In this episode of Consulting Spotlight, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Jason Willis-Lee, founder of the Entrepreneurial Translator. They discuss the impact of AI on the language services industry, the importance of entrepreneurship in translation, and strategies for scaling businesses. Jason shares insights on leveraging AI tools, building personal brands, and effective lead generation techniques. The conversation also touches on the future of AI in business and the significance of email marketing as a long-term strategy.
In this episode of Consulting Spotlight, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Jason Willis-Lee, founder of the Entrepreneurial Translator. They discuss the impact of AI on the language services industry, the importance of entrepreneurship in translation, and strategies for scaling businesses. Jason shares insights on leveraging AI tools, building personal brands, and effective lead generation techniques. The conversation also touches on the future of AI in business and the significance of email marketing as a long-term strategy.
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Michael Bernzweig (00:01.928)
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of consulting success? Tired of sifting through endless noise to find actionable insights that actually move the needle?
Welcome to Consulting Spotlight, your weekly deep dive into the transformative world of professional consulting. Your host is Michael Bernzweig, who in 1998 launched Software Oasis as one of the first platforms enabling businesses to download, license, and deploy software instantly across their networks with a single click. Today, Software Oasis has evolved into one of the leading communities where businesses find top consultants across the USA and Canada.
Each week, Michael sits down with industry titans, innovative leaders, and game-changing executives to bring you exclusive insights you won't find anywhere else. From emerging methodologies to market trends, Consulting Spotlight delivers the strategic intelligence you need to accelerate your consulting career and stay ahead of the curve.
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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Consulting Spotlight. My name is Michael Bernsweig. I'm your host and also the founder of Software Oasis. This week, we're actually fortunate to be joined live by the CEO and founder of Comrad Digital Marketing, Ivan Vislavsky. And with that, welcome to the podcast.
Ivan Vislavskiy (00:31.394)
Thank you, Michael. It's definitely very excited to be here.
Michael Bernzweig (00:35.181)
Yeah, no, I'm very glad that we're, I know we had connected prior to the episode and I'm glad we were able to get everything on the schedule because as I can see from a lot of the interest that's come in from the audience, a lot of questions and things like that. I'll try to be sure we sneak some of those in, but I was hoping we could start by, you know,
Ivan Vislavskiy (01:00.11)
to her thing.
Michael Bernzweig (01:03.611)
giving our audience for anyone that may not be familiar with either yourself or with Comrad Digital, a little bit of your backstory, how you got to where you are and a little bit of what's going on over there.
Ivan Vislavskiy (01:17.71)
Yeah, sure. So first of all, start with who we are. At Commerz Digital Marketing Agency, we help local service businesses grow by using inbound marketing strategies. So we're true experts in what is called search engine marketing. Imagine that when someone needs help, they're looking for a service or product. What they, in most cases, do is they go to Google and nowadays with
addition of AI, they can go to perplexity or chat GPT or dipstick or any of those places. And they look for the information that they're trying to find that will help them solve their issue. In most cases, it will lead them to specialists that can help them solve the issue. And so our job is to get the specialist in front of their eyes whenever someone is looking.
How do we do this? It's, know, digital marketing consists of number of pillars. SEO, search engine optimization is one of them. Paid search or paid advertising, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing. Those are the main vehicles to drive leads in customers to our clients. Now on the story side of things, how I, you know, how sort of how this agency started.
the, the original inception date was 2008, best time to begin a business, obviously. but it was, it was sort of coin, a complete coincidence. I was working in a technical space. I worked for a few marketing agencies. and I always knew that eventually I will have my own business.
Michael Bernzweig (02:44.293)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (02:53.434)
Thanks.
Ivan Vislavskiy (03:12.394)
reason being is I realized that I wanted to build something of my own, something that will reflect my vision, my values and my approach to business. Cause I did want that freedom to create my own processes or work with the people, hire the right people that I truly trust, develop my own products and so on. So in 2008, a few friends from my network
reached out and asked for help with a few digital projects, which I did help them out. And I tried to do it with utmost care, provided amazing results for them. sort of the word grew and more and more people started calling me started asking for various projects. And three years into it, we already had three or four full-time employees working.
at this sort of like a hobby and it was time to fully focus on that business because it started to look like a business. So fast, since 2008, we're currently approaching a hundred employees. We have locations in Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles and a small satellite office in Austin with one employee.
big ambitions and I feel like we're just getting started.
Michael Bernzweig (04:46.041)
really neat and out of curiosity the the name where where did the name come from
Ivan Vislavskiy (04:52.686)
Sure. So I'm Russian. I came from Russia when I was 19. It's one of those true American dream stories where I, you know, since my early age, I was sort of inspired by, you know, a lot of the American movies, Home Alone specifically, or many others. And from early age, I did want to end up here because I understood that there's a possibility to build a
Michael Bernzweig (05:09.883)
Right.
Ivan Vislavskiy (05:21.454)
you know, a proper skill to business. So at the age of 19, I, you know, I had an opportunity to migrate, which I did. Um, and when I started the business, the name of the company, the official name of the company was not exciting at all. was called CF style. Don't even ask me what it stands for. Because I don't even remember. It was like such a not memorable, such a not exciting name at all. And we have, and we have one of the one that guided company. was like,
Michael Bernzweig (05:40.09)
You
Michael Bernzweig (05:47.258)
Ready?
Ivan Vislavskiy (05:51.992)
Dude, we got to do something that will stand out. Just imagine that, you know, someone is choosing a marketing agency and have four proposals sitting in their desk. Guess who they're going to choose? Definitely not CF style. That's not, that's not going anywhere. So we did the brainstorming session and he was like, we got to go with something that, you know, truly resonates with your culture, with your background and so on. How about camera? Like, well,
Michael Bernzweig (05:54.875)
Right.
Michael Bernzweig (06:05.755)
Right?
Ivan Vislavskiy (06:18.958)
I don't know, it's kind of like sounds military to me. But then as we went looking into the actual meaning of the word, it was a fantastic word. It truly means that you carrying, you helping your friend to, to you carrying them forward. And we're like, wow, that actually does resonate with us. So we sort of decided, sure, let's, you know, let's just go with it. And that's how that's the story of it.
Michael Bernzweig (06:22.117)
Fantastic.
Michael Bernzweig (06:31.525)
Right. Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (06:42.331)
Well, that makes a ton of sense. you know, the funny thing, you know, going back to what you said earlier about the only good thing in hindsight that came out of 2008 when you started was if you had the foresight to have acquired a bunch of, a bunch of stock at that time, you would have retired many times over by now.
Ivan Vislavskiy (07:06.39)
Early. exactly. I know what you mean. Luckily enough, I actually did get some stocks right around there. It was one of my old well, one of my managers that sort of told me that, you know, now is not a good time. You probably don't believe in economy, but trust me, it's going to rebound. So I did invest whatever money I could into Apple stock, which was, which is very fortunate for me.
Michael Bernzweig (07:30.577)
Perfect, perfect. Yeah, if you had to pick one, that's the one. So, you know, for a lot of listeners, know, they're probably sitting there and, you know, probably saying to themselves, well, you know, I have a whole marketing team here and we're doing all kinds of things. And, you know, what is it that, you know, if you were to bullet point a few of the things that kind of set
Ivan Vislavskiy (07:37.132)
Yeah, definitely quadruple the investment.
Michael Bernzweig (07:59.995)
comraddigitalapart and some of the things that you're doing that an organization may find value in finding a partner that is a subject matter expert like yourselves to handle that they may not be achieving within their organization. What are some of those finer points that being a specialist in this specific area?
you would offer to an organization.
Ivan Vislavskiy (08:30.616)
Yeah. And by the way, I forgot to mention, but we've been a generalist agency since the inception of our agency. But about five years ago, we decided to fool in Niche Down. So we chose two primary niches at the beginning, which were legal and home services because we had the major concentration of our clients from those industries. And now we're also doubling with healthcare space. we're truly...
