The Shark Bite Biz Podcast with David Strausser. A Tropical contact center with Richard Blank
                     Downloaded from: j
ustpaste.it/sharkbitebizpodcast
The Shark Bite Biz Podcast with David 
Strausser. A Tropical contact center with 
Richard Blank
Shark Bite Biz, hosted by David Strausser, started as a show on how to 
navigate to your business during the Covid Pandemic and now focusing on 
"the 3 G's": personal growth, professional growth, and business growth.
This show has hosted many CEO's, VP's, Managers, and Small Business Owners 
all giving their insight as a subject matter expert in their field. The show has had 
legendary music
producer Jack Douglas, Soledad O'Brien, film director James Cullen Bressack, 
Recruiter.com and CNBC Contributor Evan Sohn and many more. Strausser is a 
member of the Forbes Business Development Council.
Are call centers alive or dead after covid with work-from-home going strong. 
Today's interview may surprise you as Shark Bite Biz's David Strausser chats with 
Richard Blank of Costa Rica's Call Center. Episode #213 Modern Call Centers.
Shark Bite Biz is a podcast dedicated to helping businesses achieve growth in 
the roaring 20's. In a world full of sharks, learn how to bite first!
This vodcast focuses on personal, professional, & business growth during the on-
going global pandemic. We focus on bringing some of the top experts and small 
business owners to the show to tell their stories about how they broke through 
barriers preventing growth and got their business to the next level.
More about the Host: David Strausser is an expert at enabling small businesses to 
drive growth via the promise of technology. David empowers his customers to 
digitally transform by automating business processes and maximizing business 
intelligence. David writes on Forbes as a member of the Forbes Business 
Development Council and a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory 
Council.
David was born and raised in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the heart of coal country. At a 
young age David realized that the small city life wasn’t for him. He yearned for 
something larger and 6 weeks after the September 11th attacks, while barely 18, 
he decided to pack up and move to a new life.
“Viva la Mexico”. David moved to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Why? Simple. He 
was able to live in Mexico and then work in San Diego, right across the U.S. / 
Mexico International Border Crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.
Since his first job at the age of 14, David has always been enthusiastic about 
sales. He had worked at places like Foot Locker at the age of 15 and then Sears 
while a young adult. Just like he wanted more while living in Pottsville, he also felt 
that the retail life was not for him.
Yes, he could do it and excelled at it, often being the top sales representative in 
his store, but he felt he could achieve bigger and better things.
During the economic depression of 2008 – 2010, David found himself searching 
for answers. He moved to Peru for about a year, where he met his wife, Raquel 
Strausser. From there David immigrated Raquel to Mexico and they re-established 
themselves in the Baja Cali Megaregion. Employment was tough and while David 
could ultimately earn a living that was good enough for living in Mexico, their 
ultimate goal was to move to San Diego. The current wage environment at that 
time did not support him being able to make such a move.
That’s when David realized that after 10 years of living in Mexico at that point 
that he had some unique skills. Not only was David fluent in Spanish and had a 
Mexican legal status as a Residente Permanente (Mexican Legal Permanent 
Resident), but he had many contacts in business throughout Mexico, Peru, and the 
rest of Latin America.
Instead of taking a position where he would be grossly underpaid for his skillset out 
of necessity, David went another route. He started the business “Strausser 
Consulting Services” and began independent consulting. The goal of the company 
was to assist American companies trying to find growth throughout Latin America 
with their products and technologies. The start though wasn’t that simple. The very 
first contract David got was with a Sprint retailer who saw his vast retail experience 
and hired him as an independent consultant to help turn around 7 of their newly 
acquired stores in San Diego County. It was a six-month contract but it gave David 
something solid to run off of if he was successful.
Success happened and from there David acquired separate large contracts over a 6 
year period. While many of the projects were fixed-term and project based, some of 
the contracts were long-term. Some of these contracts were with companies like 
P.I.N.T., Inc., doing business development to help them break into the Mexican 
market, Kodenshi AUK, a Japanese and Korean semiconductor manufacturer looking 
to break into Latin America, TAAG Industries, BorderTraffic / LaLineaEnVivo, and 
BajaBound. This all was the passion of what David does best, help small to medium 
size business grow. He was creating new channels and opportunities for these 
businesses that they did not know how to achieve on their own.
