Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. You know, there are a few things more frustrating than a leader who sets up a bunch of meetings and presents ideas and talks strategy, but then doesn't really know how to motivate people so all that stuff actually gets done. It's actually one of the biggest derailing factors I see in leaders. They can dream and plan and strategize, but they don't have that urgency and action to galvanize their teams and make it happen. Fortunately, my guest today is not that kind of leader. Liz Elting is the former CEO of TransPerfect, which is the language translation solutions company that she built from the ground up into a billion dollar business. Today, you're going to hear how she did it, and you'll see Liz has a strong bias towards action that really drives her success. She's willing to put in the hard work in long hours. She's incredibly goal oriented, and even better, she knows how to motivate a team to go out and operate in the same way. And let me tell you, it is powerful. If you're feeling stagnant or weighed down by too much bureaucracy, this episode is going to help you be the kind of leader who gets big things done with a bias towards action. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Liz Elting . You know, Liz, as we get started here, you need to know that I barely pass Latin in college, but I'm going to give this a try anyway. Quando Amari Linguas. Oh, when did I start loving languages? You got it. You got it. For everybody else out there, I guess we should keep this in English. So tell everybody, when did you fall in love with languages? You picked it up. You know, that's a great question. I love that question. I appreciate that question because, yes, languages have always been my passion. When I was eight, my family moved to Portugal, and when we did, I started learning Portuguese and French in third grade. And right then and there, I realized I loved languages. I loved going to that bakery and ordering the delicious Portuguese bread in Portuguese, and I just loved the whole experience. So came back to the US, then moved to Toronto when I was 10, and then continued with French, and then in high school had the opportunity to start studying Latin in Spanish and loved those languages as well. So languages became my passion. I took the four of them. By the time I graduated from college, and it was, yeah, a dream. I loved languages. And I want to get into how you lead and built this billion dollar business from the ground up, which is something I really admire. I love people who can really start something to make it really work. But first, let's go back to the beginning. And you touched a little bit on it already, but what's a story from your childhood that really sticks out that shaped the kind of leader that you are today? Sure. So growing up, I had some interesting times. And I remember one was when I was in sixth grade, when I was 12 years old, and I was in music class. There were about 60 of us in there. It was two combined classes. And we were all singing for our teacher, one of my very favorite songs, Joseph and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And I was just loving it, having the time of my life. And I thought everything sounded so beautiful. And then our music teacher started walking around from person to person, and in front of each person and stopping. And she got to me. And I thought, well, this is exciting. And she stopped. And she said, this is it. And I thought, oh, wow, she's going to tell me I can do a solo. And she said, this is the problem. You're off key. You need to go. We can't have you in the choir. So she basically told me I could not participate. I needed to go downstairs, sit in a classroom, buy myself for the rest of the semester while everyone else, the other 59 or so people got to stay. And it was so traumatic. And until then, I thought I was a pretty good singer, clearly not. So I think from that, I realized, wow, how could you do that? That was pretty awful. And I didn't like being called out in public. It was traumatic. It was hard. And I also felt like a bit of an underdog then, but I also thought, OK, I'm not going to do that to people if I'm in that situation, because that's really hard. And no one wants to be given such negative feedback in public. So that was one story that formed my style as a leader. But the other one was when I was 14, I was in Vermont walking with my cousin across the street in Manchester, Vermont. And I got hit by a car. It felt like out of nowhere. And I basically flew in the air, landed on my head, had a fractured skull, was rushed to the hospital in Albany, because it was a very bad situation. And my parents then ended up getting there. Turns out there was another kid, approximately my age, a boy, who had a fracture skull, similar injury is mine. We were both in a coma for about three days. And I remember my parents were talking to the boys' parents and they said, "Oh boy, hopefully they'll make it." And my parents were even, they were praying. They were saying, "OK, well, if she can't walk for the rest of her life, that's OK. As long as she can talk, as long as she doesn't have severe brain damage." Anyway, after three days, I woke up. The boy didn't and I realized, "Wow, I was the lucky one. I need to do something important in life and I need to make a difference. At some point in my life, I need to go out. I need to help people. I need to make the world a better place because I'm here for a reason." That's great. I love that. And you certainly had a great takeaway from it, which is very powerful. And