Liz Elting: Co-Founder of TransPerfect & Author of Dream Big and Win

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone, it’s Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I am so excited to have my next guest here. So excited she and I were just chatting away. And I’m like, we need to get on this interview right now. Because it’s, it’s really so important for you to hear all about what Liz is up to. So Liz Elting is the co founder of a company that you may or may not be familiar with. But it’s a very large company called TransPerfect, where she was the co founder, and the CO CEO for many years. She is currently the founder of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, we’ll get to talk about that. But drumroll for her book, she is the author of the incredible book called Dream big. And when I have a copy here, it is so so good. So you definitely need to grab a copy of it just came out. And just a little bit of information on Liz, as I mentioned, she was at a company for I think 25 years, close to maybe a little three, six years amazing, called transperfect, which is the world’s largest provider of language and business solutions. And valued at over a billion dollars she was there for a number of years, over 25 years, 26 years, I guess. And now she has founded the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, which advances economic social and political equality for women and marginalized people. And she has also appeared on the Forbes richest self made women list for five years in a row. That’s amazing and also recognized for all her efforts from the National Organization of Women, Forbes American Express. So many, so many. So and as I mentioned, dream big, and when is quite good. And you definitely need to get your hands on this. It’s so motivating, educational inspiring. Her journey is really incredible. So without further ado, welcome, Liz.

Liz Elting 2:49
Thank you so much, Kara, I’m so excited to be here.

Kara Goldin 2:53
Very excited to have you. So I’m so inspired by your journey, how you built and and scaled a company as a founder and as a CEO of a company, co CEO as well, such a massive company. And I know there’s going to be so many learnings in this conversation for sure building a company also without raising money outside capital. I mean, who does that it that’s that is absolutely incredible. So much I want to talk to you about but I’d love to start from the beginning in the early days, especially thinking back on on you as as a little person, right? You’re I read you were in lots of different countries and cultures. And clearly that really impacted your career choices and kind of what you saw a hole in the market for but can you share a little bit more about that experience?

Liz Elting 3:46
Sure. So yes, when I was young, I was fortunate to live first in Westchester, New York, and then I moved to Portugal when I was eight and nine. And I got to study Portuguese and French realized I love languages, then move to Toronto. And there I continued to study languages. And by the time I graduated from high school studied Spanish and Latin as well. So four languages all together, loved, loved love languages. And I just love being in other cultures. And I loved kind of the thought of just connecting with other people with different backgrounds. So I learned that I realized that I went off to college. And in college, I really didn’t know what to do, because I was very practical. And I loved the idea of going into business being in business. And I thought, well, I love languages. This is what I want to study, but What on earth am I going to do with a degree in languages? So I remember I called up my dad and I said, Dad, you know, as you know, I love language. I love languages I I want to major in modern languages, but What on earth am I going to do with it? And he said, Liz, you know, don’t worry about it, just do what you love, and the rest will take care of itself. And I’m just so grateful that he said that in here. courage that so I majored in languages in college. And then after college, I actually during college, I lived in Spain for a year, greatest year of my life, loved it loved connecting with people there. And then worked in Venezuela after college, came back from Venezuela. And I was fortunate to get a job working at a company that was called your America. And at the time, it was the largest translation company in the industry. And I thought, wow, how perfect is this, a way to combine business and languages. I remember I walked in there in 1987. And there was a Macintosh computer on every desk, which back then was very high tech, I felt like I was in the Jetsons or something like that. And I thought, wow, this is going to be amazing. So I ended up getting a job there. And I started in production, and then was able to move into sales, which is what I had really wanted. And I absolutely loved the industry. But during my time there, I thought, I love this industry. I love what we’re doing. But I think it can be done better. I saw gaps between what clients needed and what was available in the industry. Back then it was enough to be a translation company. But I thought clients needed projects done faster, they needed deliverables other than WordPerfect and Microsoft Word, which were the two big software’s back then. And they needed a real one stop shop with offices, really in every city around the world. So that just kind of stuck in my head, went back to school, got my MBA from NYU Business School. And because I’m very practical, and I thought I really need to get a job and make some money when I graduate. I majored in finance and international business. So after that, I graduated with my MBA, as I said, in finance and international business, and I got a job at a French bank where I was doing equity arbitrage. And I thought, okay, great. This is a way to combine what’s practical finance, and, and language, that my love for what was international. So I went there. And basically, I showed up, and I was the only woman there. And this is a 1992. And whenever the phone rang, my boss and everybody around me yelled Lin’s phone. This is not why I got my MBA from NYU, and finances is not what I expected. So didn’t love that didn’t love the atmosphere was very sexist being the only woman there and being expected to answer the phone. And then I also realized the industry was not for me, I had loved the language industry, but thought it could be done better. And I also had left the culture of the other company I was at. And I thought, I don’t love the industry. I certainly don’t like this culture that I’m experienced as corporate culture. So I’m going to go. And so basically, and that was sort of my aha moment, I thought, This is my moment, to create my dream company with the perfect corporate culture, and really pursuing my passion languages and kind of bringing the world together through shared language. So after four weeks, I said to my boss, I’m so sorry, I made a mistake. How much time do you need? And he said, two weeks as finalists, and I left after six weeks and started transperfect. So sorry, that was very long now. Kind of give you what led to my, my, my dreaming about starting transperfect? And what led to that action.

Kara Goldin 8:30
I can only imagine here you had, you know, you’re obviously very bright and very capable. But you’re in your early 20s. Right, you’ve supposably got this amazing opportunity. And you decide that it’s not for you, right? I mean, who leaves jobs after a few weeks, right? You’re you’re probably thinking like, Is there something wrong with me? I don’t want to be in this position. I mean, it’s it’s a very scary time, I can only imagine how scary that was. But here, you decided to really take the risk and and go and do something that you knew you were passionate about. But you didn’t have experience being an entrepreneur, right, you were going to go and see what would happen. And I’d love to kind of hear about that time and sort of how did you push forward?

Liz Elting 9:23
Right? No, and you’re right, it was a risky move, because I felt some guilt too. I felt a lot of guilt because I had just and largely my my parents had just paid for my and I, you know, contributed a little bit for my MBA from Stern. And I thought, I’ve got to use it. I can’t just go and start a translation company. But my heart wasn’t in it. And I thought, well, if I’m going to do this out of the NYU Business School dorm room, which I was living in at the time, I need to make it big and successful and ideally the world’s premier language solutions company but again, I felt Guilt, I wasn’t sure it was going to work out. And it was a very interesting and exciting time. During that time, we started with no money. No, I mean, a few $1,000 that I had saved from all my jobs over the years, I started working very young when I was 10. And I, I saved but it wasn’t much money. Got a little bit. So a few $1,000 in the bank, a $5,000 credit card advance. And that was the extent of it. And I just thought, Okay, I’ve got to give it everything I have, and make it the biggest and the best. But but we had some crazy stories in that dorm room, where, which I could tell you about but the goal was to be out of that NYU Business School dorm room within six months. So we would have a real office. And and that’s exactly what happened. But boy, there were some crazy times in that dorm room. How

Kara Goldin 10:51
were you in the still in the dorm room? Did you actually get to have an office or you were you living there still after business school?

Liz Elting 10:59
Actually, that’s a great question. You’re right, because I had graduated in May of that year, and then started the company in the fall. So after graduating few months after graduating, but my business partner and and boyfriend at the time, he and I were living together, and we did decide to live in that dorm room, because it was very cost effective. In fact, because we were students, we were able to not have to pay until the end of the year, like the end of the school year, oh, he was a year behind me, I guess I didn’t say that I had graduated, he was a year behind me. So technically, he was still an MBA student, I had graduated. But what was wonderful about that is, when you’re starting a company with no money, as you know, you need to find every way to do things in a cost effective way. So we were able to live there and pay the rent at the very end of of the school year, which was about six months after we started the company.

Kara Goldin 11:57
That’s wild. So I heard a really great interview that you did, where you talk about the importance of goals. And I can imagine, especially in those early years for a building transperfect That, you know, this concept of like having a check sheet or a list of things and goals that you want to meet. Can you talk a little bit about what you learned, you know, in those early days, and over the years, really that helped you probably to scale a company to