Interestingly enough, because of the unique border situation with the Baja-Cali 
megaregion of Tijuana and San Diego David was specializing at one point not just 
in technology, but border crossing technology. This lead to David developing 
extensive relationships with the Mexican Government, which led to him being 
contracted as the “Consejero Binacional” (Binational Advisor) to the Secretary of 
Tourism for Baja, California, Mexico where he worked in making lives easier for 
American Tourists while visiting Baja, Mexico with the promise of technology.
David assisted trying to modernize the Tourist Visa process online for Americans 
visiting Mexico and even helped transform the fishing permit license so that 
Americans can obtain the licenses digitally online.
All impressive feats at the time with a government that is notoriously slow in 
adopting new technology. In fact, David is one of the few non-Latino American 
citizens with a written letter of recommendation from the Mexican Government.
During that time also, David realized that there was a huge education gap in 
Mexico. Latinas, Mexican women specifically, were behind in their knowledge of 
how technology works.
Although with the younger generation it was getting better, at that time if you 
were 25 or older and female, your understanding of basic technology was little to 
none. That’s when David and his wife Raquel created a tech blog called TechChicas 
that was dedicated to helping Latinas around the world understand basic 
technology that they could access to make their lives easier. The site was a 
success winning multiple awards including one from Penn State University. That 
service was sold in 2015 when David took another turn in his career.
As successful as he was, the consulting world was a tiring one for David. Not 
only was he working 40 to 50 hours a week for clients, but he was also working 
an addition 20+ hours a week just trying to find new projects and bidding on 
new work. It was relentless and gave David no work / life balance.
After 6 long years of sacrificing all his time working to give his family the life he 
felt they deserved, David finally got offered a position that would give him what 
he was searching for. David and his family moved to Los Angeles in December of 
2015 to start with Vision33, Inc.
This brings a brand new chapter. Finally, David was able to use his networking 
skills, business development skills, sales and marketing strategies for one 
dedicated company. David was new to the ERP (enterprise resource planning) 
business but he had a thorough understanding of technology due to his degree 
from Penn State University in Information Sciences & Technologies with a focus on 
Business.
David was able to use innovative techniques to turn a barren region of Los Angeles 
to a powerhouse for Vision33. Creating millions and millions of dollars a year in 
revenue that Vision33 never saw from that region previously. He did this because 
of the way he builds personal relationships with his clients and how he manages a 
sales cycle. There were very few opportunities David lost. In fact, he became the 
king of creating his own pipeline by doing creative events like his “Executive 
Luncheon” that had an anti-luncheon type there where desert was served first and 
used out of the box type of speakers that brought true value to all the businesses 
that came to learn how to grow their business and breakthrough the barriers 
preventing growth.
After 4 years, David was given the opportunity to move back home. Vision33 had a 
new region that needed a General Manager to oversee it and that is the Northeast. 
Since March of 2018, David has been managing the Northeast from sales, 
implementations, customer service, everything where he is growing the business at 
a record pace.
Even with the position that David currently has, he still feels that he has more to 
offer in order to help businesses grow and therefore on July 6, 2020, David 
launched the business podcast entitled Shark Bite Biz. This podcast is a discussion 
with subject matter experts and business owners discussing what works and what 
doesn’t in a global pandemic world.
Overall, David has had a tough, but fun career. It has always focused around one 
main topic though. Helping small to midsize businesses grow. There are many ways 
to do this and David uses his outside the box methodology in order to help his 
clients achieve that growth.
Richard’s vision quest journey 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.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from 
the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the 
University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High 
School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. In addition, inducted into 
the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is 
very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for 
students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-camp
aigns/
#RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing 
#BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration 
#Appointmentsetting #SacrificetoSuccess #Sharkbitebizpodcast
Shark bite biz, Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing, 
BPO, Nearshore, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, 
Business,Podcast,Gamification,Leadership,Marketing, Radio, Guest, Money, 
education, trainer,