Localization Fireside Chat
Celebrating 25 Years of ProZ.com: A Deep Dive with Founder Henry Dotterer
(upbeat music) - Good afternoon, everybody. This is Robin, are you from the localization fires site chat? And welcome to another episode and another recording. Today, we are recording episode number 80, believe it or not. And I'm honored to have with me my guest and my good friend of the industry, good friend of our company here with known Henry for many years, Henry Dotterer. Welcome to the show, welcome to the episode. Glad to have you with us. For those who are not familiar with Henry Dotterer, Henry is the brain behind pros.com. And pros.com is the umbrella that actually host and have as a community all the freelance networks or the freelancers around the world. Pros has been the cornerstone of our industry since the inception of the industry since there was an industry to be recognized 20, 30 years ago. And Henry, welcome to the show, welcome to the conversation. It's an unbiased, unfiltered conversation. And I'm looking so forward to having this dialogue with you today. I've heard a lot about you personally. I've known pros for many, many years. And this is a special, special episode for me personally. So welcome to the show. And like we say on this channel, Henry, everybody's got a story. And the story goes in three types of stories. One is you came across this idea by accident. You came to it by somebody recommended to you or some people are saying, I've came across this industry, a happy accident. So I'll leave it up to you. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and your localization story. - Okay. Well, thanks very much for having me, Reverend. Yeah, my story, I was an engineer. I graduated from MIT. They had a Japan program and thinking about going into the workforce and just doing that, let me say, versus having an adventure. I chose to have an adventure. I went to Japan and well there, I worked for Nissan, the car company. And well there, I found that I really enjoyed learning the language. And I came back and worked for Motorola in the US as an engineer also. But it was kind of eating away at me. I wanted to, I enjoyed language more. So, and I wasn't very good engineer. So, so, you know, after we finished the product, we did an engine control unit for Honda, it was a Japanese customer. I thought, you know, I'm gonna make a move. I decided, I had saved up some money. I went and I traveled around the world. As a backpacker, I went in an easterly direction around the globe. It was a wonderful experience. And, you know, just to take in all the different cultures, that was 1995. All the different people and places and sites and sounds and scents and foods. And just to get a taste of the richness of the world, really enjoyed it. Thought I wanted to go into a language. So, I went to Japan. Went back to Japan after the Japan program. And started freelancing. I did different things. I was teaching, I was an extra in movies. I gave, you know, teaching English, but also teaching presentation classes for global companies. Worked in a consulting firm. These sorts of things. And started copywriting. And, translating. So, yeah, I guess I came into the freelancing world and the language world at the same time and love both. Around, yeah, team 97, an idea hit me. I was, the internet was around. And I was trying, I knew it was important. Actually, a friend at Motorola had shown me the internet for the first time just before I left on my world trip. And, it was in my head. I was thinking, wow, what an amazing thing. And, yeah, so when I landed and got settled and started freelancing, I started thinking, how could we use that internet to give people a chance to share in this wonderful lifestyle that I was enjoying of freelancing? So, yeah, myself and some others started to develop this concept of a site for professional freelancers. We called it pros.com as in professionals. PROS was taken. Although it was early enough, you could check. I wonder if PROS was taken. It was taken. PROS was not taken. So, we took that. Yeah, the rest is the history pros.com. - Absolutely. Thanks for the, thanks, you know, one of my questions was gonna be for you is how did the idea came about? And you already illustrated that. Now, as everybody, I mean, who's got ideas, who's wanna develop those ideas, they run through, obviously, some challenges. Can you, I'm gonna take you back down memory lane a little bit here, Henry, what was, what do you think the challenges, if you remember any, in launching this idea? - Mm. So, yeah, by the way, it's great timing. It's your 80th podcast. It's, it's our, it was our 20th birthday this week. - Great. Excellent. - We did a celebration yesterday, too. - A anniversary. - Yeah, thank you. So, yeah, in fact, the idea hit me, believe it or not, it doesn't usually happen. And I say this and I hesitate to say it because people think I'm making up a founder story or something, but it actually came to me in a dream. I had, I had been intensively studying the internet, everything I could find on it and different point systems and different reward systems and was spending a lot of time thinking about that and working as a translator was participating in this mailing list called the Honyaku mailing list where people would help each other with tough terms and, you know, sometimes people would come in and recruit translators there. And I guess, I don't know, my brain kind of melded that together and in a dream, I actually had an idea for the core of pros.com, which is, it's kind of a mix between collaboration and competition, let me say. There's a marketplace, but there's also, you know, the other side of the coin is where the translators help each other and how that contributes to each other. So Kudos was the service that we released where translators could help each other with tough terms and gain earned points in doing so and those points would influence your position in the directory. And that's what I woke up thinking of. And I sat there, it was a Saturday and I sat there for like two hours, thinking of all the implications of that and envisioning what might come out of that, a community of translators, you know, that would be the place that agencies would go to recruit linguists and so on that you'd have this global community and maybe you'd have events and you know, kind of thought through all that, which was possible, I think for an ineligible person to do at the time and think, hmm, why wouldn't that exist? I think it will. And I gave a presentation about that in a group, I was a member of in Japan called Content Developers of Japan. Code J that had programmers, writers, translators, designers. And I just, I thought, should I share the idea and not share the idea? You know, I thought it was onto something and I decided just to share it openly and I didn't know, you know, I gave my presentation 45 minutes, whatever it was and just every, you know, all the details that I could imagine and this was a time eBay was out but there wasn't much else in terms of like person to person, it was all kind of company to person and I didn't know how it would be received. I don't know, I thought they're quiet, they're listening. I think it might be, or maybe they're being polite and I finished and I said, if anyone's interested, I don't have a team, it's just an idea. If anyone's interested in doing this together with me, you know, come down, it was a, you know, sloped room and just a bunch of people stood up and started coming down. I thought, wow, and then one of them said, well, this has to happen. I mean, the way you've broken it down, this is gonna happen, you know, it's exciting. So that was the founding team. And I would say I didn't feel the challenges for just making it work, you know, the programming and it wasn't, you know, it was a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel back then. Is that the expression? Yeah, it was fairly easy to scoop them out. So yeah, and it was a great team of people, multicultural people that could get it. We went online in April of '99 and I guess I went to some friends, the people that I had in mind as we developed it, you know, a designer, a programmer, a translator, a copywriter, people that should, you know, here was a site that was gonna help freelancers, it was gonna replace, you could build a track record, you know, cooperate with other freelancers, fine clients, and really no one understood what the heck it was. It was made for them and they didn't speak to them at all. I think we were trying to be too general. So we'd have to say like doers and, 'cause you couldn't say translators, you'd have to say service providers. And a lot of this language was not common back then. Even freelancers, if you told the person walking on the street, I'm a freelancer, they go, you're a writer, like freelancer was associated with writing, at least in the circles I was in. And anyway, that didn't work. And so like for four months it set fairly, we do have some members even to this day who though, who found the site and registered in those four months. But I finally made the decision in August of that year to just let's go specific to what I know best, the language industry translators. And once we switched the language to say translators, it just started taking off, it's really been busy ever since. The challenges have evolved over the years. Nowadays it's tough to get people's attention. I mean, just because something works, it's kind of a nice brand, it's gotta be fast, it's gotta be everything else, it's gotta be cool. So the challenge has changed, but in serving freelancers, in deciding to serve freelancers, there are too many companies that make that their main thing. So we've had that in a way, it feels like to ourselves. - Yeah, now Henry, this is wonderful because it sounds like you've started something, you've crystallized the idea, you've developed it, you've learned from the development early on. And that whole thing, early adoption, I guess that everybody struggles with the brand new ideas. You overcame that as you started transforming the idea into what it is today. I'm assuming since launch in 1989, you mentioned. And so from 1999, sorry, from 1999 throughout the years, the system has evolved and it became system, right? So you started in a website which I'm assuming it became more intricate system of applications, et cetera. So talk a little bit about the evolution from where you started to the way you are right now. So what does it look like now versus where you were before? - The company or the site or both? - No, the technology part, the technology part. Okay, so the technology, I mean, back then I was much simpler. I mean, web programming was, you know, was, you know, straightforward, one command after another sort of. It was pre-Google. So SEO wasn't a thing and it was fairly straightforward. So you know, you learn how to do it. We used this PHP which was new at the time and that really gave us a competitive advantage. Now it's old, it's like two generations old actually. So yeah, I guess we were, in the early days, we were cutting edge and we would sometimes be used as an example of, you know, the forefront in terms of user experience on the web. We were on top 2000 websites on the internet. At one point, I didn't know of a bigger global community. That's how early we were. So you'd get points just for, wow, you guys are wizards. You know, you know how to make this work. It wasn't actually that complicated. But we were early, I guess. But it's, you know, the web has, it's become so much more sophisticated on what you have to do. You know, of course, when we got a lot of traffic, we had a moment where there were bottlenecks. So