.
So I'm still very much, and I did the same thing.
I didn't go the traditional route.
I saw very much the opportunity to dive in
and maximize life itself.
And it came with its own pros and cons and pains,
but I've looked around and life is just as hard
for the person who's 400 pounds
as it is for the person who's 2% body fat.
You don't escape the hard aspect of life.
Life is meant to be hard.
There's lots of lessons to learn.
And I get to enjoy things
because I'm not bogged down by a 400 pound
mentally disturbed individual who's stuck
never having lived their true self.
So I'm with you.
Let's do it and I'll go after it, make it happen.
If you have the opportunity, seize the day
as Richard Blank just talked about.
So we're gonna wrap up here in just one minute,
but I think you got one more pressing matter to talk about.
I can feel that I could see a little bit of a move forward
and I'm like, Richard, go ahead and give us.
So close us out today.
What would you like to leave with the audience?
I guess just not to be too hard on yourself
regardless of the outcome.
Look at your eyes in the mirror, have some self-respect,
make your bed in the morning.
And I like first downs compared to touchdowns.
I can grind this thing out.
It's okay, pan for the gold.
And as long as you keep that momentum, it's all right.
Just don't make it a forced to Mars.
Just try to be proud of what you've accomplished that day.
And if it even not even earning money,
but you can pay it forward with a compliment,
or I myself just being on your amazing podcast,
Jackson, my main man, that made my day too.
Remember tomorrow we shall die.
So today is the day to dance and sing and be merry
and compliment what you need to compliment
and feel good and do a hundred pushups.
And that's a great day.
All that stuff adds up.
Motivation comes and goes, the structure and discipline.
That's where the ACEs and the division one come from.
And if you can do any sort of dedicated practice
above and beyond what is expected of you,
then don't be surprised if you're faster, stronger,
and you jump higher.
And so you stay with it.
It's like the Rocky movies.
You only really see somebody when they step in the ring
or they perform, but what about the 99 hours
to get them there?
That's you behind the curtain, behind the scenes,
when no one's around, do those pushups.
You don't need your best friend there.
Be your own motivation.
Thank you, Jackson, my boy.
I hope I was able to add something today.
I love it.
And what I'm taking away from that, my friends,
regarding those first downs is there's hope
for my Cowboys someday, Stephen A.
So you can leave my Cowboys alone.
We're gonna figure it out eventually.
Stick with our disciplines and we will get there.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.