Episode 33: Interview with Dr. Jill Bishop, Founder & CEO of Multilingual Connections

Sharday:
So welcome to the stories of market research. I’m Sharday Torgerson the creative and digital strategist at inlay research in Saskatoon, Canada, and your host. I would like to welcome Dr. Jill Bishop to the podcast. Welcome, Jill.

Jill:
Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Sharday:
Dr. Bishop is the founder and CEO of multilingual connections, a Chicago-based company that provides translation, transcription, transcreation, multimedia localization, and research services and more than 75 languages. Dr. Bishop’s early fascination with language and culture led her to pursue a BA in teaching of Spanish and an ma and Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology. Then an unexpected opportunity brought Jill to the corporate world where she worked as a user experience researcher for a business and technology consulting firm. Now she later then leveraged her skills and background plus her love of burritos when she was hired to oversee the language, culture, and diversity programs for Chipotle Mexican grill in 2005, Jill took the next step in her career by launching multilingual connections. She’s passionate about creating a great work environment for her team and is proud of their impact on the community in worldwide. So Jill, thank you so much for joining me today.

Sharday:
It’s always a pleasure to converse with influential women in the research industry. So I’m super humbled now, before though. Before we dive into every, all the nuances of market research, I wanted to maybe ask a couple of questions. Now, maybe learn a little bit more about yourself. I understand you renovate houses. So I am myself, a new home purchaser, and I am looking for some maybe top advice when you’re looking for a fixer upper. Now keep in mind to my husband and I do come from a former life of construction and trades. So before folks have been often saying, Hey, like don’t bite off more than you can shoot. Maybe keep that in mind.

Jill:
Well, I’ll say that you have a lot more experience than my husband and I do then. So we’ve been, we love houses. We’ve always loved old houses and houses with history. And so we started with just doing little renovations and when I say we did renovations, we didn’t do the renovations ourselves, but we hired people to do the renovations with our ideas. And and then we got more and more comfortable. And, and did I got rehab on our favorite house on our favorite block in Chicago? Absolutely loved that house, like another child. And then I decided we were gonna move to Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. Broke my husband’s heart on the house side. he’s over it now. But to kind of repair that heart and to kind of change things up between our business and our home life, we started renovating houses finding old houses that had been neglected and just making them beautiful again and bringing new life into them.

Jill:
So we have we did a couple of flips and now we do rentals and I it’s a nice creative compliment to the kind of creative work we do or the different creative work we do running a business. And so I would say, just look at the bones you know, anything can be changed internally. You don’t like where the bathroom is. You don’t like the layout of the kitchen. All that stuff is, is relatively easy in the scheme of things, but find a house with great bones in a great location. And the rest is just your canvas.

Sharday:
I love it. Yeah. We are very fortunate. I, myself am in a home that is 120 years old currently, and often I am trying to convince people that there are amazing reasons to not have air conditioning. So ,

Jill:
I globally, some people would dis disagree with you right-

Sharday:
– Oh, I am. I I’m trying to convince myself, I think mostly, but yeah, just dealing with an you know, an awful heat wave, even in Canada. We’re all kind of feeling a little bit of the pinch here. So a little bit of a reprieve today, but yeah, we are, we are definitely dealing with that old bones and, and how yeah, folks just really didn’t have the air conditioning back then.
Jill:
right. Just wasn’t, wasn’t an option so you can do


Sharday:
Wow. Yeah, no luxury, I think at this point. So, you know, I could tell you’re obviously passionate. I think even renovating houses, you have to have a bit of a, a bit of a patience to it too. And you know, even based off our intros, it sounds like market research. Was it maybe your journey to start, you know, the, the qual quant world that we find ourselves in today. I’d love to lo know a little bit more about your passion and ultimately, you know, what led you to the market research industry? So quick question, what does one have to do to achieve a bachelor’s to teach and also a master’s in PhD in linguistic or anthropology, Mike, excuse me. Yeah, that sounds like an incredible journey. And like I’ve had clearly a ton of coffee.

