All Around the World - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 016

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be. Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy. Welcome. Today's guest is Wendy Pease. Wendy's a member of the International Executive Resources. She's host of her own global marketing show podcast, author of The Language of Global Marketing, and is a language translation expert at Rapport International. Welcome, Wendy. Glad to have you today.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Yeah, I'm so glad we're able to hop on again and talk a little bit about what you do. It's really fascinating to me. But before we get into those specific details, I always like to start the show off with a question about, from your perspective, what, what are some of the opportunities that you see out there that the C-suite should be aware of that they may not be quite considering from, from your perspective, from your vantage point?

Oh, from my vantage point, from day one of a company starting their business, they should be thinking about going international. And so many people say the US is such a large market. Why would I do that? Or other people don't speak English, I'm afraid. But you run into problems like if you're developing software and you don't think about globalizing it, it becomes a nightmare later on. I can talk to you about examples of famous companies that they're just not set up to handle global marketing. And then other companies start getting inquiries from around the world and they don't know how to handle it. So our borders have become so fluid and The number of people that speak English as a second language in the United States alone is changing dramatically. So even if you don't leave our borders, there's a huge opportunity. If you go on Telemundo or Univision and look at the ads, you'll see all the major consumer products are advertising in Spanish. And I mean, you got me something that I'm so passionate about, I could go on and on. But I'll say this last thing that, The United States has the— is the country with the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. So Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers. The US has the second, and our numbers are increasing so much that we're targeting towards being the largest country with Spanish speakers. So like it or not, embrace other languages and think about that from your vantage point if you're— you hold a C position?

Yeah, I think it's an amazing concept. And personally, we have been operating internationally for 3 years now. But we went about it, we kind of got into it a little bit by accident. And now it's opened our eyes up. At your CMO, we needed to find more marketing coordinators that could support our full-time fractional CMOs. And we bumped into an entrepreneur organization member who had a group of employees that were working out of Mexico, and one conversation led to another, and we hired one of our team members out of Mexico. And we were surprised at just—

is that Adrian that you talked to?

No, it was Jeremy and Gwen Aspen. They own a company called Aniquim, and they, they support the property management industry with with back office support. And so they've built a 500, 600 person operation in Mexico to do this work, all bilingual employees. And we just tapped into that network, hired our first employee, and it was amazing the talent that we were able to get access to and just how easy it was to integrate them into our team, which was concerning. With the pandemic, I mean, it just— that just normalized those virtual relationships and team building. So it became less of a hurdle. But then we'd have, you know, fast forward to today, we have 6 full-time employees in Mexico, we've got 3 full-time employees in the Philippines, and we have clients in Australia and in Europe. And we're considering a big push for clients in Spanish-speaking countries because we've we see there's a huge opportunity. So yes, I'm a big believer. I think it's huge, but it's so— it's a big leap for someone who's never done it and not exposed to it. So how do you help people that have never thought about it, or what's the first step in really giving it some good consideration?

Well, the first step is to reach out to your connections in the state. The federal and state governments provide free resources and grants to companies that are doing business international. And the reason, reason is, is our balance of trade is so far off. We import so much more than we export. And so there are people in your state that will specifically help you, and then they've got contacts all over the world to help you grow into whatever country that you want. And if you don't know which place to go, they can help you develop a strategy and look for what would be the best, best market. Now, that's ideally. Is the way that you go. You always want to have a strategy first. But I hear of business owners doing all sorts of things. Sometimes it's, you know, they're— they want to visit the country, or they have a second home, or they've already got a connection in the country that they think that they can really leverage. Or, you know, like you, you got employees there, and so you have Spanish-speaking skills, and so it makes sense to target the, the Spanish-speaking market. Um, I also hear about people who pay attention to their Google Analytics, and they see that business is coming in from Germany or Japan, you know, those are two examples of companies that have reached out to us. And then they go, huh, if I put a little bit of language translation on my website, I may be able to increase this business, which is really smart thinking. But I think step number one is find your state contact, and that can be through the export center, they call them UCX, your trade representative from the Department of Commerce. It can be through the SBDCs. The Small Business Development Centers, can be through the SBA. And if you're interested and don't know where to start, go to our website and search STEP grants, and it'll pull you right up to, uh, the person, um, that is in charge of the STEP grants for your state. And our website is rapporttranslations.com. I'm sure you can put it in the show notes.

Yep, it'll be in the show notes for sure. So are there specific businesses that are better suited for international work than others?

