Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
  • 3 days ago
The CEO Secrets for Executing Strategy Podcast. How to grow company profits nearshore. Episode 13.

On the CEO Secrets for Executing Strategy podcast, your host, Wayne Washington, encourages CEO's to share not only their expertise, but also how they achieved their success. Wayne uses a conversational approach and seeks authentic and engaging CEOs willing to share their struggles as well as their success stories.

FME CEO and CEO Secrets for Executing Strategy podcast host Wayne Washington has over three decades of managing operations, speaking, and day-to-day, in-the-trenches, running a business, Wayne’s view of operations excellence is radically different. He has learned, operations excellence is not a destination at which you arrive, but an ongoing journey in pursuit of a company’s strategic plan. Our 15 to 20-min podcast shares amazing founder stories who reveal the smartest strategies for scaling.

Your host, Wayne Washington, talks with Richard Blank of Grow Company Profits. Grow Company Profits deals with the misalignment of your strategy, culture and organization model. If you are seeing symptoms like sub-par financials, out of control growth or even internal competition then this is the place for you.

CEO Secrets for Executing Strategy Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica as an expat. Topics discussed with Richard: advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, pinball machines, employee motivation, phonetic micro expression reading.
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. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Transcript
00:00I know you've got things to do, and I have things to do, but Richard, what makes you a good CEO?
00:06Two things. That fortune favors the brave, that at least they know that I have vigor,
00:12that I have grit, that I'm going to back up what I say. But the second thing is empathy.
00:19I'm a North American guest in this country, a CEO of a company. I almost have multiple
00:25strikes against me. They sometimes are judging me what happened at their last job, with their last
00:31supervisor or co-worker, as I'm not judging them on what happened with the last guy that just couldn't
00:36step up to the plate. There's an expression, Borar y Quinta Nueva, starting from scratch.
00:43And as I say before, if my first impression with my agents is standing next to them and playing some
00:49pinball, or getting to know their names when they're smiling and laughing, I think I set a pace.
00:56And I could always buy more equipment and have different real estate and do all the bells and
01:03whistles. And there are companies that are 10 times my size. But my core foundation of how I treat myself,
01:11how I treat your audience and you, of course, we both trust for one another.
01:14Right. And just giving people dignity when they say they don't feel like a robot or a number.
01:20That is why I've lasted 14 years, because if nobody comes back, I'm by myself at Chuck E. Cheese and I'm
01:27alone on a birthday party. So this positive reinforcement of low attrition and of people
01:33that have been with me over a decade, my hat's off and I can't thank them enough.

Recommended