Jill:
Student loans. That’s one way certainly a component there. But I was always interested in language and culture and didn’t know what to do about it. And I’d been studying Spanish. I studied Hebrew growing up and then studied Spanish in high school and college. And then one day I was talking to my mom about, I think I was a sophomore in college and she said, you always wanted to teach when you were little. And I thought, oh right. I, I could teach Spanish. And so the very next day I went to the foreign language department and enrolled in their teaching program. Nice. and I was really excited about that and bringing, bringing language to people to students of different ages. And after I graduated, I went actually went to Israel for a year to teach English at the high school level and then came back to Chicago, got a great teaching job, but just a couple months in, I realized that I wasn’t ready to be done.

Jill:
I was 21, 22 and I still had more travel to do more studying to do so. I found a program in linguistic anthropology that brought together my interest in language and culture, head down to Argentina for the year, while I was waiting for applications and GRE scores. And all of that taught English in Argentina came back. And then I wound up enrolling at UCLA in their linguistic anthropology program. Wow. and so none of that was what I had planned, but I was so glad that I did do that. And then again, expected that that would be my future career. But then I had an opportunity at actually at the triple a, at the American anthropological association meetings in Chicago. I saw a flyer for a happy hour at Sapient, which was a user research or a, a business and technology company consulting company that had a user research department. And a number of us saw that and thought, great free wine and cheese let’s go. And never expecting that. That would take me into corporate research. But that, that was the beginning of it. And then many little decisions and little changes along the path that brought me to where I am today.

Sharday:
That’s awesome. And yeah, we often hear that within market research where, you know, I, I love that whole, I never meant to end up in market research story and, and here we are, but, you know, it sounds like too that you were able to, to oversee the language, culture and diversity programs for Chipotle Mexican grill now. Yeah. That sounds like a really unique opportunity. What, what would something like that entail?

Jill:
Yeah. So I had worked for user research and then nine 11 happened. We all lost our jobs and about 13 months later, my husband was unemployed. I was unemployed. He found his perfect position and I found mine at the time, which was an ad for culture, language and diversity programs at Chipotle. I was a huge burrito fan, loved the food that thought of bringing together my language, teaching my focus on culture, the love of burritos altogether under, you know, with one shiny package or bow was really exciting to me. So I spent the entire day working on my resume, my cover letter to make it perfect hopped in the shower. And my husband knocked on the door a few minutes later and said that Chipotle had called. And so it was a really great way of being obscene language applied in a very concrete way.
Jill:

So it’s one thing to teach language at the high school or college level for more theoretical needs, but helping people learn English so that they could do their jobs better and more safely move up within the company, communicate with their kids’ teachers at school. It gave me a new perspective on, on language in the workplace. And so after a couple of years, though, I realized that I could do similar programs for other companies that didn’t have the luxury of full-time people in this developed department. And so I left to start my own company which originally was focused on job-specific English and Spanish training. And it was only a little bit later that we got requests for translation and then transcription, and we become more, became more of a translation agency. And then only many years later that the work that we were doing started veering toward the research world.

Sharday:
Wow. Sounds like you really hit this you know, hit the ground running naturally evolving into really running your, your own show. As far as I’m concerned, total girl boss moment , but back to the, the idea of, you know, market research. Again, often I, I would argue the most talented folks in the industry, you know, come from from other industries, they’re usually leveraging their skills and background and they bring such a, such an incredible lens to the work that they do. So I’m, I’m curious to learn a little bit more about launching multilingual connections back in 2005 there.

Jill:
Yeah, sure. So I had a stack of business cards, a website that my husband designed for me. They’re not being a web designer and the yellow pages, and that was, and a flip phone. So again, the beginning was focusing on, on restaurants and hotels kind of pulling out of my or drawing from my experience with Chipotle. And I would just call HR directors and say that I was curious about their people and where they’re from, and if there were any communication challenges at work, and I expected to be hung up on all the time. And that was not the case, people would say, you know, I think they’re used to different kind of cold calls. And so nobody was calling to talk about the diverse employees that they had representing all different areas around the world here in Chicago and all of the communication challenges and opportunities for their people.

