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Today’s show featured an interview with Liz Elting, author of Dream Big and Win, and the cofounder of TransPerfect, a billion-dollar translation company.
Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership (CEWL) Program Director Gina Stracuzzi conducted the interview as part of the Women in Sales series of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Find Liz on LinkedIn.
LIZ’S TIP: “Take that risk. If you’re at a company, take the risk at something new. Suggest an idea. Act like an owner in a nice way, don’t act like you know everything, but offer ideas and then offer to carry them out. Risk takes us so far. It’s so fulfilling. It’s what changes companies and changes the world.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Gina Stracuzzi: With us today is Liz Elting. Liz is Co-founder of TransPerfect, a billion-dollar translation company, and author of Dream Big and Win. I can tell you that I read this book, and while it’s about entrepreneurship, as a woman in sales, I really took a lot of these lessons to heart. I know that you are all going to get a great deal out of our conversation. Welcome, Liz.
Liz Elting: Thank you so much, Gina. I’m super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Gina Stracuzzi: I want to add that Liz is not only an author and a businessperson, she is also doing something really special. She is sponsoring the keynote speaker portion of the Sales Excellence Award event that we’re holding on May 1st, because she is really good friends with our speaker, Jack Daly. We’ll get into talking about Jack in a little bit, but Liz, I always like to have my guest tell us a little bit about themselves in their own words.
Liz Elting: Absolutely. As far as my background, and I will keep this brief, but just to give a little more information. I basically was very fortunate because I was born in Westchester, New York. When I was 8, I moved to Portugal with my family. When I was 8 and 9, I lived there, and I started learning languages: Portuguese and French. When I was 10, I moved to Toronto. There, I was able to continue with languages in middle school, high school, and I started studying Spanish and Latin. So, by the time I had graduated from high school, I had studied four languages and realized that was a real passion. That contributed to a lot of what happened to me after, but that’s a little bit about that background. Then I went off to college, majored in Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, majored in languages. I did my junior year in Spain and worked in Venezuela briefly after. Then, I came to New York City. I was 21 years old. I actually have lived here ever since.
I can certainly tell you a little bit about my company and how it started.
Gina Stracuzzi: Yes, please. I went to NYU for my graduate work, too, but I just loved everything about your dedication to building something really special. Even if people aren’t entrepreneurs, you can take away some amazing lessons from the way you approached growing your company. So, yes, please tell us a little bit about that.
Liz Elting: I certainly wanted to build something really special. I think we all do and we all can. Whether it’s our own gig, our own company, or whether we’re entrepreneurs within a large company, because that is really critical to success in business. Being innovative. Being an entrepreneur. I think it’s important either way. For me, I think it happened for a number of reasons. I was certainly fortunate with timing and my own experience, but I’ll tell you what happened.
By the way, I was not necessarily a born entrepreneur. I mean, while I had many jobs growing up starting when I was 10, my parents really encouraged me to work. They said, “Work, work, work. You need to be financially independent. You can’t be dependent on anyone except yourself.” When I was 16, they stopped paying for my clothes and my entertainment. So, it was time. I was a worker, but like the people listening to this podcast are, and I think that helped. My thought was, “I’m going to make sure I do something where I can take care of myself.” That led to my first job after coming back from Venezuela, which was a job at a translation company. It was really interesting because at the time, it was the world’s largest. It was about 90 people in Manhattan, and I absolutely loved it. I started in production there. I actually had wanted to start in sales there, but they didn’t have any sales positions available.
I said, “Okay, I’ll start in production. Can I perhaps move over to sales after I do?” And they said yes. So, I was first in production there, and then in sales, and I absolutely loved it. I was there for three years. I loved it, but during the time I was there, I thought it could be done better. I saw a real gap between what clients needed and what was available in the industry. So, I kept that idea in mind and kept working. I can give examples of this, like quicker turnaround times. A client would say, “Hello, I need a document translated from English into Spanish. It’s five or ten pages. How long will it take?” I’d have to say, “That’ll take a week.” I thought, “Wait, I was in production. I know we can do this faster, and they might need it faster.” So, there wasn’t a sense of urgency.
Another part was we were taking too long to get quotes to clients. It would take two days. I thought, “Wait, if there are pricing guidelines for the salespeople, we could get right back to the clients and show them the urgency there.” Another example was if we would make mistakes on jobs, I would have to often charge the client. I thought, “If there are mistakes, how can we be charging the clients?” Finally, there was a sales-versus-production culture. I thought, “That’s no good. We need everybody on the same team.” I kept all those ideas in my head. I went back to school and got my MBA from NYU, our Alma Mater. Actually, I have a big NYU event tonight. I’m such a fan. I loved that you went there, Gina. Fabulous school.
When I was there, I thought I should major in finance and international business because that was practical, and I was a very practical person. I wasn’t someone who said, “I’m going to go take a risk and go be an entrepreneur when I graduate.” So, I majored in finance and international business, and very briefly after I graduated tried out finance. What happened is I got a job in the proprietary training division of a French bank. This was in the early 90’s. 1992. I walked in there, was the only woman. I realized very quickly it was a majorly sexist culture along the lines of a madman or something like that. I didn’t like that. Even more so than that, I realized I didn’t love it like I had loved the translation industry. It was a lot of number crunching and paper pushing. I was doing equity arbitrage, which sounded very exciting.
Gina Stracuzzi: Sexy. Yeah.
Liz Elting: It did sound sexy to me, thinking, “Well, this is what everyone from NYU Stern wants to do. 70% of the people majored in finance, and they wanted to go into investment banking, but for me, it was the wrong thing. After only six weeks, I quit and started my company out of my NYU business school dorm room. I could go on about that, but that was how it all started.
Gina Stracuzzi: I have to say that your time with the arbitrage company really resonated with me because I got my sales career trading commodities in Dallas. It was the same environment. I was reading it, and I was having flashbacks to exactly what I dealt with there. Let’s take the conversation in a slightly different direction but still leaning heavily on this whole building of this company. I want to talk about the importance of taking risks. In corporate America things are much better than they were when you and I were coming up and we had to deal with horrendous behavior. There’s still this socialization sometimes, and there’s this invisible culture in corporate communities. It taps down women taking risks. So, talk to us about that because as an entrepreneur, you are taking big risks. Talk to us about your experience, even though it’s an entrepreneurial one, because we can relate it to what it means to take risks in male-dominated or just bigger environments.
Liz Elting: I did certainly feel like I was taking a big risk because I had just gotten my MBA from NYU, my parents had basically paid for it, and I felt tremendously guilty not using it to go into finance. I knew that was a risk. My dad even said to me… I asked his advice on everything. He was really my greatest mentor at the time and still is a huge mentor along with Jack Daly, which I know we’re going to get to talk to soon. He said, “You’ll have a lot of fun doing the translation company thing, but you won’t make much money.” That was a risk because there, I knew it was my responsibility to make a certain amount of money. That was a risk. I thought, “Okay, I’m going to prove him and everybody wrong,” including the people who I had gone to school with. People didn’t understand how I could do it.
That said, I took the risk because I wasn’t happy and life is short. I thought, “It’s a good thing to do when you’re young, in your 20s, and you don’t have a lot to lose.” But I also believe in doing it when you’re older, when you’re in your 50s and 60s, when you’re an empty nester and you can really focus on it. I do believe there’s a lot of focus and time you need to give it. Those are great times to do it. Then, of course, in between you can do it, too.
I did it. I thought I would be miserable if I didn’t. It would be a risk not to, because I would always wonder, “What if I had left finance? What if I had tried the translation industry?” At the time, and I think this is important for anybody in sales or any entrepreneur. There were 10 thousand translation companies out there already, but most of them were tiny moms and pops, between one and five people started and run by translators who were so incredibly talented, but they were so busy doing the translations that they couldn’t scale the company. Of course, that comes back to sales, which I know we’re going to talk about.
Even though I loved languages and I had studied languages, I was not translator level. So, I thought, “Okay, I can be a businessperson and focus on scaling the company, growing it, and building it into the world’s largest.” That’s what we did. I think the important thing in that dorm room was the first thing I did when I got up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, it was all about sales, sales, sales. Bringing in the revenue. I say if you’re an entrepreneur, funding is vanity, profitable revenue is sanity. That’s how we funded the company. Even if you spend all that time trying to get funding and get it, which is a ton of work, as we all know, creating the deck, and the meetings, and all that, you’re still going to need revenue to survive and thrive. Your investors are going to be awfully upset with you if you don’t have that revenue.
That’s what we did. I made in the early days 300 phone calls a day and sent out 300 letters to prospects. It took many thousands of letters to get that first project, but the idea was the first project turns into multiple projects, and multiple projects from that client turns into a multi-million-dollar relationship. I can add to that and give anecdotes on that, but that was what it was all about. Sales, sales, sales.
Gina Stracuzzi: Reading your book, I was thinking, “In some ways, I think we should go back to mailing people.” It would surprise them so much. We’re all just hammered with emails that it’s really hard to cut through the noise. Yes, it’s more efficient, but the chances of actually getting read are so slim.
Liz Elting: You’re absolutely right. I think it is super important to be unique and memorable. That’s one of the things I think Jack Daly says, but yes. How do you stand out amidst all the emails that we all get that we’re just trying to click through, and to keep up with the ones we really need to look at? You’re right. We would stand out. Back then, it was the only way but what we did then, and it’s just a way of thinking, “How can we be different?” is back then, literally Rolodexes were used. We sent a Rolodex card to everyone with our name, phone number, and address, so they could put it in their rolodex. Finding ways to reach people differently.
As far as sales, and most of us who’ve been in sales know this, but it’s a numbers game to reach people. Then, of course, people who you really want, you need to go deep into and contact them maybe six, eight, or nine times, I’ve heard, to get to establish a connection. Reaching them maybe with letters quarterly but also in multiple ways is so important. I can’t stress that enough because that is how we built our company.
Gina Stracuzzi: Let’s take a minute and talk about Jack. Mentorship is such a huge part of success. You’ve got to have your mentors, people who can really be a great sounding board and give you honest feedback. Talk to us about how you came to know Jack and the best advice he ever gave you.
Liz Elting: I love how I got to know him because it shows the power of networking and being curious. We all have to keep networking and keep being curious and wanting to learn. That’s exactly what happened. We were about three years into the business and had maybe a handful of employees. It was me, my partner, and a few employees. I remember he was speaking. I was a member of YEO, Young Entrepreneurs Organization, and he was giving a speech at the Beekman Tower Hotel in New York City, which is where I was, on managing sales managers. I thought, “Well, that’s basically all I do. What we do is we sell, sell, sell, get a client, basically spoil the client with quality and service, and then do our best to make it so that client turns into a long-term client and a multi-million-dollar client.”
Back to Jack. I went to the event. The Managing Sales Managers event which I thought was pretty ironic at the time because I wasn’t managing any sales managers. I was basically the salesperson for the company. We barely had salespeople at the time, so there were no sales managers there except whatever I was doing. I was the salesperson and sales coach. Anyway, went and I was wowed. I was mesmerized. I was so taken by everything he said and it made so much sense to me. I thought, “Wow, this is the key to growing.” I listened to his wonderful speech, went up to him after, and said, “Can I connect with you? Could you ever come and speak at our company?”
Within a year, we had him speak to our company. At the time, we had a handful of salespeople and he met with them. He met with all of us as a group, and then he met with each of them one-on-one and talked to them about their goals. He said, “What are your goals? What are you going to do to accomplish those goals?” I was in the room with him as he spoke to each person and I thought, “Yes, it’s very much the way we had gotten to the point we had gotten to before I met him. It’s all about goals and holding yourself accountable for those goals, and figuring out exactly what you’re going to do to accomplish them.”
He came back to our company once a year, approximately, over the course of about 20 years. By the end, he was speaking to over 600 salespeople at our company. He helped our company grow from a few to over 600 full-time salespeople. I remember he would come in for a few hours, he would jump on tables and get everybody jacked, and he was fabulous. He brought new material and also, for the new people, shared the lessons that we had all learned along the way. Then we’d have him at sales manager meetings. I even had him talk to our production team because in production, some of the lessons he had were incredibly valuable. He talks a lot about culture. As we know, the right culture leads to repeat business, revenue, and profit.
