Lessons from a Self-Made Billionaire | Liz Elting

Natasha Nuytten: Liz Elting is the founder and CEO of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation. She is a New York-based entrepreneur, business leader, best-selling author, linguophile, philanthropist, feminist, and mother, really the ultimate multi-hyphen. She co-founded TransPerfect, the world's largest provider of language and business solutions, which she then helped lead to significant success over 25 years, including being recognized for not only its global revenue successes and being a really successful company, but also for its strategic growth and incredible corporate culture. Liz is recognized as one of the most successful self-made women in the world. Her book, Dream Big and Win, Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business became a bestseller, and I highly recommend it. It is full of practical tips and just really thoughtful considerations for how to run a business, be a great leader, and be an intrapreneur if starting your own business isn't your jam, but really being successful in the lane that you choose. Now in her act two, she is widely renowned for her work on tackling systemic barriers to success and equality and developing the next generation of underrepresented people and women, specifically. I am very excited for you to enjoy this conversation, and Santi, I'm just going to do the last sentence over again. Now in her act two, she is widely renowned for her work on tackling systemic barriers to success and equality and developing the next generation. Liz is creating the world that she wants to see. I'm excited to welcome her to the podcast, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Human Side Up. This is Natasha, your host, and I am so excited to introduce you to Liz Elting today. Liz is, you read her book and you just understand what a clear powerhouse she is, but the amount of energy that comes off of this human being and is directed toward sharing what she's learned and making the world a better place, which seems like a very lofty goal, but one I really admire and appreciate, is really super evident. So I'm excited to have you here today, Liz. Thank you so much, and welcome to Human Side Up. 

Liz Elting: Oh, thank you so much, Natasha. I'm so excited to be here

Natasha Nuytten: Thank you. So we start the podcast with a question to all of our guests that is unique to us, I think, at least for now, and it is, if there were one or two words that reflect who you are that might not be on your CV or resume that have really become a part of who you are as a human and as a leader and a businesswoman, what might they be, and when did you start to recognize and own them as true about yourself? 

Liz Elting: Sure. Thank you for that wonderful question, and I guess the first one I'd say, just because it seems like something worth sharing, that I think a lot of people are, and they don't realize how valuable it can be to them and their career and their life, but I am genuinely incredibly curious about the world, curious about learning new things, and curious about people. I truly am. I genuinely like meeting people and knowing all about them and what makes them tick, and so that is something I realized, certainly by the time I was in my 20s and beginning my career, and it was, why I enjoyed socializing and then why I enjoyed growing a business, and so I think that's one big thing, and I think that's been helpful to me. And then I guess the other one I would say, since you say one or two, and it might not be as surprising given my career, but I'll say it anyway just because I think it's valuable, and that's risk-taker, because I wasn't originally that way. When I was in college, I thought I would go to law school because that's the thing to do and that's safe and that's practical, but I took a course, actually a freshman year of college, which was a wonderful course, and it relates very much to this data, the type of work I do with my foundation. It was called The Legal History of Race Relations, a super important issue, fascinating course, but I realized, as far as the lawyer aspect of it, reading the cases and writing and making the arguments, that was not my thing, that was not my specialty. So the content was fabulous, but being a lawyer, I realized, was probably not for me, and instead I needed to take some risks and do what I was passionate about as opposed to, not that I wasn't passionate about that subject, but I was passionate about languages and I took a risk with languages and embarked on my entrepreneurial career. So risk-takers. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I love that. Having grown up when I grew up, the Huxtables, Cliff and Claire Huxtable, were on the Cosby Show and I know we've got the whole bill thing, but that was such a, it was, for me, especially as a young mixed-race woman, seeing these professional African-American folks, I was like, I was going to be a lawyer, I was going to be a doctor. Those were the two things I was going to do, I was going to be one of them, and I really thought it was going to be law, and I stopped for the same reason that you're mentioning. I was really curious about people, and I started learning about how I would have to dig into these cases, and I was like, yeah, that's not how I want to make my impact. So I can appreciate that, it's important, there is this relevance there, but certainly finding something, choosing the thing that you're good at, and using that to give to the world is such a gift, that's what you can do, that's unique to you. So yes, I appreciate that. It's awesome.

Liz Elting: That's really interesting, so you felt the same way, and you were thinking, okay, I'm going to be a lawyer, something that's very secure. 

Natasha Nuytten: Reliable, yes.

Liz Elting: Yeah, practical, and that's what I thought that's what I have to do, because I want to be independent, I want to make my own money, and that is a route to doing so, but then I realized, I'm reading the cases, I'm writing, and it would have been, and I am not, I've learned a lot about what lawyers do, and I am not, it is not my specialty. The things that they need to be good at, not my thing.

Natasha Nuytten: I love it, working towards your strengths, right? Yes, exactly. Working towards your strengths, I love that, which is a theme that I noticed in the way that you built your company and the way that you have built your teams, which we will definitely talk about, I think that's really fantastic. And in thinking about that, as I was saying early, for folks, obviously, who weren't on the call as we were jumping in, I loved your book. It was so practical. It was also very personal. It was clear that you took the time to make that work, but what I also really appreciated about it is you just start out saying, I think something else we might say about you is that you are an action-oriented person. And so as such, you built it around verbs. You built it around doing and making business successful, but also building a great culture and being an amazing leader. So I love that, and I'm curious. I know this is not necessarily about leadership, but when you were thinking about building and writing this book, communication's been your life, right? Why verbs? 

Liz Elting: Yeah. Yeah. Why talk about verbs? And yes, I am a language person. I always, but, and again, I don't mean to keep coming back to the lawyer thing. Writing was never, because lawyers need to do a tremendous amount of writing, but I'm more of a language person. I love the English language. I did some writing, but I love foreign languages and learning the verb forms and talking about languages. So the reason I talked a lot about verbs is precisely what you were saying. A lot of people talk about their dreams and their vision and a vision board and you need to manifest them. And I know a lot of those people, but the reason they haven't quite made it yet is they're not doing the things they need to do every day to get there. You need to figure out, okay, what are my goals? And then what actions do I need to take every single day to get there? And that's what verbs are, actions. So I revolved each chapter around a verb and that was how I decided to write the book. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love it. Out of the gate, as I was reading, I'm like, okay, this is something I can do. And that's the point of learning is how can it impact what I'm doing? How can it improve my learning of the world or how I show up or how I develop? So yeah, I thought that was fantastic. So I want to walk you through a little bit of your experience and for those who don't know you, can you give us the sort of high level, how did Liz Elting become Liz Elting? 

Liz Elting: I'll try not to go on too long, but just to give a little background, I was very fortunate because growing up, I lived when I was little in Westchester, so an hour north of Manhattan and New York City. And so I lived there until I was eight. And then because of what my dad was doing with his career, I had the opportunity to move to Portugal with my family. So I lived in Portugal when I was eight and nine. And there is where I really was so lucky because I was able to learn Portuguese and start studying French and what a gift for an eight-year-old. And that's really, I think, where I started becoming both interested in people and curious, back to what we were talking about. So did that. Then when I was 10, I moved to Toronto, so I lived in Canada from the time I was 10 till I was 17. And there, I continued with my passion for languages and started studying Latin and Spanish. So by the time I had graduated from high school, I'd studied four languages other than English, and that's where my passion developed. And went to come to the United States for college, went to college in Connecticut. And I remember this is where I was torn. And back to what I was saying, I thought I need to major in something practical because one thing my parents did with me is they really taught me that I needed to be financially independent, to not be dependent on anyone except myself. And they really brought me up that way. From the time I was 10, I had jobs. And often I had two jobs at a time, two jobs every summer during college. Started off with newspaper delivery and babysitting and working at a cleaner's. But then it was always two jobs every summer, a day job and a night job, a night and weekend job. So anyway, working hard, wanting to be financially independent in college, I thought, so what should I do with my life? And I knew I loved languages, as I said, but I thought how impractical is that? What on earth can you do with a language major? And I remember I called up my dad and he said, I know you don't know exactly what you're going to do. And I know you had thought you were going to be a lawyer, but you're not into reading all the cases and writing and making your arguments. So major in languages, follow your passion and the rest will take care of itself. So I declared my major, sophomore year the next day and majored in languages. And then did my junior year in Spain. And that was such a gift, Córdoba, Spain, just the most amazing time of my life. And then after college, I worked in Venezuela for a few months. So that was super special in Caracas, Venezuela. And then after all that, when I was 21 years old, I came to New York. And I've been here ever since. I was fortunate to come across a job at a translation company. Who knew in 1987 there were such things, but there was. And I walked in and I thought, what a dream, a focus online, which is there actually happened to be a Macintosh computer on every desk. And this was in 1987, and it was very high tech back then. I'm sure a lot of the people listening do not know what that world was like, but computers were not on every desk. Anyway, got, ended up taking a job there first in production, and then I was able to move over to sales. I absolutely loved it. I worked there for almost three years, but I thought this could be done better. And I thought this can be more quality oriented, more service oriented, and more giving clients whatever deliverable they needed. And so I thought, wow, I love this, but there's a real gap between what clients need and what's available in this industry. So I kept that idea in my head, and left that company because I felt there really was nowhere to go in that company. It was a relatively flat organization. It was quite small. And went to NYU business school, got my MBA thinking, okay, now I have more skills. I majored in finance and international business. I could get a job in banking, maybe international banking and use my language knowledge. I thought about all that. I ended up getting a job after university, after getting my MBA from NYU in the proprietary trading division of a French bank. And I know, Natasha, you may have read about that. I think it's the first chapter of my book. And I thought, okay, this is what you do with an MBA. You spend the time and the money on the MBA. You've got to use it. So I was doing equity arbitrage. Does anybody know what that is? I certainly didn't at the time, but sounded like important work and lucrative work. And I thought, okay, I'm going to be able to take care of myself. I talk about this in the book, but basically I was the only woman in a professional role. And whenever the phone rang, all the guys would yell, Liz, phone. Even though there were guys alongside me at my level, starting at the same time. And, then they asked me to get them coffee and order supplies. And again, I would have been able to do that had that been, if I weren't being singled out because I was a woman, but experienced that issue. But then the even bigger issue was I realized finance is not for me. This is not what I want to do with my life. I don't find it interesting putting numbers into a spreadsheet and paper pushing. And that's what I was doing. And I just didn't have the passion I'd had for languages. So after four weeks, I said to my boss, I'm so sorry, I made a mistake. I'd like to give notice. How much time do you need? And he said, two weeks is fine. And after six weeks, I left that job and started my company. So sorry, I just realized I went on and on, but that's what led me to start my company when I was 26 out of an NYU business school dorm room. 

Natasha Nuytten: No, I love that. And you didn't go on and on at all. You actually laid the foundation for everything that came from everything that came later. So those are all threads we're going to pull as long as you let me. So no, it's fantastic. A few things. One of the reasons why I love that story so much is that I grew up very similarly and had my first job when I was eight and I worked. And then my mother also, not only did I have, I had a paper route as well, and I also did the babysitting and that type of thing. But my mother was a single woman in the seventies and eighties and she managed to buy a home for us when I was eight years old. The deal was, though, that I had to switch from my private school that I had been into a public school. And so I agreed to do that. The other thing was that it was this crazy, amazing program that there had to be, there was a lot of sweat equity. And so like my, you talk about having two jobs. I had my little paper route and I did the babysitting, but I also, my job was to haul the buckets of rocks for the landscaping from the big pile of rocks over to where they need to be spread out in the yard. And so I also had two jobs over the summer. So I just appreciate though, that it wasn't about, it was really about like, how do you take care of yourself? How are you going to be able to stand on your own two feet? Like I'm here and I support you and I love you and you need to be able to do this for yourself. And so I really resonate with that sort of resourcefulness and what it taught me was a lot of self-efficacy that I can do things. And so I resonated with you as you're sharing that. So thank you for sharing that. 

Liz Elting: Oh you must have really resonated with the book because yes, we talk about those things and that you develop the confidence that you can do things on your own. You can make things happen when you go through all of that. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. That's right. In fact, one of my co-founders and I, in our business, one of our core philosophies is that everything is figureoutable. 

Liz Elting: Absolutely. Love that. 

Natasha Nuytten: We can do this, we can do this. So yeah, I love that. 

Liz Elting: Can-do attitude. Can-do attitude. Love that. That's right. 

Natasha Nuytten: So talking about your time at Your America, which is the first language place, when you talk about it, you said it was a flat organization, but you loved the people. You loved the work. Are there certain things outside of, there are things I could do better, which we'll get to as well. I'm curious if there were any leadership lessons that you learned while you were working with that group of humans. 

Liz Elting: Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't learn a whole lot about leadership at that point, but what I did learn is I think I learned what I thought a company could do better and, which led me to want to start the company. Although now that I think of it, I did talk about one thing in the book and actually this happened. I remember just one leadership lesson that comes to mind now that you, now I'm thinking a little more, is this. When it was time to give a quote to a client or a project, the key, you want to have urgency. You want to get back to that client quickly, right? That's great service. And what I was able to do in that job is I was able to go to my boss and come up with a suggestion on how we could get quotes back more quickly by having pricing guidelines rather than having, if you're in sales, go to production and say, okay, here's this project. What will this cost? And then waiting a day or two for them to get back to you. And working from like a rate sheet or guidelines. And I was able to come up with that idea. And what I realized from that is companies need to empower their employees to come up with ideas to make the company better, both internally to make the client experience better, through service, through technology, through whatever it is. So I was able to do that there. The boss allowed me to do that there. So one of the leadership lessons I learned was at my company, once I had one, or once I was a leader, I needed to encourage my people to give us their ideas on how to make the company better. And in the book, I talk about that. I said one of my, one thing that was very important was one-on-one meetings with employees and ideally weekly, if weekly is not feasible, every two weeks. But sitting down with them and saying, and asking my favorite question, which was, what would you do differently if you owned the company? And from that, we came up with so many amazing ideas from our company. So it's about getting their ideas and then using them when appropriate and often empowering them to carry them out. So that was something I learned. I guess it originated now that you asked me the question, maybe it originated there because I was able to give that kind of input back when I was not a leader. 

Natasha Nuytten: I think that's fantastic because it is its own version of leadership, right? Taking the initiative to do and ask, to observe and say, hey, I see this problem, can I solve it? And maybe the boss there or the leader there wasn't planning on that, but having that bit of humility to learn from a young 22-ish year old person at that stage, okay, yeah, let's try a thing. I think that's awesome. So thinking about having enjoyed the culture there and learning these types of things about engagement and taking ownership, was there anything specific that you recall from your time at Perasco that maybe informed the way that you ultimately built and led in your next organization? 

Liz Elting: And again, back on Your America, there were things I loved, like the culture, the people, we had fun together and then things like that. So there were wonderful things to recreate and then some things to do differently. As far as Perasco, it was the opposite. I would go in there at 7 in the morning, ready to prove myself, stay until midnight, which I did and I talk about, I did that at the other job at Your America. I remember my first day, I think I mentioned how I stayed till 2 in the morning because the first day at Your America, they gave me this big project and I thought, needs to be done, I'll stay until the job is done. And that was exhilarating. But then when I did the same thing at Perasco, it felt entirely different. And I think it felt different because I didn't connect with the people. It was a boys club and that was very difficult. And I think it's really important at companies to make sure you don't have a boys club that a woman who comes into is not going to feel comfortable with and not, fit into. So it was the opposite. So I felt no sense of community whatsoever. And I think the leader's job is to try to create a good culture so that you don't have those issues. And so I learned from that, again, what not to do, and I contrasted it with how I had felt about the culture and the community at the first job at Your America. 

Natasha Nuytten: Absolutely. And, just as valuable, what not to do, right? Don't recreate the wheel kind of thing. So one of the through lines that I heard already in this conversation that you've shared and I know that I picked up, and I'd love to get your take on this or where maybe you think it came from, but it's like a drumbeat throughout the conversations I've heard you've had, the writing that you do accountability. And it's such a critical factor, right? And I think in leadership, we often, I think one of the things I love about what you shared is that we often know that we need to hold other people accountable. And yet, I think one of the things that I loved about what you shared is that sets you apart is that you also held yourself accountable in really interesting ways to not only to the values of your organization, but also to the work, like actually the work that you were doing. You weren't just making sure everybody else was doing theirs. You were also, as on top of yourself, doing the things as you were expecting other people to be. And I think that to me was like, I know it's going to sound totally bananas at my age, but that was like such a, oh we have these to-do lists, right? Where these are all the things I need to do. And maybe we time block and, we try to be responsible and doing those types of things, but that's a, but having this is how many of these things I'm going to get done today. And that's my priority. And that's where I'm starting is a totally different way of looking at that. And it seems so simple. Like it's just a small little tweak, but it's so huge. Anyway, it was like, for me, it was like, oh my God, hello. I need, oh, wow. Okay. So again, just such a practical thing. And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit did you come upon that? Did someone teach you that? Like where'd that come from? 

Liz Elting: I guess I was always goal oriented. I think, yeah. And I, I had wonderful parents who were my biggest mentors and, I took different things from both of them. I cleaned different ideas, but so I'm trying, I guess that's, the goal or being goal oriented. I think I just saw the people who were successful in life had goals and it was, I, I was taught not to be all talk, no action, but instead, you got, it's about actions. And so I'm trying to think beyond that. I think I found as I started, when we started the company out of the dorm room, the only way we were going to bring in business was it was a numbers game. And, basically, and it was about having goals each day and holding ourselves to them. And, again, it's hard to know exactly where that came from, but I'm sure, someone, something, someone said to me, something I read, someone I was admiring, but yeah, I really felt like that was the key. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, that sales background of yours, it runs deep. There's a lot of that sort of working backwards from what I need to accomplish, right? And tracking those metrics is okay for me to get this, I have to do 77 of these, or whatever the case may be. And I think it's just a really thoughtful practice that is, I don't know, maybe it's me, maybe it's because I don't have a sales background that I thought, oh that makes sense. Thinking about the notion of working backwards from a goal isn't necessarily new to me, but like putting the performance metrics around my day, even outside of sales was like, oh damn, that's a great idea. I should do that. 

Liz Elting: It's like New Year's resolutions when you write them down. And, if you put them in writing and then you think, okay, what do I need to do to hold myself to every day? It's, and I think, that's the key. And I, yes, sales, one of my jobs in college was selling Time magazine subscriptions. And I remember had, I needed to get on the phone and make a certain number of phone calls and make them quality phone calls. But without those, I was never going to get to the numbers. So there was some good sales experience there. And then of course, 8-Year America too, but I think that was helpful. Absolutely. And yeah, I, yeah, I think that's, obviously it's important. And then of course the leader has to lead by example. In the early days, it was just me and my partner needing to get to the next level, get to a place where we could pay for an office, get to a place where we could hire our first employee. And it was all about intensity. And one of the things I say is focus, it's be focused, be intense when you're working on them. Don't let yourself get distracted or, make it so you have to do 20 phone calls before you can get up and get a drink of water or, and really be tough on yourself because especially in this day and age, there's so many distractions. We can all constantly get distracted by our phone, by social media, by, emails, texts, whatever. It's too easy. There's too many sources of information coming in. And back then, sometimes it was people just wanting to, do the, have their fun. Work, doing the work they did when it fit in, but you got to be a little tough on yourself. And then it's very rewarding. And, one of the things I say is work today like no one else will, so you can live and give tomorrow like no one else can. And it really does pay off because another saying is, and I know I have lots of sayings. I love quotes, I used to hear the first million dollars is by far the hardest in revenue. And it's so true. The early days are tough. And when we would then hire people to open offices, we'd say, yeah, it's going to be tough that first couple of years. And you're going to be making your 300 phone calls and sending out your 300 letters a day. But then you'll get your projects and you then will spoil the client with service and quality and turn the projects into multiple projects and the multiple projects into multimillion dollar relationships. And that's truly how it happens. It's got to be tough for a period of time, but it completely pays off. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. That discipline, right? It's just, 

Liz Elting: It's discipline. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. It's 

Liz Elting: Yeah. It's hard to interrupt― 

Natasha Nuytten: No, please.

Liz Elting: But I, and I should know this quote by heart because I have it in my book and I think about it all the time. But, Warren Buffett, who, who can― 

Natasha Nuytten: Who lives where I live, right? The land of the oracle here in Omaha

Liz Elting: That’s right, and he has so many smart quotes. And he's brilliant, obviously, but he says, the difference between people who achieve big success and people who, don't is simply discipline. The words are slightly different, but that's the concept. And I totally agree. It's coming in every day and focusing on your goals and your actions and carrying them out every day over a sustained, sustained, sustained period of time. And if you have the discipline, it's fun. It's rewarding. You feel good. Yeah. And working out. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Yeah. And going back to, the advice that your father gave you when you were like, I'm not passionate about that thing. And it's following what you're excited about, right? What you care about, but also what you're good at, because I can be excited. Look at, I'm an American idol. There are a lot of folks on there who are passionate about singing, but they're not good at it. Be pros, right? But they should enjoy it. They should love it and have an amazing time. And that shouldn't be their necessarily their job. But if you find that thing that you're good at and you leverage and work towards those strengths, then you are more prepared. So therefore you're more lucky, right? Because the people who are lucky are prepared and they work hard. And you get to continue to create opportunities for yourself that maybe someone isn't necessarily going to give you, or they're going to, they wouldn't have seen you get close to accomplishing. So they, they, then they're like, Oh if you could do that, then you could probably, and I know from my own experience I never really knew exactly what I wanted to do, yes, Dr. Lawyer because I knew, again, I need to make money, I need to be self sufficient, whatever. But then, I also went through a phase where I was like I want to do all those things. So maybe I need to be an actor, right? That was terrible, too. I like all the folks on American Idol. Pardon me, only in college. 

Liz Elting: Wonderful. Yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Oh, only in college, and I absolutely loved it. But just because I was passionate about it didn't mean I should do that. But what it did reveal to me is what I am good at being uncomfortable and trying new things. That's not something that everybody else is great at. But if that's a strength that I can play into, it later opened a lot of doors for me because I was willing to do the thing that no one else knew how to do, or didn't want to take on because they didn't want to be out of their depth. And so I've just found that playing to that strength, much like you did around being disciplined and focused, and really focusing on these core things like service, allowed you it opened doors for you by just driving with the skill set that you have. And that doesn't mean you don't work on your weaknesses, right? Or I call them growth edges. Just feels a little better. But working with the things that you have, right? That's what makes Liz Elting. That's what makes Tasha, is this uniqueness. And so if we can dive into that. So I love that you've exhibited that throughout your career, and that now you're in this place where you are driving that for other people, and helping them build their businesses and find their way of creating in the world and creating equity and access and opportunity. Those things that you matter that matter to you and matter to really all of us right at the end of the day. So I love that. I love that through line there is, even though it's not like on the cover of your book, it's such a, it's such a critical part of what your success has been from where I sit. So thank you. Yeah. So in just thinking about, again, from a sort of creativity perspective, as you mentioned early on, in Your America, you were able to see where problems could be solved differently, or things could be improved. And really the translation business when you were getting into it, like while the offices were small, it was a red ocean, it was not a bluish ocean by any stretch. How did you figure out how to carve out the space and differentiate in such a way that you were able to get in that middle seat on the airplane and elbow your way into having a little more room? 

Liz Elting: Yeah. And, it was really interesting. First of all, it was interesting between 1987 and 1990, being at the translation company, seeing what they did right, and then things they could do better. And then when we started the company in 1992, there were actually 10,000 translation companies out there, which sounds, like a very high number. But they ranged between about one and five people each, because they were started and run by translators, which is a very important job. And it's a very high level job. These people are very well educated. They know their terminology of whatever the subject matter is in both English and the other language, and, whether it was legal or pharmaceutical or financial. And so anyway, very talented people. I was never at that level. I was never translator level. So I thought, okay, instead, I'll be a business person starting a translation company, working with these talented linguists and be able to scale it, to grow it to the world's largest. That was the goal. And the way to do that was with being hardcore on sales, working very hard on bringing in business, doing whatever it took to bring in business. And then when we did, spoiling the client with quality and service, and continually figuring out what else do they need that no one is offering, no one in the language industry, and maybe among other vendors, they're not offering. And I think that relates to being curious, asking lots of questions, both, about their business needs, and about their personal needs and what they need, to be happier working with us. And being curious about what's going on in the world and what is needed in a business. So we did it, that is how we did it. And another thing I talk about in the book, and I talk about a lot is, we didn't focus on getting funding. And I know that's the thing these days, everybody thinks that's the key to creating a unicorn, right? You, you get funding instead, focused on bringing in revenue, because you can spend a lot of time doing PowerPoints and pitching investors. But even if you get a few, you then need to deliver for them, you need to bring in the revenue, which you may never do. And then you're unhappy, of course, they're unhappy, they just lost their money. And most companies go out of business, even you know, those that bring in investors, and you have a very, unhappy group of investors and, owners, of course. So focused intensely on sales, and one client at a time, and then one salesperson at a time. And once we accomplished our goals, and the salespeople that we brought in accomplished their goals, they, we would be able to pay for the next person, and so on. And I, I talk about specifics. I say things when we first started hiring our salespeople, we'd bring someone in, we'd say, you need to sell $50,000 in revenue for three consecutive months, and then you can hire a second person. And then the two of you need to sell $120,000 in revenue for three consecutive months, and you can bring in a third person, on your team. And the way we were able to pay for those people was not through funding, but through revenues and profits brought in by the salespeople, which was originally us. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love it. I love that. So one of the, in thinking about that, there's this sort of conventional wisdom that, like we think about Southwest Airlines, right? Southwest came in, disrupted the airline industry by choosing to be really great at on-time options, and they chose intentionally to either not do or to be really bad at some other things, like transferring your bags, right? Or giving you they just wouldn't do it, right? They're like, yeah, we can't do that and achieve these goals. And so I'm listening to you, and I was thinking, wow, in your experience, you really settled on delivering amazing service, but you also did all the things that were asked. And I was like, wow, those things at first seem at odds with one another. And the reality is that as I'm listening to you, I'm like, no, that's just doubling down on this being amazing at service. And that's where our investments were like, and we did that by really being great at sales, like building a company that was delivering amazing service. And that made it possible for us to sell. So we really doubled down on this differentiation. And so as I'm thinking about that, a lot of the work that you do now because we've been talking a lot about the last, the first act of your life. But the work that you're doing now, you're really teaching and supporting other organizations and how to do that. And so I'm curious, that doubling down, that hyper focus on the differentiation part, how are some of the ways that you are now seeing that with your foundation, that is driving the choices that you all are making in the work that you're doing, the orgs you're supporting and partnering with, the people that you're lifting up? 

Liz Elting: So as far as the foundation, what's really different about my life now is I really was into the day to day from the day we started, even to the day I sold after 26 years, even though, yeah. And at that point we had 5,000 full-time employees offices and 11,000 freelancers. We had offices in over a hundred cities around the world. But I was still involved in the day to day for the whole 26 years. Now, and what, and I'll tell you, what I experienced during that time is I experienced sexism, and then I saw my employees experienced sexism and sexual, discrimination and all that. I also saw that people from diverse and marginalized populations didn't have the opportunities that some of us had. So that led me to start my foundation to make it so we all have a fighting chance to achieve our wildest dreams. So whether that's focusing on education, and I'm involved in a number of educational institutions, institutes of higher education and scholarships, and supporting entrepreneurs and women and, diverse populations in these institutes of higher education. And also doing the same thing related to health, helping, whether it's with heart disease, the number one killer of women and men, or cancer, helping people become educated and deal with the social determinants of health. So for, diverse populations and for marginalized populations and for women, making sure they're getting the right treatment. And then dealing also with hunger and gun safety and all the issues. So people have the chance to be out there and they're not just disadvantaged by or at the mercy of where they were brought up, what zip code. So that's what the foundation does. And I get to work with entrepreneurs, often who are doing wonderful things. Often they're women-led companies or diverse, people from diverse populations that are leading them, and they're working on big issues. They are social entrepreneurs dealing with taking care of people, often people in their community, and then often dealing with technology and coming up with huge, things like cures for cancer or early markers of cancer or heart disease or Alzheimer's. So that's what I'm doing. And I give them my advice. I do speak about entrepreneurship and I do mentoring, but I'm not nearly as hands-on as I was. So I just talked about an umbrella of all the types of things I'm doing. But it's wonderful because we all just want to do our part to make a difference in people's lives, and I do get to meet a lot of these entrepreneurs that are doing wonderful things to help the world. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. No, that’s wonderful. One of the traits, as I was thinking about, hiring is hard, finding people. You can have a great idea, but it's really about execution, right? 

Liz Elting: Absolutely. It's not, there aren't million-dollar ideas, there are million-dollar executions. That's right. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's right. That's right. So thinking about that, I think one of the things that I have appreciated both about your work and where I see some folks, some other folks heading is, the landscape of what we need is changing very rapidly. And part of that is because of technology, part of that is aging population, all of these different types of, there's a lot of globalization of the world. There are a lot of things happening. And as such, we really need people who are able to learn quickly and be adaptable, that they can think critically for themselves and make decisions. And one of the things that we really double down on and help companies think about is what we call distance traveled, which is things like resourcefulness and like that self-efficacy I was talking about that I learned from hauling those buckets of rocks when I was a kid. But also, taking the opportunity to value what someone maybe has learned from experience or life lived and what that brings to their role. And so one of the through lines that I think I've noticed in things that you've talked about over the years is hiring for a particular type of human who had not only shared values with you, but like they behaved in a particular type of way and saw things in a certain way. Can you talk a little bit about what those things were and why they were so critical for your organization to be successful and collaborative? 

Liz Elting: Sure. Yeah. So I think hiring is obviously a huge part of it. It's maybe the most important because when people used to say, what's the biggest challenge about growing a business? And without question, it's finding, developing, and retaining the best people. And so as far as that, I think it's not about what school you went to and living in Manhattan and dealing with the private schools and the colleges that everyone wants to get to. People think it's all about that. No. It's not about that. And we had our share of people we hired. We hired many people over the years, and we had plenty of turnover because we made many mistakes. And sometimes it was asking people to work too many hours out of break, and we thought we'd just give them more money, they'd be okay. No. People needed a life. They needed not to have complete burnout. But we brought in people from different schools, and it wasn't about the school. It was about, you needed a threshold level of kind of intelligence and capability, but then it was about energy. It was about ambition. It was about personality, traits that are, empathy. And then it's about curiosity. And I mentioned curiosity because I think people who are curious about people and curious about how to do better and curious about what's going on in the world and, all of that. And so those were the traits that I was looking for and learned over the years, largely by trial and error. It wasn't about their resume. Oh, and then people above all who had jobs, like we talked about. You working from the time you were eight years old, people who had worked hard, through high school, through college, people who paid for their college education. That was extremely, a lot of us didn't. And so I wouldn't hold that against people if they did other wonderful things like work and all of that, but the point is, yeah, people with the work ethic, the ambition, the curiosity, those were the traits we were looking for. And then the team orientation, and of course, some of that you need a few interviews to get to, but, one of my favorite mentors says, hire slowly, fire quickly, which is sometimes you need a number of meetings to really know what you're dealing with because a lot of people can sound pretty impressive in that first or second interview, but you really have to know what are they about as a person. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Now that's excellent. Because I have a lot of other questions for you, but I want to be respectful of your time. Before we go, I have two, two questions for you. One, what, how can I, what should I ask you that I haven't asked you that you would like to leave us with today in thinking about what we've discussed or haven't discussed? 

Liz Elting: I, as far as what you have, I appreciate your questions. They were terrific. I loved our conversation. I think it's important just to keep networking. I talked a lot about hard work and goals and actions because that's how we built it. But in this day and age, networking is easier than it was then with social media, right? Connecting with people on LinkedIn there are also at events, there are many more events than there used to be. I see them, many more groups. So joining those groups and connecting with people on social media and then getting to know them and then being interested in them as people, not just what can you get from them, but being truly interested in them. And then of course, if you're meeting with them and you're interested in them, aside from asking them for whatever you're asking them for, try to really genuinely figure out is there anything you can do for them and ask them. So I think that's very valuable. I think in the end it's about taking the risk. We talked about taking a risk and you're comfortable being uncomfortable, which I think is critical for finding your passion and building your dream. And I think that's really important for, all of us, taking the risk because I probably almost didn't, had I not had that miserable job at Peresco, I, who knows what I would have done. And I would have maybe never truly found my passion. And take the risk, try new things, be true to your passion. And then as you say, make sure it's something you're good at and you can find within your passion what you're good at and what you're not by trial and error. Take that risk. It's a not, oh, it's a risk not to, and, keep dreaming big because I truly think the bigger you dream, the more you're going to accomplish and, think big and then think, what do I need to do to get there? And you're going to get there in some way, you're going to get there in some way, sometimes you don't know exactly what big goal you're going to accomplish, but it's going to be something big if you think that way. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. I love that. Thank you very much. And thank you for demonstrating that combination of, find the thing you're passionate about, but do it in the ways that you're good, like you're good at business. So you got to serve your passion for language and communication by leaning into hard work and discipline and those things that fiscal responsibility and all of those things. So I appreciate that. It's such a great book. I really appreciate you writing it. Thank you. It's it's, there's a lot to be, a lot to be learned there. How can we, as a last question, how can I personally be helpful to you? How can listeners be helpful to you? What, how do we help serve Liz Elting? 

Liz Elting: Oh thank you. And I didn't mean you. No. I really, though I do with my book, I really, I try to share my knowledge based on what I did right. And the many things I did wrong because I started my company when I was only 26 and I had barely had corporate experience because a couple of those years, I'd been first in college and then in grad school. So except for the three years in a corporation full time, I really did a lot of learning by doing and without that, that I didn't have a lot of, business mentors. And so the point is, that's what this book is. It's really supposed to serve as a mentor, a guide on things you should do and, shouldn't do in business based on my experience. And I think it could really be helpful. And then I really do try to make it, fun and entertaining and vulnerable. I tell some sort of wrenching stories about me and whether it was when I was being bullied or what I, what happened with the choir. I don't know if you remember that, Natasha. But anyway, the point is. I do. 

Natasha Nuytten: And I felt, yes, I was feeling little Liz's pain in the back of the 

Liz Elting: auditorium. Yes. When I was kicked out for having the only bad voice in the 60 person group. How humiliating for the rest of the semester, kicked out. But the point is, I do recommend my book because I meet with a lot of entrepreneurs and they say, OK, so can you tell me what, you did to build your company and, what works business wise? I said, I really I say read my book because I put so much more in there than I can share in a half hour, an hour. But I recommend it. And then I do believe people should just follow their dreams and, and look at people as good people and give back. And I think people do that. Overall, we live in a wonderful world where people are connecting and know that so many people want to connect with you and you have so much to give to the world. Everybody. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. Liz. Thank you. I've so appreciated the conversation. As I said, I really loved the book. And to your point, as I said, it's so practical. There's so much there. It is like having a mentor, right? Learning from people who've gone before you. So thank you for that. I'm so grateful for the work you're doing now and all the people you're helping to make the world a better place. So thank you for that as well. And if we can be helpful to you please let us know. 

Liz Elting: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Tasha. I've loved speaking with you. Thank you. 

Natasha Nuytten: All right. Take care, everybody. 

Natasha Nuytten: Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this exchange and in conversation with Liz. As I shared, she is multi-hyphenate for a reason. She's got such high energy and great curiosity and is just a very genuinely enthusiastic person to be in conversation and sharing what she's learned and learning from others. So I highly recommend the book. I think that there is so much practical knowledge for all types of folks, whether you are running your own business, whether you are a leader in someone else's business, whether you're an entrepreneur, or otherwise. She is an incredible human being, lovely and kind, thoughtful, and really quite brilliant. So I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Please check out the show notes where you can find Liz's book, how you can learn more about what she's doing. And as always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us. We're happy to connect with all of you. So thank you for that. And I hope in the meantime, until we talk again, that you keep the human side up.