Episode 87: The Biggest Mistake I Made While Chasing Growth

I always believed that if I worked hard enough, the results would eventually come.

This past week challenged that belief.

After spending money to grow my podcast and seeing almost no results, a simple Father's Day video unexpectedly connected with more people than I imagined. It forced me to step back and rethink what growth really looks like.

In this episode, I share what that experience taught me about building something meaningful, why people connect with people before they connect with content, and how I'm changing the direction of The Ricky Ricardo Show moving forward.

Whether you're building a business, investing in real estate, working a W-2 job, chasing a fitness goal, or simply trying to create a better life for your family, I hope this episode reminds you that growth isn't always about working harder—sometimes it's about changing your approach.

Thanks for being part of the journey.

🎥 Watch the full video episode on YouTube:
 youtube.com/@therickyricardoshow

📲 Instagram:
 @rickyricardoshow

About the show:
The Ricky Ricardo Show documents the real journey of building financial freedom through leverage, better decision-making, and real-world lessons — in real time.
Real estate is the current vehicle, but the principles apply far beyond it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think I made one of the biggest mistakes you can make when trying to build something, and that's convincing myself that if you just work harder, the results will come. Well, something happened this past week that changed my mind completely about growth, and I'm actually glad it happened. All right, so I skipped an episode last week. My bad. My apologies. I was involved with my kids' performance. It was performance week, so there was a lot of moving parts, a lot of hours, a lot of efforts that you know needs to come together to make it a successful week. So he had my undivided attention, and that's why I didn't talk to you guys on your speaker system, your laptop, or whatever it is that you listen to this podcast at. Just so you guys know, I always appreciate the time you guys sit and hang out with me and listen to what I have to say. But I want to talk about, you know, an episode that I recorded previously. I felt really good about it. I did. Felt like it was gonna be a solid episode. Well, it kind of flopped because it didn't get the love or the views or the clicks, any of those things, right? Because that's what I'm trying to do here is is get some growth. I even spent money promoting it, and it still didn't do anything. Just telling you the the story and the facts and everything that goes on behind scenes. I tried to grow this organically and naturally, and it it has. You know, there's a there's quite a few of you guys that do listen, so I appreciate that. Um, but I did try and say, hey, let me throw some money at this and see what I could do. Probably the first episode I've ever done it for, and you know, we'll see where it goes from here. But I didn't get the results um I was thinking of getting when I put the money down, and that's okay. It we all learn. I'm learning in this, but what I did learn is that there's times that you need to evolve. There's a whole learning game in all of this, and content creation, and you know, trying to grow a podcast, trying to grow a YouTube channel, whatever it is that we're trying to do, grow a business, grow our monies. Like there is things that need to fall in place for that to happen. No matter how hard you work, I do feel like I work pretty hard, and a lot of you do, but no matter how hard we work, it doesn't always end in results that we like. Now, there can be an argument that if you don't work hard, you're not gonna get anything. And I'm not saying not to work hard because sometimes things come out of it, but you do need a little bit of luck. You do need to be at the right place, the right time, make the right investment, make the right purchase, make the right content to go viral or whatever it is. And a lot of the times we don't get there if we don't learn how to get there. And so I've talked about it before. It's that leap of faith. You know, I've had a little bit of success with my flip. There's some money involved behind that. But my rentals that I've had, I guess you can say, haven't been anything exciting or sexy or something I want to brag about. It's pretty cut and dry, buy a property, rent it out, get a little bit of cash flow, nothing life-changing. And, you know, it's a boring method, but it can work long term. You know, everyone has different pasts, different things they want to do, but just being super transparent with you guys in all of this. And you know, it's funny is I posted a Father's Day run. So I ran 10 miles. If you don't follow me, I'm on Instagram at Ricky Ricardo Show. Come along for the ride. I've gotten into running recently. I actually really enjoy it. And you know, kudos to myself. I ran 10 miles. I did a 10-mile run, furthest run um I've ever done. And I did it on Father's Day in celebration of the day because I'm super proud to be a father. And I posted that to social media. I didn't put any money behind