we had to go from a single server to a group of servers. So then we had to develop some systems, administration, expertise. Then you have security issues. You know, you start to get hacked. So you have to develop that expertise. Then, you know, for me, you know, I didn't really have a model of, I did work for Motorola and Nissan, but as a, what they call a hirashain in Japanese, you know, the lowest level of employee. So I didn't really, I didn't really understand how organizations work or how to manage them. So that's a personal, some personal growth I had to do. Technically these days, we've just built a new website. We released it to members for beta testing last week. We had a deadline to do that in advance of the 25th birthday. And it's, it's modern technology. It's the front end JavaScript type stuff. It's a mobile friendly, responsive, accessible, you know, we're excited about that. The members are looking at it going, wow, pros.com, this is great. It's clean, it's fresh. It's new. Whereas our current sites gotten pretty old in the, in the, we've really fought about a year and a half of overcoming the technical gap. So we're excited about, you know, the new platform and what that can do for our members. - So Henry, like the number of features and functionalities that you started with, are they the same now? Or has they been, you've added more features and functionalities, the, the initial idea that you started with that collaboration aspect of things. I'm assuming it morphed over time. So what, what are the features and functionalities that you have today, for those who are not familiar? And for those who are familiar as a reminder, now that you would look at it and you say, these are brand new, these are impactful. We did not have them before and we, and we feel good about them. - Good, yeah, thank you for that question. So the old site, the traditional model, right? The, the, the, the, the Eureka, the idea was, okay, translators help each other with tough terms. This is before Google. So back then, you know, you had a tough term. If you didn't have the dictionary for that field, you know, you might have to call someone, you know, it was very difficult. I mean, we had the Honyaku mailing list, but translators help each other the tough terms. They get points assigned to that niche. So I'm gaining points in, in Japanese to English automotive. Now when you search the directory that gets sorted according to the points earned in that niche. So who comes to the top, those who have helped other translators in that niche. So that made us the best director on the internet. I mean, that was enough. So people would post jobs or search the directory. They'd match and go off and do the thing. And, and I decided as a freelancer, I decided to adopt a business model that is what I would want. Let me have the client. Let me interact with them directly. And you're out of the equation. And I'll pay a yearly fee. And that's how we did it. And it's still how we do it. And the members with our customers are the pay managers. So they paid and that, that really puts us in a great position. Since we're working for them, we don't have to hide their identity. We don't, you know, it's just a lot we can do that maybe other services can't do. 'Cause we're already paid by the freelancer who we work on behalf of as their agent. Now it's evolved, you know, more and more. People expect more than, you know, sort of a Craigslist experience of, here's the posting and a bunch of stuff starts coming in. You know, that's still mostly how people are using pros. But the faster growing aspects, you know, the curve and it's, it's probably transitioned by now, I guess. That the bigger thing is, you know, there's more support for the rest of the project lifecycle. So it's not just meet and jump off. So we have a payment service called pros pay. And that's, that's growing quite a bit by, ironically by inserting ourself in the payment process, it in many cases winds up better for everyone. The freelancer can pay, you know, we've learned, we've become expert in paying people in different regions in the way that they prefer and works well for them. So someone in Egypt doesn't have to get paid by PayPal just because the US customer, you know, wants to pay that way. And, you know, when that happens, they lose on the exchange, maybe they can't even take it out because of the PayPal restrictions in that country. But the client's going, hey, we can only hire freelancers that use PayPal. So we get in the middle and go, okay, hey, in Africa, you can be paid with empaza or here, you can be paid with crypto, here you can be paid. So we stay on top of what's working where now. And we can save a lot of currency and fees. And at the end of the day, even though we're in the middle, the freelancer gets more. We also offer advances for, you know, we're able to assess the credit worthiness of the payer because of our blue board, you know, we have relationships in many cases with the LSPs who are paying. So we do extend credit. And so we can take payment by credit card or however the LSP pays. And in the meantime, pay the freelancers, even advance, you know, when a payment is due at the end of next month, we can, if they request it, we can pay them now for a fee. So that's one of the new things. Another thing we do is we have platforms where the project can be carried out. So instead of finding a freelancer, you can post the project, get quotes, get it done within the platform without regard to who's doing it. And that's yet another way to meet freelancers. Again, I think LSPs and platforms that offer this service won't do what we do, which is here's the freelancer that just did your job, feel free to work with them directly or bring them into your own system. And that's why we continue to be a tool for LSPs, you know, and not a competitor to do