IAM1123- Entrepreneur Brings the Language Immersion Experience

Ray Blakney is probably like every other award-winning Filipino-American entrepreneur who grew up in Turkey and lives in Mexico you know.

He started his first business, with his wife as a business partner, in 2008.

Since then he has bootstrapped multiple 6 and 7-figure online businesses.

Most of this was done from home in his Superman pajamas.

• CEO Hack: Micro-soft to-do
• CEO Nugget: Always take a step forward
• CEO Defined: Figuring out the vision for your company and passing it on to the team

Website: https://www.livelingua.com/

https://rayblakney.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raymond.blakney
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondblakney/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rayblakney

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Transcription

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00:19 – Intro 

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

00:47 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ray Blatantly of Live Linguah and the podcast Hawk. Ray, it's great to have you on the show.

00:57 – Ray Blakney 

Gresh, thanks for having me.

00:59 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Ray so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Ray is probably like every other award-winning Filipino American entrepreneur who grew up in Turkey and lives in Mexico that you know. He started his first business with his wife as a business partner in 2008. And since then he has bootstrapped multiple 6 and 7-figure online businesses. Most of this was done from home and in his Superman pajamas. And who doesn't love Superman pajamas? Ray, great to have you on the show. You dressed up for us. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:28 – Ray Blakney

Definitely. I have the pajama pants on below, but I put on a nice business shirt on the top, right? You never know.

01:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, there you go. You're starting trends over there. So that's definitely a powerful combo. So I know I touched on it a little bit and how you got started and all the awesome things you're doing. I wanted to rewind that clock, and hear a little bit more about that and how you got started your CEO story.

01:46 – Ray Blakney 

Yeah. So I can say I didn't plan on being a CEO as a kid, right? It's not one of those things that when I was a little baby, I was like, yeah, one day I'm going to run my own business. But the odd thing was, if you would ask any of my friends, even when I was 10 or 11, they said I was going to run my own business. It was one of those things where like everybody saw it. But back in the day, I wanted to be a computer programmer, right? I love my computer games. I'm like, I want to write computer code. I want to write computer games. So that's what I did. I kind of studied. I went to college to study computer engineering. And then I learned, wow, writing computer games is a lot less fun than playing those things.

So I'm like, yeah, I do not want to be going down that path. So I became more of a traditional computer programmer. I worked in Fortune 500 companies and worked over in Silicon Valley for a bit. And then I realized, I don't want to be sitting in a cube for the rest of my life staring at a computer screen. So I quit all that. I had a six-figure salary, almost six-figure salary as a computer engineer, and I joined the Peace Corps. And they paid me $150 a month to work in southern Mexico with indigenous communities down there. That's where I met my wife, not in the indigenous community. She was actually a Spanish teacher who was teaching me Spanish. So that's how I met her.

And we actually launched our first business together after that. She always wanted to launch her own Spanish school, but she didn't know the business side of things. Not that I did either, but I'm a computer programmer, like, I can make a website, and let me learn this whole online marketing SEO thing, which this is back in 2006 when most people didn't know what it was. And I'm like, let me learn what this SEO thing is. And let's see if we, let's have a go at it. We're in our twenties. We, you know, we were newlywed. We got married where we launched our first business. And if it doesn't work, luckily we have loving families who like, I'm a computer engineer. You're a bilingual teacher.

We'll go to the U S we'll get jobs. We'll be fine. Right? So like, let's give it a shot. Luckily that first business worked. We ended up owning a chain of language schools around Mexico, which we sold in 2012. From that, we launched our online language school in 2008, LiveLingua.com, And that's one of the top 5 online language schools in the world right now. The only one that doesn't have significant VC money. We bootstrapped all our competitors, like millions of rich people, investing millions of dollars in there. We didn't do that. We bootstrapped it up. So our first two businesses worked. Then, of course, I failed a whole bunch of them afterward, but I already had 2 businesses working. So it made things a lot better. I've had a few successes since then and quite a lot of failures, but that's how I got into becoming a CEO. It was kind of a back door entrance into the whole game.

04:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. I love to hear the bootstrap story. I almost feel like, you know, a lot of times when you are able to bootstrap your business, it shows how you have to be really, really lean. You have to be very strategic and aware of what's working and what's not. And like you said, a lot of those businesses sometimes have those huge pockets, I guess, of people that bankroll them. Sometimes they don't know what works and what doesn't, and it isn't as well built a business. So sometimes you can be a lot more nimble and effective.

04:24 – Ray Blakney 

I agree 100%. The thing is, if you have millions of dollars, usually you can fix any problem by throwing money at it, right? Throw enough money at it, the problem fixes itself. Or at the very least, it covers itself up, which doesn't mean you actually fix the root cause of it. You're just like, I threw enough, we're not getting students or we're not getting enough clients. Let's throw a million dollars at Facebook ads. You get clients, you might not even make back the million dollars, but yes, you did get clients, right?

You didn't do it right. You didn't build a good funnel. You didn't actually have all of that built-in there with the customer's custom avatars or anything like that. You just threw enough money at it that it worked. And in the long term, I don't think that'll work for most businesses, right? You'll eventually run out of money and you're like, wow, everything we did worked, but none of it was actually profitable. It just got us clients, but that's not profitable clients.

05:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like you said, I love that because it actually does cover those things up. So I know you've been able to build and grow many ventures. So I wanted to go a little bit more into LiveLingua and also hear about your new venture podcast, our newest venture podcast. I can hear a little bit more about that.

05:23 – Ray Blakney 

Sure. So LiveLingua.com, as I mentioned, is actually appropriate because we're getting out of COVID right now, but I actually launched LiveLingua.com because of the Mexican swine flu back in 2008. So as I mentioned my wife and I owned a chain of language schools back then and the way it worked was we actually taught Spanish to foreigners who flew to Mexico to kind of have the immersion experience with us here in Mexico. We put them with Mexican families, we teach them classes, and of course, with the swine flu this for those who don't remember was supposed to be what COVID is right now, right? It was supposed to be this big global pandemic. So they pretty much closed down Mexico's border.

So overnight we went from having a school that was full and booked out for 3 months to almost no students. And of course, everybody canceled for the next 3 months. So it was actually my wife who had the idea of, okay, we need to at least pay our rent on these places. We were only a year or so into our business at that point, so it's not like we had a huge war chest there to just ride out the storm. And she's like, let's contact our old students to see if they'd like to take classes via Skype with our teachers, just so we can keep our teachers employed as well. So we sent out the email and I was expecting 2 or 3 people to reply and say yes, but wow, we had a great response rate.

So I'm like, why don't I just throw up a website and see if anybody else in the world wants this? It was an awful website. I am not a graphic designer. I'll tell you, I'm the guy who does the database in the backend and all the rest of it. It was awful, but I threw it up there. I used SEO to get it on the first page. Back then it was a little easier. This was before some of the Google updates like Google Penguin, and Google Panda. So it was a little easier to get to the first page. Within 6 months, not only had the school recovered, but LiveLingua, or what became LiveLingua, as we called it something else back then, was actually making more money for like one hour a day as a side hustle than our 3 language schools were.

So that's kind of how we launched LiveLingua and we've been growing ever since. It's not an overnight success in the sense that we weren't a million-dollar business in 12 months or anything like that. I like to say it took us 7 years to get the 7 figures. So, you know, it's the reason I don't write a book about my experience because that's a book nobody would buy, right? How to build a 7 figure business in 7 years, nobody wants it. They all want the 30-day solution, right? And I'm like, I can't give you that. I don't know how to do it in 30 days. So it took us 7 years to kind of get to some significant numbers that we've been growing ever since COVID last year was actually pretty good for us because everybody was stuck at home and like, hey, why don't I learn Chinese?

Why don't I learn Spanish or Portuguese? And they all came to us. We're one of the lucky businesses that grew out of that. Podcast talk is actually a similar story. So at the beginning of COVID, LiveLingua was growing. And I wanted to find some other channels for us to grow our business with. Primarily I've been in the online space. So SEO, Facebook marketing, ads, Google ads. That's kind of where we've been getting people from. I've been on a number of podcasts over the last few years, about 50 or so, and over 5 years. And I was like, wow, that was actually a good way for us to get clients. So you could get on there, they do it.

