Ep. 1: How Richard Blank Built Costa Rica’s Largest Call Center

Transcript

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live or work in another country? Be honest. I know I have. It’s a big reason why my team operates remotely around the world. But it’s not the same as living in those countries. How do you get over the mental hurdles to try something different in your business when everyone is telling you, “No!”

Welcome to Scale Tales – a business storytelling podcast where businesspeople just like you come on and share those extraordinary moments when they scaled a business, a team, or even a new product or service.

This episode is brought to you by Equilibria, Inc. Equilibria provides training to assist fast-growing companies in documenting and improving their key processes for maximum operational performance. Visit EQBsystems.com to learn more. That’s EQBsystems.com.

Our first scale tale comes from Richard Blank. He’s the founder and CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center. His journey to the successful entrepreneur he is today spans across three continents and is filled with introspection and sprinkled with lots of common sense along the way. Stay tuned as he takes us along for an interesting ride.

This is Ep. 1: How Richard Blank Built Costa Rica’s Largest Call Center

My name is Richard. I’m a very proud Northeast Philadelphia boy. So I grew up there graduated Abington high school in 91, my team university of Arizona, class of 96, Spanish and communication. And I moved to Costa Rica when I was 27 years old to work at a friend’s call center for a couple of years. And from there, I pretty much learned the business from the inside and out. And in my mid-thirties, I took the chance and started my own company. And here we
are today, 14 years later…

Hold up, hold up, hold up…wait a minute. Richard! Surely there’s more to your story than this. Let’s try that again!

How about this? When I was in high school and I graduated, most of my friends were going to Ivy league and studying law and medicine, engineering, and architecture. I myself decided to double down on languages. It was my favorite class and at the University of Arizona, once again, being a communication major, I was able to focus on public speaking rhetoric and non-verbal communication. And so that was very important for me.

Sometimes I kind of felt like a dreamer and I was almost doing this alone, but since my great grandparents came from Europe, from Romania, Russia, Germany, and Poland, they came at the turn of the century. And so when they came to the United States in the early 20th century and they learned English and were entrepreneurs is pretty much my strongest argument to my parents on what I was trying to do. Our family were nomads. We were risk-takers. And for me, all I know is that I wanted some sort of adventure and I know that by learning a second language, it would open many doors for me. And so my natural progression pretty much got me to where I am today.

Okay, now that’s much better! Context always helps! So now we know why Richard is so passionate about language. In fact, his last two years at university were critical in setting the foundation for turning his love of language into a career.

I was an intern in Tucson for my final two years of college. And so there is these two really influential gentlemen. One was Miguel Kitana that did the news out of Los Angeles. And the other was Pedro SEF SAC who had a really popular talk show. And when they used to come to Tucson, I would go to certain events with them. And these individuals would encourage me and give me advice and tell me how to be more professional. So really hats off to them. But prior to
that, I did spend my junior year in Spain. I was there for two semesters and I didn’t come home over Christmas break. And so what I would do is with my backpack, I traveled for two months through Europe and I was having the most incredible conversations every day, meeting, meeting people from all over the world.

Backpacking around Europe opened a whole new world for Richard. He learned the valuable lessons of evaluating and focusing on what really matters in life as well not taking certain things, experiences, or people for granted.

And what I figured out then was that the things that we hold so dear in the United States really didn’t make a difference overseas. And we’re really just looking at your essence. So it just opened my mind that there are other places in the world where I could learn and be accepted. And I guess my main thing, and I’m very proud of this is that, you know, when you’re 21 years old in Europe, all you want to do is party and have a good time, which I did. But if a party began
at eight, o’clock what I made sure to do before that time was to see as many museums and buildings and as much artwork and architecture as I could. So at least I could put in my time to grow and see these incredible historical artifacts that made our cultures, our Western civilization. And so that was the year that I read more books and didn’t watch television and really mastered Spanish. And so that was probably the year that I grew the most.

Sounds like Richard was maturing into a self-aware young man. But then, just as he was coming into his own, he had to return to the U.S. to complete his studies. He went back with a renewed sense of purpose and a calling to do something bigger than himself.

What was a huge culture shock because once again, my mind was adjusted towards another sort of lifestyle. And then I was thrown right back into the competitive north American culture. Interning for Telemundo was one thing just for work experience, but I wanted to do something above and beyond. So there was an organization in Tucson called Casa de Los Ninos, and it’s a place for abused and neglected children. And so when I was lying by the pool, one day, I heard that they were having a Corvette raffle. So I put in, cause I’d love to, you know, win a Corvette, but I didn’t, but I met the organization there and I offered my services to see if I could raise money for them. And so my fraternity on campus did a haircut marathon raised, close to $800 for them. And so what I tried to do was something that was not egocentric.

I wanted to not only show my marketing and promotion skills, but coming back from Europe, I wanted to give back, I wanted to pay it forward. I figured that since I was given so many special opportunities, was there any chance that I could use this sort of knowledge and momentum for good? And I think a lot of it has to do with maturity as well, because I took that responsibility very seriously. So once again, by doing that, fundraising landed me that internship. And then
post-grad, I landed a great job with the importers of Corona.

Wow! What a life so far and at this point, Richard’s only in his early 20s. He’s had an internship at the popular Spanish channel, Telemundo, he’s studied abroad in Spain, and graduated, landing a job with importers of the well-known beer, Corona.

And I was doing promotions and public relations in Spanish. But once again, I wasn’t completely fulfilled. And if you can get past your parents’ guilt, you can live anywhere in the world. And so when that one-in-a-million opportunity crossed my path, I decided to take it!

Turns out it was a year after working with those importers of Corona that Richard’s onein-a-million opportunity surfaced…in Costa Rica.

I literally had to make a decision to stay in the United States and continue working or to go down there for a couple months. And I guess it was more of my intuition because there’s a lot of naysayers out there at least, and then seen the “Negative Nancies” and “Debbie Downers.” And these are usually the people that love you so much. And, and they’re trying to protect you, but my intuition said, “Richie, go for it! I know that this is the right thing. You’re not just dipping a toe. You’ve been studying Spanish your whole life. And I believe that you could do well.”

And if it didn’t work out, I could have always come home after a couple months. But I also believe in positive reinforcement. And the fact that I did learn a second language, I was openminded and embraced this new culture and traditions here. It really gave me this reinforcement stay here. And I fell in love with the girl of my dreams and we got married and, and we started a life together here and started a business together here. So as much as it’s different from my
family’s expectations in the United States and what all of my friends did once again, I was being very true to myself that 18-year-old that decided to take that huge risk on myself and not to be able to compare notes to my friends that were doing different things. But the one thing I do know is that my circle did support me.

And so me being from Philadelphia, I guess I was doing the “Rocky.” I wanted to go the distance. I just wanted to see if I could do it. Even if I got beat up and knocked out, your friend, Richard was at least going to try. And at the end of the day, at least I could look at myself in the mirror and be okay with that.

So, there he was…a wide-eyed Richard, full of ambition, relocated to Costa Rica, optimistic about his future. To be more specific, that one-in-a-million opportunity was conducting training for over 5,000 employees at an extremely large call center in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica.