Lessons from budding entrepreneurs

Rico and Amanda: our marketing wizards

In the second episode of our podcast series, we have two of our early clients. They are Rico and Amanda, whom we got to know through a mutual friend.

The cool thing about Rico and Amanda is that they are budding entrepreneurs like us. So when we meet, we often share about our journeys as we hustle and struggle to build our business. Sometimes we talk about burn out, feeling demotivated, and our own personal ways to bring ourselves back up. Sometimes we talk about our vision for the future and how much we love what we do despite the difficulties.

Rico and Amanda are entrepreneurs in the marketing industry. In fact, if you think the way we market Recompound is different from others — through our Instagram and blog posts — we are mostly inspired by them. Because of them, we make sure to do our marketing efforts ourselves (the founding members) and talk about things we truly believe in, rather than following the trend out there and aiming to get viral. Perhaps because we are quite geeky and boring as people, the things we talk about are like us — geeky, slow and boring. But we always go back to our objectives, which is to bring value to people, not to feed people with dopamine. If that means we don’t get viral, so be it.

It is also Rico and Amanda who taught us that we want to attract our people, not all people. We did try posting content which leverages on the trend and Instagram algorithm, but the clients that came in from there hung around for 3 months before getting upset that they have not yet scored 50% returns. Sayonara!

Going back to the spirit of attracting people who are like us — we want to attract people who see investing as a wealth-preservation tool, not a get-rich-quick tool; people who are in this for the long-term; people who can be patient through the bear markets; people who understand that it is consistency that brings results, not a one-shot lucky bet. I remember talking to another client, who is a middle-aged man and a successful local entrepreneur, who says:

I understand what you guys are doing, and I appreciate that you don’t promise results within an XX period of time. If I want to accumulate my wealth, that should be done through my work. I see my investments as a savings account for my kids in the future — for their university fees, wedding, working capital, and maybe a house.

I hope this little snippet will tell you how amazing Rico and Amanda are, and you are going to be bamboozled by them even more in the podcast, just like I did.

The story of two entrepreneurs

I don’t want to give you too much spoiler of Rico and Amanda’s cool stories, but I hope this short snippet will convince you that their stories are worth listening to.

Both Rico and Amanda came from a background of employee-like mindset, with family members who are mostly working professionals. When they decided to venture into entrepreneurship, it is like being thrown into the sea without knowing how to swim. There is no textbook, no teachers, no YouTube videos, no boss teaching them how to become successful entrepreneurs.

But in the first year of their entrepreneurial journey, they hit a jackpot. They call it luck, but we call it skill (just by virtue of how good they are and how valuable their work is). Their business reached the success level that they did not imagine — they met their 3-year goal in less than a year. When they reached that kind of success, things started to change. Suddenly they had things to lose, metrics to maintain, goals that became obsession. So they started doing things by “industry standard”. They jumped onto every bandwagon in their industry: make sure to follow that new trend, this influencer is doing this, that entrepreneurship guru is doing that. They became obsessed with numbers: we have to maintain our reach and engagement, our customer growth is stagnating, let’s produce this new product that people will like.

What started as a genuine passion became a burden. And they decided to escape.

But what was intended as an escapism ended up bringing them back to their passion.

In this podcast, Rico and Amanda brought us 6 stories from their travels. Their stories are not only relevant to people like them (young entrepreneurs feeling the burnout of work). These lessons are so timeless that I am sure even people from all age, background and stages of life can appreciate.

Tales from 6 cities

1. If you ever feel like you are in the midst of a burn out, doing work that makes you ask “What am I doing with my life?”, meet a scary tattoo-ed tour guide in Prague. He will show you the embodiment of passion and being deaf to the standards of the world.

2. In an increasingly economically-centric and competitive world, we might unconsciously be treating people as commodities. How can this person benefit me? Is there any partnership opportunity? Can I get good connections from this person? Or perhaps you are at the receiving end, where you are being taken advantaged of. From Kyoto, an okonomiyaki chef will see you not as cash-generating customer, but almost like his friend whom he truly cares about. It is perhaps a good time for a reset: change the spectacles you wear when seeing the people around you.

3. If you feel that you are falling behind the current standard of prestigious jobs (maybe in finance and trust funds), the current standard of vanity (6’5’’ and blue eyes), the current standard of class, or whatever it is — a bike-taxi driver in Berlin will show you a different way to live. You can do things your way, live by your own standards, and your decision does not have to make sense to others.

4. A grandma in Shirakawa-go has a lifelong dream to travel the world, but her reality cannot be further from this dream. Don’t even mention “the world”, she has never stepped out of her small hometown of Shirakawa-go, not even to Tokyo. If you feel that your dream is so far-fetched that you don’t know it will ever come true, go and meet this grandma.

5. The fifth story is something that Recompound can truly relate to. When I wrote the first Recompound blog in January 2023, I thought I was an idiot. Why the heck was I writing about why we built Recompound? Who the heck would care? Shouldn’t I be making reels on how to become a millionaire, or doing deep dives on viral stocks, or paying influencers to promote Recompound? It only hit me hard when I started receiving notes like below (more than a year later) that many of our fans are silent, but they are watching. So if you feel that what you are doing is not noticeable, don’t stop yet and listen to a street bassist in Osaka.

6. Our brain is often so complicated. When we do things, we have to have extremely good/cool/sophisticated reasons. We overthink things, we question what is the purpose of life, what we want to do with our life. Now you can do some decluttering exercise. Your life does not have to be complicated or cool to others. You may have a very simple objective in life: to enjoy good times with my family, to see my children grow up, to make good food for others, to learn math and be amazed by it. And you don’t have to look far, because Rico and Amanda rediscover the purpose of their work in their hometown, Jakarta.

So folks, it is an absolute pleasure to have Rico and Amanda as our second podcast guests. They have truly been a great inspiration to me and Budi and to how we can be better entrepreneurs. Cheers!