Michael Bernzweig (08:52.315)
Okay.
Ivan Vislavskiy (08:57.634)
Right now, if you asked us, what do you specialize in? We're truly specialists in helping those three industries grow. Now, what differentiates us from other agencies? I can say things like transparency and so on, but everyone will say that. It's truly our pride in our ROI driven approach. When we work with our clients, our primary focus is to deliver measurable results in the form of qualified leads and new customers.
Michael Bernzweig (09:03.803)
Okay.
Ivan Vislavskiy (09:27.628)
A lot of the agencies that a lot of our competition, what they'll deliver, what they'll show you in reports are vanity metrics, like clicks or like traffic or like positions. But that doesn't translate into leads. That doesn't translate into clients. That doesn't help you understand if your marketing truly pays for itself. If your marketing is truly, you know, provides positive ROI or not.
Michael Bernzweig (09:45.403)
Right.
Ivan Vislavskiy (09:56.766)
And our experience shows that most of our clients see an average return on investment of 400 % to 600%. So meeting that they'll generate four to $6 and every dollar that they'll invest in our services. Which is really easy for them to understand, right? Like it's not when they hire us, the first thing is like, how can you help us grow? Well,
Michael Bernzweig (10:12.293)
Wow, that's crazy.
Michael Bernzweig (10:17.169)
Yeah.
Ivan Vislavskiy (10:22.934)
Let's see where you are. Let's see who you're going after. Let's make sure there's enough demand for you search in your geographical area. And then we'll devise a plan. And by the way, we will, from the beginning of our relationship, we will vet them out in the way where we'll tell them if we're a good fit for them or not. We will not be sorry to say, look, would we want more money? Of course. But we don't think we're going to help you grow for so and so reason.
But here's some of our partners that may be a better fit for you. This is for the reason that we only want a truly satisfied clients. Client tenure, client retention in our business specifically is very, very high. We retain 96 % of our clients. And so that's very, important for us.
Michael Bernzweig (11:13.755)
So with an ROI like that, you're obviously doing a lot more than just running campaigns and optimizing things. You're getting involved and digging into landing pages and conversions and funnels and all of that for your clients.
Ivan Vislavskiy (11:29.294)
Yeah, we're turnkey solution. So many companies hire us and we become truly their marketing extension, their marketing arm. We function as in some cases, we function as a fractional CMO. In some cases, we'll work under their marketing manager or marketing executive and we do all the work, execution strategy and so on. So it truly depends on a company that we work with.
Michael Bernzweig (11:58.971)
Got it, okay. Now makes a lot of sense. Now, if you can talk a little bit more about, you mentioned the two subspecialties, can you talk a little bit more about, is there overlap between the two or are they just completely separate but you've specialized in these two areas of?
Ivan Vislavskiy (12:20.908)
Yeah, yeah. So the reason why we chose legal and home services slash construction services, because they're both local service companies. So they have a place, they have a location, they have an actual office, and they provide services mostly to local audience. With that said, we're...
true specialists when it comes to local advertising and local promotion, because we know that space really, really well. If someone comes to us and say, look, we need a nationwide promotion, they're probably not going to be a great fit for what we do because our services laser focus on local, on like city-wide or, you county-wide or statewide promotion. But other than that,
Michael Bernzweig (13:13.425)
Sure. And obviously, yeah, there's a lot of very unique characteristics. So I think that's probably the one element that you could probably tie a bow around and say both organizations are focused on local search.
Ivan Vislavskiy (13:21.032)
yeah.
Ivan Vislavskiy (13:30.7)
Yeah, yeah. And the recipe is pretty much the same, but you're right. There's a lot of difference between the two sectors, between the owners of the businesses, right? The way how they intend to grow their businesses, their emotional intelligence, their business acumen. Huge difference, obviously. But from our end, to provide the services, the recipe is very much the same.