Liz Elting 12:28
Yes, and you know, I do think goals are so important. Because, you know, as I said, I think we were very nervous about not succeeding, and we didn’t have any outside funding, it was sort of do or die, there was nobody else’s money, it was just the little that I mentioned we had. So what we did is said, Okay, today, every day, we’re going to send out 300 letters and make 300 phone calls. Actually, it was more make 300 phone calls and then send out 300 letters, because the 300 phone calls were to figure out who would accompany would have a need for our service, put them in a spreadsheet, and then send out 300 letters. And this was every day for months and years to get that first client and then the second client and you know, then of course, it becomes easier over time because the first million is by far the hardest. But that so goals were you know, a day couldn’t pass without 300 calls and 300 letters. And then beyond that. I mean, once we started getting revenues, monthly revenue goals, annual revenue goals, and just holding ourselves to them and doing whatever we needed to make sure we accomplish them. Another goal as time went on was, in order to be the biggest and the best with offices in every major city around the world, we would say okay, what if we had a boss, we would need to present them with some goals on how we’re going to grow this company. So I came up with a plan on Okay, each quarter, what office are we going to open. And then we required ourselves to find a way to open that office. And the way we opened offices was very cost effectively, I mean one person at a time, that person needed to accomplish certain goals, and then they could add a person and that they needed to accomplish certain goals. And I’m referring to revenue goals now. And then they could hire a third person and so on. And this is really how we funded the company internally. But with goals with deadlines.

Kara Goldin 14:27
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Liz Elting 17:45
There were so many Yes. failures and things got going wrong. I mean, in the very early days in the dorm room, literally the first couple projects we did the first client, I remember, she and this was when this was back in the day when having an office was important. I mean, now we’re at a different time where everybody or so many people work remotely. And it’s not about having an impressive looking office. But I remember my, our my very first client finished the project for and then she said, Great, I’ll come over to pick it up. And I can you know, check out the operation. I was like oh boy. So ran downstairs to the lobby of the dorm and just sort of intercepted her before she got past the security guard and handed her the project. Because this was before email, this is four weeks, literally send her the project. And then the second client somehow turned up as well. whereby he got past the doorman and we weren’t even expecting him. And he literally got to the dorm room, knocked on the door and said Hi, I’m here to pick up my project. So that was craziness. But as far as things we did wrong mistakes we made in the early days. We were working so hard on selling that we would work day and night. You know, I talked about how hard we were, you know, pulling a lot of all nighters working 14 hours, 16 hours a day worked so hard. And then we brought in people to do the same. And they understandably were burnt out. They were either selling or they if we sold, they were producing the jobs like taking the projects from start to finish. And understandably, they were burnt out and we thought okay, we’ll just give them a bonus. We’ll give them overtime, we’ll pay them more. And no, that wasn’t sufficient. They needed their life. Of course they did. They needed work life balance, what we call it now, which that back in the day, you know, it wasn’t paid and people didn’t quite look at it that way. But we realized that was an issue. So even when we paid them more, even when we gave them a bonus, it wasn’t sufficient and we had a lot of turnover in the early days. So we found ways around that. Like we start started having shifts we created shifts what we call T one and T two And so people could cover for each other throughout the night. So they were working 24/7 We also had people in other offices and other time zones covering for these people. So they could turn over their work to to them. And then of course, also overtime comp days, but we realized the importance of making sure everybody had a work life balance, because no matter how much money people made, they need their time. So learn to that. Another lesson early on was, we we were really working hard on selling, we got with like a $15 million dollar client in Florida, which was huge, in an office in Florida. And they said, Okay, we’re here, we have a big project for you. And they were, they were like a fortune 100 company. I mean, they, we knew they could pay for it, they were real. And so we opened the office, we, it was big office, we hired a lot of people, and then they just sort of backed out. And we did not have a formal agreement, which of course, looking back, of course, you need a formal agreement for something like that. But we knew they were legit, we had done a few projects with them, we knew they were a big company, and we didn’t require it. And so that was a loss. And after that we required contractor terms of terms and conditions with every project. And even, you know, when we knew clients were, you know, legitimate.

Kara Goldin 21:25
That’s so interesting. So you left the company after being there for 26 years, after really bringing this business to life. My question for you is, what did it feel like to leave the business? We’ve had a lot of founders on our podcast, founders who have also been CEOs, or, or another executive and in the company, what is it? What was your experience? Did you did you feel like you were? I know that there were some challenges with your co founder. But did you really feel like it was, it was hard to watch other people operate the company, because you really had not only put your heart and soul into it, but also, you actually really believed that you knew how to grow the company. I’m so curious what you would say to that.

