This episode, entrepreneur Ray Blakney talks about the benefits of bootstrapping a company, how to use other people’s podcasts for free marketing, and what it’s like to be business partners with your wife.
Ray Blakney is an award-winning Filipino-American entrepreneur who has over a decade of experience building, bootstrapping, and operating 6 and 7-figure location independent businesses. He and his businesses have been featured in magazines such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Boston Globe & other top publications. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow:
- The effect having quality SEO can make to a company’s launch.
- Building an online language platform.
- The difference between venture-backed and bootstrapped companies.
- What it’s like to network on Richard Branson’s island.
- What all uber-successful entrepreneurs have in common.
- The benefits of bootstrapping a company.
- How to use podcasting as a marketing channel.
- What it’s like being business partners with your wife.
Resources:
Connect with Ray Blakney:
Connecting with the host:
- Brian Dainis on Linktree
Quotables
- 10:40 – “So we launched our school and since no other Spanish school in Mexico had a full-time SEO, I was teaching myself but I had a full-time SEO doing it before we even launched we were number one in the country if you looked for a Spanish school in Mexico or learn Spanish in Mexico we would have come up number one thing is we weren’t even open yet, we didn’t even I had stock photos of cities of Mexico around the website but as a result we were fully booked the day we opened.”
- 19:45 – “There’s something to be said about scrappy needing to pay the rent, there’s the thing you said earlier I want to bring it back not knowing what you don’t know and the less you know it’s almost to your favor, some parts like the experience part you might make stupid decisions you miss on that but not being able to talk yourself out of why not to take a shot makes you more likely to take a shot.”
- 21:00 – “He’s been studying entrepreneur trends for the last 15 years and what he was telling me is that entrepreneurship while on social media it’s trending more actual registration of new businesses, actual hard data on entrepreneurship has been steadily declining since the 70s. I could believe that because it’s easy to say you’re an entrepreneur if we went on LinkedIn now and did a scrape and said how many people put CEO or entrepreneur on their profile probably a tonne but actually being an entrepreneur it’s a grind.”
- 21:47 – “Being an entrepreneur what does it mean? My first business it meant I cleaned the bathrooms, I took out the trash, and then I put on a suit to welcome people to school before they got there and I would be there until 8 o clock at night so I could sweep up and clean, our building got flooded a few times so my wife and I were there with buckets emptying it out and drying it out two hours later the students would arrive we hadn’t slept all night that’s being an entrepreneur, especially if you have the bootstrapping, not glamorous, no fancy cars, none of that stuff.”
- 33:50 – “I don’t think you can fly on private jets on 10 million I think that’s a little far. You can get the tickets they’re about 7000 dollars an hour, and that’s everybody on the jet, I have actually looked into because my dream is to get enough money that I can buy, that’s not owning a private jet that’s about 60 million dollars plus whatever maintenance and gas and all the rest but flying on private jets at 10 million, just off of interest if you get 6 percent back.”
- 49:58 – “I have been on over 150 podcasts in the last 18 months using my own Podcast Hawk and I don’t have to do almost anything, for you you reached out but most of the time I have Podcast Hawk running on in the background, the old hair club for men I’m not only the president I’m a member, I’m trying to get on 1000 podcasts as Podcast Hawk, look this is the power of podcasting, you know this .”
- 53:59 – “Money is just a side effect of making an impact, they made big impacts so they have money and another phrase I’ve heard that I like is money doesn’t make you anything it just makes you more of who you already are, so if you’re a nice person and you have money you’re not suddenly going to become an awful person you’re just probably going to use it for charities if your an awful person you make a lot of money you’re going to be a more awful person you’re just going to be able to amplify all of that.”
- 59:43 – “If you start a business with your wife there are only 2 possible options you have a really strong relationship or you get divorced there is no middle ground there’s nothing where oh nothing really changed and the strong relationship chance I’m saying is about 20 percent and the divorce is around 80 percent so long story short probably not a good idea for most people to do it.”