Jill:
And so it was really exciting to be so well received and create customized programs based on their needs. And so very quickly I realized that it was, it was gonna be about what the clients needed and everybody needed something different. So somebody might need diversity training. Somebody might need English training, some might need Spanish training but all thinking about how to apply it in very concrete contexts. And so when I got my first request for translation, that was something that I hadn’t considered doing. But I I think at the time I, I Googled Spanish translation agency and I found one to outsource it too. And, and now we’re the ones, the receiving end of those Spanish translation agency, Google results. But of course we, we work in 75 different languages. Spanish just happens to be the bulk of what we do.

Jill:
Yeah. And, and it’s been interesting to see the company grow and change partly based on the requests that come in from our clients and partly based on the talents and experience from our team. And it’s kind of like watching a child grow up and evolve where in the early days, everything they do is because of you. And then as they become, they get outside exposure and they grow and change and, and develop into their own humans. And so my business, obviously not human has grown and changed outside of outside of me and beyond me as as the needs in the market and opportunities have presented themselves.

Sharday:
Absolutely. Now I am sure, you know, multilingual connections today looks a lot different than maybe it did back then, but I’m sure what hasn’t changed is the focus on inherently creating these connections across languages and cultures. Exactly. It sounds like, right. And it sounds like you guys have really looked to evolve this and naturally, and, and, and, and into the market research industry. So as someone, myself who, who values transcriptions, I mean, even in podcasts, like it’s a, from an accessibility perspective you know, transcribing podcasts is incredibly important to the work that we do and even, and not to go too far into it, but human led transcript. So I’m, I’m curious, is, is there a growing need for, for market research translation and, and why perhaps

Jill:
Absolutely. I mean, people, companies are looking beyond, beyond their borders to grow their products and their services. And so it naturally lends itself to doing work internationally. I think in past years, people might have perhaps looked for English speakers in, in the regions they were looking to go into and, and using them as their participants. But now I, I talk to a lot of clients that finally realize that, that you’re not gonna get at the heart of the matter and the nuance, if you only limit yourself to English speakers in country. And so by necessity, you have to be conducting, conducting research in the language that people speak. If you wanna hear their authentic voices and their authentic experiences, you have to have somebody who can connect with them on a language and a cultural perspective. And so from that, that means translating discussion guides, questionnaires surveys. It means transcribing IDIs and focus groups. And then on the, on, at the end, it might mean translating reports or subtitling highlight clips. So there’s a lot that has to be taken into account. And we encourage people to think through these language needs beforehand and not always after the fact when they haven’t budgeted for it, they don’t have time for it. And they’re scrambling to put together a solution that might not be ideal.

Sharday:
Yeah. I think you, you hit a lot of challenges that a lot of folks in the research industry deal with on, on a daily basis and Canada and north America, you know, the states ever are entire continent for, for such a diverse, melting pot as well. And, and things, as you, as you mentioned, are, are slowly changing in terms of folks looking to expand into international markets and how important it is to ensure that you’re creating you know, surveys and, and questionnaires to, to be inclusive to the audience that you’re, you’re speaking with. We had another guest on and brown who’s with gazelle yeah. Global services, of course, and, and spoke very highly about the importance of ensuring that your, your surveys remained unbiased and, and effort to do so one way was to ensure that the questionnaire was available in, in their language and culturally you know, provided in a way that can be understood. And, and often that is not gonna, you know, maybe sometimes come from your, your primary research team and, and a service I’m sure like S is, is an opportunity to be looking at your study, especially in a marketplace perhaps that is yeah. Different than your own.

Jill:
And I wanted to note also that it’s also local research for our two countries in particular where absolutely. There is so much linguistic diversity mm-hmm . And so if you wanna be inclusive, even here at home, thinking about who your audience is, and does it make sense, is there a need to translate, how do you connect with people? And even if you’re not translating, how do you connect with them culturally? Oh, and so there, there are just so many things to think about and absolutely that’s what we love helping our clients think through not just providing a transaction of translation, which we can do also, but really strategizing on the language side.

Sharday:
Absolutely. Again, in Canada, French-speaking is highly sought after in terms of you know, a valuable skillset in market research for, for that given reason in, in Canada, it, it’s almost imperative to have your surveys, especially when you’re looking to you know, Eastern Canada, specifically, people speak French there and you really need to ensure that you’re creating this type of survey or questionnaire to make sure that it’s getting to them specifically. Sure.

Jill:
It’s and with a translator from mm-hmm from the region and not from outside.

Sharday:
Exactly. Mm-hmm yeah. And often that is so the case isn’t it, but recognizing that locally it’s very important to ensure that they’re talking to, you know, people that they would it’s same dialect even to some degree. So that’s very important. Mm-Hmm yeah. We’re learning that even ourselves within Saskatchewan, where there’s so many rich, diverse languages within no indigenous groups, for example, where it it’s super important for us as a market research firm to ensure that we’re providing these surveys from the perspective of, of different cultures, even within, you know, one indigenous group. So it’s absolutely, yeah. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing, I think, yeah. Back to translation you know, such an important role in market research. Now, I, I think it empowers researchers who genuinely wish to understand their audience and, and, and, you know, targeting to some degree. But how really important is it for translation to be human led over, over automated? Or is it important at all?

Jill:
Absolutely. That’s a great question. And, and the answer is, it depends. And so it depends on what your goals are, what your budget is, what your who your audience is. And so obviously technology is far more sophisticated one than it was when I started the business 17 years ago. Right. And I will never say that machine translation has no role. But you just have to be careful and think about how you, how to prioritize. And so what we recommend, for example, when we’re doing a survey, when we’re doing outbound surveys, we recommend to humans. So first a translator to do the translation and a second translator to do side by side editing and proofreading. Cuz this is your company’s voice, your brand. You don’t want anything to slip through the cracks there. If you’re translating inbound, your open ends back to English, for example, one translator is typically enough.

Jill:
You don’t need, need it to be proofed and polished. You just need to know the gist of what what’s happening in that situation. It might be sufficient that you could do machine translation with a post edit. And so there’s a term Mt. P E it’s machine translation, post edit, where you send content through an engine and then you have a trained, skilled professional editor to go back, not just to clean up and proofread, but, but to do the side by side comparison, because you don’t know what the machine might have missed, so it might sound right, but it might not be right. And you don’t know until you’re doing that side by side comparison. And so you know, for informational purposes, when you have lots of content sure. Send it through Mt. I use machine translation all the time when I’m chatting with a friend of mine in Israel and I’m just too lazy to read the Hebrew, I pop it in and it helps.

Jill:
So there are purpose, there are places where it’s absolutely appropriate, but when, when nuance matters humans matter and that’s where you really wanna think through the opportunities and what could potentially be lost. Right. Especially when it’s on the outbound you know, in terms of really trying to connect with your audience, you don’t wanna just, you know, I, I tell people, you know, it’s one thing to reach out. You wanna connect with a multi audience, but you, but if you don’t care enough care, meaning invest the financial resources and the time resources to, to do human or quality translation, it tells them that you want their business, but you don’t really care enough to, to earn their business or to create that connection with them. So you do have to be careful, but there certainly is a role for machine translation,

Sharday:
Right? Yes. I, I wholeheartedly agree. And I think even to use podcasting as another example, you, you mentioned how important it is to represent your brand. I think close captioning is inherently important when, when you’re providing visual content to people and accessibility matters. And I think even further when you’re, you’re looking to express like a conversation like this you know, taking that one step further so that you’re providing, you know, a real clarification within the conversation sometimes that can only be managed by, you know, professional linguistics like yourself. So, absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s super important. And even as a marketer, I really advocate for using, you know, Mar or translation, both within market research, as well as in, in marketing context

Jill:
And, and not just humans, but humans who are trained. So oftentimes people will say, you know, Hey, who speaks this language? Can you help with this translation and in a pinch? That’s great. But I, I always recommend whether using or using another agency, the role of a professional agency is crucial for brands that are doing that, that, that wanna make sure that they’re translating, right. It’s a skill it’s, it’s, it takes years of experience to be a great translator. It’s not just about being a native speaker.