that. - Absolutely. And Henry, like, it doesn't, you know, we can't escape the fact that since the inception of pros till now, there has been a wave of collaborative tools that has been created, right? So, you know, outside of our industry, right? So I'm talking about LinkedIn came about and, you know, Instagram, you know, now we have Telegram channel, you've got WhatsApp, people are communicating a lot more. But you still have prosed.com as the center point when it comes to the language industry. Although the other tools are fundamentally available to anybody and everybody can participate in them. And the draw here is that community that you've created and under one roof, under one umbrella, under one system, which is pros.com. And, you know, 25 year celebration doesn't go unnoticed and nobody lasts 25 years in any business unless they're doing something right. So, you know, from your perspective, what is next at this point? - Well, I mean, what's gotten us here and what continues to be the strategy is just to our mission, which is, you know, the way we state it, we empower freelancers and language professionals to achieve their business objectives. So that would include freelancers and then LSP professionals, the project managers, vendor managers, LSP owners and so on. So that's just what we do. And that's what we've always done. So when something comes along like LinkedIn, we'll help you use it website. We'll help you build it. But we just, you know, where it seems like is this competitive, is this smart for us competitively or not? I just have thrown caution to the wind as I did in the initial speech and just said, what's best for our members? That's what we have to do. And we'll keep doing that. So going forward, people say, what about AI? What about, you know, you should adopt AI. We're, to the extent we're involved with AI, it's to bring the power of AI to our members. - Yes. - And then we just go away. Then we go away. Because we're sticking with the game plan and we'll go down with the ship. So yeah, we just keep looking at it going. All right, here's these AI tools. Our due freelancers wanna, you know, it's 25 a month for our freelancers to pay for a chat TPT license or a Gemini license or whatever. We said, we'll get an enterprise license and make all three models available to them through a tool. And within their membership fee. So that's the way we just keep powering them with whatever technology comes along. We're using WhatsApp, we're using LinkedIn. We have, I think we have the largest group for translators in the LinkedIn, largest group for translators on Facebook. We just keep using the things, bringing them to the benefit of our members. And that's what we'll keep doing. We do have, you know, kind of one thing that's new is we have, interpreting is a lot more important within our community now than it was at the start. We were like 85% translation, 15% interpreting. I think the percentage interpreting is more and more significant within our community. And, you know, we do have interpreters now that have direct end clients. And so now in our new version, we'll have direct calling capabilities so that they can have their client, client they already have. We don't have a sales team or anything like that, but the clients they already have can call through their profile, we'll time it, they can invoice, we'll do the handle the payment and so on. So again, we're just empowering them in their businesses. - So anyway, let's run through some numbers. For those who don't know you 25 years later, let's talk some statistics. And I'm assuming you remember a few of those numbers, one of them perhaps, what numbers did you started with? Like when you first started the first year, how many freelancers you had on board, what do you have now? You know, everybody's talking about AI is kind of at the end of everything it seems to be. Some people are pessimistic about it. Some people are optimistic about it. And what did you notice so far with this whole explosion of AI application? You know, is there more freelancers coming online? Are there less freelancers coming online? Like give us an idea of the demographics, I guess, of pros. - Hmm, so yeah, we've had about, I actually didn't check the number lately, but I would guess about 1.6 million people have ever registered at pros. The number that registers, I'm not sure what, in terms of SEO, like I say, where as we were cutting edge some time ago, we have fallen behind technically and until we released the new site, when released the new site, I think we'll be had technically again. But right now we're behind our SEO performance is poor or penalized for several things. So even though we have SEO, very poor performance now, we have more registrants than we ever did before. And there's a constant stream of people coming in, multilingual, you know, I want to freelance in the language industry. And we see it from Africa, Asia, I think it's a long tail being reached. And a lot of these languages aren't that affected yet, they AI, you know, or even some of the technologies. And yet they're in demand by clients. So in terms of people interested in being in the industry, it's more per day than ever. In other ways, I do see indications that, you know, people used to, MT comes along in this latest release and they laugh it off or whatever. And a couple of years ago, they stopped laughing it off and then AI came. And there are discussions in the community going, okay, how much time do you think we have left? And that's kind of the, yeah, I guess it's a very common vibe in the discussions, but huh, it's not gone yet. You know, that kind of thing, you know. And yeah, people start to move, like I say, there's more interpreting than, you know, it's like what is, you start to gravitate to what is the human element. Some people have a diversified or left the industry. But