A Transformative Year in Europe

Welcome to "Fire your Boss Fridays" with Lisa Hart and Chad Passa. Special CEO guest Richard Blank. Welcome to "Fire your Boss Fridays" Our mission is to: Help you discover new knowledge with the help of our special guests, who will teach you how to launch, manage, and grow your business. Inspire you to take control of your destiny, steal your life back, fire your boss, and live a life full of purpose. Bring you entertainment through captivating stories of our guests who have successfully fired their bosses! You'll hear about the highs and lows of running a business and celebrate the victories of these inspiring entrepreneurs. A Transformative Year in Europe Thank you for bringing that up. That was the best year of my life. I went to college for five years, right? So this was my junior year, then I did senior, super senior. So I went to Europe the fall of 93 through 94. And I stayed in Europe during Christmas break. I didn't come home. So I was there for 11 months. I was 21 at the time, and I lived in Spain. I started off in El Porto de Santa Maria, which is right next to Cadiz, one of the famous ships, the Santa Maria from Columbus. Then I went to Madrid, then I toured Europe, and then I came back to Sevilla. But when I was in Europe, I went as far east as Prague, far south as Corfu in Greece at the Pink Palace. You know I went to Amsterdam. I was also in Tangier, Morocco. But here's the skinny-diny, right? I'm 21 years old, couple grand in my pocket, Euro pass, and a backpack. I couldn't call home. This was a collect call at least once a week or a postcard, so I disappeared. But here's what I realized. The parties were there. I mean, all day, every day. But instead of going to the party at 12, 1 or 2 o'clock, I would get up early to go to the ruins, go to the museums, do something. https://youtu.be/gRQ_cc9JVv8 https://youtu.be/j0PeLXCXloI Fire your Boss Fridays, Lisa Hart, Chad Passa, Richard Blank, Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing Call Centre, BPO, Nearshore Contact Center, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business, Podcast, Gamification,Leadership, Marketing, CX, Guest, Money, B2C education, BPO trainer,call centre, contact centre, contact center Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. In addition, inducted into the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level. Hired bassist Garry Gary Beers of INXS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieGjN5H4xPQ Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies. We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry. https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/ #FireyourBossFridays #LisaHart #ChadPassa #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Gamification #CEO Reflections on Wisdom and the Telemarketing Industry I'm the elder around the fireside now telling tales and giving wisdom. And so to me, it was important. You've been to Costa Rica with your wife so many times. You love it here. And you know what it's like to be a guest in the country. And so since I was given such positive reinforcement, it felt right. And since English is my native tongue, I had that sort of leverage. But then again, I could use it to make a career. Do I love this industry? Some parts of it. I enjoy the art of speech. I enjoy the technology. I can't stand the attrition rates. or what Hollywood does to glamorize telemarketing call centers. And there's a lot of misconceptions. And also, you know, it's a grind. The industry can burn people out. Selling Candy and Life Lessons in a Creepy Van No, I made a dollar a box. I mean, this guy, and I don't tell this story often, but his name was Ruby. He had a gray van with no windows, the short Chevy van to the creepy one. That sounds so shady. And my mom, I was like, I swear I was 14 maybe. My mom would let me leave with this guy for four hours a night on school nights. And sell candy. and sell caricatures. I did that for East Abington Little League, a box of 100 back in the late 70s. I would knock on the door back and ride on Abington, dollar a thing for the uniforms, but good for you. Well, you're okay now, so obviously nothing bad happened, but for 14 years old, they probably loved you. They probably bought two candy bars. They must have. I did something right, man, but I was just doing it, right? And thanks for asking, by the way. Share a little bit about me, but that particular part of my life, I never thought it would have the impact that it did. It surprised me later on. In fact, surprised me so much, I just had this epiphany, and then I decided to put it on my LinkedIn as one of my jobs. Straight Shooter: The Basics of Successful Communication A lot of the times, I like to not be a devil's advocate, but let's be a straight shooter. If somebody only has 400 phone numbers, that's not enough to last the month. Maybe they don't have a script. Maybe the tone of their script is too aggressive. There's no rebuttals in case someone asks a question. No email template, no voicemail template, no pipeline. So I'm going to say, yo, bodies, I mean, this is where we're beginning. And so a lot of the times, it's really working backwards. Unique Training Methods Using Arcade and Storytelling I start with dessert first and you know what your favorite class was back in the day. It was recess. Let's call a spade a spade. You were kind enough to mention my, my pastime and my collection of antique pinball machines and retro arcade machines. And so what I like to do prior to the first training class is to have the dozen agents out there in the arcade playing pinball with one another in air hockey. It can reduce their stress. They start bonding through play. They make friends. And then when they're in the training room, they're now contributing more than just absorbing. And I try to do checkpoints with people. I like the triple gun trainings. Just don't give me an answer back, Chad. I'm going to expect you to stand up in front of the class, hold your paper in the left, use your right hand because of illustrators. It gives you another 15% of expression and helps you with your pausing and pacing. And I'm just trying to triple building confidence. But I got something even better for you. When people come in prior to working at the company, they fill out a resume, OK? And they put in all the bells and whistles. But man, that's what everybody does. So I'm going to say, Chad, why don't you turn the paper over and give me three paragraphs of a coming of age moment. I want to see your grammar, your vocabulary in English. I also want to see when you beat up a bully or if you saved a kitten out of a tree or if you happen to do both in one day. Why do I do this? Because I want to see depth. I also want to make a nickname for you. And also on a rainy Wednesday, I want to tell you that you're the kitty saving champ just to give you that second wind and remind you of where you are and where you're going. And so I can separate a lot of people that want to be promoted immediately without showing any sort of merit. I would prefer to have people without any bad habits. They could speak the English. They just don't know a predictive dialer or a CRM. I can teach that in five minutes. Figuring Out the Secret Sauce in Communication But these are golden nuggets. I mean, like I said, I've done my fair share of phone calls and communication studies as well. What you're talking about, Richard, you're right. You it is absolutely clear. You have listened to tens of thousands of calls and analyzed them and found the patterns. Right. There is no question in my mind, my man, the way that you laid it out so eloquently, I just felt like an infant in communication because, I mean, it was well executed. And I think it's really, really cool that that exists and that to find that purity, I think you found it, man. So if anything, you figured out the secret sauce. Imagination and Innocence: Keys to Future Entrepreneurs And I think we can not push them into adulthood or to maturity or stress too fast. They don't need to lose their innocence. And still create power and strength right through this. You're creating power and strength, right? Through imagination, play, and innocence. And diversity. All day. Because like you said, the canoe metaphor that you used I think was amazing because... Well, when the canoe starts going sideways, I don't care how many books you read or what information you know, you're going to have to pull on and pull from that amazing imagination and make this work. And I think you will be building the next generation of entrepreneurs with those books. For sure, because that is the rapids that we navigate as entrepreneurs every single day. And in all cases, but definitely as entrepreneurs, for sure.