A great question. So you would think that products would be the best because you think exporting products. So of course it works out great if you have consumer products. Amazon's got some great programs that you can do. Just remember to make sure you follow any regulations. Like if you're an electronic consumer product, you have to follow CE regulations for the, for EU, which means that you have to have multilingual packaging and user manuals. And then you'd think maybe industrial products, you know, things that are made in manufacturing. But actually, the number one export from the United States is services. And so if you think about what you're doing, you're providing a service and you're exporting. And so there's— there's most of the exporters are small and mid-sized companies. It's not the large companies. And so it doesn't matter what you do. I mean, I, I say it doesn't matter what you do. If you own a dry cleaner or a local insurance agency or something that has to be very local. Notice I didn't say restaurant in there, and I'll get to that. A gas station, something like that. It's, it's really hard to, you know, you're a local business, you're, you're limited by geography. Now, I didn't add restaurants to that list because if you're a restaurant and you create a secret sauce or you've got some sort of recipe book or you sell items that would be interesting to people somewhere, then what the heck, pop it on Amazon or ship it internationally or put it on your website because you never know what— who might be interested in what you have.

Yeah. Do you see an opportunity for franchises to translate and kind of go out of the country? And do you know much about that as it relates to whether or not you need to have specific franchising laws and, and stuff in different countries like you do in the U.S.? Do you have any, any experience in that arena?

Uh, I don't have experience, but I got a network of people who do. So I think with franchises, of course you have the opportunity, because if you have traveled anywhere internationally, you know you can find a McDonald's and a in a Starbucks, right? I guess Starbucks isn't franchised, but McDonald's is. Um, and so there are so many franchises that are international. Of course, there's going to be an opportunity for that. So if you are a franchisee, or, or you could certainly look into it, and you'd have to either gain the rights to own a market there, or, you know, look at what that would be. Now, there are all sorts of experts that help with entering the countries, and so you start with the free resources from the state and federal. But then I belong to, um, IERG, which is International Executive Resource Group, which is internationals that have— or executives that have worked all over the world. So they would have connections. I'm also part of Soft Land Partners, which is an organization of service providers that's connected all over the world. And so if we need a question answered from another country, we've got access to people who do business there. And then plus there's EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, where you can get in with all sorts of business owners from everywhere. So if, you know, if I had a client that was interested in doing that, of course they need translation because anything they're doing in another country, they will translate. Because I can cite research statistics on how people are more apt to buy if you provide in-language communication to them instead of saying, well, they speak English as a second language. You translate, they're more likely to come, more likely to stay, and more likely to spend more money.

Can't they just use Google Translator?

There. Oh, drives me nuts when I see the plugin on websites. I mean, if you go— I do this, this is what I do for fun. I search down websites in other languages. So recently I went to a Chinese website. And I could see they had the Google plugin on it, so I switched it to English so I could read it because Chinese isn't one of the languages I read. I know some words in it like shishi ni, but I did the Google Translate on it and it was gibberish. I would never buy from a website that had that on there. And not only that, not only are the businesses losing money, you don't know what liability is going to come up. There's already been legal cases where people have used Google Translate and there's been a medical situation, there's been a legal situation, it's only a matter of time when there's a product liability situation because somebody used machine translation.

Yeah. So how do, how do you help companies then from a translation process? Because I would imagine there's just a lot that goes into that. Sounds simple. Just click a button on Google. But there's a lot more to do it the right way. Can you walk me through that a little bit?

Yeah, so if you're watching any video, you can see I'm holding up a book I wrote, The Language of Global Marketing, to help lay out the steps. You can find it on Amazon, just look for The Language of Global Marketing if you want to deep dive. Now I'll give you the highlights for it. So we have something that we call the multilingual flywheel, and I do presentations about this all the time, but it breaks down how you think about your multilingual communications, and it starts with strategy. Then process, technology, and quality. And each of those areas you've got to think about. The highlights on that are strategy. You've got to make sure your corporate strategy aligns with your marketing and your HR, all the other groups. And then you have to make sure that that aligns with your multilingual strategy. Then you develop a process, and within the process, there's a lot of frameworks you can use to decide what needs to be translated and what doesn't. So rather than going, oh yeah, should we do this, should we do that, you know, do we need to do this again, or is this a one-time use, or is this a multiple use, you develop a framework, either a 4x4 grid or by looking at the HubSpot flywheel or the stages of your buyer's journey. And so once you figure out the process for it, then it's easy to replicate across languages. Then you look at technology. Now Google Translate is really good if you get unsolicited email, you don't know what it's about, pop it in Google Translate and see what it says. You know, that kind of thing. You're having a casual conversation with workmates and you want to figure out what something means, pop it into Google Translate. Like, you know, I see fabulous uses for it. I think the technology is amazing. But if it's anything to affect your bottom line, you have to use human translation. But if you translate it once, it's just like if you write your marketing once, you reuse it across the different platforms. It's the same with translation. And so there you can use a technology called translation memory. So you use it once and then you reuse it to keep that consistency of voice. And that's what we use in the industry. That's not something typically that you'd manage in-house. You're going to want to have an agency or your translator use that so they can keep it for you. And then the final part on that next ring of the flywheel is the quality. Okay, so segment out the kinds of quality you need. You need high quality for anything that's really important— legal, operationally, you know, for liability, marketing, so you don't lose clients. That's high quality. You need a human. Now say you're a lawyer that you're doing a lot of discovery and you don't know which of the files has important stuff. Sure, pop it into machine translation, get the gist of it, review it, and then figure out what's the important folder. And you just translate that one that you would then, you know, you could use in court. And there's also something called machine translation with post-human editing. I think that's if you have a lot of content that doesn't have to be really well written, that would be fine. I've had people, I've had clients come to us who said, you know, we don't want the machine translation with post-human because it just didn't sound right. Right. And so they'd come to us to get the high quality. So obviously you can tell from us, we're in that high quality space. We don't do the high volume machine translation, but there are competitors that do. Okay, so now you've got your multilingual, you know, flywheel. You've got your stages. You do your next ring is your audiences. So you've got to think about who's consuming it. Is it clients? Is it partners? Is it vendors? Is it employees? And you've got to make sure to have that. And then you get to the outer ring of what the actual content is. Your website, your user manuals, your employee communications, your trainings. And so if you work your way out the multilingual flywheel, it helps you visualize a process of how to handle your multilingual communications.

What about audio, video, and human-to-human conversations? Do you get into translation in that way, or is it all written?

Oh, excellent, excellent question. Okay, little known outside the industry, translation is written. An interpretation is spoken. Okay. Okay. So in translation, you'll hear a lot of words like localization, globalization, transliteration, transcreation, translation. All those, they have subtle little meanings. Okay. We do all of those, but I never start the conversation, what do you want? I go, what are you trying to accomplish? What's your strategy? Then we can figure out the kind of translation that they're going to need. Okay, the kind of written. If it's video, you can do— you have two options. You can do subtitles, which are different from closed captioning. Subtitles are just the words in there to help with language understanding. Closed captioning has all the laughter, background noise, truck drives by, all the things for somebody who's deaf or hard of hearing. Okay, so you can do subtitles on a video, which is less expensive because there's no human audio that you have to record and lay over, or you can do the audio, the dubbing. So you'd have to translate the material and then have the person come and record it, and then your video editor would lay the voice on top.

So we— I want to just pause there for a second because I think that's interesting, and I have a lot of experience in video. Would you recommend if an organization was really interested in promoting their product or service externally to just create fresh new video with actors or real people in their native language, in their native environments versus dubbing over an existing video?

Oh, such a fabulous question. You're getting into some good questions. Okay. So that— the answer is depends. Okay, now, um, let me use two consumer product companies because it'll give you a good example of it's not as easy to say if you're industrial you can dub or subtitle versus consumer you have to, you know, do it a specific way. Okay, so what you're talking about is cultural adaptation. That's making it so the viewer feels comfortable coming to your site and using it and not feeling like a second-class citizen or not important, okay, or not like they're the target market, okay. So if you think about, um, Nike— they happen to be the shoes that I've run in for years— Nike Air Pegasus. If you go to the Nike website for anywhere in the world, it's going to look very different. Okay, the color choices are different, the people who are on there are different, the descriptions that they have on there are different because they're really localizing. So they're going to do native, um, local content creation because they really have to emotionally connect with who their buyers are. Now look at Airbnb. Okay, so this is for people who travel the world. Now Airbnb and, um, TripAdvisor do a very good job with this. If you go on there, they have a very standard way of listing properties, okay? So they have the, you know, the, the number of people that could stay there. There's an icon that might show the number of people, you know. So they use a lot of visuals, they use a lot of formatting, so when— so it's familiar. So even if another language came up, you might be able to understand it. Okay, on that you can get away with subtitles or you can get away with dubbing because people are expecting people from all over to be buying from this site. And then if you go down in— so their sites are professionally translated, their new content, but they use translation memory to populate a lot of their databases because a lot of the content is recreated. Now, if I'm a user and I want to list my property there, I do it in my native language, or I could also choose if I speak two languages, put it in for two languages. Now, I had fun playing around with this with Russia because I've always wanted to go to St. Petersburg, although right now my opinions on going there is a little bit shaded. But I was playing around on this about a year ago, and I looked at a site in St. Petersburg, and it was written all in Russian. A lot of the reviews were in Russian, but Google Translate it was fine because I could read that it was close to a lot of the tourist sites that I wanted to see. And then for the reviews, I could see that it got 5 stars, right? Which meant the same to everyone. And then down below, I could use Google Translate, you know, because they have that plugged in all over their site. Um, whether it's— I mean, it's machine translation. I just assumed it's Google, but I could get enough of the gist from the reviews that they were saying positive things. So it's not as easy to say which is better. You have to step back to the strategy and saying, what are you trying to accomplish? You have to think of the audience, of who you're talking to and what their expectations are going to be. So the site is professionally done. They've avoided any liability. They've increased usership. They make it feel very welcome. But you know the individuals who are coming in are going to put it in their own language, and you're willing as a user to accept that the translation isn't going to be as good as you would demand from the company.

