Aidan

Hey, everyone. Welcome back. This is episode number 76 of The Growth Booth and is the first in a new series of episodes that I'm calling Decoding Success, where I'll interview people who have built very successful businesses and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars online. Today, to kick things off, I'm with Ricardo, who is, without doubt, one of the most innovative marketers that I know. Someone who is an absolute sponge for information, someone who loves testing and is incredibly passionate about building his online business. But not just building his online business, also helping other people build businesses as well. Ricardo is, in fact, one of the coaches in our Blueprint Academy Mastermind, and he does that on the side of also running his own very successful business.

Ricardo is from Portugal. I met Ricardo, I want to say, around about a decade ago as part of our 100K Factory Training program that we did way back then. As I say, Ricardo's built a very successful business and works as a coach. I'm incredibly grateful to have met Ricardo because I've learned an enormous amount from him. I always look forward to getting these little emails about new discoveries that Ricardo has made. 

So, Ricardo, thanks for taking some time out and being with us here today. 

Ricardo

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I'm pretty excited to be here and share some of my journey. 

Aidan

So just before we dive in, maybe you could give people a little bit of background about yourself and the business that you've built. Obviously, I mentioned that you live in Porto, in Portugal, which is an amazing, beautiful city. But what were you doing before you built an online business, and what is the online business that you've built? 

Ricardo

Okay, so what I was doing before in another life, I was a software developer. I worked on building databases for hospitals, so software for hospitals. I did love software development. But at a certain point, the corporate world started to fade on me. I was not passionate about it anymore. When I started, I worked on small on very small businesses, startups. And on a startup, you can really wear the shirt and work with the team and help the business grow. When you start working on bigger companies, it's more about politics than actually doing the work. And I really was not much into that. So now I always had this, since I was four years old, five years old, I had this entrepreneur bug inside me. 

When I was five years old, I was trying to sell this, how do you call that? Papers, where you put two sheets of paper and you write on the first one, and it carbon copies to the next one? I think it's called carbon copy paper. 

Aidan

Carbon copy paper, yeah. 

Ricardo

My father used a lot of that, and the used ones, they were still good. So I put the paper on the door of my house saying, “Selling used carbon paper, $0.01 apiece,” or something like that. I sell calendars, I sell proms, I would sell anything. I would try to sell anything when I was a kid. So I always had this entrepreneur inside me, and it never went away.

Aidan

You know the great thing about kids is kids never think something is a bad idea or a good idea. It's just an idea. Whereas if we were thinking, “Oh, you know, I could sell this carbon copy paper,” we'd probably think that's a terrible idea. But for a kid, you're thinking, “Oh, I've got this idea, I'll do it.” Kids have this tendency to jump in the deep end and just do stuff. And I feel like as adults, we can actually learn a lot from that. Especially as adults who want to become successful entrepreneurs, we can learn a lot from kids who just jump in the deep end and try things. 

Ricardo

Yeah, we should never lose that. I'm very happy every time I see a story of 16 year old, 17 year old that is succeeding, and I say, “Okay, you have everything, because you still have that drive inside yourself, and you believe you can do anything, and you just go out there and you do it and you succeed. That's how you succeed, really.” 

I always had this passion and I never lost it. So when I had my job, my 9-5 job, I had that feeling. I know many people has the same feeling. We are a very special breed. Our breed, the entrepreneur people, we are a very special breed. Not many people understand that. I couldn't imagine myself doing that, working for someone else my entire life. That would kill me. Doesn't matter what I have to do. I needed to run away from that. 

Aidan

Sure. 

Ricardo

Otherwise I would always feel like a failure. Regardless of how successful I could be in my job, I would always feel like a failure. I really needed to get away from that. I was always trying new stuff, catching some information here on YouTube or watching that. I remember it clearly. Not very proud of that anyway, but when Amazon came around 2002, I signed up as an affiliate for Amazon, and then I was a software developer, so I created a piece of code that was always moving in my screen and clicking on the ad so I could make money. Of course, that didn't last long.

I was always trying to figure out a way of doing it. It was not so much for the money. It was more for proving to myself that I could do it, that I didn't need to depend on someone else. I didn't need to depend on a job. That was my drive and still is my drive today. 

Aidan

Yeah, I think this is a common theme that a lot of people experience. Firstly, happiness and that feeling of fulfillment is sometimes hard for entrepreneurs to get from a 9-5 day job. Or at least they can get a lot more of it when they've got their own business. Then this thing you just mentioned about proving it to yourself and getting that success firsthand for an entrepreneur, it's one of the best things in the world. That's one of the reasons why we we start new projects because each project has got a probability of success or failure. The projects that succeed, it is incredibly fulfilling and sort of hard to replicate. 