The last thing about Jack. I would call him up maybe annually to ask him advice about business, about people issues, and he often knew the people which made him even more helpful. He gave me very valuable business advice. So, he was both a mentor to me and a coach for our company. He was fabulous. I can’t say enough good things about Jack.
Gina Stracuzzi: I’m super excited to hear him speak at the award event. We’re very appreciative of you sponsoring his speech. Now that we’ve talked about that, let’s talk a little bit about what you were just alluding to, which is how the culture can make all the difference in the world as to whether or not people feel heard, seen, and nurtured. How did you foster that within your own company?
Liz Elting: Certainly, we made a lot of mistakes along the way. I made a lot of mistakes along the way. What would happen, and I’m sure a lot of people listening can relate to this, is we would work so hard to bring in business. That’s how we kept the lights on and paid the bills. But then we would get it from a client and the way we would get it is they’d say, “Okay, we’ll work with you. We have a million words that need to be translated in two weeks.” We would take the job because we had to, because that’s how we were going to build our company. Maybe the competition wouldn’t, we would. As a result, the people we did have at the time were working very long hours. Everybody was working long hours. I would say things to myself like, “Okay, we’ll just pay them more. We’ll give them a raise. We’ll give them a bonus.” We had a lot of burnout going through that, but these are growing pains of having companies.
As far as keeping the hours in check for all of the employees, did that by basically creating shifts around the world so that nobody was working too long hours, and also gave them comp time, and found ways so that they could keep their hours in check. But the other thing that we did along with that is helped them become innovators for our company. They helped us, basically. We did this in a whole bunch of different ways. One was through one-on-one meetings with my employees, for example.
I would meet with all of the people who reported to me once a week. If not, once every two weeks if it wasn’t feasible. I’d sit down and talk to them about what was important to them. Personally, how were they doing? How are you doing? They’d say, “Fine.” I’d say, “No, how are you really doing?” They’d say, “Fine.” I’m like, “No, how are you really doing?” Then maybe we’d get to how they were really doing and addressing it, addressing what’s important to them. Then also, from a business perspective, making sure I’m clear to them on what I think their goals should be, and they’re clear to me on how they feel about them. Is there anything else they want? Do they have any other goals? Are we giving them a plan for getting to their goals? Finally, my favorite question, the last question I would ask is, “What would you do differently if you owned or ran the company?”
We got so many amazing ideas for our company through that. We got ideas like TransPerfect language certification. We basically created a language certification which became the gold standard in language certifications in the language industry because there wasn’t a good certification for translators. We used that both for our own vetting of translators, but also, we offered and sold it to clients. Another idea we were given by one of our people is TransPerfect litigation support services. We were doing all this work for law firms, translation work, and because we were, our people realized, “Wait, why aren’t we offering what happens before the translation and what happens after?” They were things like copying, scanning, coding, blow backs. Now, it’s things like e-discovery, deposition services, and all of these things. That was an employee idea.
Finally, another client-facing thing was, “Why don’t we become ISO-certified? That’s very important for the financial and life sciences industry.” These were all employee ideas. Then there were internal ideas and smaller things like, “Why do we have an espresso maker on the 39th floor but not the 38th floor?” These seem like little things, but they matter because people feel like, “Why are they treated better than we are?” These are just some examples, but so many examples. The last thing I’ll say on the culture part is we did employee surveys. When they gave feedback, it was really important to act on it. Isn’t it crazy when you do a survey and then you feel like no one’s acting on it? Of course, you need to follow through with action on it, if it makes sense.
Then exit interviews. I was a huge believer in exit interviews because sometimes, people won’t tell you the truth until they’re walking out the door. Those are some of the ways. Then we as a company did so many things. One of the things Jack says and I loved it was, “Throw the employee party the day they start, not the day they’re walking out the door. Throw them a welcome party, not a farewell party. That’s when you want to get them excited about the company, and do things like take them out to lunch and really learn about that.” We brought people together all over the world in wonderful sales conferences with learning, networking, and just fun bonding time. Then many awards. Obviously, awards that are related to the kinds of behaviors you want to see. Lots of things related to the culture.