I've had my own podcasts and, Gresh, as you know, it's a lot easier to be on somebody's podcast than doing it yourself because you don't have to produce, you don't have to do the social media, right? You just show up and you talk. So I'm like, let's see if I can get out there and get on some more podcasts. That'd be a great way for us to get in front of a new audience. It's gotta be an easy way to do that, right? So I went on Google, like podcast guests or something. I don't remember the exact search term. Yeah, that didn't work, right? I mean, you know, you don't get shows, half the shows are inactive, more than half the shows don't exist anymore. Out of the 1.5 million podcasts in the world, Do you find like 50 of them?

And they're either really high-end, like Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan. And as much as I'd love to be on their show, they're probably not gonna have me at my level right now. Or they're just, you know, been out of, they just don't do episodes anymore. So I contacted them. I was wasting a lot of time. So I went on to iTunes and tried to find these podcasts. I tried using some tools out there to see if I could find podcasts. I contacted podcast booking agencies and I'm like, okay. And they're like, okay, $3, 000 and I'll get you on 5 shows. I'm like, wait, you're talking good shows? Like, no, just 5 shows. I'm like, does anybody listen to them? Like, I don't know. I'm like, I'm not paying you $3, 000 to get me on these things. So that's where Podcast Hawk, HAWK, the idea was born.

So I'm a computer engineer. The first thing I ask myself is, can I get all the shows in the world into a database? And I spent a few months like, yeah, I can do that. Can I get their contact information? Yeah, I can do that. And then right now, that was the basic concept in the back end. Right now, we're cleaning all the contact information manually. I have a team in the Philippines of 10 people who are just going through every single podcast in the world and cleaning Facebook, emails, and all that kind of stuff. So what does our service do? Pretty much, Gresh, you could go in there, and let's say you wanted to grow your podcast by appearing on other people's podcasts, a valid strategy, or you had a book and you wanted to publish it, or you had a business and you just wanted to get in front of your audience, right?

09:41 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And this could be for your businesses, yourself personally, or a combination of both, but is it that ability to be able to kind of see, I guess, the simplicity and bootstrap things and be able to kind of build them into, you know, scalable and growing businesses?

09:54 – Ray Blakney 

Absolutely. So I usually categorize, you know, 2 types of CEOs or 2 types of founders, let's say, right? They're the visionary CEOs. Those are kind of the guys we see, including when we're recording this yesterday, right? Richard Branson, the guy who goes into space and we're going to be doing all of that really cool stuff. Or, you know, Steve Jobs, creating an iPhone and all that, you know, all those things. I'm not one of those. I'm one of the second class of CEOs, and that's the ones who see opportunities or see needs that are not being met or not being met well and create businesses around those. You don't read about us as much because it's not quite as interesting as being inventing space flight.

It's just there's something out there that I needed for my business and it didn't exist. And instead of just throwing my hands up in the air and saying, oh, well, that's too bad. I go and create it. And that's generally where I found most of my success for the businesses. As far as the ideation part of the businesses are concerned. The second part that's kind of my secret sauce, as you said, is discipline. So I've been practicing martial arts most of my life. And the key to successful businesses, at least for me, has been getting up every morning and taking one step forward. That's it, Nothing else but that. I think most businesses fail in the early steps because most of us go into it for the first 3 to 6 months and we use adrenaline to get us through it.

Business is like, wow, this is exciting. This is cool. This is all the rest of it. Once that runs out, you realize, wow, this is work. Right? I mean, I gotta get up and I have to start doing stuff that I don't really enjoy necessarily. Right. And being able to do that constantly, time after time with the ups and downs, we alluded to, you know, Google algorithms. I lost Live Lingo overnight to Google Penguin, the first version. The reason I said it was called something else before was on another website, Google Penguin, just we were number one in the world, and boom, gone. Not in the first 100 pages, totally de-indexed from Google. And I had to get up and start and build the business again the next day.

And I take one step forward. It took us 3 years to even get back to where we were when Google Penguin hit us. And then we kind of kept on growing past that. That's the key for the business, kind of looking out for opportunities and then just sticking. When you find one that works, I'm not saying sticking is a bad idea for 3 years, but if it's growing, stick to it and just grow a little bit every single day, and 7 to 8 years down the road, you might have a 7 figure business as well.