Michael Bernzweig (13:55.129)
So if you were to, we always like to try to find some actionable insights that we can provide to listeners that'll help them from where they are today. Are there some, if you were to bullet point a few details that you found work across search at the local level to really.
derive results and conversions. there some details that you found are very effective?
Ivan Vislavskiy (14:27.278)
details I found very effective. Well, I can tell you that what a lot of the businesses don't do properly, if that makes sense. so I think number one, not having proper marketing budget and long-term vision and plan in place. Many companies sort of just have a small budget to test it out and hope that it will either work or not.
Michael Bernzweig (14:36.527)
Yeah, absolutely.
Ivan Vislavskiy (14:56.698)
And with digital specifically, sometimes it requires more time, requires more resources to get it going. For instance, with the help of SEO, there's no quick wins. I mean, there are some, but if you truly want the proper ROI, a good ROI, then you need to invest for a year, maybe two to see that result.
Michael Bernzweig (15:05.328)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (15:18.403)
Yeah, and it's very hard for a lot of organizations, you know, if they're looking for that quick win, obviously that quick win is going to be on paid search. But, you know, again, you really have to have enough data to have some statistically relevant results to be able to take action on. And you have to ramp up slowly on a lot of these, these campaigns.
Ivan Vislavskiy (15:40.694)
Exactly. And just to piggyback on what you just said, not tracking or understanding marketing data is another issue that we see a lot of the companies are struggling with. So the marketing manager, the CMO, whoever is responsible on their end, or it might be a business owner, right? They just, they don't dig enough to understand what is truly happening with my marketing. I mean, they see the reports from the agency or from freelancers that are working.
for them, but they don't understand how it translates into actual business. And we definitely encourage when we come to our clients and we show them our reporting where we, start with the most important, most impactful things. Like what is the cost of each lead? How many leads am I getting from each of the channel? Does it make sense to invest more in advertising or email marketing or SEO, any of the channels?
And then how many leads does it actually take to generate one client? In most cases, they don't have that visibility. So they're almost flying blindly without really knowing where to invest and what works or what doesn't. So that's mind boggling.
Michael Bernzweig (16:56.261)
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, you know, being consistent and sticking with, you know, with a campaign or a strategy is obviously the most important element to any of these. So, and I guess that that would be another great question. So if you were to bullet point, you know,
other common mistakes that you see clients suffering through from whence they came. I'm sure a lot of times, you know, a client comes to you for a specific reason. They're probably either, you know, managing campaigns internally and having challenges or, you know, from wherever they're at at this point, things are not going well. are there a couple of
real scenarios you see day in and day out that are common, like when new clients come to you.
Ivan Vislavskiy (18:00.878)
Yeah, definitely. One of those scenarios that we see quite often is when their budget spread too thin between too many marketing channels. They're trying to do everything at once. They're trying to split the budget, let's say, six ways when there's only enough budget to cover, let's say, one or two channels. And our advice to them is
Michael Bernzweig (18:18.192)
Okay.
Ivan Vislavskiy (18:29.262)
Look, let's master this one or two things. Let's get really, really good at it. Let's make sure we're getting good out of right from it. And then you'll probably have enough budget to invest in other areas as well, as opposed to trying everything at once. Um, and it's quite amazing when we have an RFP comment to us and we like, well, our budget is $25,000 per month, but we're in New York and Manhattan.
in highly competitive space and we want to do SEO, we want to do paid search, we want to do social media. It also needs to include ad spend budget and so on so on. It's like, well, do you want results or do you just want to spend this budget and not getting anything back for it? So that's one. Also, it's interesting that companies sometimes hire
Michael Bernzweig (18:58.223)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (19:14.949)
Right.
Ivan Vislavskiy (19:26.766)
resources, freelancers or agencies without proper vetting. sometimes it's just amazing that you deal with, let's say, you know, they'll come to you specifically for the advertising, but you know, they tell you, or our SEO is taken care of. Don't worry about it. And once you start digging, you realize that whoever's in charge of SEO, they have no clue what they're doing. It's like, how did you even bring them in the first place? What did you ask them any questions or not? so.