Yeah, that makes good sense. That answered my question. Thanks. There's a lot that goes into this. There's no real easy, straightforward answers. It does depend, and I'm sure that's why people reach out to your company for that kind of support and from time to time. So how did you get in this business? I'm always curious about people's paths.

I have two kids and I was laid off on both maternity leaves. Yes, it's supposed to be illegal, but you have to prove that it's discrimination. And one company was bought out, it was venture funded, it was bought out by another venture capital firm. And the other one was a large, uh, global public company. Um, and they decided to do away with their corporate marketing department. So I was no longer heading up global marketing. And, and at that point I said, you know, enough. I've got two young kids at home. I'm really tired of this corporate thing. I had owned my own business before I went back to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College to get my MBA. And I had always wanted to own my own business before, but I didn't have an idea of what to start. I didn't, you know, I was kind of wondering, and I didn't want to be the person that provided the service. I like doing the business building and leadership and business development and networking. So, I wanted to focus on that side of the business. And I met somebody at a conference and he said, well, buy a business. And I kind of laughed and I was like, with what money? I need to work. But that little idea was planted in my head and I went and searched buy a business on the Google and came up with a bunch of business brokerage firms, and I had majored in foreign services, lived internationally, love languages and cultures, and came across this little translation company for sale. Owner had run it for 18 years. She was ready to do something else. I was ready to come in. It was a natural. That's 17 years ago. We've grown it phenomenally. I got an incredible team. We've gone through— there was nothing called Google Translate— to how do we incorporate that into what our customers are doing. So that's how I became a business owner.

Yeah, 17 years ago. That's a— so you've had a nice, uh, journey as an entrepreneur, I imagine, like most of us. Um, I'm really curious lately about, uh, leadership and this, like, what that term means to different people. So as a leader of your business, what do you think of your role as, as the leader? What, what are— how would you describe that?

You know, that's interesting. Years ago when I was working with a coach I wrote my job description, and I'm looking it up because I— looking up at my bulletin board because I have it up there. And that's the person who stands in the center that helps make it all happen, you know, establishes responsibilities and procedures to get things done efficiently and seamlessly. The broker doesn't have to be involved with the day-to-day. She hires and inspires, and people can get it done the right way, and the right way aligns with our vision and mission, stays within our values, and services the clients how they want to be serviced. And then, you know, I put down the activities that I do. So it's really, you know, it's been a transition for me because I, you know, smaller in the company, I was very hands-on. And so I've struggled with letting go, but luckily I've got two strong leaders that take it and run with it, and they've had to kick me in the butt to get me out of the way. I slowed them down, and when I stepped out of the way, the staff stepped up, and they're, they're doing it better. So, uh, you know, I— it's leadership, is— that's something special to watch. And it's, it's interesting, I'm on the board of EO, um, the Boston chapter, and I watched the other people who are all leading businesses, and I'm, I'm learning a lot from our current president and watching the different styles and, and how to think about it. So there's some natural leaders, and there's something for all of us to learn.

Yeah. So you said you had two leaders that stepped up. What, what makes you define them as leaders? The same definition you gave yourself, or do they have different attributes or qualities that make them leaders in your mind?

Um, so Linda started with me as a project manager, and she had had a long productive career in corporate and had managed lots of people. And she was a stay-at-home mom that wanted to come back to work. And as we grew, I realized that she knew more about running operations than I did, and she paid more attention. Like, I paid enough— I pay enough attention to details to get the project done right, But processes, systems, managing to the day-to-day events, I'm not good at. She's really good at, and she's really good at working with people and setting expectations. So she had to, you know, boot me off our weekly calls and say, I'm taking over it, this is my team. And I was like, uh, it's worked out fantastic. So I said, you know, part of leadership is taking, is taking ownership of it and then being able to encourage the people to do what they need to do and make decisions on their own. And so she's, she's better at that than I am. And then the other leader that stepped up is Lisa, who had worked in HR but came on with me as kind of a support person, um, ends up she has phenomenal marketing skills. So she's taken over our marketing, um, and we're all over social media. So if you want to see some of the work that she does, you can follow me on LinkedIn or Facebook or, you know, Instagram or Twitter. You know, we're posting all the time. Fun. We're getting into TikTok this summer, and we're going to increase our, our YouTube stuff. So, uh, yeah, yeah. But, um, you know, it's all about edutaining. I mean, I— we're really trying to educate people on how to get good translation, but our industry is loaded with fun stories and facts and culture. I mean, we have endless amounts of content to play with. If you have good content, send it in. We'll, uh, we'll share it around.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. So she stepped up and really managed the people that, you know, that are working for her now to get all these activities done.

