Call Centers Are About Feeding Families, Not Fortune.

Fight for Success Podcast by Michael Shaw. Strong virtual relationships with INXS fan Richard Blank. My favorite type of people are entrepreneurs and fighters. Fight for success podcast I personally believe that entrepreneurs and fighters go through a very similar grind before they achieve success and I want to share their stories! This podcast will share the stories of these fighters while sharing some valuable content for my listeners. May 25, 2022. Today I was joined by Richard Blank who runs a large call center in Costa Rica. Richard shared how he runs a large virtual team and how he still motivates them to work their best and enjoy their job. I think everyone will get something out of this episode. Plus, it was just a really good chat! Thanks for coming on the show, Richard! Daily Workout Routine Insight So when you, when you do your workouts, what, what are you, what are you doing? Are you doing like weights or cardio or what are you doing? You really want to hear the real deal? So I get up at five 30 every day. I do a half an hour of cardio. You've gone elliptical or a bike. Then I do about 45 minutes of weights. I'll break it down with chest and trice back and by shoulders and legs and one day on. I'll also do about 15 minutes of hitting a heavy bag. And then I'll do 15 minutes of core stomach training. And so this is done every day. And I've been doing this since I was 17. Might not be the largest man, but right now at almost 50 years old, I'm in the best shape of my life. Impact of Remote Work on Company Culture A lot of people hire the call centers for the brick and mortar for that sort of stability and electricity and support. But you know, today, a lot of people are working from home. It saves them time. It saves them money. They could still work out of their homes with the infrastructure we have. But without sounding selfish, I lost the fact of being able to walk through packed roads and being with everybody and breaking bread with them. And just having those sort of moments where not just I know your name and say, good job, champ. I walk past you and go, Michael, that call you did with Mrs. Jones was incredible. And let me tell you the three things why. Modernizing Vintage Jukeboxes Now, I've always loved the jukeboxes. They don't seem as much anymore in pubs or anything else. It's kind of all just digital, select a song on a little screen, and that's the new jukebox. It's not the same. I have a suggestion for you. Let's just say you don't want to spend all the money to fix the motor, which could be thousands, and the parts are very rare. Sometimes just have the beautiful outside of it with the glass and just put it in an MP3. Put it in a Bluetooth. I mean, you're still good to go. I mean, if you want to play the vinyl, it's fine. It doesn't sound so good. People like that sound. And that's OK. These machines can do that. But once you start, you know, the Bluetooth, the MP3, it sounds so much better. So you can enjoy both. The Art of Speech in Modern Support I see it as the art of speech. Today, you'll see, Michael, that a lot of people are doing omnichannel non-voice support, where they're doing a lot of things with chat, filling out forms. And to me, I think that's very informal. You're really eliminating the chance to get a referral, to get an upsell, and to retain that client. And plus be able to understand a little bit more of the client with whom you're working. For me, no one when they're a child says, hey, mommy, I want to be CEO of a call center. You kind of gravitate towards it. And once you're here, if you can appreciate, especially me by seeing these representatives that are bilingual and English is their second language, I gravitated towards that. Why Richard Moved to Costa Rica I'm originally from Northeast Philadelphia, but I'm currently here in Central America and Costa Rica, and I've been here for the last 22 years. Awesome. So what made you move to Costa Rica? Kind of prepared for that prior and that's an excellent question as far back as high school. I know that instead of going to Ivy League and studying medicine, law, engineering or architecture, I was into languages. So I doubled down on Spanish and communication at the University of Arizona. During college, I did some internship with a television company called Telemundo. And post-grad, I worked for an importers of Corona beer. So like I was always working with jobs that involve Spanish sales and public relations. https://youtu.be/zDbZ3wSDzD0?si=r92Jg-LTF4U5NHLU https://youtu.be/dNSV9n93z1A https://youtu.be/M4t0YZAvQBM https://youtu.be/QIQZLhzYJsE https://youtu.be/GP-Rc6pfJ2o https://youtu.be/E6eqqWVF5MU https://youtu.be/Pj6oEmHJitk Richard Blank hired bassist Garry Gary Beers of INXS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieGjN5H4xPQ Richard Blank produced a Rap Breakdancing video commercial https://youtu.be/GQvGZYcX71s?si=3I6N3p-LVxwTvnh2