Sharday:
I, it’s funny because I think, you know, once folks maybe learn a language or looking to learn a language, I, I think, think that in of itself is real proof that it it’s such a difficult, difficult skill to overcome. So I think folks that, that know two or three languages, they’re some of my favorite people in the world, because I think to some degree, the amount of work it takes, but really understanding you know, everything that goes within you know, the, the language itself. And I, I can’t speak from an expert perspective, but I think even just understanding that, you know, English doesn’t necessarily have a similar structures, even within terms of gender, which could be very important when it comes across from a survey question, when you’re speaking to somebody within a, you know, a class or, or a certain structure of a family how, how often that can change just by one language to another one dialect to another.

Jill:
So, and actually that point about gender is really important, gender and inclusive language that we, we are changing the English language. Yeah. And our expectations of what language can do don’t necessarily apply to other languages. Mm-Hmm . So you can be a very well intentioned researcher wanting to use gender neutral language in, in a particular locale. But if, if that language doesn’t support that you need to have conversations about how you can, how you can do that in a way that’s not gonna feel artificial or externally imposed mm-hmm . The example of Latinx, for example most Latinos I know do not like that term. And so it’s, it’s well intentioned, but it’s, if it’s not representative of, of the participants and of the community that you’re using it in you, what you think is gonna help you connect can push people away and make it feel foreign. So you have to really make sure you trust the people that are helping you make these decisions on terminology.

Sharday:
Interesting. You could even go granular, look at it from a neighborhood perspective where often, you know, and I’m sure this is the case in Chicago. One neighborhood is going to drastically be different from another one and, and everything from culture to, to history, to, to community. And, and even then when we are ourselves are collecting neighborhood data, it, when we’re developing these surveys, a big part of what we’re trying to do is ensure that we’re, we’re asking questions that are important of folks that maybe have lived in a certain area for 40 years and say, you’re, you’re looking to gauge the interests in a leisure center. Well, the, the folks that have been living in this neighborhood, they know certain landmarks a certain way, and you have to, you have to really play in, not play into, but speak to them in a way that they’re, they appreciate, and they’re going to then answer honestly, or in a way that they that the, their truth can come out. So I think that’s incredibly important. That’s

Jill:
A great point. Absolutely.

Sharday:
Yeah. And it’s really back to that whole localization thing. Right. So, you know, we, we talked about some key fundamentals, but really understanding the importance of localizing your content, especially for a multilingual audience. What, what does that look like? Jill?

Jill:
Sure. So, you know, when we, we get requests all the time and I’ll refer to Spanish because it’s just the most common sure. You know, someone says, I need this in Spanish. And then we have, we go back and say, well, who is your audience? And is it us Hispanic? Is it general Latin America? Is it Spain? Or are you trying to really create connections hyper, locally? And is it just for Columbia, for example? And so the more that we know about your goals and your audience, the better we can do in assigning the project to the right people. And so we assign linguist to projects based on native language, regional exposure or regional you know, affiliation and industry expertise. And so in some cases, the content you know, the higher, the register, the less specific needs to be from place to place.

Jill:
So if you’re reading, if you’re doing a medical translation, for example, you’re not gonna have that many differences from, from Columbia to Mexico, but if you’re doing something very community level, very slang oriented, very informal, that’s where those nuances are gonna come out. And so it really depends on, on what you, what you’re looking to accomplish. And then, you know, of course budget comes up and so you might not be able to localize into five different regions of Spanish and you have to pick one or two, and that’s a decision that you make and that’s that’s okay. And the translators are trained to be able to do as neutral of language as possible, but you still wanna, you still wanted to read for them, like it was written for them, you know, not that it was artificially translated in any way. And so that’s where you know, thinking about translation as part art and part science, it’s, there’s the accuracy part, but the art is what makes it feel like it was written for them with transcreation, which is a, a newer term for highly creative marketing content. That’s an area where where it’s not just a word for word translation or even a, a culturally relevant translation. It’s a, oftentimes a complete reimagining of the content so that it resonates with a population. And that might be on the, you know, once you’ve done your research and you come up with your findings, then on the marketing side afterwards, employing transcreation to really create meaning and connection.

