Building a Billion-Dollar Business with Liz Elting
In this episode of “Meet the Expert,” host Elliot Kallen sits down with Liz Elting, the visionary co-founder of TransPerfect. Liz shares her incredible journey from starting a business in an NYU dorm room to building the world’s largest language solutions company. She also discusses her philanthropic efforts, the importance of resilience and discipline in entrepreneurship, and her recently published book. This conversation is packed with insights and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and established business leaders alike.
Watch the Episode Here
Language Passion to Business Triumph: A Conversation with Liz Elting
Elliot Kallen: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode of “Meet the Expert” with Elliot Kallen. We’re going to take a break from what we usually do when we talk about electric cars, the lithium industry, or the petrochemical industry. We’re going to introduce someone so exciting that she stands on her own two legs without a product and without a crutch, because she is so successful. So let me welcome Liz Elting to our show. Liz, welcome.
Liz Elting: Thank you so much, Elliot. Great to be here.
Elliot Kallen: Thank you. If you’re okay with this, and I know people are listening, I’d like to break this down into three segments. First, your corporate success. Second, your philanthropic success. And third, you—you’ve got a book, good to mention it, and so forth. What makes you successful? We’ll finish up with that, because I think that’s the most exciting part—the people side of it. So this way, we keep everybody listening because, haha, you’re just a successful billionaire. What’s the big deal? So let’s get started. Liz has got a great background, just for everyone real fast. She has a master’s degree from NYU. Don’t hold that New York against her.
It’s listed as Columbia today instead of NYU. And she’s obviously a very smart lady. She started a business called TransPerfect. I’ll ask her about that in a moment. She ultimately sold it when they did over a billion dollars in sales and moved on with her life, so we can talk about those phases under corporate success. And now, she has a terrific charity Philanthropy program going for better men and women and marginalized communities. So we’re going to give Liz a lot of time to tell us what she does. And if you’re listening, there are so many great ways to reach me at prosperityfinancialgroup.com. That’s probably the easiest way. Give me a call, and we can talk about this stuff too. So let’s get started. Can we do that?
Liz Elting: That would be wonderful. Thanks so much, Elliot.
Elliot Kallen: You’re very welcome. So I’m going to talk to you about phase one: corporate success. There are really three major phases in corporate success if you want at your company, and I’d love to hear how you tackled all three. The first one being the idea, the startup, the way it went from a piece of paper and a coffee shop to becoming a business. And then phase two: you turned your business into something successful. It’s got profits, it’s got sales, it’s got people working for you.
And then phase three is: okay, I need to now divest myself of my business, whether it’s to my children, sell to strangers, close it down—whatever that is. I would like to know how this whole thing got started, this amazing brainchild that you’ve created. It turned out to be incredibly successful because so many people in our audience are entrepreneurs, and they think, “Okay, I could be the next Mark Zuckerberg, start my program and four years later, I’ll sell it for a billion dollars or go public.” And we both know, as entrepreneurs, that’s not how this works.
Liz Elting: That’s right. That’s not how this works.
From Dorm Room to Billion-Dollar Company
Elliot Kallen: Let’s talk about this, and let’s give the floor to you for a moment. You went from infancy with TransPerfect to a viable, thriving business. What were the phases, the little mini-phases, that happened in the years from cash flow to people to HR to some of the challenges you experienced as well?
Liz Elting: Sure. So what happened was I was very fortunate because, as a child, I was able to—I was born in New York—I was able to move to Portugal and then to Toronto. During that time, I was able to first study Portuguese and French when I was in Portugal. And then after moving to Toronto, I continued with French, and then I added Spanish and Latin to the languages I studied. By the time I graduated from high school, I had the opportunity to study four languages, which was wonderful. I learned during that time that this was my passion; that was my favorite thing. I then went to college and ended up majoring in languages, not knowing what on earth I would do with it. I remember people would say to me, “Oh, so you’ll be a teacher because you’re a language major.” This was in the 1980s, and I thought, “Well, no, I don’t want to be a teacher. I love business.”