I understand that your father gave you some great advice early on that ultimately led to you starting your business with languages. What did he tell you? It was sophomore year. It was the night before I needed to choose my major. And I called him up and I said, "Dad, I don't know what to do because I love my language courses, but what on earth am I going to do with a language major?" I want to have a good career. I know I need to be independent. And he said, "Don't worry about it." He said, "Pursue what you love and the rest will take care of itself." And so I chose languages. I majored in modern languages. And boy was I glad he told me that because I felt like he gave me permission to pursue my passion and that was wonderful. Absolutely. And when did you first experience that intersection of your passion, which was language and a career? Shortly after graduating from college, I first did an internship in Venezuela and then I came back from Caracas, Venezuela to New York and I was able to get a job at what, at the time, was the world's largest translation company. It was about 90 people and I was so excited because I saw, I walked in the door , I remember at that company for my interview and I saw there was a Macintosh computer on every desk and what they delivered was language services and I thought, "Wow, this is business combined with language." And I said to them, "I'd love a job in sales. Do you have anything?" They said, "No, but perhaps you could do production." And I said, "Okay." And if that works out, could I potentially move into sales after? And they said, "Yes, maybe you can." So I had the opportunity to work at this wonderful translation company where I learned the business. I loved it. I loved the culture. I loved what we were doing for clients, but I thought it could be done better. I really felt like I saw a real gap between what was needed in the industry and what we were providing. I felt like there could be a real one-stop shop with top of the line service, top of the line quality and at the time that was really what clients needed. Back then, it was enough to be a translation company and they were getting by, but I thought it could be done better. When you thought about how you could really differentiate yourself, what was the idea you took to market and really ran with? Well, I knew there was a need for this service. I actually, at the time, there were 10,000 translation companies out there, but they were all moms and pops. They were between two and five people and they were started and run by transl ators, very talented individuals with a very high level of language knowledge. But I didn't have that level of language knowledge. Instead, the idea was, "Okay, I as a business person with an MBA could really take the company and scale it by spoiling the client with the best service out there, by delivering superior quality, by having an office in every major city around the world, and by being a real one-stop shop." So those were the differentiators. Really to create the world's premier language solutions company. You have 10,000 competitors and most of them have less than five employees. And yet you had this dream to scale this language business, which is really amazing. How did you pull yourself out of the weeds when you first started so that you could really build scale? I think that had to be a big task because you don't have a lot of infrastructure at the beginning. You don't have that many clients. How did you pull yourself out of the weeds and really start scaling something? I think it's so important as an entrepreneur to, even though in the beginning, all I focused on and all we focused on was selling, selling, selling 300 phone calls a day, 300 letters a day, and not letting ourselves up for air unless we did that. We were the only salespeople, my partner and I. So that was critical. But the question is, how do you get to the next level? I think the key thing is to not be the company's only salesperson or even most important sales person. I guess ultimately the founder and CEO could potentially always be the most important. But by that, I mean, as far as how they spend their time. I think it was so important that we quickly built a top tier world class sales organization. And so every bit of profit that came in really went toward hiring these people and training them, developing them and retaining them so that they were our connection with the clients over time. And I think that was so critical because ultimately we did have the largest sales team in the industry. But that was by design over 600 full time salespeople. And it was necessary because had we not really focused on that? We couldn't have built the company. It was all about hiring the salespeople so we could work on the business rather than in the business. Give us a snapshot of TransPerfect and the business that is today, the business that you developed. Well, I did sell it five years ago. But when we started the company and out of an NYU dorm room and then when I sold, the goal had been to become the world's largest with offices around the world, a real one-stop shop. In 2017, when I sold, we finally accomplished that goal. We became the world's largest language solutions company with offices in over 100 cities around the world and the highest revenue of any company out there and over 5,000 full time employees. And that was the company. And basically any foreign language related service we did, also litigation support services, staffing solutions, technology solutions. That was the company. Basically, anything a client needed in a foreign language