What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced when you started out? And obviously you're in Portugal, you've got English as a second language, were these things that were barriers to you or they never concerned you? What's your take on that? 

Ricardo

The language? I never felt the language as a barriers. My English is not perfect and was way worse ten years ago. That's part of my daily routine is to always do a bit of English learning with online apps to improve my English. 

Aidan

What do you use for that? What apps do you use? 

Ricardo

I use Duolingo and I also use another app called ELSA. ELSA is really good because it helps with the pronunciation. I find it very useful and has been helping me a lot. 

Aidan

I'm on a 30-day streak with Duolingo now, so I started using Duolingo as I started diving into Italian, which I mentioned on a recent podcast. Duolingo is just part of the way that I'm sucking in new vocabulary and filling up little five minute windows of downtime I've got in my day. So interesting to hear what you're using there. Anyway, I'll let you get back to what you were saying there. 

Ricardo

But talking about Duolingo, you can learn a lot from that app, not only from the perspective of learning a new language, but also from the perspective of marketing and how to build the business. If you pay close attention to the way they build the tool and the way they keep people engaged and all the games they build, it works and it can be adapted to anything else you do. It really can be adapted to a lot of other things you do well. 

Aidan

One example of that is I mentioned this 30-day streak. My brother in law also uses Duolingo for Spanish and he's on a ridiculous 1200-day streak. That means he's opened that app every single day and spent at least five minutes on it every single day for about three years. Even me yesterday, it got to about 09:00 PM at night and I was like, “I must go and do this because I don't want to break my streak,” and I got in there and I ended up spending some time on it. But from a marketing standpoint, that's one thing that I think we can work into a lot of projects, ideas like that, to keep the audience engaged. Anyway, we are going way off track here, but it makes things interesting. So I thought I'd mention that.

Ricardo

I'm on 600-day streak, so two-year streak and I'm not going to lose that. It may rain. Nice. I'm not going to lose that. 

Aidan

Challenges for you getting started, I just want to go back to that and touch on it. It sounds like speaking English as a second language was not a huge barrier for you. Being in Portugal, I don't think was a huge barrier for you. 

Ricardo

It was, not the fact that I was in Portugal, but the fact that in Portugal, our salaries are very low, and so my money was very limited when I started. We actually had a conversation about that. I don't know if you remember. 

Aidan

I do remember. I do remember, yeah. 

Ricardo

Before succeeding, I did try a lot of stuff that did fail. I did a lot of courses that did fail with with many other guys. Actually, the 100K Factory was the first program where I actually succeeded after that. 

Aidan

And even with that though, success didn't come immediately to you because I know speaking about, we had this conversation and I seem to remember the program was not a cheap program. It was, I think, $2,500, $1,000, something like this, and you had hit a few roadblocks straight out of the gate and it was basically, “Look, I've paid a lot of money for this program and I haven't got the results that I'm after yet,” at that stage, and obviously you went on to do some amazing things from there. 

But I think a lot of people can relate to that, investing money in something, but then maybe the results take longer than they expected, or there were unforeseen roadblocks and challenges that they didn't expect. Obviously, you have been able to blast through those. We're talking seven, eight, nine years ago or something like this, but can you remember what some of those challenges were? 

Ricardo

Yes, definitely. So the biggest challenge I had was money, because I was investing money that I couldn't afford to invest. It was like a gambler addicted because of what I said prior. I could not accept I would be my entire life working for someone else. That's the sad part is, at least here in Portugal now, things are different because the market now is global, especially mainly because of COVID. People realize, “Look, I don't need to work for a Portuguese boss, I can work for the United States, for the UK,” for whatever. 

But at the time so you have a job where you were ill paid, you weren't paid very much, so you need to pay bills and everything. At the end of the month, you didn't have any money spared. So if you don't have any money to invest, it's very hard to do anything, and you get into that wheel of needing your job to keep feeding your family and paying your bills. I invested money that I didn't have. I invested my savings, I invested my kids savings without telling anything to my wife.

Not something that I recommend anyone to do. 

I'm very ashamed of doing that, and I shouldn't have done that. And that's why I spoke with you, and I was very upset at the time. You said, “Ricardo, okay, that program didn't work, but you should try the next one.” And I was like, what is this guy talking about? He's crazy. I'm not going to invest any more money on this. But you said, “No. This one is much better. It's much more predictable and reliable,” and I took your word for that, and I'm glad I did. 