it. What I learned was people, you know, viewers, all that, the social media, uh, the internet, they like that type of stuff. In comparison to what I've been trying to push, I should say. Now, it's not like the video went viral or anything crazy. The the views, the clicks, the follows, everything that came from that is not what you would expect when you put money behind something. Not like I put a ton of money behind uh promoting the uh last episode, but you know, money nonetheless. And same thing with like real estate, same thing with business, uh, same thing with parenting. It's there's things that we do forcefully and don't get the result we want. And we're always surprised, or at least I am as well, all is that I'm always surprised to see reactions, feelings, emotions, results when it's organic, when it's real. When someone's real or something is real, we have way more respect for it. We do naturally. We can talk about anything, right? We can talk about our bosses. We don't want a fake boss, we don't want a fake friend, we want real stuff. And if we get that real stuff, and if we give off that realness, there's a lot of positives that can come from that, right? If you do good by me, I'll do good to you. That's you know a nice way to put it. And I've realized that people connect with people before they actually connect with their content. Because I want to trust, respect, and think you are a decent person to be able to sit here and watch or listen to whatever you have to say for seconds, minutes, uh hours, however long you know you have my attention on your screen. I want to know you're a good person. And if you're a good person, then I'll follow you. I'll listen more and I'll be on your side, right? All that, I'm not telling you, you know, this is a flop. And because I thoroughly enjoy this, um, I'm not quitting the podcast at all, not quitting real estate. I'm still gonna do that, still going to make investments, just trying to be a little more strategic with using the monies this time around rather than going all in like I did on the flip. I've been telling you guys that. I'm not chasing views, I'm not, you know, trying to grow this to be the next Joe Rogan. I'm not trying to do any of those things. If that, if all of that happens, cool. But I just want to be real, I just want to be me, want to be honest and transparent and let you guys actually see if this is possible. You know, I've said that time and time again, but I think I've been hiding too much of my journey. I I've given plenty of updates about, you know, real estate, about every week I get an update, and it was a lot. I had a lot of information, a lot of things that were happening over the past year and a half that I could give you guys something weekly to talk about. I mean, we're talking about notices, we're talking about contractor headaches, uh, payments, all these things, right? I can't consistently keep up with that. Like, that's boring. It's cool until it's not. And I don't want to be the guy that just consistently gives updates on renovations of a home or what monies I made or what payments, what issues I'm having. You know, there's a lot of things that I do that can relate to just life and and a lifestyle. And like I said, I'm trying to show you guys to see if this is fully possible, but I can't hide everything from you guys. I enjoy time with my kid. I enjoy fitness, I enjoy martial arts, jujitsu. I now enjoy running, and I'm showing you guys on my Instagram and everything that I enjoy it. You know, I enjoy losses, I enjoy the lessons. Real estate's been fun, life is is fun, and it's all tied to the same story. It's all tied to the journey. This week reminded me that growth isn't always about working harder. Uh, sometimes it's about letting people see who you really are. And that's what I'm gonna do here forward. I'm gonna talk to you guys about everything I can uh to give you guys some information behind the scenes of who I am, who Ricky Ricardo is. And, you know, I'm still gonna talk about real estate. That's not gonna stop. I will make more investment purchases, I will make more uh decisions in that realm, the wins, the setbacks, all that's still gonna be there. But I just want to share more of my journey because maybe that's what the show was supposed to be all along. And I kept that from you guys, but I'm just a regular person, I'm no one special. I'm a worker W-2 employee, just like a lot of you are. There's a lot of us that are employees that are trying to make a better life for ourselves. And I applaud every single one of you, uh, every single one of us that's on this journey to try and do better for ourselves and our families. Like it's not easy. And if it was easy, you know, everyone would be doing it. But let's be the people that give it a real try and attempt at it and see if we can make it possible or let's make it possible. That's all this episode was. You know, had a busy week, had a lot going on. And thanks for your listen, as always. I appreciate you guys. And, you know, we'll continue to grow. Let's continue to grind and build something for the future. So have a great rest of your week, and I will talk to you guys on the next episode. Thank you. Bye bye.