Liz Elting 22:18
No, it was incredibly hard. It was initially to leave. And I thought, at first, I went through years of litigation, and I looked at buying it. And without getting into the details I ended up selling instead. And at first, I was devastated actually, because it was my baby, it was my life. And I didn’t think I kind of I knew ways to run it and grow it as well as anyone. And then also, above all, I was close to our people, our employees, they were my family. And you know, we didn’t talk about that. But so much of what I learned during the 26 years was working with people leading people, and all of the those leadership issues because our company was very people intensive. And I didn’t want to say goodbye to them. But fast forward to to what ended up happening. I did end up leaving walking out the door. And initially it was weird. It was strange. It was awkward, where I literally what do I do with myself now? Yeah, I remember, like back in the day when I used to watch the Flintstones and and Fred Flintstone would sit on a park bench. Well, I thought, What do I do with my stuff now, but then I quickly realized it was a blessing. It was a blessing because it had been 26 years. And like anything, I knew I need change, we all need change. I think careers need change, you know, like a company needs to change and pivot, I think we all need to, or it gets old. And I was so excited finally, to think, okay, now I can do the things I never had time to do, like philanthropy, like give back, like, address the issues in the world that are real issues and problematic issues, because I’ve been so incredibly fortunate. And I need to try to help people who did not have the advantages I had. So that’s a big one. And I’ve spent a lot of time on that over the last few years. And then because I love entrepreneurship and speaking about entrepreneurship, I was so excited to share what I learned based on what I did, right? And what I did wrong. And I did a lot of things wrong. I didn’t even get to talk about all the things I did wrong and the lessons I learned. But I was very excited to write my book and share the lessons in my book and then speak more about it. So and then finally a little more time with my family. Because it was hard for 26 years it was hard. I mean one thing you know as an entrepreneur, Karen, every buddy knows it’s it’s crazy hours and for many, many years over a sustained period of time. It’s a lot of hard work. So now I get I got I got to go on the maternity leave that I never got to go on when my kids were little.

Kara Goldin 25:03
I love that description for sure. And I totally get it because you give up a lot to go and be an entrepreneur. And I think time is the most valuable thing that any of us have, as humans, and the amount of time that goes into founding a company scaling a company is enormous. So what are the key things that you’d like people to learn from dream big, and when you’ve obviously shared a lot of your lessons, you not only have scaled a enormously profitable company, and that is a private company, but now you’ve started your own foundation to which is incredible. So you have vast experience in lots of different areas. But what else would you like people to kind of learn from the book?

Liz Elting 25:52
Right, right? Well, no, there were so many things. I mean, certainly about leadership, because I had no experience, I made so many mistakes, managing people, I mean, in the early days, we still much needed people, we made some hiring mistakes. And you know, and one of the things I learned is, it’s not just about skill set, I mean, and experience, and especially experience, it’s much more about attitude, and curiosity, and propensity to learn, and motivation, and all of these things. So So that’s important. Another thing that I learned over time was I was working very closely. I mean, I was working closely with someone who sat literally outside my office, like, next to me practically. And I thought we were very close, I thought I knew how that person felt, and that they were happy in their job. And then one day, they gave notice, I thought, oh, my gosh, how could I have not foreseen this? What did I do wrong. And that was early on. And I learned about the importance of one on one meetings with people who report to you, even if they’re sitting next to you all day long. And what I mean by that is one on one meetings where you are, you know, talking about their goals, they’re where they want to be in five years, ideally with your company, and you know, what they think is going right and what’s going wrong, and then giving them a a plan for how to get there. So So after that I really carried out and I think we as a company, you know, carried out the important carried out one on ones across the board. Also, employee feedback. And client feedback could not be more important. learned that from mistakes we made. And so many of our ideas came from our employees and our clients about new products, new services. So that was lessons learned from from not always doing things, right. And then finally, one that comes to mind is I talk about this in the book, but I did not have a shareholders agreement. When we started our company. We started without funding, as I said, and we thought, well, we can’t hire a lawyer, we can’t hire an accountant, we don’t have the money. But the most important thing is a proper shareholders agreement. And I learned that over time. Over time, as I mentioned, our company grew. And after about 20 years, my partner who I owned the company with 5050, and I were having issues, and we had no shareholders agreement. And as most entrepreneurs know, you definitely need one to basically determine how roles responsibilities, decision decision making dispute resolution, what happens in the event of death, divorce disability, and above all, a Buy Sell provision. If you and your partners can’t work together, or you want to sell the company or whatever the issue is, you need to set forth how the company is valued, and how you can exit or how they can exit and, and all of that, and we didn’t have any of that. So it made it challenging over the years not having that, you know, when I mentioned the roles, responsibilities and decision making, but but certainly over time, it made it difficult. And the other thing I didn’t mention is we were 5050 owners, I don’t recommend that. So I recommend ideally being in the controlling position. And usually that comes with ownership being overfit a 50%. Owner. But or but it can come in other ways depending on how many owners there are, you know, being the biggest owner or just what set forth in the shareholders agreement with related to who is in charge of what but a proper shareholders agreement not being 5050 owners. So it’s unclear how a tie is broken. And that’s a mistake I made. And then of course if you do that if you do that, make sure you get a shareholders agreement as quickly as you can make sure you bring in advisors or board and attorneys to draft the agreement as soon as you can. So and then I do for me, it would have been valuable to have a non compete agreement with my partner, because then ultimately, when I exited, I, you could have, I could have gotten more a higher valuation. But but that’s okay. I mean, ultimately, I mean, I was incredibly lucky, I had a fabulous run of it. But these are some important lessons I learned that I always share with entrepreneurs now.