Yeah, I work with a lot of fractional leaders, and it's interesting to see some of the things that they bring to their engagements. And leadership is a, you know, it's a word we use a lot, but I don't know if it has a common definition for many people. And especially as business owners, you know, we're leading our own organizations, but we're also building leaders within our organization often. It'd be nice if there was a common language around leadership. I mean, I think about it, some of the words I heard resonate with me. I think about it as influence, like good leaders, bad leaders have influence. You know, they make people do things, good or bad. And we see that playing out in the Ukraine-Russia contract. Both of those could be considered good leaders because they have influence. One leads maybe a different way than the other. One's probably in the right and one's probably in the wrong, but that also depends on which side you're on. But then leaders make decisions. So that's a big piece of, I think, the leadership is decision-making. And then development, you know, how do you develop leaders underneath you? So it sounds like you're—

you've kind of— inspiring. I think it's inspiring, I'd add to that. And the other one is setting a vision, like getting everybody to follow the same roadmap. What's one good word for that?

Yeah, but you know, it's vision, vision brings a vision, right? And that— so where I'm spending some of my time, it's, it's trying to understand how you can build leadership at all levels of the organization and incorporate vision and inspiration and influence and decision-making and development at every level. So in an ideal world, you've got a decentralized organization of leaders.

That, um, that are all working in the same direction.

Yes.

Which is, which is the tricky part. Exactly.

Um, and how do you, how do you do that is, is the, the crux of the problem there. You can have— and we, we see it in EO. We're both EO members, both on EO boards. You know, that's a group, it's a— you're, you're in the midst of leaders, you're leading leaders when you run the board, but you're also leading your own role on the board. And there are so many different styles, but it does take a shared vision for everybody to do their own piece of it, to execute on their own piece of it.

Right, right.

Yeah, it's generally not a single person's vision, so it's like a collective process to build that vision as well.

Yes, yes. What's the— what's the saying about me and we? I get less done with me, I get more done with we. Yeah, it's something like that. But that's something early on, every time I was stuck, my coach would say, well, have you talked to your team about that? And so now anytime I feel stuck or alone, I'm like, ooh, important conversation to have with the team. I don't have to swirl it around in my head, and then it's solved really quickly. Yep. Yeah, yeah, the whole fractional leadership is fascinating too, because if you're a long-term leader, it's a different skill set than a fractional leader. Because as a fractional, you know, in a fractional any kind of role, you've got to come in, be a leader, and get work done.

Yeah, it's very different. It's unique for someone that has been a leader in an organization to then go out and be fractional. In other organizations, it's a— there's different skill sets that they have to tap into. That you have to— it's assumed that you have the expertise to fulfill that role as a CMO or CTO or COO or CFO. So let's assume you've got the skills that allow you to do that work, to have the impact as a fractional leader versus a a full-time leader, you have to do different things. Fractional leaders have to, as you said, show up and deliver almost immediately. There's an expectation that I'm going to get stuff done every month from the get-go and it's going to be high-level stuff and it's going to have immediate impact where the expectation of a full-time hire is, hey, you got 3, 6, 9 months to kind of work your way into this role and start making the change. So you've got an expectation issue. You're you're dealing with. And you have to be able to influence differently. So as a full-time leader, you're in the office when we have offices and you're in the hallways and you're at the water coolers and you're in the other meetings, the outside, the boardroom meetings. But as a fractional, you're just there a limited time trying to make the connections and have that influence but you don't have those outside of the meeting conversations. You don't have the water cooler conversations. You're not able to get to know people personally on the same level often as you would be without creating some intentionality behind doing that. And so we talk to fractionals all the time where they realize that. And so they intentionally reach out and try to have those one-on-ones and those other meetings to build some rapport and relationships that way, but it's harder. But in many ways, the, the, the fractionals can, can get more done sometimes than full-time because they don't have some of those distractions either, and they don't get some of that filler work to do, and they're able to focus really on strategy or high-level work and they can be more productive. At the price point, when you look at it from just a pure dollars and cents standpoint, I think it's the biggest opportunity that business owners have today is accessing fractional leaders. You mentioned it's really hard to let go, and that's one of the reasons it doesn't happen. But if you are a business leader and you're in the C-suite and you're wearing more than one hat, a fractional could probably take one of those hats and allow you to do your job better, be more productive for the business, And a good fractional leader can— you can trust to do that job better than you probably could. So that's the opportunity that I see in business. I don't know if you see it as well with people that you know or work with in the fractional areas.

That's, you know, I was just going down the list of influencer decisions, development, inspiring, envisioning, and I starred like a, you know, those are all the things that a full-time leader would have to be. But a fractional, you're really coming in and doing visioning and developing and influencing.