Early Influences and Education
So what happened is I did my junior year of college in Spain, and then after college, I worked in Venezuela. After leaving Venezuela, I came to New York City, where I happened to be visiting my sister and found a translation company where I could potentially work. I ended up calling them up—this is another translation company, not mine—and I ended up getting a job there. I thought, “Wow, this is so perfect—a company that does translation, a business where I can use my language knowledge.” I remember it so well. I remember walking in, and it was a very impressive-looking company with a computer on every desk, and this was back in 1987 when there weren’t computers on every desk, so it was a whole other time. But I got the opportunity to work in the industry. I absolutely loved, loved, loved the industry.
The Decision to Pursue an MBA
First, I worked in production there; then I was able to move into sales and learned all about it. After three years, I thought, “Okay, it’s time to leave and go get my MBA.” The reason I did that was because as much as I loved my time at the other translation company, I wasn’t sure where I would go, how I would be able to ascend there. I also thought they could be doing it better. I saw a gap between what clients needed and what was available in the industry as far as quality, service, and turnaround time. So that was a very important moment. I ended up going back and getting my MBA from NYU, as we said.
Shortly after graduating, I took another job, which I don’t need to get into because it was such a brief period of my life. It was literally six weeks, and it was in Finance, in the proprietary trading division of a French bank. I did it because I thought I should be in finance and that was the practical thing to do. But I learned after only four weeks that I had made a huge mistake. It wasn’t for me. I liked and loved, in fact, the language industry. I had an idea on how it could be done better, and I did not love finance. It was very dry, lots of number crunching, not my cup of tea. So after only four weeks, I gave notice, quit after six weeks, and started TransPerfect out of that NYU dorm room. And I know you said to talk about it—talk about how we grew it, and I can certainly do that. But should I keep going and move on with how the company started with an idea in an NYU dorm room?
Elliot Kallen: Well, that’s almost pretty startling. It’s amazing. We hear about companies being started on a napkin and all these stories about that. But how did you go through the phases of building your business? You got a startup, you had an idea that you could build a better mousetrap here with languages, but it wasn’t something—I mean, it went from you to much bigger. If it was only you, it would be as big as your two arms.
Building the World’s Largest Language Solutions Company
Liz Elting: That’s right. That’s right. At the time, it was very interesting because this was at a time when there were actually thousands of other translation companies out there. We were not the first people to do it, but those companies were tiny companies run by translators, typically between two and five people at these companies—10,000 companies, 10,000 competitors I learned when I did the research. But I thought if we’re going to do this, we are going to do it differently and better and build the world’s largest. So how did we do it? We did not focus on getting funding like so many entrepreneurs do now. And I say funding is vanity; profitable revenue is sanity.
Launching TransPerfect
So every moment was put into selling, bringing in clients, and then making sure they were profitable so we could start hiring people and get out of that dorm room into an office. So from day one, no written business plan. It was more like on the back of a napkin and, you know, in my head. Because I had had three years of experience in the industry, I knew a good amount about it. Then I called some people that I had also worked with—some translators—and asked them what they thought of the idea. Everybody said the industry was growing, it was a good time to do it. But as I said, I focused on sales, sales, sales.
Important Links
Elliot Kallen: You know that people at NYU, when they listen to this, are going to cringe. But you did this without a business plan because MBA schools live for business plans and structure, and you did something without structure. So I want you to know that at some point, you’re going to have to stop by the Stern School of Management and give some apologies to somebody for this.
The Journey to Success & Overcoming Challenges
Liz Elting: You know, I’m very involved in Stern now, fortunately. I adore Stern. I love Stern. I’m on the board of the NYU Business School board, so very involved in Stern. They know how much I love them, and I loved my Education because I did learn a lot and started that company out of the NYU Business School dorm room. But I felt like we could put a lot of time into writing that business plan, but it was already there. It was in my head, and I was most concerned about bringing in business as quickly as possible. We started without funding, as I said, and without cash in the bank—virtually none. I had my life savings, which was a couple of thousand dollars, and then my ex-business partner had $90,000 in business school debt, so we didn’t have time to waste writing that business plan. If I was going to quit that job that I did for six weeks, I had to get right to selling.
Scaling the Business
The way we did that was I made 300 phone calls every day to figure out who would accompany us, who would have a need for our service. Once I figured out who the person was, I sent out a letter to that person with information on our company—300 letters a day. Now, I would recommend a person do it by email or by LinkedIn messages or whatever it was, but the concept was to have goals of what you need to do each day to generate those sales and then stick to your goals. Have discipline. Don’t miss your goals on the actions that you need to take to generate the sales. That’s precisely what we did. We did it for weeks, for months, for years. That’s how we built the company into the world’s largest. And of course, there’s a lot more to it—the world’s largest company in our industry, that is. I can elaborate.
Elliot Kallen: When we talk about discipline and resilience, you brought up some good words. Realizing that entrepreneurs are listening to this—you know, my dad used to talk to me all the time. I have this little voice; I call them my schizophrenic voices from my parents in there that say, “Nothing makes up for hard work.” And you showed that—300 calls a day, emails, it doesn’t really matter. You just can’t make up for hard work. And then my mother’s little schizophrenic voice, this little five-foot-tall lady who was an Auschwitz survivor, put this message in my voice saying, “You can do better today than you did yesterday, and you can do better tomorrow than you did today.” Which means that every day when you come to work—and I try to teach this to entrepreneurs—you come to the world knowing that you’re coming to work, put your ego aside, you’re coming to work, and you’re coming to build.
Key Strategies for Growth
Liz Elting: That’s right. No, I love that. That’s a very interesting way to put it and look at it because I think you’re absolutely right. First of all, I was a big lover of quotes, and my dad was too, and we used to discuss quotes together. One of ours was, you know, like yours, about hard work—the harder you work, the luckier you get. Same concept, right? It’s all about the hard work. That’s not what people want to hear. They want some silver bullet, but no. We know it’s about the way I like to say sometimes: show up when others won’t and do what others don’t. Work harder than everyone else, be intense about it, be disciplined. I think Warren Buffett has a great quote: the difference between people who do average in life and people who are mega, mega successful is simply discipline. I am such a believer in that, in the power of hard work, as well as challenges and resilience. Sometimes getting your nose bloodied—I know you’ve experienced that too.
Elliot Kallen: Oh, all the time. But there are times when it was so difficult, so grueling to get that first project from a client—that first phone call when a client said, “Okay, I have a translation project for you.” It took thousands of phone calls and thousands of letters to get one. And then to get the second after the first from a different client was thousands more letters and phone calls. Those days are grueling and depressing and difficult. One of the things I like to say is, work today like no one else will so you can live and give tomorrow like no one else can. That’s what I kept reminding myself when the days were tough—that it would pay off. Another thing I talk about is, when we got that first project from the client—and I remember those first two clients well because both of them somehow showed up at the dorm room. The first one said, “Okay, I’m ready for my project,” and I said, “Great, I will messenger it over,” and they said, “No, no, I’ll be in your neighborhood and I’d love to check out the operation.” Well, the operation was an NYU Business School dorm room.
Importance of Hiring the Right People
So I needed to run downstairs and intercept them before they got past the doorman. And then the second one—I couldn’t even do that. The second project that came in, and this was thousands of letters later, they literally showed up and knocked on the apartment door. The suite 2E—it was an apartment to us, but we called it suite 2E on the letterhead. But what I was going to say is, there were times that were very tough and very frustrating. You need resilience. You can’t let it get you down. You just have to push through it.
Lessons from Liz & Elliot on Balancing Life and Work
Elliot Kallen: You know, it’s funny that there was a commercial, and I know you’re very involved with women, and we’ll get to that shortly. But, you know, Virginia Slims had these commercials going on in the ’70s—you remember that? Cigarettes. Their phrase was, “Baby, you’ve come a long way.” The reality is that every business owner like us, on any given day, you don’t have it all. You cannot be a great business owner, you cannot be a great spouse, you cannot be a great mom. You can’t do all these things well every day. So, as you grew this amazing business, how did you figure out that every day is about balance, and how do I get back into balance?
Liz Elting: That’s right. And I could not have been successful if I had balanced in my life every day, or even every week, right? It’s more about focus. It’s about being all in. Focus pocus—another one of my sayings. If you focus, it’s like magic, but you really have to focus on what you’re doing. I had people from business school who would say, “Oh, okay, after work, we’re going down to South Street Seaport, or we’re going out for drinks, or we’re going to the Hamptons for the weekend—we have a share.” And I thought, “I can’t do these things. First of all, I don’t have the Money, and secondly, I don’t have the time—I’m building a company.” So, I think you throw yourself all into whatever you’re doing. You have to put aside some of the socializing and some of the hobbies. But you make your business your obsession. You act a little addicted to it, and then you find pleasure in it because you know what you’re shooting for. It’s about putting down on paper what your goal is.
Your long-term goal for sure, and our goal was to create the world’s largest language solutions company. But then also the annual goals, the quarterly goals, the monthly goals, and the daily goals to get there, and then sticking to them. But I think, yeah, it’s not doing what everyone else will do. It’s getting pleasure from accomplishing your goals. And one other thing about writing your goals down, which is really important: Harvard Business School did a study, and they found that people who wrote out their goals, ten years after they had graduated, were making on average ten times more money than those who hadn’t written down those goals. So writing down the goals and making sure you do what it takes to stick to them is very important, and there’s pleasure in that. Then also, as you hire, you bring in like-minded people that you enjoy building the dream with. That makes it so you’re not all alone, and you’re not thinking, “Why am I doing this every month?”
Elliot Kallen: Let’s transition to the second phase of that big transition, as I call it, which is that you hire people with strong egos, strong ideas, strong talent, that want to be part of a team.
Liz Elting: Yes, yes. And you’re right—they are those things because those are the people you want. People who act like owners and think like owners. What I recommend doing is compensating them like owners whereby, if they’re successful, they make a lot more money than they would elsewhere, and if they’re not successful, they make less. Ultimately, they’re not going to survive at your company. So you compensate them that way, and you incentivize them to innovate. Make it so that in order to get a promotion, they need to come up with a new idea. Basically, make it so they are acting and thinking like an owner. We did that in all kinds of ways, and “owning it” was one of our core values. Just like not having a written business plan, the core values—we didn’t reach out until years later, but they were understood. So “owning it” is a critical one, and I have a lot to say about that whole concept.
Elliot Kallen: You’re listening to “Meet the Expert” with Elliot Kallen. As you can see, this is another exciting episode. Come check us out at prosperityfinancialgroup.com. You’ll see 65 or more episodes. It’s Elliot, E-L-L-I-O-T, at prosperityfinancialgroup.com. And my direct cell is 510-206-1103. I look forward to meeting with you. So is TransPerfect still around today as is, and are you still at the helm of it?
Liz Elting: No. I did this for 26 years, and then after 26 years—which sounds like an eternity when I say it—I sold it. It’s still around, and that was actually back in 2018. So I did it from 1992 to 2018.
Decision to Sell TransPerfect
Elliot Kallen: What made you sell it? That’s phase three now of the entrepreneurial way. Phase one is, I’ve got my napkin idea like you did, or college idea, or dorm idea. Phase two is, I’ve grown it into a really successful entity. I’ve got people, I’ve got skills—all the things that you’ve done. Phase three is, what’s my exit strategy? How did you get to that point?
Liz Elting: Well, you know, a lot of excitement and drama along the way. The big goal was to build the world’s largest, and it was a really interesting 26 years. But after about 20 years, my partner and I—a 50/50 business partner—we were on different pages, different goals, aspirations, and values. We had really just gone kind of like in different directions. I thought, okay, I don’t see how I can run this company with him anymore. So either I need to buy him out or sell, or someone needs to buy us—sell to him or someone needs to buy us both out.
There was a lot of drama in order to make that happen, quite frankly. I had to litigate and spend $50 million of my own money on legal fees, and there were about 20 different lawsuits going on. But to keep it simple, ultimately I did sell at the end of 26 years. Now I get to do what I’m doing now, and there’s a lot more to it. But in retrospect, it was time. My partner and I were not getting along, not agreeing, and I thought, okay, this is a very hard thing to do. If I’m going to sell, I’m giving up my baby, you know. It was my third child and all of that. But now that I’ve not been doing it for six years, it’s wonderful to be doing what I’m doing now. It was a wonderful experience and journey, and now this current stage that I’m in is…
Philanthropy: Empowering Women and Marginalized Communities
Elliot Kallen: Let’s move forward, if we could, Liz. I can’t tell you how exciting that is, as a fellow entrepreneur, to be discussing this with another entrepreneur. You’ve left there, you now have created a foundation with your name on it. You’re able to help, fund, or do things that change the lives of women and communities. Tell us about your philanthropic roadmap.
Liz Elting: Sure. What I found, kind of related to what we were talking about before, is that when I was busy building and running the business, that was all-encompassing—it took a lot of time. Then when I wasn’t doing that, I needed and wanted to focus on my family. So I didn’t have time to do philanthropy. Sure, I was involved in a few causes, and we wrote some checks, but I realized during my time that there were a lot of causes to work on. I also realized how fortunate I was. I had a great upbringing with wonderful parents who emphasized the value of hard work and education. I was taught to work from a very young age—I started working when I was 10.
I needed to make my own money. My parents said, “You are financially responsible for yourself,” and that needed to happen very early. So the work ethic and then the education I had—but a lot of people didn’t have that upbringing. So I wanted to help those people. That was one piece of it. Then the other piece of it is women. Women were not always treated the way they should be. I had experienced sexism, and I saw a number of our employees had. I wanted to address that issue as well. So my foundation focuses on helping support and empower women and people from marginalized and diverse communities to make the workplace and the world a fair and equal place for all. That is what I’m trying to do with the foundation. We work on a bunch of different causes, focusing on women and diverse communities, and it’s just wonderful.
Elliot Kallen: If somebody wanted to get in touch with your foundation, how would they do that?
Liz Elting: We have a website. It’s theelizabetheltingfoundation.org. That’s the website.
Elliot Kallen’s Book | Driven: How to Elevate Your Success as an Entrepreneur
Elliot Kallen: That’s great. Let’s move to you a little bit. There’s a lot about you—you’re an interesting person. Take a deep breath for a moment and tell us about what you’ve learned. Now these learning lessons—your personal Growth world. You’ve got a book over your left shoulder. I want you to tell us a little bit about that one. I’ve got a book over my left shoulder, so I know what it is to write a book. Driven by Elliot Kallen, all about entrepreneurship and resilience. We kind of share that story. It’s an Amazon bestseller.
Liz Elting: Okay. Congratulations!
Elliot Kallen: Thank you. It’s exciting to do it, and I don’t know how many copies it has sold, but all the proceeds go to the foundation. So you and I are living on opposite coasts but parallel lives.
Liz Elting’s Book | Dream Big and Win
Liz Elting: Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s so nice. And yes, I’m doing the same thing with mine. Virtually all the money—yes, same thing with the money going to the foundation. I mean, that’s where the money is basically going. So why did I do it? I mean, should I talk about the book or me or both? As far as the book—because, and you can relate to this, Elliot—the reason I wrote the book is it’s the book I wish I had had when I was in my 20s, starting off my career and my company. I did read every book I could get my hands on back then, and I couldn’t find a book quite like this because I like reading stories about people.
So it’s more like a business book memoir—a beach-read business book, is how I like to put it. I think there are a lot of lessons in there, but I try to make it a little more fun, entertaining, vulnerable, and authentic. That’s why I wrote the book, because I could have used it. I made a lot of mistakes in 26 years, and with very little experience leading and building and running a company, you’re bound to make mistakes. Certainly, I did, and I wanted to share what I learned based on what I did right and what I did wrong.
Elliot Kallen: How long did it take you to write the book? For me, I came in basically every Saturday and Sunday for a year on either one of those two days. The deal I made with my wife was I’d come into the office and write for three hours every weekend, or six hours if it was two days, and then I’d go home and spend the rest of the time with her. So I wasn’t pulling away or detracting. It took a year for me to write it, not counting all the edits and rewrites, but a year to come up with the first draft. How about you?
Liz Elting: Yeah. It was basically a year. But I liked the way you were disciplined with how you did it. You wanted to make sure you still had family time at the same time. I did find it quite all-encompassing, because it’s narrowing, culling down what you want to say—all of your experience—into one book, and which things you’re going to say and which things you’re not going to say, and how you’re going to say them. It’s an interesting learning experience. It took about a year. But then the other thing I learned is, when you publish that book, you are the Chief Sales Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Financial Officer. It’s like launching the company all over again. It’s really interesting, because that’s what I focused on in 2023 after writing the book in 2022.
Elliot Kallen: It’s a lot of fun. So now as we finish up here, I want to go back to the original term that I brought up—the word balance. You can’t have it all, but on any given day, we’re all out of balance. Something’s number one, and something’s number three or four. It’s just life. I am married, and I’m on my second marriage. I have two stepchildren, grandchildren. I have a daughter with multiple children, and I have a son on the East Coast with a great job. They’re all very different. They all demand a little bit of time, and they all deserve time.
And of course, I don’t want to be on marriage number three. So I want to give my wife time because I tease her that I’m just the guy between one and three. And I don’t want to really be that when we get together 20 years from now, but it’s still that she deserves all that time. We take a lot of Travel, vacations. Like you, I lived in Geneva, Switzerland for some time, so I’ve got a very Eurocentric mindset. We’ll be in Germany and Austria and Greece very shortly, and I’m practicing my German right now so I can communicate well in Austria. Because in Germany, they’ll speak English, but in Austria, if you don’t try in German, they look at you a little bit like, “Show some effort.” And then they’ll talk to you.
Liz Elting: Yes, that’s true.
Elliot Kallen: So I know what that is. But it’s the balance part of life. So how are you handling this?
Liz Elting: Well, I guess I feel very fortunate, and I think that’s one of the reasons, after 26 very intense years, I do have more balance in my life. I think what happened is, as an entrepreneur—this might be more interesting to people than the balance I find now because it’s a lot easier now that I’m not running that company—but when I was, the first eight years really before I had my first child—because I have two sons—it was intense, and it was pretty much working crazy hours, 100 hours a week, whatever it took. Then I had my first son, and I realized, okay, I’ve got to have some family time. Then I had my second son.
So then it became much more about compartmentalization, right? Kind of the way you were describing how you wrote your book. And it was the concept of, okay, I’m going to get to work at 8:30 every day—since that was our start time—work super intensely during the day, make it all about goals with deadlines and results, and then at the end of the day, whenever it was—6:00 pm or whatever—leave, exit, go home and be all in on the family, right? Stay off the phone and the email and the texting and all of that. And same with weekends—really stay away from it.
Obviously, there are times when you break the rules a little bit, but you need to be all in when you’re at work, and then leave and be all in with the family and make sure you allot enough time to the non-work activities. I think the way you do that is, as I say, not making it about hours you spend in the office and small talk in the office, but about intensity and results. I think that worked well as an entrepreneur. Now, I’m actually focusing pretty intensely on this book and my philanthropy because I’m on a number of boards. But I do want to make sure, and I am going to make sure, in the near future and certainly this summer, that I get proper family and friend time in, and travel and reading, because those are three of the things I absolutely adore.
Elliot Kallen: I use the term “be present.” Be present, be all in wherever you are. I’m hoping that my children one day will look back at this and say, “You know, Dad, I know you worked your butt off to make things successful and paved the way. We went to private school and private colleges and all these wonderful things. But when you were with us, you were really with us.” I can’t say that for sure, because my cell phone went off at soccer games and ice hockey games and football games. It did, and sometimes we were in a texting world on a Saturday trying to close a deal. And I’m sure you have the same thing. But for the most part, I want them to look back and tell their children that Grandma and Grandpa were present in our lives. And my lesson is, I will be present in yours.
Conclusion Insights from Liz Elting’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Liz Elting: You’re absolutely right. That’s why we have to put away our phones, too. For me, it was the iPad. I had my iPad around too much. There were times when I had to, and I will say at the end of my time at my company, it was ridiculous—5,000 emails a day. It was outrageous. We were becoming such an email company. But you’re right—you have to be completely present wherever you are. When you’re with your family or a friend, not pick up your devices. Be all in, be focused. I think that’s a wonderful lesson that you just said, and I couldn’t agree more. I think I found it when we had employees—I needed to make sure I was doing that, too, because if they saw me on email 24/7, they wouldn’t want to ascend in the company. They wouldn’t want their boss’s job, they wouldn’t want my job. They think that’s what they had to do to succeed at our company. So I think it’s very important for the employees to see that, too. But I couldn’t agree more with you—be present.
Elliot Kallen: So tell me the name of the book and where people can buy it.
Liz Elting: Sure. It’s Dream Big and Win: Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business, and it’s on Amazon and also in many in-person retailers and online retailers. But Amazon is definitely the easiest.
Elliot Kallen: That’s great. Get both of our books. You’ll have a good time, but make sure you get Liz’s book. It sounds fabulous.
Liz Elting: And Elliot’s too. Thank you.
Final Thoughts and Advice for Entrepreneurs
Elliot Kallen: Well, just to recap for everybody, because I’ve been talking with Liz Elting, who created an unbelievable company in the world of language translations—TransPerfect. A terrific company. She sold it when it hit a billion dollars plus in sales. She made the transition that entrepreneurs struggle to make, which is phase three. That is, what do I do now? I’m going to exit, and we’re going to put this exit strategy together. She experienced litigation, she experienced the trials and tribulations of a partner. I did the same thing, buying out my partner at some point and dealing with going to court. But this is the life of the entrepreneur. It is not a straight line.
It is not Mark Zuckerberg starting like you did in college, like he did, and in a matter of four years, you’re a billionaire. You are a billionaire in a billion-dollar company, and so much more successful than so many entrepreneurs—men or women. There are lots of reasons why, and especially after this interview, it’s obvious why you’re more successful. The key is you showed resiliency. You showed getting back up after being knocked down. You showed, “I’m here for the long run, and I’m going to keep doing it.” And when it’s all over, I’m just going to become a better person than I was. I would bet that you didn’t write that book for money. You wrote it because you want to tell a story. And you don’t live your life today for money—you live your life for purpose. Is that fair?
Liz Elting: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you get to a point where, fortunately, you don’t have to worry so much about the money and paying the bills. We only need so much, right? Then we can really focus on the purpose. Even early on, if you focus on the purpose, usually the money takes care of itself. Yes, I couldn’t agree more with everything you just said. I love that.
Elliot Kallen: Okay, so we’ve been talking with Liz Elting. This has been “Meet the Expert” with Elliot Kallen. It’s a series that has come out where we’re interviewing successful people because we’ve got so many great lessons. More than 65 episodes exist on our website. Come check us out at prosperityfinancialgroup.com. Come listen to Liz. I think you’re going to like what you hear. Stay tuned for more episodes to come. Thanks, everybody. Make sure to check out previous episodes of “Meet the Expert” with Elliot Kallen on every podcast platform available to you right now. We are also in the top 2% of all financial podcasts globally, and amazed by that fact. But it’s also very exciting. So check us out. I look forward to meeting with you. I look forward to Zooming with you, and I look forward to speaking with you. Have a great day.
Important Links
- Elliot Kallen’s Book | Driven: How to Elevate Your Success as an Entrepreneur
- Liz Elting’s Book | Dream Big and Win
- A Brighter Day Charity | Uniting Stress & Depression Resources with Teens & Parents
- The Elizabeth Elting Foundation | All Women Working Together
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