Ricky remembers telling his dentist when he was 12 years old that he wanted to be an actor when he grew up but he did not pursue this career until much later. In high school, he took his first job as a busboy to pay off a new car and then worked in retail. He entered business college planning to take over his dad’s business but his old dreams of becoming an actor remained. He began to do auditions. Ricky’s early acting years were filled with ups and downs, and he continued to work in restaurants and retail while booking jobs. Over time, he began to coach aspiring actors and leveraged his networks to expand his clientele. Over the last 15 years, he has developed a strong reputation as both a performer and coach.

Ricky’s success in his acting and coaching careers are grounded in one more important life lesson: learning to fail. It took a lot of trial and error before Ricky drew a steady flow of students for coaching. With acting, Ricky had gone after jobs that didn’t pan out. Rather than viewing these failures as devastating, he saw them as new opportunities: “People never teach you how to cope with failure and failing for some people could be really, really difficult. But if you do it, you know how to deal with it, it’s like okay, alright, whatever. Now let’s go back and see what I can adjust for next time. So you’re never really failing anymore, you’re just kind of trying to get better.” Ricky’s growth mindset and ability to normalize failure kept him perpetually striving towards new projects and goals. Taking a page out of Denzel Washington’s book, Ricky said, “They asked Denzel, ‘What’s your best movie?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s my next movie. If someone like that is trying to get better, each and every time, you’re going to be. You’re done if you don’t try to get better.”’