12:03 – Gresham Harkless

I would ask you now for what I call a CEO hack and it could be an app, a tool, or something that makes you more effective and efficient.

12:11 – Ray Blakney 

Yeah, so I use actually Microsoft To Do. It's just simple to-do list software. Used to be called Wunderlist, which I liked a little better, but then Microsoft bought them and they're not quite as good anymore. But it's the basic idea of like, I plan out on Friday, I plan out my next week. So we use EOS, SRR kind of, for those who don't know, we use ROKS and 90-day plans. But I go in and take a look at it and then I break it down for the next 5 days on Friday afternoon. So I know next week what I'm gonna do, the 3 big things I need to do every day to move the needle forward. That way when I show up on Monday, I'm not thinking, so what am I gonna do today? I know exactly what I'm gonna do.

I know exactly what I'm gonna do every single day this week unless you know a server blows up or something unexpected happens. It kind of frees up my brain power and not having to create it's like those CEOs wear the same clothes every day because they don't want to think about what they're going to be wearing every day. That's my hack for what am I going to do today. I know exactly what I'm going to do today and I can go to my list and tell you what I'm gonna do tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It's Monday today for those who are listening. So that's the hack that I like. Simple to-do list, put 3 things on it for every day of the week and just make it, don't go through them. If you end early, take the rest of the day off. If you have to work late to finish them, you have to work late to finish them as well. So that's kind of the balance.

13:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I think so many times you hear that the most successful people are able to control what they can control, plan what they can plan. And when they have as much as possible, you know, planned out and understand exactly what that is, then they're able to kind of lean more into the things that, you know, they have to do in terms of execution. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Ray, what does being a CEO mean to

13:41 – Ray Blakney 

Being a CEO to me is figuring out the vision for your company. We talked a little bit earlier about the vision of your life. So you figure out the vision for your companies that align with the vision for your life as the CEO. That's really important. And then going down and kind of moving that into the company, make sure everybody you hire, everybody you bring onto the team has the same vision as you. If you do that as a CEO, it means you're gonna have a happy company.

I've had almost nobody ever quit in any of my companies because I make sure that people come and have the same vision as we do. And wanna live the same kind of life that I do and kind of have the same goals and dreams. And it's really hard to lose track and really easy to lose track of that as time goes on. So the CEO's job is to make sure that everybody has that. We have bi-weekly meetings with everybody in the team and it's my job to kind of, you know, put that, you know, bash that home every single time to make sure we're all on the same page.

14:32 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. It's so powerful and definitely something that's extremely underrated and making sure everybody's rolling in the right direction, so to speak, and having that same vision and mission personally, but also within their business and how that can kind of, you know, overlap and support one another. So Ray truly appreciates that definition. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:59 – Ray Blakney 

Sure, So to follow me, I'm actually not that active unfortunately on social media. I'm kind of busy so I don't have time to you know be posting on those as much as I'd like. I also joke that on Instagram I don't look very good in the bikini so I'm not very popular on Instagram either. But if you want to do want to find out what I'm doing you can usually go to my 2 businesses, livelingua.com, L-I-V-E-L-I-N-G-U-A.com, or podcasthawk.com, podcasthawk.com. Go to the About Us page, and you actually find my email there. I'm very, you know, I like being open to my companies. I'm not behind an email wall, so you'll find my email. You can contact me there. You can also go to my personal website, RayBlakeney.com.

I speak at conferences, and I'm on podcasts, so you can kind of find a little bit there. I don't update it all the time, but every few months I'll go in there and do an update. And then the final thing is if you do insist on following somebody on social media, Facebook, I kind of date myself when I say that, go to Facebook.com. You'll find a picture of me, of somebody sword fighting. That's what I do as a hobby. So if you found that person, you found the right one and you can just add me and feel free to contact me there as well.

15:58 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Ray. We will have the links and information to show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But I appreciate you for taking some time out, of course, for all the awesome work you did, you do, and the reminders you gave to us as well too, and how to, you know, be successful and determine what our why is and how to lean into that. So thank you so much again, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of

16:16 – Outro