there are others getting fun projects. You know, I like the projects that you look at and you go, wow, you know, we had someone show us a company demoing a platform, localization YouTube videos. And they do a bunch of cool AI things where, you know, they dove and they transcribe and, you know, here's these construction guys and there's eight different characters and they assign a voice and, but they, and then they kind of give a dashboard or let's say, a control panel where maybe one linguist for that language can fix everything. The length of the transcription, the selection of voice for that person, you know, maybe it's not the right accent or, you know, whatever, just all different things like that that can be calibrated. And sometimes you see projects like this and the freelancers say, well, that's fun. I mean, that's not, that's not AI making things mundane or it's, it's making it more fun. So we like those, you start to see, you know, well, those may be outpaid hourly. So there are adjustments that we're having to make. I don't know, I don't know, I don't, you know, we'll see. - It means to be seen, I guess. And, you know, everybody is approaching it, I think, based on the conversation I've been having on this channel, with eyes wide open. It's there, it's not gonna go away. We may as well figure out how to deal with it, how to work with it, how to create an opportunity. And I'm specifically talking about AI in this case. And it's not the monster that we thought it would be. Like the more we, the more we dive into it, the more we creating opportunities from it. And you can see like entrepreneurs popping up here and there all the time, creating applications, creating ideas using AI that we never had the access or the possibilities to create in the past, because we did not have the technology. And as you mentioned, using the video dubbing and video editing as well. So many companies out there are taking advantage of the, taking it. So we've talked a little bit about, you know, where you were, where you are right now. And, you know, you got to continue the journey. Have you encountered competition in this business? Or were you the only application that delivered, the type of service you delivered? Of course, there's a lot of uniqueness to each application out there. But have you ever encountered a competition in your business? - Yeah, I mean, I would say there have been at least 15 funded companies that, you know, have entered our space with an exact, I mean, it used to be like unfunded companies. Nevermind, unfunded, you know, copycats. I mean, we had a language, I met this woman once and she spoke to Mara and we didn't have demara. It's one of the minor click languages in Africa. And so I added the Mara to the language list so that she could put it in a profile. And so, you know, you'd check demara as this new site, did they, you know, and then you'd know whether they're copying our site. And demara was at everybody's, you know? So it was, for a while, it was like it turned me quite a bit. It was still concerned. I mean, you got to be a little bit paranoid about competition, right? But no, yeah, so they'd come along and it was gonna destroy us. But yeah, I think, I think really our focus on the freelancers is usually there's a different agenda. So in a way, I would say there's been tons of competition, but in another way that one really, tear our mission. - Yeah. - So on that note, I mean, I've heard a few, I guess they don't come to mind right now. There's a cafe, something, I guess, it was called translators cafe or something. Just, I think, I don't know if it's still around. I hardly go to their website. I think they're gone now. I'm not sure what their situation is. But at the same time, I mean, you continued, you continued the evolution, you continued the road and you, and that's a proof of point. I mean, if you believe in something and you stick to it, it's gonna make a go out of it and it's gonna be successful. And I think you and your team, how big is your company, Henry? How many employees you have? - I think we're 43 right now. This is the-- - Are you located here in the North? I think in New York, right? - Yeah, in New York, that's where I am. We have offices in Parkview, Ukraine, La Plata, Argentina, and now Nairobi, that's our newest office. - Okay, and also your total employees are probably tech employees, right? So focusing on the development of the technology, I'm assuming. - We have 11 developers, so 32 non-developers. - Excellent. Now, what is the, like, if you were to think about that from an industry perspective, so because now you're like, you know, you've been a central point for the industry for many years, so what's your thoughts on the industry? If you look, if you think of the industry trends, maybe future visions, or perhaps an advice to an entrepreneur who is using your site, what's your insights for the future? - I don't know that I'm the best person. We see you such a diverse, you know, increase in diversity. You know, because of our model, in part because of our model, like you can build your database of translators and interpreters, and work fine with that. Like LSPs, you know, I know sometimes people are hesitant, no, I'm getting away with murder. Go ahead, get away with murder. Recruit, you know, they work for us, so if you've got good opportunities, come recruit 'em. And so a lot of LSPs have built their databases of linguists. So they come to us, it'll be a Spanish to Dutch job, or Indonesian to tie, or whatever. - Yeah, yeah. - Or if it's Spanish, it's for an interpreter today in, you know, whatever, Ithaca, New York. So it's only the challenging stuff, you know, that people are using to matchapros.com, but then we see, you know, we're also doing the payments and we have invoicing. So we see these different, there's a lot of interesting industries. There