Sharday:
Ooh, I you’re, you’re speaking to the, to the audience, to the you’re preaching to the choir. I I, I love this topic a lot, actually. I think transcreation is such a unique way of looking at you know, localizing content. And I, I think, yeah, you kind of really dove into, again, a lot of the nuances of why that’s super important. So what, what are some of the ways of, of conveying that nuance when, you know, you’re trying to create appropriate creative content, mm-hmm for the consumption of your target audience. I, you know, and we’ve been talking about Spanish audiences as an example, mm-hmm

Jill:
sure. So it’s so transcript, so any kind of translation should always be culturally relevant and the translator understands the cultural content context. It might have to, to rephrase like sports metaphors, for example, right. That just don’t translate. And so that’s just fun coming up with an alternative. And so that’s, that’s being a good translator, right? Transcreation is beyond that. So a great example is the Netflix show orange is the new black. You could translate that into a hundred languages accurately, but it’s not gonna mean anything. Mm-Hmm . So in that kind of situation, you have to completely, reenvision what you’re trying to accomplish and come up with something that’s gonna really, really hit home. I think that’s probably a sports metaphor really really connect with the audience. And so what happens is for content like that, you often have multiple people brainstorming reading creative briefs, people that are not just translators, but copywriters and people with extensive experience in marketing translation, throwing all kinds of ideas out when we did work for Netflix and we didn’t translate oranges the new black, but we were doing translations for for all of the middle east for all of their titles and content marketing content.

Jill:
We would often have multiple translators working together just brainstorming ideas, thinking about elements of the show and what they could pull out that would, that would connect even. It was if it was totally different from the title in English or the original language title. And then when they did co settle on a topic, they had to create a rationale for why this would make sense, because oftentimes the people who are ultimately gonna buy into this tagline or title or whatever it is, they don’t speak the language they don’t know. So they have to just trust that this is gonna make sense. So having a detailed rationale as to the linguistic and cultural interplay and why this is going to really excite and connect people and convey the meaning is, is essential to, to, to selling that title or selling that tagline.

Sharday:
Hmm. And that’s where the market research comes into play. You guys are providing not only the, the translation, but really the, the insights that I think, you know, organizations are really looking forward to ensure that they’re creating a, a thoughtful, even marketing strategy in internet for international audiences. Excuse me, that’s really, it’s really interesting. It actually reminded me of my own experience where let’s even use Netflix as an example. I, I am a prideful subtitle user. I love using subtitles for anything that I’m watching. And that includes English speaking shows that I like as well. My husband is huge into anime, and often he would mention that even if it was English dubbed, that he would still watch subtitles. And, and the real reason that he does that is because a lot of it isn’t translated well through the dubbing and, and really the context actually comes out in the subtitles. And he mentioned, you would be very surprised how different, you know, the subtitles are actually providing context for his show versus, you know, the actual English dubbing. And I think it’s, it’s a really key example. And, and, you know, Japanese anime is probably, you know, one of many genres where I think, you know, that nuance of really ensuring that the cultural perspective of what this show is, is portraying, you know, is, is important to understanding what’s going on.

Jill:
Absolutely. And the added challenge there is is line spacing requirements. And so mm-hmm, , you have to be able to get the, get the translation accurate, convey the meaning, convey any of those nuances and do it in only with, within character limits. So it makes it much, much more complicated. People always battle over subtitles, and somebody’s always gonna be unhappy with that. There was a big halloo around squid game subtitling and yeah. You know, but it is such a challenging experience. But I also feel the same way as your husband about listening to a show or a movie in the original language you, yeah. Those people were hired as actors because of who they are. And so you kinda wanna experience their voices, their emotion, their pure acting, and, and rely on the subtitles for the, for the understanding.

Sharday:
Absolutely. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. You really appreciate that. We live in a time to now where we do have the option to be able to, to watch the, the, you know, or enjoy the show in English, but really also being able to, to enjoy, you know, in its true form and still be as an English speaker, be able to enjoy it on, on a different level, I think is wonderful. So it is such invaluable work. It’s such important work globally, you know, not just in north America. And this is a really great example, especially for content where audiences are looking to, to access from, from, and Netflix is global. Let’s be honest. So

Jill:
Sure, absolutely.