Yeah, from the— from right, right off the get-go.

Absolutely right. So if you have a CEO that can make decisions and can inspire, then your job as a fractional is helping that vision get, you know, setting a vision of what's going to be done in this area, and then let's get it done. And then I've got to influence the people that are going to get it done. Right. But you don't have to do all the relationship building and the inspiring and the— that stuff of the full-time person. And they have to make the decisions and support the— yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way.

And in some ways, the fractional leader is making a lot of the decisions also. There's a certain— it's a comfort level how much decision-making that the owner or the CEO suits, gonna allow that fractional leader to make, similar to a full-time leader in that regard as well. Like, what decisions are you gonna let your full-time person make and/or not make? And some of us are macro managers and some are micro managers, and that plays into it. And there's a big cultural component to fractional leadership that makes or breaks the relationships that I've seen as well.

So— And what— say more about that.

Some, um, well, there has to be a cultural fit. Now, depends on the organization what that fit looks like. So some, if their leadership style is very loose and soft and, and fuzzy, and you get a hard-charged, driven, I need accountability, I need this, I need that, there's not going to be a fit. And vice versa. Um, there's—

which is interesting because there you're talking about business culture and how you work. And so then if you layer on language and ethnic culture, the potential for innovation and higher productivity is much higher, but it becomes more challenging because already it's challenging if the business culture or the work culture doesn't fit, right? But then you add that other level to it, which is real interesting because it might be to an advantage for an international company to bring, you know, one of your fractionals in to help them with their U.S. expansion. But I could imagine there would be a lot of frustration for that, but a lot of benefit.

Yeah, we've seen it. We had international clients and we've— they've wanting to make a mark in the U.S., so they hire U.S.-based CMO fractionally And we've had it work really well, and we've had it not work so well. And it comes down to kind of the understanding of communication between the different organizations. What's important to us to communicate and what's important to others to communicate culturally is different.

And whether you're direct like we are here in the United States or indirect in many countries where that might not work is telling you that's not going to work. And as American, you're thinking, okay, it might not work, let's figure out how we are going to make it work. Yeah. So those subtleties.

Yeah. Yeah. And the pace, you know, um, there's, there's a lot of— there's just a lot of moving parts there, which is fascinating. It's exciting. It's— it makes the up— it makes a lot of opportunity when you can figure that out. Um, but we have—

you know, in all the research, like when it first started coming out. I mean, basically we're talking about diversity and inclusion here. When it first, you know, that first came about, it was the right thing to do. Now McKinsey and Harvard Business Review, they all publish articles with the statistics on how much better the companies do financially, how companies that aren't diverse or don't bring in those cultural struggles suffer for it, and the longevity and the increased innovation you get. Yeah, yeah. So if you can figure out those communications challenges with somebody in, you know, the international company coming in, everybody benefits, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's very interesting. Even, even then, you know, as we work internally with our employees that are in different countries, um, we have to understand those same conversations and their communication issues, not just language, but just how direct can you be with an employee that's used to being very indirect. And it's fascinating how different we are in some ways, but then at the core, everybody's very similar. Everybody wants to do a good job. They want to improve themselves and the company and the people around them. And so there's really figuring out what those core fundamentals are and rallying around that as much as you can is where we've found some success. Our Mexican and our Filipino employees are so family-focused. I mean, we're family-focused, I think, in the US, but it's just at a great level there. But that's the bond also. You talk about kids and you talk about family and you understand. We need to take time for you to spend time with your family. And so it's the differences there, but the similarities are there as well.

Yes. So I, as a child, lived in Mexico and I lived in the Philippines for a little while, also Taiwan. But yes, Mexico. And that was one thing that my parents loved particularly about Mexico, because we were there longer, that, you know, there's just the enjoyment of family and children and everybody was included. So it's funny, a number of years ago, I talked to a woman who had a yoga studio in a Spanish-speaking part of town. It was in the United States. And she said, I'm having a really hard time getting the mothers to come. And so, you know, we thought about— I thought about it with her a little while. And I was like, well, why don't you make it family yoga? And so she's like, that's a great idea. You know, and you could easily do that and make it a community event rather than just for the moms because they need to take care of themselves, because they're not going to do that. They value the time with the kids and their husband. So I, I should have kept in touch with her so I could tell you how it turned out miserably. In my little mind, I like to think that everything was wonderful and her studio was highly successful and families and kids and everybody loved yoga.

I bet you it was. I've, I've, I've gone to yoga with my children before, and, uh, it's always been a good experience. Like, I could imagine that would track them to be able to come. Maybe they don't have to figure out daycare or whatever, right?

Right, exactly.

Yeah. So what else you do for fun these days, Wendy?