was a guy at our pow wow in Nairobi. We had a hackathon in Nairobi, we had a pow about 100 linguists there. You know, different languages, a couple not in the ISO list that we were, you know, that people actually post the job, people are getting work in it, and it's not even in the official list. So we added those languages, you know, you see these things, so languages not even on our radar, or even though it's being met through the site. There was a guy there, he said, what he comes up, a trans producer. So, you know, he takes content and develops video content for the target mark. And are you the only one knowing that I saw one other person marking himself that way? It's this very interesting. I mean, what's the same as, you know, I don't think it's going away that global businesses will want effective communicators to speak to their target markets. I don't think that's going away, but the way that looks is already, it's pretty, it's become pretty diverse. You know, the way they access that talent, that capability to connect with, you know, the remote audience. So I think, I guess I'm bullish about global businesses continuing to use culturally aware communicators. - Totally, yeah. - So those people that can do that, I think will continue to have opportunities. And the other, the mundane stuff, yeah. I mean, AI's pretty good, isn't it? - Yeah, and, you know, it's a testament to our industry, really like 25 years ago or whatever, however, what somebody wants to go back in memory. When this thing started, it was more of the idea that, you know, everything was done in English at the time. I remember I recall when I first joined, and I remember hearing these stories, if you don't speak English, you can't use the product because you can't read the manual. Hence, you're not qualified to buy the product. Now, like, it's complete opposite. Well, before we think about the product, we need to know who we're marketing into, start developing a communication strategy, put it into 125 languages, just an example, and making sure that everybody who's gonna be taking a look at our product or services are actually understanding, in their own language, the, what the product is intended for, how to use it, how to troubleshoot it, all that stuff, and the services as well. The need, my point is, the need started early on, decades ago, started small. And as we continued, like this particular channel, is this what it's about? As we continue talking about the industry, promoting the industry, the knowledge has been, and the awareness has grown. And now what you have is you have a lot more content to be translated. And this is where AI came in. I mean, AI now is producing more content than, you know, I mean, you've probably seen that as well on your side. But the content that used to be created by an individual used to sit down and write a report for three, four days, now they can do the report in like an hour. And, you know, with a little bit of edit from AI, they're done, here we go, here's a report. So we're creating more content, we're translating more. Mind you, we're using a lot more technology to accommodate that plethora of content to come in. And hence, the network of pros are still needed out there because the job may not be the same, but the need is still there. Any comments on that? - Yeah, I mean, that's what we see. You know, we cooperate with Wix now. So there's, let's say, 300,000 websites that, you know, are localized or whatever it is, it's a ton. And, you know, someone sees it. I want mine in Chinese Y 'cause we get orders from China. Well, AI, there, you wanna check, use AI for that. Do you wanna check? And then here's a freelancer that'll work our way to check that. And what freelancer you're gonna pick? How the one that does your field? Cosmetics, it's a cosmetic site. Here, talk with someone that knows cosmetics, a Chinese translator, a Spanish to Chinese translator that's expert in cosmetics. And so that kind of connection is appreciated. I think it's gonna continue to be appreciated. And I think for companies like that, are they an influencer? Are they, do they know? I mean, like I say, our challenge, it's not just technically it works, but that it's cool, you know? And so we're really talking about, I think it's an era where you gotta move people. People are busy, their attention. You have to inspire or make them laugh or, you know, these are things where it might be beyond just converting the message to being part of the relationship. I don't know, I'm just... Touch the emotional assuming, right? Touch the emotional reaction I would, correct? I think so. I don't know. I should be interviewing you and you teach me, 'cause I haven't had many conversations like this. One day, I guess we'll do this again and you'll interview me. One more thing, like on the relationship between you, pros and the community that you've created, one big aspect of things is education and training and knowledge sharing, can you speak to that? Do you have any parts of training development, certification program, do you support any webinars or learning or any of these resources do you offer to your customers, I guess? Yeah, yeah, we have it with training department. We call it empowerment, training tools, events, and certifications. So badges, this sort of thing to help. The way we look at it, you know, the outsorcers are gonna use, they're gonna vet, ultimately, they're gonna, you know, run their regular procedures for vetting. We try to make that as easy as possible by, you know, we'll verify that a credential's been earned, that diploma, or what have you, check native language. You know, we try to do all that and then train up, you know, there are 40 hours of enturbance required or HIPAA certification. So we offer those courses as we buy the course and deliver it for our members at no additional charge. So we're trying