We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Richart Ruddie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Richart, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

My whole life feels like a vacation where I am still working and vacations have blended into an office that has just moved locations that day. For the last 12 years I’ve been working almost entirely remote and building online businesses. Being able to see the world and as I feel that it was important to make up for lost time when I didn’t get a chance to travel and see the world I’m glad that I can do both and as I travel I am always networking and meeting interesting people from all over the world.

The one negative of all of this is that I don’t turn off and take true vacations where the outside world is obsolete. The one main exception to this would be Burning Man pre 2020 when there was no connectivity there. With StarLink now I believe that trend of a digital detox has come to an end.

Richart, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a serial entrepreneur I love coming up with new ideas, helping others to build out theirs, and experimenting with new potential ideas. Some don’t work and incur a six figure headache and others have paid for the rest of the mistakes a few times over. Take chances, due your proper diligence, and refine a skill set that can separate you from the competition while being so good at something that people want to pay you to do something you hopefully like. I started up in my last business that sold by complete accident because I had a valuable skill set that people wanted to pay me to do.

I’m most proud of all the different things I’ve accomplished and the people we’ve been able to help and influence over the last 12 years as a growing entrepreneur. Its important to always do right by your clients and after proving my worth for clients it translated into referrals and recommendations.

Now I’m working on a childrens YouTube channel to bring entertainment and joy to infants globally. Starting a new venture with unlimited growth potential is fun and will bring new challenges. Being excited about that and new work in the data privacy industry excites me and the thrill to keep working because it’s fun and I love doing it. Find that passion in your life.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Relentless and Grit. They are two books and adjectives about the type of personality that is needed to win. I started out as an intern learning digital marketing skills and had negative money in my account. To the point that I needed to overdraft at the ATM just to have funds to eat over the weekend. I lived off of leftovers, rice, and cheap pasta. In desperate times you develop the grit to work hard and avoid distractions so that you can get to the lifestyle that you dream about. After working hard and creating a business from scratch and turning it into a multi-million dollar business I hopefully don’t have to go back to living off of leftovers but can let the audience know that hard work, determination, and working to find that skill set that can get you out of the rat race is the key to long term resilience.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Started with $550 from a friend who put up the funds to make a website and then I spent the week and weekends in my free time doing SEO work. From there leads started to pile in and from offering a service that involved receiving money up front and then doing the work after being paid. From that was able to create a business that did nearly a million dollars in it’s first year and only grew from there. Never had to fundraise. Was just creative for a very tiny initial seed and grew it from there.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://richartruddie.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richartruddiestanford/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichartRuddie
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GKZgvbJ_g