Kara Goldin 30:29
No, I think that that’s incredibly valuable. So last question, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start a business or disrupt an industry outside of having an incredible ironclad shareholder rights agreement?

Liz Elting 30:47
Well, okay, so when people are starting, I think it’s so important to get have goals with deadlines. And, you know, I think what happens is a lot of people spent a lot of time I guess, on a business plan, and getting investors. And in our case, we didn’t do that we didn’t have a business plan. I mean, in our head, we knew what we wanted to do. But that can take a lot of time. And then of course, getting investors can take a lot a lot of time. And I think it’s at least as valuable to focus on getting the sales and getting the making the profit. So revenue, and profit. One of the things I say is, I used to say is revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. But now I think sometimes funding is is the vanity part. And ideally, profit is sanity. And then of course, you need revenue to get profit. But I think that’s so incredibly important. Because there most times when company not, I think I’ve heard something like 90% of entrepreneurs fail, and 75% of funded companies fail. And it’s all about the revenue and the profit. And that’s the most important thing. That’s what will sustain you over time. And that’s really what we focused on, and building the sales team. That’s another thing. Actually, I like to say this to people. We focused on sales a lot in the beginning, but it wasn’t just us. It was building a sales team. And my goal was to have the biggest sales team in the industry. And when I sold we had over 600 full time salespeople. And that was very important. Because that’s how you grow the company. I think so many entrepreneurs have wonderful ideas. But the entrepreneur is the salesperson for many, many years. And then how do you grow it. And we even acquired a company that had had something like $82 million in funding, but it didn’t have a proper sales team. I think it had some about a million dollars in revenue after $82 million in funding, because it had a great back end solution. But not a proper sales team. So I felt I stay the sales team is very important. Another thing is diversify your risk. That was a big thing we did. No one client accounted for more than a couple percent of our business and we focused on that intensely. Also, we worked with every industry. You know, everything from life sciences to legal to financial to advertising, okay, so that’s important, and every geography and every we have to adding services and technology. And I say that because you don’t want to rely on any one area. Yeah, so important. One last thing, because I think this is really important for entrepreneurs. Don’t confuse being an inventor with being an entrepreneur or being an entrepreneur with being an inventor. We didn’t invent something entirely new. And I remember in business school, when people would take entrepreneurship classes, they said, I have to think of a new product, what can I do? And I thought, boy, I don’t have one, I just have a thought on how something can be done better. And you know, I’m not the most I’m not the most creative person, I didn’t have a new idea. So it’s just a case of doing it better. And then you can really, you know, have a very successful company and be wildly successful without being without inventing something new. So I think that’s very important to

Kara Goldin 34:03
know, I think that’s absolutely important. And we’ve we’ve talked to a number of people who have taken components that are already out there and figured out how to build a company out of that to So, so incredible. I love talking to operators, like yourself that are really knowledgeable about how to grow companies and dream big and when is just so so right on so inspiring. So informational. So you need to get a copy of this. We’ll have all the info in the show notes. But Liz, thank you so much for your time and all of your knowledge and motivation and inspiration. We loved it. And thanks, everyone for listening.

Liz Elting 34:44
Thank you so much, Kara.

Kara Goldin 34:47
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single Episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen. Or pick up a copy of my book undaunted, which I share my journey, including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And thanks everyone for listening. Have a great rest of the week, and 2023 and goodbye for now. Before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. Successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book.com and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara Goldin and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara Goldin. Thanks for listening