to, you know, grease the wheels of the whole mechanism, if you will. In terms of procedures and learning, you know, one good thing, another good thing we have now, we have our pro bono department, run by Andrew Morris the last couple of years where, you know, this is an exciting sort of community development. So you've got this community of linguists and, you know, a philosophy of, well, 97% of the time, I'm working for pay, but, you know, I'd give back once in a while, an hour a week, couple hours a week, whatever. So that's something that, you know, great sense of community. And people new to the industry now can get in, volunteer, do something, have their work checked by someone, which is you're getting feedback, learn how it works with, say, project management in the industry and these sorts of things. So yeah, it all sort of comes out of that. Bye. - So, Andrew, let's talk a little bit about a pro's organizational structure. Are you still involved heavily in it, or have you, you know, what's your org chart look like? Are you still heavily hands-on, or you have that delegated to your management team? What does it look like from your side, your org chart? - Yeah, pretty hands-on. We have a very good team and people, we've been around long enough that we have some very experienced people that know pros, they know our community, and they know the industry. And, you know, we've had some people join recently experienced elsewhere. So yeah, I feel great about our team. You know, my role, you know, take the new website. What was my role? You know, I guess I'm still, you know, maybe I'm involved for the, say, innovation. It's a piece a little bit. And I don't know, less, maybe not necessarily just because of the technical mindset or what have you, but I guess I've been the hub of the communications with the various departments. You know, we do have, you know, in our business model, once around that core, once we got our members, members started to ask us for everything they needed. You know, so they understood that we're working for them, and then go, you know, sometimes I don't get paid. I want a board where we can review out sources. Okay, we built that. No, I, it's kind of a pain invoice in the taxes in Europe, and I want an invoice and solution. So we built all these different services, and they were pretty siloed. We have more than 50 unique service, you know, meetups, and we call them powwows, group buying. We did a lot of these things. You know, in many cases, like we did meetups before there were meetups, you know, we did group buying before there was group buying. So, you know, it's been really fun to have this, you know, creative community asking for stuff too. But there's been a need, organizationally, to pull that all together and have a more coherent, central organizational structure. And as I said, that was, that's not something that came easily to me. It's something I've learned about more, even in the last two years, I would say, I've made, we've made the most progress in that respect. So we've added about 18 people in the last year and a half. It's the biggest we've ever been. And so, yeah, it's, I'm just now getting to the point where you're multiple layers of management and figuring out how to do that, you know? - Yeah, that's true. Hey, Henry, like most industries I've been talking to, like several companies in the past few weeks, I record these things on Friday. And, you know, business entrepreneurs and CEOs, they come in and we chat similar to what we're doing today. And there is a sense in the industry that, you know, 2024 as a fiscal year has been a bit of a challenge to some companies in terms of their revenues. Have you seen any impact positive or negative on the revenue for pros like the rest of the industry are seeking and seeing right now? And that's generally impacted by AI. But from your side, how is it going 2024 for you? - Well, we have the, we're seeing growth, as I said, where we support more of the project lifecycle. So in the, I guess, you know, what we call managed services. So we're like, you're not looking for a person, you're looking for, you know, you want to get the work done. You know, so we include in that, you know, upload the files for translation and the platform, you know, invites and, you know, it gets done and delivered sort of with the people attached, going, here's the people who did it. So that's growing for us, the calls, the interpreting calls, you know, we keep a network online at, I don't know, 60 languages now, we can receive calls on demand with our, you know, our network of interpreters. So those are growing, pros pay is growing, which I never would have expected because I thought payments would have been handled by now. But it only gets more and more complicated as a single agency is working into more and more markets. So counterintuitively for me, the need for the payment service has grown quite a bit. So that's a high growth area for us. The membership itself and the traditional model for us of posting a job and getting quotes, going down, going down, it's messier than people prefer. And so that's, yeah, that's, we're having to, you know, have this surpassed the other. For us, the new stuff's lower margin. You know, the other stuff was easy, you know, they post and meet and whatever happens happens. So quite important challenging, we have to be better as an organization. It's mission critical stuff. You know, we do a great job with pros in terms of responsiveness and, you know, you got to have all the details are very transparent. So people appreciate that. But we've had to elevate, we've had to have more people. And yeah, that's, I guess, profitability. We've never, it's been about 15 years since we were this, you know, like that. But it's also never been more fun for me because now you got to be on your game. It's like being in a close game. You know, it's three, three over time. It's more fun, really. So that's what it's like for us. - It's almost, it's almost keeping us on our toes, almost when you are in a situation. You got to get creative. And that's where you diversified your revenue streams. Good for you. You saw the, you saw what's coming and you sort of foreseen the, what's going to happen. And therefore that you've, you know, you've developed other things like the payment modules and a few other things. Now, one thing, one item that is, I've been thinking about before, like we started this call. Actually I've been thinking about this interview before. And one item on my mind is let's say, let's say, God forbid, if a translator whose part of your network, you know, passes away. I mean, at some point, everybody does. How do you manage, like, how do you get, how do you know that, you know, out of the pump 1.7 million translators on your side? Like how do you keep track of that? Because, and the reason I talk about this is because years ago, there was an article written that is sort of stuck in my mind is, you know, it's about digital assets after somebody passes. And in your case, they detected, deleted, managed it. How do you do that? Is there somebody that notify you? Do you detect it on your own? How do you do that? - Yeah, that's a good question. When we're notified, we have, we give some options to the family. What is most commonly used is we mark the profile as deceased. And, you know, message comes up, they can put a custom message in, or we'll say the contributions of this member because they've helped people with terms and they talked in the forums. So, you know, in memory of their contributions to the community or something like that. And there's a candle. And so that's, you know, we have a mutual friend that passed away, of course, and her profile says that. As a sort of a tribute, we've, you know, we follow the European regulations, right to be forgotten and so on. So, you know, we get a fair number of requests to be forgotten. And I don't know if it's, I don't know how often that happens with deceased, that people request to be forgotten, it usually doesn't. But yeah, so people are disappearing. And then we anonymize the term help they gave or the forum post they made. - Okay, and the net still positive for you in terms of people brand new joining versus people leaving the network. I'm assuming it's still positive. - Yeah, I mean, like I said, more people joining than ever. - Yeah, and so to finish the call, and then I don't wanna take too much of your time first. Thank you for your generous time being with me today. I really appreciate it. But one of the last thing, and everybody, every entrepreneur I ask them the question, it's, you know, what do you hope to be the most significant contribution of pros and the idea that you've created to the localization industry in general? What would you, you know, you would hoping to achieve as a legacy from this particular initiative? And where is it now? What status is it at? Did you achieve it? Are you still working on it? - Yeah, I think, I think to serve really. I mean, we have to be a humble organization. You know, we serve freelancers. You know, we work for the freelance. So we're, you know, hirashayin, we're the bottom of the totem pole, you know? So we have to be supporting the freelancers well and helping them achieve their objectives and dreams. And that's what gives us the most, you know, our team gets excited about that the most. We share messages from people and we love when we get no sort of evidence that we're being successful at that. It extends at the next level to the LSP. LSP's earned a lot of pressure. They have a lot of opportunities. But, you know, the more we can help them with their back office operations to be out there selling and finding new services. You know, these websites, like the cosmetics one that I was speaking about recently, you know, let them be in eight languages, 10, 20, 50. - Yep. - Make that happen. We need people out there talking to them and talking about how to do that. And so it goes up from there. I'd like our contribution to be, you know, what I hope and think it has been, just to keep empowering on business to be more successful. And if we're behind the scenes and aren't getting credit, well, that's okay. And, you know, we enjoy the empowerment aspect of it. - Absolutely. And you know what? I want to thank you for your time today. We're coming up for the time here. Thanks for being with me, Henry. It was pleasure a meeting you. Thank you for sharing. Thanks for the information you provided on this dialogue today. Hopefully it's not the last time you join me. Hopefully we get another opportunity here to bring you on. I think I do truly believe that pros deserve a lot more publicity than it did to have in the past. And I feel from this conversation that was intentional, that's by design. And I'm hoping that you don't mind, you know, coming back in again and give you a little bit more publicity than before. I'm really happy and ecstatic that we've had the opportunity to do this today. And to our audience, I want to thank you so much for listening in. If you're coming in on our podcast channel, thanks for listening in. Thanks for taking us with you, to the gym, to whatever, to your walks and listening to the podcast. I hear a lot of people do that. And if you're coming in on YouTube, thanks for watching, I really appreciate it. And thanks for liking, commenting and sharing the content that we're creating on this channel. To Henry and the team, congratulations on your 25th anniversary. And thank you again for being with me today. Don't hang up, just when we finish the recording, we'll continue on with the side conversation for a few minutes. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (somber music) (gentle music)