Well, I just got back from Florida. Kind of just starting to get into travel again, and I took my senior in high school son down there to go scuba diving. I used to dive a lot in my 20s, and he just got certified, so we had a blast doing that. He's a, he's a fish, so he took to it naturally. And scuba diving in Florida was surprisingly good. I had never been. I've been all over the world, but I hadn't been there, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Really? What part of Florida? I'm not a diver, but for those that are listening, what's the good part of Florida to go dive in?

Well, we stayed on Luke Key, which is just north of Key West, and they didn't go out diving because the winds were so bad. Apparently this time of year the trade winds are strong. So even though it was 70s and sunny and I thought we'd be fine, they didn't go. But they connected us to Key Dives, which was a great outfit if you're going diving there in Isla Morada. Um, it's just called Key Dives. Their divemasters were fantastic. Their boat was very safe. They took us out to a bunch of different dive sites. We saw an octopus, we saw sharks, we saw turtles, um, flamingo tongues also, you know, and then tons of the, the blue tangs, the angelfish, the grouper. Um, so the, the manta rays. So it was loads of fun. So I'd recommend going to Isla Morada and key dives.

Okay, great. We did have a chance to do snorkeling at the Barrier Reef. That was, uh, a bucket list item for me. My daughter was staying overseas in Australia for a summer and— or a semester, and my wife and I went out and visited her. And that was, um, that's as close to scuba diving as I got, and it was fantastic. I can only imagine what it's like like putting a tank on and actually getting underwater for a long period of time. But just—

you compare it like going to a zoo where you see the animals at a distance versus walking in the woods and coming across live animals. Like, it's just— you're completely immersed in it. So if you have an interest, I recommend getting certified.

Yeah, I have interest in lots of things, but not enough time for all my interests. But that sounds fun.

Yeah, yeah. So I do that. And then when I'm at home, I got a Peloton. So I'm enjoying that. I'm GlobalCycler if you want to follow me.

Yeah, what's it like translating Peloton? Have you ever thought about that?

You know, they have German instructors and Spanish-speaking instructors, and I speak more Spanish. I don't speak German. But somehow I'm doing a challenge for your core with a German-speaking instructor. Okay. I'm getting a kick out of that, but I keep meaning to do one of the Spanish workouts. I should do them all the time and get my ear back up for Spanish. But, you know, it's only a matter of time until they add additional languages on there. It's fantastic.

Yeah, I gotta figure that the German instructors are a little more hardcore than the Spanish instructors. The culture, like, those German words would just get me like, all right, whatever you say, I'll run, I'll cycle faster.

I promise. The woman that I have is delightful, but her core is massively strong. So she's not— I would have thought that too, but she's smiley and nice and I can understand enough. Plank pose. And there's a lot of sports words that end up being in German. So, uh, yeah, yeah, it's fun. But yeah, I hope to get back to international travel. There's nothing I like better than being dropped in a country where I don't speak the language and navigating around and meeting locals and doing the local things. I mean, that's, that's what floats my boat.

Yeah, I'm a— I've been making it a priority to get some international travel in as well, and it's so exciting just to visit a new place, whether it's in the US or out of the US, but then a whole other culture and a whole other country, it just comes with it. It's exponentially more interesting, I think, to me. I really want to learn Spanish so that I can spend more time in Mexico with our coworkers and team there, and then travel. I have a little Spanish from my high school years, but gosh, that was decades ago. I need to figure out how to get it back. Maybe Peloton's the way I can figure that out.

And there you go. There's also, I'll see if I can look it up right now, but there's a language learning app that is in New Hampshire, if I can find it, but they've been around for years. That, uh, yeah, I'm not finding it right now. And if, when I find it, I'll, I'll send it over to you. But they, um, you know, you use any of the Duolingo or that, or those kind of things where you can do it. But this app was really good. I went to see them once. They train a lot of the military. And by doing it on the app, you can actually record your voice and it gives you feedback on your accent. And you can pick different criteria, like if you want to learn business English or business Spanish versus travel Spanish or living there Spanish, so you can help change the vocabulary in. But, you know, as a language services provider, I always say you just need to speak English really well and then get an interpreter. Yeah, you can. And, you know, we offer telephone interpreting that you can get somebody on the line within 20 seconds and help facilitate a conversation. You can add somebody into a Zoom call and they can help facilitate. You can have in-person. So there's a lot of different ways. If you're hosting a big conference, there's actually a technology that we have that, that we, you know, we contract to sell, that the speaker speaks in their native language, and then if you download the app for the conference, you can click it and it'll give you the transcript in language. So it's like a Google Translate. It's not good, but by the time you hear English as a second language and then have Spanish there, if you're a native Spanish speaker and can read along, it's two different ways you're taking in the language to help. And it's a lot cheaper than hiring a simultaneous interpreter. So for those of you out there who don't know, don't have an interest, or don't have the skills to learn a second language, Don't be afraid of doing international business because you can do a lot with a little bit of assistance that can give you a great big ROI.