or a technology solution in order to conduct global business. What was the base business you had when you first started out? And then what was the next big new area you went into? So really, the base business was document translation. But the plan was to do anything in a foreign language that a company needed. That was the plan from day one. And then as time went on, as we spoke to our clients, we realized and our employees, we got a lot of ideas for how to grow. And that was starting related lines of business, like some of the ones I mentioned. But initially, document translation and then anything in a foreign language was really the core. Have you ever wondered what David is thinking as he interviews our guests each week? Or have you been interested in hearing David's take on some of the questions that he asked his guests? Well, I do. And I know a lot of you do too. My name is Koolah Callahan. And together with David, I host the three more questions podcasts that airs every Monday. These episodes are just about 15 minutes. And in them, I asked David three questions that dive deeper into the themes of his episode with his guests. David shares incredible insights and stories from his career leading young brands. And all of his answers are super practical and inspiring. Think this great insight, David Sherrod, and one of our most recent three more questions episodes. You know, so many ideas get killed before they've had any kind of opportunity to develop. So let people get their ideas out and build on them. But if you start out by judging everything that comes out and say, "Nah, that won't work. That will work." You just squash creativity. Just suspend judgment. Let things play out. Get the three more questions podcasts in your feed each Monday and dive even deeper into the episodes you know and love. Just subscribe to How Leaders Lead wherever you get your podcasts. You grew your team to over 5,000 employees. We had over 100 offices worldwide, $1.1 billion in revenue. How did you develop the leadership skills so that the business didn't pass you by? So it was a lot of learning by doing and making plenty, plenty of mistakes along the way. Because you know, I had had virtually no training. I had worked at the other translation company for three years, but I had had very little experience there. And I was really making mistakes and learning from them and then making sure I didn't do them again. What's one area of leadership, Liz, that you felt especially challenged in as you were scaling the business? In the early days, as I mentioned, we were working so hard to sell, sell, sell so that we could get the money to hire people and grow. So we would do that. And then we had enough work where we needed to hire people to get the work done . And we needed people so badly that we would bring people in. And sometimes we made mistakes on what we looked for in a person we hired. That was one thing, but the other big thing was we in the early days asked too much of our employees. We had so much work because we had worked so hard to get that work and our employees had worked so hard to get that work. But then they were working crazy hours. They were pulling all night after all night. And we needed to have them do that to get the work done. We couldn't bring in the people fast enough, but that's no good. We thought, okay, we'll just give them a bonus. We'll just give them a raise. But over time, of course, that doesn't work. They need their life. They will be miserable. They will burn out. And we lost a lot of people in the early days because we expected too much and we couldn't just take care of it with paying a bonus. So that was a big mistake we learned. And through that, we learned things like, okay, we need to set it up so we have different shifts. And after that, we added shifts within a time zone. For example, in New York, where our headquarters is, we also made it so in our other offices around the world, they were covering our second shifts and our third shifts. So when the work day was done in New York, then it could go to another time zone in Hawaii or wherever, and so on, and then Tokyo and so on. So we found ways around it, but initially, we had a lot of turnover. Every leader has to go through those learnings that really impact themselves and other people. And that's a great example. And you say that your business was all about sales at the beginning. I mean, you were sales, sales, sales. Tell us about Jack Daly and what you learned from him. Yes, and Jack Daly is terrific. One thing I did early on a couple of years into the business is I joined something called Waiyo, a young entrepreneurs organization, and was very excited to do that. And one of the first programs that they had, the first lectures was with Jack Daly. And Jack Daly's lecture was about how to manage sales managers. And I went to it. This was a few years into the business, and we were the sales managers. You know, I and my partner were the sales managers, but I thought, I'll go listen to Jack, and he just gave all his recommended ideas, advice on how to manage sales managers. So from that, I thought, okay, we better get some sales managers in place. We got a really higher than this world class sales team. So he gave me amazing ideas. I was wowed by him. And what I started doing after that is I brought him into our company. And we started bringing him in when we had about five salespeople, and he would speak to them all together in the morning, and all of us, and kind of give his ideas. And then in the afternoon, he would meet with each of them one to one and talk to them about