Life, Passion & Business podcast. How to explore your calling in Costa Rica with Richard Blank.
Exploring the creativity of the human spirit with just five simple questions. Those questions give us a window to explore the journey and life story of people that look like they have it sorted.
Explore your calling, are you on a life path that feeds your soul?
My guest on the show believes that everyone has a calling.
Richard Blank is a native of Philadelphia born to a family with more than the average means and there was a plan. He was on a path to an Ivy League education to study medicine or law.
But even at that age, he knew it was important to be inspired in his chosen career. Neither of these was his calling. He convinced his parents to let him take a different path. He went to the University of Arizona, earning a bachelor’s degree in communication and Spanish.
For his junior year at the age of 21, he took a semester at a university in Madrid. It was about absorbing the language and the Spanish way of life. While he did enjoy the party scene. He also took the opportunity to travel on trains and stay in youth hostels. He explored the art and culture of Europe.
On returning to the US he took an internship with a Spanish TV station. And for a while and another job working with an importer of Corona Beer.
He used his bilingual ability and communication skills to create opportunities for himself and built a career in telemarketer training.
The Big Break The life-changing break came when he was 27 years old. He relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centres in San Jose.
He was hooked on the industry, the country and the culture
00:00So in Philadelphia, where you grew up, what was, did you have any thoughts about what you wanted to be when you grew up?
00:05Did you, were you, you know, was there a plan?
00:07That's why you do such an excellent podcast.
00:10There was a plan.
00:11A lot of the times, my friend, we grow up with opinions that are provided for us in predestined careers.
00:18And so I was almost on a path of Ivy League to study medicine and law.
00:23And I almost realized that it wasn't for me.
00:26It wasn't, it was a forced fit.
00:28And I know that I wouldn't be able to fulfill the sort of spiritual vision quest journey that I was on in my life.
00:35And so the argument, Paul, that I made to my parents when I decided to choose a language for my major at university was that my great grandparents were nomads.
00:45And they came over from Europe at the turn of the century.
00:48They learned English.
00:49They started a company.
00:51And if they didn't take these large risks, we weren't able to grow up in a very comfortable, middle class sort of lifestyle.
00:57And so I guess I had to build on the momentum of what was passed to me from generations ago.
01:05And also, once again, to be true to myself.
01:09I didn't say that I wanted to be a musician or an artist.
01:12I think those things are admirable.
01:14Even so, it's a very mature outlook to recognize the path you're on was not where you wanted to go, even in your, I guess, late teens and early 20s.
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