Aidan

Just talking about the money challenges, because I think this is something that a lot of people experience online, was there anything that you were able to do to help with that? I know some people work sort of like a side job, but then if you do that, you're using time that you could be using to build the business. Sometimes I try to guide people to looking at a business model that doesn't require much investment of money, but maybe more time. 

So, for example, right now, one of the things that's working really well, niche websites that get traffic through search engine optimization. They don't require money to be spent on inventory or traffic, but I guess the downside is they do take a wee bit longer to generate that momentum. Any ideas or thoughts for people who might be faced with that same challenge that you had, financial constraint as they're getting started?

Ricardo

So my advice there is, and that's the mistake I did and I shouldn't have done, is take aside a budget for your online business. It doesn't matter what that budget is like. “I can afford $300 per month”, or “I can afford to spend $500 per month.” Think of that like an investment every month. “I am going to spend $500 on my online business, regardless if I make any money back or not. And I should be comfortable with that.” 

If I cannot do that, then I need to find a way of getting that money first. I need to find a way of getting that budget first, because starting an online business takes time, and it's not easy. Like I did in the past, if you are betting on money that you don't have, waiting for your business to generate that, that's gambling. That's not a business, and you should never do that. But if you take apart that budget, “Hey, I have $300 per month, and I'm going to invest on this $300 per month every month for as long as it takes to succeed.” 

Aidan

Yeah, I think that's brilliant. The thing that I would add to that would be to stay laser focused, you want to be like a magnifying glass that's focusing all of this energy into one specific thing. You also mentioned when you were getting started, you tried this, you tried that, you tried all kinds of different things. And one thing that I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen this in working with people is when you start focusing on just one thing or two things, that's when you really start to see the result. I think focus is overlooked by a lot of people. I love your idea there about setting a budget, even if it's just a couple of month, at least you know what the budget is. 

Thinking of it as an investment and I think looking at it through a longer term lens, so you would have seen this online, I certainly have, of you come in and you start something new and you're expecting instant results. You want to be making thousands of dollars per month in 30 days, which can be done. You've done it, I've done it, other people have done it, but most of the time it takes a little bit longer than that. So if you think about it as an investment, maybe like a six-month plan or even better a twelve-month plan, and you set aside a budget, $200 a month or $500 a month or whatever it is, and you focus all of that into one area, then that's when I think the magic happens. 

Ricardo

Yes, it is. Not only that, so there are a few components here that are critical for making this work. So the first one is you need a blueprint for success. You need to have that certainty that what you're doing is actually going to produce the results you're expecting. When you do training from a reputable source, there's a lot of rapid training out there, but there is also a lot of good training out there. I see this every day. This is the biggest mistake as you said, this is the biggest mistake people make. 

If anyone is going to take anything from this podcast, this should be it. This is the secret for succeeding online, and this is the best lesson I can give to anyone is when you start something, more often than not, you are going to fail. You are not going to get the results you are expecting. And why is that? Because when you start something, you don't know. You create a funnel, you create a marketing funnel, a sales funnel, and you don't know if it's going to work or not, but you need to put it out there and you need to start getting traffic to that. 

And when you get the traffic, then you can take ideas from that. You can see what's working and what's not working. You can see what is not working and start optimizing and improving that. So this is all about when I start something, I know I'm going to fail, I know I'm not going to be successful, I know I'm going to lose money, but I'm okay with that. I'm expecting that. That's a starting point. Then I see, “Okay, what's not working? It's the ad that is not working. Let's optimize the ad,” and we keep optimizing the ad to a point where we know, “Okay, the ad is now working well. Now let's optimize the landing page. Okay, now the lending page is working well. Now let's look at the offers and try to find a better offer or trying to make the offer convert better.” 

This takes time and/or money. What most people don't realize is that, they build a website, they build their marketing funnel, they start running traffic, it doesn't work. “Okay, this is not working, and so this is probably a scam. No one is making any money with this,” and they suddenly see another webinar for another program where some guys tells you that you are going to make millions in a few weeks. They say, “Okay, this is not working, and that thing there seems amazing. So let's do that thing there.” And guess what? You go to that program and the same principle applies because this is a universal principle. 

When you start, you need to start with something that, unless you are lucky, it's not going to perform well and you need to optimize it to success. You move to that one, you are going to start from scratch, and all the investment you did here, you lose it because you gave up before you actually succeeded. It's not the blueprint. The blueprint works. If it's not working for you, it's because either you are not good enough yet or you haven't optimized your funnel yet to the point where it needs to be for you to be successful. 