Yeah, that's great to know. And I've been on Zoom calls through— actually through EO on a global board position where the Japanese speaker member, just like me, a peer of mine, doesn't speak any English. Everyone else is pretty well spoken in English no matter what country they're in. It seems like that's the some of the language of business. But nonetheless, on the Zoom calls, he's got a translator. And when he's speaking, you can go in on Zoom and you can say English version, and you're hearing the translator and you're not hearing him at all. And if you turn it off on native, you're hearing him. It's so fascinating how the technology has allowed that to happen. And if you just selected at the beginning of the call, every time he speaks, you're always hearing the translated version. It's like I don't know, it's like Star Trek or something. Yeah, yeah, machines are like, oh, I can hear you saying that's great.

Yeah, now, now I'm pretty sure they have a human behind that, right?

Yeah, there's got to be a human that's also on the call with us. I don't see her ever.

Um, yeah, there's some automated functions that aren't good that you can do that, but Zoom's platform is built to have somebody in there, and that's— we'd provide interpreters. Facilitate that conversation. So you can set it up that it would have the option, and you can pick it. So yeah, it's fantastic.

Well, that's—

and those people, the simultaneous interpreters, are fascinating. Imagine listening to something and then having to repeat it at the same time you're taking it in. They say they're not even processing the language in the meeting. They're just repeating it because they're just so focused on the words coming in and out. So they do it for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then they tap out, and somebody else else will come on because it's just such a concentrated thing. Even as a speaker, you have a moment to stop and collect your thoughts, but as the interpreter, simultaneous interpreter, you don't.

Wow. Yeah, I didn't think about that. That is pretty taxing on them. I've seen a— in one of my video business that I was involved with, we would have an actress come and she would have a script that she would work on. And she would get— she would record the script herself, and then she would play the recording into her ear, and then she could just— she could just interpret the script. And she didn't know what the words were. Like, she didn't even care what was in the script. She just listened and spewed. And it was fascinating. Like, that is some sort of talent. I can't believe you can— you can do that that well.

Oh, there's— there's— but I mean, the linguists that we work with are amazing because you've got people that can do that And then you've got translators who are like writers, that they, you know, quote dictionaries, they do research, they're very thoughtful. A lot of them have advanced degrees. They've had other professions and they come to this. So, you know, they're the more thoughtful, writer-y people. And then you get the consecutive interpreters that are running around making sure everybody's taken care of, like at doctor's appointments or depositions, business meetings where one person says something and then the interpreter says it, and then the other person repeats. So they're like a cultural conduit, you know, a conduit, cultural conduit, because they're trying to make sure that those people are getting along and understanding each other. So when you look at all these linguists, not only are they bilingual, but they've got deep subject matter expertise in each area, and then their skill sets are so different. Fascinating. Yeah, yeah. So don't ever discount them. Give it— I always, you know, all the first responders, like the doctors and the nurses and the ambulance drivers and EMT, they all got credit, which deservedly, 100%, they got during the whole pandemic shutdown. But I just kept looking at the interpreters who are going into the hospital to facilitate these conversations. They were another whole group of first responders that really deserved a lot of credit.

Yeah, that's good. And some of the things that, you know, we take for granted, just speaking and communicating, it's not that way for everybody, depending where you are and where you came from.

And speaking of speaking and communicating, do you know what the one gesture that is recognized internationally is the same? Hi. The smile.

Ah, the smile. That's terrific.

Yes, because thumbs up can have an offensive meaning. The okay sign can have an offensive meaning. Waving your hand like come here with your palm turned up can be meaning— so some countries they wave with the palm down. So how people wave hello is all different, but the smile is the only international gesture. That's great.

Well, what a great way to end. So with a nice big smile, I appreciate your time, Wendy. It's been great. Just this conversation is so fascinating to me, what you do and, and how you open up the world for all of us. It's exciting. Um, what's the best way for someone to reach out and get in touch with you if they have interest in following up?

Well, if you go to my Linktree, you can find everything there. So I don't know if you know Linktree, but it's L-I-N-K-T-R www.wendypease.com. And if you go there, you can download a couple free chapters of my book, you can get to the podcast where I interview fabulous guests, our website, and all my social media handles. So that's a good way to find me.

Great. Well, we will try to get that in that in the show notes. Everybody has easy access to it. And for all the listeners, thank you. This has been a good hour with Wendy, and I hope to talk to you further. And Wendy, once again, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. What would be a good word to say goodbye in? Pick a language and say thank you. I can say gracias, but that's about it.

Say gracias, adiós, or merci, au revoir.

Very good. Thank you. Muy bien. And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by YorCmo, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YorCmo.com. YorCmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.