their goals and how they were going to get there. And he was wonderful. And he came back once every year or two for the entire 25 plus years I was with my company until we had over 600 salespeople. At the end, he was just jumping on tables, motivating the 600 plus salespeople all together. But he started when we were about five salespeople. So he was wonderful. What did he teach you about yourself that made you a better salesperson? You know, he taught us a lot of things that weren't even only related to sales. Like, for example, I can think of some of his lessons which were higher slowly, fire quickly. That was one of his sayings. Another was, you know, don't have a big party when people go away from your company when they quit. Have the big party when they're coming in. So some of these ideas didn't just relate to sales. I'm just thinking back. But I mean, I think it was just be really tough on yourself with your goals. Make sure you have your goals down on paper. And that's daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, quarterly goals, annual goals. Make sure you have them on paper. And then make sure you then go back from there and figure out whatever you need to do to deliver them. And then the other piece of it that he shared was make sure you share those goals with people. You don't just put them down for yourself. You make sure you announce them to your internal board or, you know, your board of directors, whatever it is. And that was very valuable. I've read where you're a big believer in these goals, but goals with deadlines. Oh, yes. So how did you implement that in your company? How did you drive that deep in the organization? Oh, absolutely. And I because I think that really is the key or was the key for me. Growing up with goals with the deadline. And I think that starts with when I started as a salesperson or when our sales people started, just as far as the actions we need to take, like making 300 phone calls a day, sending out 300 letters. And now maybe those letters would be emails or something like that, but not letting the day pass without requiring ourselves to do them, being tough on ourselves and, you know, giving ourselves little rewards when we do 25 or 50 or 100, letting ourselves get up for a break, up for a sandwich, up for a five minute walk, but not letting the day pass without doing those things. So I think that's on a daily basis, you know, as far as other goals with deadlines on a big higher level, basically with the goal being to open an office in every major city around the world. I said, okay, our first external offices need to be in these cities and basically put down on paper. Okay, in Q1, we'll do San Francisco. Q2 will open Atlanta. Q3 Washington, D.C., Q4 Chicago, and then held ourselves to those goals. And you know, they weren't the hardest things in the world because we really started with one person in each office. And then of course, those people had goals where they had to sell a certain amount. And as soon as they did, we could add people. And then when those two sold a certain amount, we could add people and so on and so on, but really sticking to the goals. And you know, as I said, on a daily level, on an individual basis, and then as far as the offices, the company is added and basically for every person adding to their team. What do you think was the most important thing you did to build a world-class sales organization? So basically finding people who were very entrepreneurial and aligning their incentives with the company. So when the company did well, they did well. Or when their office did well, they did well. And basically, as far as how that worked is they would come in and as far as compensation, they might make a little less than they would in a regular job. But then if they sold and were successful and really built an office or built a team, they would make more money than they could anywhere else in the industry and perhaps anywhere else in a company. So that from a compensation standpoint was very important. But these people, they were entrepreneurial. They were very driven by the idea of building their own organization within the company. So I think that was very important. I think the way we paid people was very valuable, a commission that never sun sets, so that you're 10 of a client they're making the same amount as they would in year one. I think that's very important. I think really hiring the best, most motivated people and then getting out of their way. Letting them do that's so, so important, not micromanaging because so many of them, they could do it so much better than I could. And that's the whole concept of hiring people who are smarter than you are. And it's a little cliche, but boy, is it true, right? I mean, that was not that hard for me. I could find people who were smarter than I was and better. How did you develop that security to hire people smarter, better than you? I mean, was it easy for you to get out of the way? Yes, because I think I know what I'm better at and I know what things I'm not so good at, there are plenty of other things to do at the company, right? So that wasn't a problem for me at all. And I think the whole idea is with hiring, it's just making sure you hire people who impress you. When they walk in the interview, they may be young just out of college, but you can tell when they're impressive and there are so many that are impressive. And if they are, then why would you not want them there? If you can envision them there in five years and 10 years, leading a team of 100, 200 people, that's an opportunity. And I was just so excited to have that opportunity and to go for it. You started out as basically the chief sales officer, you're pounding, knocking on doors, sending emails, the business grows and grows. How did you step up and carve out the time to think about the new growth vehicles and the vision for the company that would take you down new paths? Well, what was nice is we definitely focused on building that sales team early on and then related to what you're saying, we got so many of our great ideas for the company through both our employees and our clients. So for example, our salespeople who were on the front lines, they were talking to clients or handling big projects. And one example would be when we started our litigation support services division, that was the idea of one of our salespeople who was dealing with these cases that we were doing the translation for. And so that was one. Another was when we became ISO certified and that added a lot of value to our company. That was from another employee. Another was when we developed our language certification, which really expanded our reach. And that was through an employee. And then so many of the other ideas were through conversations with clients. So I think what I found is the innovation was not difficult because we had employees and clients who were happy to share ideas with us. And in fact, we had all kinds of ways to get these ideas from our employees. I mean, everything from certain positions required an innovation idea in order to be promoted into. We did a lot of promotion from within in order to be promoted. Someone had to come up with a new idea. So that was the incentive. But as far as how they came up with these ideas, you know, as I said, just from dealing with the business, another way we got them was employee questionnaires, employee one on one meetings. I'm a big believer in sitting with the people for a meeting or walking with the people that you work with directly one on one ideally once a week, if not once every two weeks. And that's how you can get some of these great ideas. So that's the answer to your question. I think so many ideas from our employees and from our clients. And then by just stepping back, because as we all know, when we're busy in the business, we can't and stepping back and looking at the big picture also gave us a chance to come up with some of our own ideas as well. Now you had a co-founder who you met at NYU Stern School of Business. What made the partnership work at the beginning? So the way it worked at the beginning, we met at business school. I had the language background as far as taking languages and working in the industry. And he liked the idea of being an entrepreneur. And I think we were both just committed to building the world's premier language solutions company and doing whatever it took. And in the early days, we were putting in a ridiculous amount of time, 100, 120 hours a week for quite a few years, and we were both willing to put everything aside in our lives to do that. And we were committed and we were motivated. So I think that made it work. We did have complementary skills. However, I will say, we didn't do the best job saying, okay, you do this, I do that. We didn't. I mean, of course, that's what you need in a company to divide responsibilities . That's critical. And we didn't do that. But in spite of that, we had complementary skills and we were both beyond motivated. That's great. And when you started the business, I think you had a 50/50 deal, right? When did you first realize that that could potentially be a problem or was it a problem? So the truth is, I think I realized pretty early on that it could be a problem. When we started the company, we started with no money, no money whatsoever. I had a few thousand dollars life savings in the bank. I got a credit card advance, but we had no money. And he actually had some business school debt that we needed to take care of. So the bottom line is, when did I realize it was a problem? I think very early on when we were in that NYU Business School dorm room, just thought we don't have money to hire an attorney, to hire an accountant. So we will just file incorporation papers and we'll be on our way. A few years into the company, what happened is he and I were boyfriend, a girlfriend, and then we were engaged. And then we broke up. And at that point, I think I realized we really need this shareholders agreement because we need to clearly define our roles, our responsibilities, how decisions are made, dispute resolution, what happens in the event of divorce, death, disability. And if either of us wants to stop working and sell this company and the other doesn't, for example. So I knew we needed this for a lot of reasons, not to mention we couldn't agree constantly. Constantly. So we fought. We fought. So this happened about five or six years into it. I will say we did bring in attorneys at that point, spent the day with them, and then could not agree on a shareholders agreement. We just, we're not both agree to do it. So that we went through the whole time together as co-owners, co-CEOs, for all intents and purposes, 50/50 owners with no clear way of making decisions. And it was a challenge. And then finally, it got to a point where it got really bad. And I tried again. We couldn't agree on one. And as a result, I had to pursue litigation. And I'll tell you what I did. I actually litigated to get a custodian to be put in charge to resolve deadlock in the short term and oversee the sale of the company in the longer term whereby I could buy him out. He could buy me out or a third party could buy us both out. But the point is when I tell people the lesson learned is you need a shareholders agreement. Even if you have almost no money, even if you're broke like we were, you need a proper shareholders agreement. I also recommend you not be 50/50 owners with no clear decision maker, no tie breaker, because it can be very rocky and very challenging. And then finally, if you do have a shareholders agreement, it's important that there be a non-compete between you and your partner because that ultimately I couldn't get . And that would have been helpful to have in the end too, just as far as when you're selling the company, that will increase the valuation of the company. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. But that had to be, we'll move on from this, but that had to be a lot of drama, particularly at the end before you sold, I would imagine. I mean, how did you, with that drama, how did the company function, you have all these people working for you? I mean, how did you manage through that, Liz, as a leader? I mean, how did you rise above it? Yeah, that's a great question because that was the toughest time in my life, quite frankly. It was difficult, I think we just had to not be emotional. I mean, how can any of us not be emotional, right? That sounds crazy. But in the interest of the company and what's best for the employees and what was best for the clients, I did my best to rise above it. But yes, it was very public. There was a lot of press on it. And I just thought, I've got to push through this and I can't quit. I could have just not pursued the litigation, not gone through the litigation, not gone through the lengthy sale process. But I'm so glad I did. And I think I learned from that the importance of not quitting. And believe me, a lot of people were saying, this isn't good for the company. You should just do something where you're not working together in an expedited way, but it needed to be done as it was done as far as the process. And I think you just pushed through it, but it was a good learning lesson for me that sometimes you just have to stay with things until the end when you know what's best. But all the while, trying to keep the employees out of it, much like when parents are going through a divorce, you keep the kids out of it. And that was what I tried to do, but it was crazy. It was crazy drama. It was so insane. Sounds like it. But you decide to sell your shares in the end. It's trans perfect. But before you left it, as you mentioned, after 25 years from the business, you finally hit your big goal to become the largest language solutions business in the world. How'd you celebrate, Liz? It was ultimately a celebration, very emotional at first. I felt like I was leaving my baby behind. And, you know, there was so much loving and caring and emotion in the company. And I had felt like so many of those people were my family. But, but that said, how did I celebrate? I finally went on my long-awaited maternity leave. And what I mean by that is I was very much in the weeds when I had both my kids . And we had about 150 people at the company when I had my first son and a little more than that when I had my second son. And I couldn't take even a day of maternity leave. So my kids were in high school visiting colleges. And I got to spend some long-awaited quality time with them. So that was wonderful. I also started my foundation. And I thought, well, isn't this great? And now I can focus on all the issues that I've been seeing, are real issues in this country, in this world that I haven't had time to focus on. So that's been wonderful. And then, of course, now I just wrote my book, Dream Big and Win, where I'm really excited. I've really enjoyed the process because I love talking about entrepreneurship and what I learned along the way from what I did, right? And the many things I did wrong. And I've loved this process as well. So it's all been one big celebration. It's been wonderful. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Liz Elting in just a moment . I'm telling you, it's an incredible thing to build a billion-dollar business from the ground up. That's also what Uri Levine did, is the co-founder of the popular traffic app, Waze. He joined me for a conversation on how leaders lead not too long ago. Just like Liz, Uri has found that success often comes faster when you're not afraid of failure. At the end of the day, it's going to be a journey of failures, right? So you are going to make mistakes throughout this journey. And there are two conclusions of that. If you realize that this is going to be a journey of failure, the first one is that if you're afraid to fail, then in reality, you already fail because you're not going to cry. But even if you decide that you are not afraid to fail and you go into this journey, the faster that you fail, you essentially increase the likelihood of being successful because you have enough time and resources and funding for another attempt and another try and another experiment and so forth. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Uri, Episode 129, here on How leaders lead. This foundation you started. What do you see are the tangible things you're going to do to advance women's ability to move up in the workplace and be treated the way they should be treated? I know you had a big payout that everybody knows about. You walked away with about $400 million. You got plenty of money to make a big difference. So what would we specifically do to change the game? What I've tried to do related to what you're saying, David, is I really do focused on women and marginalized communities. And one of the things I do is scholarships for women, undergrad, like Trinity College, where I went and I'm on the board, and then business school went to NYU Business School, focus on MBA scholarships also. And then I focus on other scholarships at a few other colleges as well. And that's because of course, education is the great equalizer. But in addition, another great equalizer is entrepreneurship. And so I really focus on entrepreneurs. And I do that with NYU Business School. I'm part of something called Endless Frontier Labs. And I have something called Elizabeth Elting Ventures. And I fund women-led businesses that are part of Endless Frontier Labs, which is what I think the best accelerator program in the world. I mean, we have people from all over the world participate in it. They don't have any or they don't need to have any affiliation with NYU. And I'm very involved in supporting those women entrepreneurs. Also, I'm supporting women entrepreneurs through the American Heart Association . I just started a social impact fund there. And these women entrepreneurs are, and they're women of color generally, and they're working in their communities addressing the social inequities related to heart disease. So doing that, lift our voices. I will mention that because it relates to your original question. That foundation was started by Gretchen Carlson, who went through a lot with sexual harassment and working on her cause as well. So that's an important one. Your book, Dream Big and Win, you know, you want to share what you learned as an entrepreneur. What skills do you think are most important to have that you're going to start and grow a business? Well, I think it's super important to feel comfortable with risk. Because of course, there's going to be some risk. And you just have to get comfortable with it because the alternative is another kind of risk, which is you may not lead your dream life. You're not in control of your destiny. You can't necessarily be working in your dream industry or in the dream culture within your company. You can't necessarily control how much money you make. You can't ultimately control how you spend your time. So it's worth the risk because if you do all the right things, it could definitely work out. And if not, so be it. You learn and you move on. But I think you need to get comfortable with risk. I think you also need to be comfortable with putting in a lot of hours. You know, I think, you know, that doesn't sound what people want to hear, but I think we all know the hours can be crazy, you know, it can be crazy. But it's worth it because you can create your dream. You're creating your dream company, you're working with the kind of people who are like-minded and they want to build your dream too. So again, I think it's comfortable with risk, the hours. And then people who think outside the box, people who are looking for ways to do things better, you know, and I think that relates to just being curious, asking lots of questions and then thinking, okay, what's a way to solve this? How can I come up with a better way? You know, in your book, you say verbs are fundamental for dreams. Explain. Yeah, because if you don't have a verb, it's just a dream or a wish. And I think dreams are great because that's how you get inspired to do it. But it'll then just end up being a wish. So verbs meaning action. And I've always been a language person with English too. I mean, I love my verbs. And it's all about actions because I think a lot of people love the idea of being entrepreneurs, but it's about the actions you take day in and day out to get there over a sustained period of time. And I think they're critical. You know, this has been so much fun, Liz, and I wanted to have some more with a lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Yes, sure. All right, here we go. What's one word others would use to best describe you? I would say authentic. What would you say is one word that best describes you? I hope kind. I'd like to believe I'm kind. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? I would say Taylor Swift because she's got it all together. I mean, she's got, she's figured it out, right? The talent, the brains, the ability to entertain. I mean, she's amazing. Absolutely. What's your biggest pet peeve? I like when people are on time. I don't like when people are late. I don't like when people are late. What's your favorite language to speak? You know, I love Spanish. I just had the most amazing time, my junior year in Spain and the people, the culture. I just feel like I'm in another world when I'm speaking Spanish. What's one of your daily rituals? Something that you absolutely never miss? I walk at least five miles a day. Awesome. If I turn the radio on in your car, what would I hear? Jimmy Buffett. I love Jimmy Buffett. What's something about you few people would know? I'm very competitive. But I think people might know that. That's the end of the lightning round, okay? But I want to ask you, you say that, you know, you're competitive. How do you manage your competitive instincts? I mean, you obviously, you know, dream big and win. Win's a big part. You know, it's like, if you had to say, what's the biggest part of the book, the Dreaming Big or the end win? The idea is, you know, whatever you're doing, and I think what I mean by it is, you don't just think, okay, I'm going to do it to a small degree. Like, think big. I think it's so important to think big because if you think big, you may not achieve everything you want to, the biggest in your industry, but you just might. And you will get damn near close if you do. So I think it's very important to dream big, and then as far as winning, you know, what defines the win? I mean, getting close, achieving the actual dream. And I feel like whether it's doing it in the first part of your career or, you know, what I went through in the later parts of my career, I mean, what I went through and with, you know, I had my litigation, then I have my foundation work and now my book work and I just think it's whatever you're doing, you know, go for, shoot for the stars. And then you will, you know, win in some way and maybe it's the actual ultimate goal. In your book, you have a quote and I love this is which is work today like no one else will so you can live and give tomorrow like no one else can. You know, when you look forward now and you think about your own dreams, what do you see as your unfinished business? I think the unfinished business is trying to leave the world a better place than when I came into it or that it is now and there are a lot of causes to work on, right? They're all the different things that I and so many other people are working. And so that's my unfinished business. Just keep trying to give them back and make the world a better place. Last question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who wants to be a better leader? You know, I mentioned before the one on one meetings and I think they are so important. You know, basically talking to your people and finding out what's important to them. And sometimes you actually have to ask more than once like, how are you? They say fine. No, how are you really? Oh, everything's good. And then you might have to ask five times to get to the answer and part of it is personally and then part of it is respect with respect to business. And that way you can manage them right, you can make sure you're addressing their personal needs, you can also make sure you're helping them fulfill their long term goals . So I think it's so much about talking to your people and of course listening to them and then making sure you're giving each individual what they need so that they want to work for you and with you and stay at your company a very long time. I have to ask you another question while I have you because it's interesting. You know, you work these incredible long hours and I think we all do when we're building something and you know, you talked about a hundred hour weeks, hundred and twenty hour weeks. Did you ever burn yourself out and if you did, how did you replenish your energy? Yes, I did burn myself out over the 26 years. I mean, yes. And it got so much better and I guess that's what happens to people over that long period of time. In the last days, it was crazy. How did I replenish my energy? I think as time went on, I was lucky enough to have kids and get to spend time with my kids and of course, when I did get to spend time with my kids, that is the most kind of uplifting time that I ever had. I mean, being with them, being with them when they're little, when they're learning to walk and learning to talk. So that was very fulfilling and I think traveling with them when I got the opportunity, getting exercise, I think that was wonderful. But yeah, I think it's really important. Yeah, you have to step away from it or you will completely burn out. But it was all about the family in the end because the last thing I'll say on it is, I think when you're doing it, you don't have a lot of time for hobbies. So our eye didn't and so it was kind of all work, but then boy, if I wasn't working, I wanted to spend every minute with my kids and that was the best. You know, at Young Brands, I got a lot of big ideas pitched to me and it was my job to ask the right questions and make sure those big ideas were really going to help our business. One of those questions I always asked after hearing a big idea was, "Now what? What do we really need to do to make this happen?" Because here's the thing, those big dreams and ideas are important, but they're just the beginning. The real success comes when you do the hard work of executing them. And that's a big theme I see in how Liz leads. From the get-go at TransPerfect, she was all about action and execution, where their daily quota of 300 sales calls that really built the business. And she built that bias towards action into her culture. She made sure her team set goals and she incentivized everybody to achieve them . That's an important takeaway to your life as a leader too. Dreams and ideas and strategies are all crucial, but it's easy to get stuck there. Develop a strong bias towards taking action, both for yourself and your team. Set goals with deadlines, create incentives, and just be willing to jump in and get started. You've got to execute. You've got to make sure things get done. So I got to ask you, "Now what?" This is a big idea, but we got to turn it into action, right? This week, as you close out your meetings and workdays, try that question for yourself. Ask yourself, "Now what?" So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders develop a bias towards action. And up next on How Leaders Lead is Mike White, the former chairman and CEO of Direct TV. Integrity and character comes first, no question. But second in a world of change, you've got to look around the corner and skate to where the fuck is going to quote Gretzky. And in this world in particular, the change has come in so fast and furious, you've got to make sure what to keep and what to change. And that's a constant challenge. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]