This was the mistake I did at the beginning. I was trying training after training and not committing to anything, not focusing enough on anything and giving up soon, basically.

Aidan

Yeah. Was there a specific moment in your story, in your journey, when you can remember thinking, “Wow, this works”? Like, I can remember my first affiliate sale. I can remember the first time I made money online. I can also remember another point where I was in Argentina and I went down to the Argentine Coast for a short break with my wife. I can remember I was at the point then when I was making $20 per day. Not a lot of money, but I can remember saying, “I can make $20 a day here. I've been doing that day after day after day. I know I can make $200 a day. I know I can make $2,000 a day. I just have to keep doing what I'm doing.” Is there a moment that you've got kind of engraved in your mind when you realized that it was going to work for you?

Ricardo

There was, and it was with 100K Factory, the second edition. I think it was called Ultra. 

Aidan

Yeah. Which just, by the way, to give some people a bit more context here, that was about drop shipping ecommerce products. 

Ricardo

Yeah, I did build. So the first thing I did was and that was what made all the difference. At that point, I was a very obnoxious person, and I thought I knew it all and I did know better than the teacher, so I would know better than you and Steve and Annie and all the other guys I was doing training from. And so I was watching the training and you say, “You should do A, B, and C as an algorithm.” “I'm not going to do C because the other guy said that you should not do C. So I'm not going to do C, I'm going to do F because F is better and I'm going to be different than everybody else, and I'm going to make much more money.” 

And guess what? I was failing after failing after failing, and I was fed up with that. And I said, “Okay, this time I'm going to play dumb, and I'm going to do exactly as the instructors tell me to do.” And without deviating from anything, there was two things. So the first one was, I'm going to follow the training even if I don't agree with any of that. I'm going to follow the training exactly as they are teaching it. The other thing is, I'm not going to bed before I apply the training. So if I was watching the live event at 07:00 PM, I would implement that. I would finish at 02:00 AM, 03:00 AM, but while I hadn't finished implementing everything, I wouldn't go to bed. Then I would have to go to work at 09:00 AM the next day anyway.

These two things of following the training to a T and implementing it as soon as possible, I start getting results. And so I started getting sales. At the time I remember it clearly, I was selling USB to micro USB adapters for phones, and I was buying them on AliExpress for $1 or $1.50, and selling them on my website for $3 and running ads on Facebook. I was actually being profitable. So I just wish I knew then what I know now. But anyway, I think that's the history. I'm going to say the same thing ten years from now. I just wish I knew now what I'm going to know ten years from now. So anyway, that's our history.

You have these competitions, you always have these competitions where say, “Okay, the people that makes more sales is going to win $100,” and I applied. I had five sales for that week, and I applied. I'm never going to win this. And guess what? I won. Five sales, I won. “Oh my God, this is it. I'm going to do this. This is going to be my future.” Have in mind that I really needed those $100. Those $100 were very important for me because I needed the money to invest on my business because I didn't have any spare money. 

And then the next competition was for something else. You would win $200. So I need to win those $200. Now, I know I can win prizes. I won one, so I know I can win prizes. I started competing for the prizes and I actually won them all. That helped me a lot with running the ads. But not only that, it helped me a lot building the business as well at the same time because I was taking action and I was getting the results. 

I remember it clearly. We had this Facebook group, and Rory and Kieran were there as well, and we were competing against each other, saying, “Okay, this week it's me that's going to win the prize.” There was another guy there. I don't remember. Unfortunately, I don't remember who the other guy was, but we were in a healthy competition between ourselves, trying to see which one got the best result. 

Aidan

You know, one of the things you did there was you gamified your business building. The $100 you might have won is like a symbolic prize, really, because the big prize was that your business was actually getting sales every single day, but you gamified it. And you also used this kind of, like this “streaks” idea that we were talking about from Duolingo, where every day before going to bed, you would implement the training or you'd make sure that you took this small step. I think that's a big lesson there as well. 

Ricardo

Yeah, that's quite important, actually. That's the most important thing of all. So the first thing is, of course, you need to have the right blueprint. You need to know that the steps you are taking are going to give you the results, and you need to be certain about that. Then you just need to take the action. We talk a lot about the mindset and the goals and setting goals and all of that is important, but if you think about that, setting goals is important for you to take the actions. 

And it's not this big action that you need to take. It's not this grandiose action. It's the small actions you take every day, making sure that every day you go to your business and you say, “Okay, I need to do this and I'm going to do this. If I do this, the results don't depend on me.” I cannot make anyone go to my website and buy something. So the results don't depend on me. The only thing that depends on me is the actions I take. 