Sharday:
Yep. So it sounds like you’ve built a wonderful remote workforce around the globe. So as someone who takes a lot of pride in working for a hybrid workforce where a lot of our folks even are remote I’m curious, how do you manage to create such a great work environment with such a such a diverse workforce?

Jill:
Yeah. well, I’ll say we’re really lucky to have an amazing team, and so it starts there but we’ve, we’ve been largely global for a number of years or largely remote. We started the bus business in my basement, Chicago. We moved to Evanston just north of the city. And we were always, I, my thought was always have our, our team in person. Our linguists of course, are all around the world. Right. And then about five years ago, we had an application for a project manager from someone in Turkey, and I thought how’s, how would that work? And we interviewed him on Skype and I think nobody had a, even a description for Skype for like, who has a login, you know, from like 10 years ago. And he was great and we thought, okay, let’s give this a try.

Jill:
And and it worked great. And so we’d always have our team meetings with, and just with one person on, you know, on video. And we did our best to just engage him and keep him connected to the rest of us. And then very quickly we started hiring others. And especially when we were working for Netflix and we had we were working in the middle east, we hired a team in Egypt, and so it just happened. And once we realized that we could be successful with one, we thought there was no reason why we couldn’t be successful with more. So we were really well positioned when the pandemic hit to already to, to be remote because that half of our team already was, was working in that environment. And even from the beginning with our local for folks I said that they could always work remotely at least one day a week.

Jill:
I wanted to have that work life balance. And as an owner, that was really important to me. And I didn’t wanna just do it for myself and then not for my team mm-hmm . So we already have this kind of hybrid slash fully remote situation going. In, at the time though, pre pandemic, we had the office and then we had what we called remote land , and we would include them on all of our videos, all of our meetings, we had we were doing wellness and we’d find ways of involving them as well. We’d do huddles and always involve them. We did a white elephant gift exchange a number of years ago. And my husband and I ran to home goods to buy 15 little tchotchkes because we had 15 people remote at the time, wrapped them up.

Jill:
And then we set up multiple cameras and UN gift unwrapping. And everybody, regardless of where they were around the world was able to participate in the game of stealing or trading their little, you know, $10, $15 gifts. And then we sent them around the world. So things like little clip lights with Lama, blinking things, you know, just totally random trinkets. We spent all the money to send them, you know, to Egypt, into Turkey and elsewhere, just so that they could be a part of, of this silly gift giving process. And so that was always really important to us. And then of course, when things went fully remote we were already ready for it, but our, our local team actually appreciated it because there was no more remote land. That was just the way it was. And they felt like the, the playing field was much more level and everybody was in the same situation.

Jill:
And so we, we really make sure that we are doing you know, intentional video. I mean, everybody’s doing this now, of course, but making sure that there’s the informal time, different types of team meetings from a formal structured training team meeting to informal huddles, happy hours making empanadas with somebody in Argentina and everybody’s in their kitchens, you know, baking them along with them. And giving people opportunities to, to be involved in different training opportunities and different research opportunities and helping, helping develop the company regardless of where they are. But it all starts with having the right people and, and being driven by your core values and making sure that we’re hiring for those values, not just for the, the resume skills, but for values that are in line with us as a company

Sharday:
Back back in, you know, we’ll even say 10 years ago when, when things like punctuality mattered and I’m, I just a joke, but at the same time, it is quite interesting how, how, you know, these types of skill sets or the soft skills that, that we are looking for have changed in this hybrid workforce. You know, we, ourselves at insight, we had a fairly remote workforce ourselves, or at least were flexible to the idea prior to the COVID. So I think even too, we felt fairly ready for, for this type of environment. And I think we, we flourish sense. We we’ve come to appreciate that the hybrid work model works. It’s about having the right people, having the right folks that are checking in on you, validating work putting, like you said, putting systems in place to ensure that folks are, are co-creating collaborating appropriately.