Finally, and we haven’t talked much about this, but as far as paying salespeople and paying all people, the employees, paying them in such a way that when the company does well, they do well. We went about that in a big way. It was unique in the industry. If they weren’t selling much, if we focused on salespeople, they made less than most people would make. But then they would leave. But if they were doing well, they made more than they could make anywhere else, certainly in the industry and even perhaps in any industry. That was really important because then they felt appreciated. Doing a commission that never sunsets is very important for salespeople. I think that was invaluable for us as well.
Gina Stracuzzi: I’m sure a lot of the salespeople listening to this are like, “Hmm… I wonder if she needs anybody right now?” Let’s talk a little bit as we wind down the conversation and then I’m going to ask you for some advice. Can you share your experience? I know it was a short tenure with the finance company, but I’m sure you’ve still come across situations in building your business, writing your book and everything. What advice would you give women? What did you learn about working in male-dominated industries?
Liz Elting: That’s a great question. Yes, I had a short tenure there, a total of six weeks. But in my own company, I was there for 26 years. That was a male-dominated industry, certainly at the top, at the senior levels. Over time, we did a lot of technology. I will answer your question, Gina, but obviously, that’s the important thing about growing a company. As times change, you need to pivot. We didn’t just do translations, we became largely a technology company because, of course, that was the only way to grow with the times, be on the cutting edge, and be the biggest and the best. But as a result, we had a lot of men. We had a lot of men the whole way, quite frankly.
I experienced my own issues. I would walk in with my business partner, who was a man, and people assumed I was the assistant. I hear stories from women today, 22, 24, 26 year old women, or 50 year old women, and they get the same thing. So, that still happens. What I tried to do during my time was make it all about results. Just be very clear what the results need to be both for me, for the company, for my people, for all of that. Then make sure I deliver on them and make it about that as opposed to hanging out at the water cooler, going out to the bar at night. Sure, we all know in business it’s about relationships. You have to have those, too, but focusing intensely on results, compartmentalizing, so at the end of the day you’ve delivered as much or more than anybody. It’s not about all of those things that sometimes the boys’ club would be involved in. That could still happen.
Another huge piece of it is having your own women’s groups at your company. If you’re part of a company that has women’s groups, fabulous. If you are, of course, become a member. Become a leader of them. Networking with them and supporting other women is invaluable. We’re at a time where that is happening more than ever. In my company, it was before that time. I had a couple of women who came up to me and said, “We should have a women’s group here,” so we started one. I think also having great policies for families, for women and men. Great family leave policies. All of those things are incredibly important.
Finally, for women, believing in yourself and standing up for yourself. I needed to do that a number of times. Probably a lot of it was related to sexism, and we all have to do that in life. Men can’t back down, they’ve got to do it, too. We’ve got to do it with warmth and kindness, but we’ve got to be strong. We can’t just back down because someone is acting like, “This is how it is.” We have to make it about results. I had to stand up for myself. Certainly, I had to walk out the door at Paresco. That was the name of the proprietary trading division of the French bank. I also ultimately had to be strong at my own company because there were issues. I had a dramatic ending to it because I had to be strong, and I had to do what I needed to do. I just think believe in yourself, be strong, and don’t let anyone tell you, “Stand back, you’re a woman.” Believe in yourself and do what you need to do.
Gina Stracuzzi: That’s great advice. Usually, we ask our guest for one piece of final advice that people can put into place today to help their careers. Maybe that was it, believing.
Liz Elting: I think that was so important. We’re pleasers. Often, people in sales and entrepreneurs, we’re service-oriented. We want to keep everybody happy, but you know best. Go with your intuition. Go with what’s right and do what’s right.
My final piece of advice is take that risk. Certainly, take the risk to start a company which applies to many, but if you’re at a company, take the risk at something new. Suggest an idea. Act like an owner in a nice way, don’t act like you know everything, but offer ideas and then offer to carry them out. Take that risk rather than just doing what’s being done. I think that risk takes us so far. It’s so fulfilling. It’s what changes companies and changes the world.
Gina Stracuzzi: Liz, this has been such a pleasure. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your book and the parallels in our careers. I hope to meet you someday in person. Thank you very much for your time and energy. Listeners, we will see you back here next time. Take care.
Liz Elting: Thank you, Gina. Thank you, everyone.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo