#157: Liz Elting, Cofounder and former CEO of TransPerfect — Develop a bias toward action
Oct 19, 2023
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Former CEO of TransPerfect, Liz Elting, discusses her strong bias toward action in leadership and shares insights on building a billion-dollar business. Highlights include focusing on scaling quickly, overcoming personnel mistakes, hitting goals, hiring for sales roles, and practical sources of new ideas. She also stresses the importance of critical safeguards in business partnerships. The episode emphasizes the value of taking action, setting goals, and executing them.
Having a bias towards action is crucial for effective leadership and achieving success in business.
Creating a motivated and autonomous sales team, aligned with company goals, is essential for business growth and scalability.
Deep dives
Developing a Bias Towards Action
One of the biggest derailing factors in leadership is a lack of urgency and action to galvanize teams and get things done. Liz Elting, former CEO of TransPerfect, emphasizes the importance of taking action and having a bias towards getting things done. She believes that dreaming, planning, and strategizing are important, but without the urgency and action to execute those plans, success cannot be achieved. Liz's success in building a billion-dollar business involved putting in hard work, long hours, and being goal-oriented. She also emphasizes the importance of motivating teams to operate in the same way, creating a powerful force for accomplishing big goals.
Lessons from Childhood: Resilience and Motivation
Liz Elting shares two significant childhood experiences that shaped her leadership style. The first was a traumatic incident in sixth grade, where she was told she couldn't participate in a school choir after being called out in front of her classmates. This experience taught her the importance of not publicly criticizing and demeaning others and formed the foundation for her leadership style of treating people with respect and empathy. The second experience, a near-fatal accident at 14, made her realize the value and purpose of her life. It motivated her to make a difference in the world and led to her commitment to helping others. These experiences taught Liz the significance of resilience, kindness, and finding purpose in leadership.
Following Passion and Taking Risks
Liz Elting's father gave her valuable advice when she couldn't decide on her college major: pursue what you love, and the rest will take care of itself. Taking this advice to heart, Liz majored in languages and followed her passion. After college, she found a job at a translation company, where she realized that she could create a business that provided superior language solutions. Despite facing 10,000 competitors, Liz took the risk of building TransPerfect, aiming to become the premier language solutions company worldwide. Her entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to take risks contributed to the company's success, as she combined her business acumen with her language expertise to offer top-notch services.
Building a World-Class Sales Organization
A pivotal factor in TransPerfect's success was the development of a world-class sales organization. Liz Elting focused on hiring motivated and entrepreneurial individuals who aligned with the company's goals. She ensured that their incentives were tied to the company's success, aligning compensation with superior performance. By hiring talented people and giving them autonomy, Liz built a team that could outperform her in many areas. Additionally, she emphasized the importance of setting and sharing goals, providing a roadmap for employees' success. This approach allowed Liz to focus on working on the business rather than in the business, fostering growth and scaling the company to become the largest language solutions provider in the world.
There are few things more frustrating than a leader who sets up a bunch of meetings, presents ideas, and talks strategy…
… but then doesn’t know how to motivate everyone to actually get all that stuff done!
Fortunately, our guest today is NOT that kind of leader.
Liz Elting is the former CEO of TransPerfect, a translation solutions company that she started and built into a billion-dollar business.
Today you’re going to hear how she did it. And as you’ll see, a huge part of her success comes from Liz’s strong bias toward action.
She is willing to put in the hard work and long hours. She is incredibly goal-oriented. And best of all, she knows how to motivate a team to go out and operate in the same way.
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’s biased toward action – and whose teams are, too.
You’ll also learn:
What to focus on early in a startup if you want to get out of the weeds and scale quickly
A big personnel mistake Liz made early (and how she fixed it)
One big reason you might not be hitting your goals
A key characteristic to look for when you’re hiring for a sales role
Practical sources of new ideas that you’re probably overlooking
Three critical safeguards EVERY business partnership needs
Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:
The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go
Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each day
Whichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.
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