Sharday:
Maybe on top of this Jill one question I have is, you know, younger, younger researchers, younger folks in the industry, they’re already kind of dealing with a lot in terms of, you know, having to manage a new career entry level during, during a time where I’m sure none of us kind of expected. And I personally felt like you put two years on hold. I couldn’t imagine somebody maybe entering a workforce and, and dealing with hybrid as a, as an opportunity, what, what would you say to folks who, who may want to enter say market research or, or work for someone like you and, and don’t know perhaps how to, to enter a hybrid environment? What, how would you welcome them?

Jill:
Yeah, well, it’s, you know, I think you need to have that balance of independence because there is a lot more independence expected in this environment. But also the desire and the ability to collaborate. And so both of those sides are so important. You know, we want people to feel comfortable asking questions, being a part of the team with people that they’ve never met and possibly will never meet in their lives because they live 5,000 miles away. But can, who can also work on their own. And so it’s it, it’s not for everyone, for sure. And I think for perhaps for folks newer to the industry or to any kind of professional career, it requires confidence that that not everybody has. And so for some people, I think being in person is gonna be the best entry point for for them and their careers and their development.

Jill:
And then maybe after a couple years of professional experience, there’s the comfort and the confidence to be in a hybrid or a fully remote role. Mm-Hmm . But it’s not a guarantee when we we’ve had people that, that we’ve hired in the past that say, yeah, they’re fine working remote. And it becomes obvious that it’s just not the best fit for them. And so, yeah. So you can think you’re okay with it. And then the reality is you’re not, and you don’t know yourself as a company. You don’t know, you have to just kind of trust based on what people are saying, but you have to be flexible and, and supportive. And I think mentorship is so important having somebody that you’re always in touch with who’s kind of showing you the ropes and helping you develop that confidence, but ultimately it is a bit of a gamble of who’s gonna be successful in that kind of environment.

Sharday:
Absolutely. I, I think you know, maybe working with multilingual connections, you, you have such an interesting you know, work model where just having professionals across the world is really inherently important to, to the service that you provide. So I think even just being a unique business within that model, it makes total sense that you’re going to have a, a, a di diverse workforce. I also would recognize too, that research primary research is becoming it’s more and more important that your, your primary team is becoming diverse as well. So absolutely recognizing, yeah. Being in a hybrid workforce, you, you have the opportunity to, to be looking at folks maybe that, you know, aren’t, aren’t within the pool of hiring within your, your local region. So there, there are those opportunities to strengthen your research team to be a little bit more focused on certain types of audiences or different skill sets.

Sharday:
I think where we’re at a time now, both within the industry, but as a society where you know, the, the pool, the hiring pool has gotten much larger and, and folks really, you know, take advantage of that and think you guys are a wonderful kind of example of that. Granted you’ve been doing this long, long before you know, a lot of the, the hand was forced with some of us mm-hmm , but I think that’s kudos to you guys. So thank you. Yeah. So, Jill, I really appreciate you joining us today. I know we kind of bounced around a little bit, talked about you know, this, the importance of transcribing and market research, you know, multilingual market research as a whole, the nuances, you know, why it’s important to provide culturally relevant multimedia to a global audience. And I, I, I wanted to leave the floor to you if you had any final thoughts or how perhaps people can get in touch with you, if they’re interested and learning a little bit more about the language services you provide.

Jill:
Sure. Thank you. It’s, it’s been so fun and I love these kinds of conversations. Thank you. There is so much to talk about, and it’s hard to just keep it on one thread. But we I’ll just say that we love talking to clients about this topic. And so if there’s, regardless of whether there’s an immediate project or not, just to learn more about what might be an ideal workflow, we always encourage clients actually to do the research beforehand so that they have partners in place when the need strikes. So even if there isn’t a defined project, start starting to develop those relationships with a translation agency or multilingual research focused agency so that when the need happens, they’re prepared and they’ve already thought through some of these questions and have a better sense of how to how to integrate the language component. But I really appreciate it. And you can find me in multilingual connections.com or on LinkedIn. And thank you so much for the time and for the great conversation. Thank you so much, Jill.