And if I take the right actions, I can go to bed with peace of mind that I did everything I could do for my business that day. This goes even deeper. It's not only the actions on your business, it's also the actions for you to be on the right mindset to build your businesses. Eating well, sleeping well, exercising, all of that is super important, because if you're not well, you're not feeling well, then you will not do what is required to do or you will do a lousy job on that. That's another mistake I see many people doing is they get so obsessed with building the business that they don't sleep, they don't eat, they don't rest…

Aidan

The vicious cycle.

Ricardo

It's not doing them any good. 

Aidan

Yeah. Sometimes you have to just step back and take a breath and then come back at the problem again. Ricardo, I was going to ask you for one final tip, but to be honest, you've given an absolute treasure trove of information and advice here. If you were in a position where you were speaking to someone and it was that they were just starting their business, is there anything in addition to what you've already shared that you would share with them as a tip for getting started? 

Ricardo

Yup, there is. You need to surround yourself with the right community, be part of a community of like-minded people, and on that group, there should be people that are already succeeding on what you want to do, or get a coach that can help you with that. The reason for that is that that is going to give you certainty, and that certainty is quite important. We already spoke about having a budget and putting aside a budget for you to invest on your business until you succeed. Doesn't matter how long that's going to take. It can be one month, it can be six months, it can be one year, it can be five years. 

But if you're doing this alone, you will start doubting yourself. You start thinking, “Okay, am I investing money on this? Is this really taking me anywhere, or is this a dead end?” Those are very valid questions, because you may be investing on the wrong thing. If you don't know, if you're working alone, you may be investing on something that is never going to be successful. But if you are inside a community where you see other people doing this same thing and succeeding, that gives you the certainty that you are on the right place, doing the right thing. So it's just a matter of time. As you know, I'm with BPA, but when I joined BPA, that's when I got that certainty. When I saw other people doing the same thing, I said, “Okay, really? You can really do that much?”

Aidan

Yeah, I think just to fill in the gap for some people there, BPA is our Blueprint Academy program, and Ricardo came on as a student of that many years ago, and after years as a student, he actually became a coach. He's sort of seen both sides of the Blueprint Academy program there. Man, I've got a list of different nuggets of wisdom that you've given everyone here today. I'd just like to quickly run through those. 

Regarding money, set a budget and think of building the business as an investment. Don't go for that or don't expect a big win in your first week kind of a thing. Don't bet using money that you don't have. You need a blueprint. Don't try to reinvent a new recipe and don't try to merge different recipes together because that can lead to problems. If you've got a proven system that works, then stick to that and resist putting any other magic bits and pieces into that until you're seeing results. You're going to fail more times than you succeed, but you can apply a scientific approach here and make iterative improvements little by little. Get better, learn from your failures, and eventually, it's a numbers game. If you stick with it long enough, you will succeed. 

You also mentioned taking consistent action, not just massive amounts of action, but just consistent action on the right things on a daily basis, I think that is hugely important when you want to get good results in anything new that you're trying. And then finally, surrounding yourself with a community of like minded people, people who are already succeeding at what you want to succeed at. This might mean getting yourself a coach, joining a mastermind. 

Finally, I think, having faith that this will absolutely work. If you're constantly questioning, “Is this going to work? Is that going to work?” then you need to find something that you believe in, because the people that get the result are the people that just accept that the business works. And it works because so many other people out there have already done it, and then you just double down, focus on doing the actions day after day after day, the things that you can control to make that business work. 

Ricardo, thank you so much for taking the time out here today. As I mentioned at the very beginning, I always love chatting with you and getting your emails about the new discoveries that you make. Ricardo is, I'll tell you what, he's a sponge for information, and he is always on the forefront of whatever is new in marketing. He's all over it. He sends me these emails all the time about, “You got to check this out, you got to check that out,” and it's the most amazing, oftentimes it's the most amazing thing. So, Ricardo, thank you, not just for today, for this podcast episode, but for everything that you do. I know you've helped so many people in our amazing community. So thanks for everything, man. 

Ricardo

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for helping me. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. Thanks so much. 

Aidan

Thanks. All right, guys, that's a wrap. Episode number 76. You can check it out over at thegrowthbooth.com, navigate to the podcast section, episode number 76. You can also find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever it is that you like to listen to your podcasts. 

We'll see you on the next episode in a week's time. Watch out for more Decoding Success episodes in the future where I'm going to be interviewing other successful students and successful online entrepreneurs. That's a wrap for today. See you on the next episode.