Michael Bernzweig (19:49.381)
Ryan.
Ivan Vislavskiy (19:56.578)
We always encourage our clients, revaluate their relationship, revaluate what sort of results they bring to you. Because the agency or freelancer's job, their goal is to grow your business. And if you don't see a direct correlation, then put them out, look for someone else. Also not sticking with...
Michael Bernzweig (19:56.613)
So doing the proper vetting is so important.
Ivan Vislavskiy (20:24.714)
industry leaders would be another key mistake that we see. For instance, we're leaders or we're experts in legal home services and we know this industry really, really, really well. If someone would come to us and say, look, can you advertise our retail store? We're like, nope. mean, we can take you, but we're not going to get any results because we have no clue how to advertise you. We'll need to learn on your dime.
And we, I guess, you know, always encourage if someone is coming to us from retail space, for instance, I tell them, look, check Google, you know, where it's asked CHPT, who is best in retail marketing, go talk to them, go consult with them. They have all the know-hows. They know how to promote your business specifically.
Michael Bernzweig (21:14.713)
Yeah, and the interesting thing, and I think you probably realize this, but I think a lot of organizations are learning bit by bit. At the end of the day, by being an expert in a specific area, you start to learn all the nuances. So you're not learning on someone else's dime what you can and can't do, what the requirements are from the different platforms and all of that.
know, seeing ads and campaigns rejected and all of that. So you've been there and done that and you're going to help a lot of these organizations avoid those pitfalls.
Ivan Vislavskiy (21:55.63)
Exactly. Michael, there are two more and I'll finish this topic. Next one is a proper intake. So I've learned a long time ago from a mentor that great marketing equals nothing if your intake is not at the same sufficient level. What is intake in a lot of places is when you get the lead, how do you communicate? How do you engage with this lead? And believe it or not,
Michael Bernzweig (21:59.524)
Sure.
Ivan Vislavskiy (22:24.558)
many companies that we work with, we actually do a secret shopping just to analyze how well their sales team is responding to the lead. And in many cases, they don't do a great job. They'll sometimes, you know, will lead to a voicemail or they'll respond only the next day, or they'll send an email in two days and forget about it. They'll not follow up and things like that.
At the end of the day, you can hire a great marketing agency that would be super costly, super expensive. But if you're not staying on top of your leads, guess what? You're not going to go anywhere. Your business is not going to grow. So definitely make sure that you have that buttoned up before you invest heavily into marketing.
Michael Bernzweig (23:09.967)
And what are realistic expectations for your agency partner in terms of, you know, for a client? What are some of the, you know, measurable, you know, expectations that are reasonable?
Ivan Vislavskiy (23:28.718)
in terms of intake specifically.
Michael Bernzweig (23:31.793)
No, more in terms of account management and all of that.
Ivan Vislavskiy (23:37.002)
yeah, sure. So we tell our clients that at beginning, we definitely do envision that it will be at least a weekly conversation going where we'll need to engage with the point of contact at least once a week and sometimes even more to cover the most important aspects so we can understand the company as much as we can.
We want to fully focus on to fully understand what the company does, who their buyer personas are, what their challenges are, how are they better than their competitors and so on. So I would say the first month or two, there's a lot of hand holding, there's a lot of engagement going on. But once we get all this juice, once we understand all that, it's truly like once every other week or once a month, depending on where it goes and how it goes. And it's a lot easier.
Michael Bernzweig (24:31.761)
And there's obviously a lot of learning that needs to happen at the beginning of any relationship. And I think that's obviously a big part of Intech.
Ivan Vislavskiy (24:32.334)
I
Ivan Vislavskiy (24:36.215)
a lot.
Ivan Vislavskiy (24:41.548)
Yeah. And not only on our end, on their end too, they need to understand our service. We actually provide them with a lot of the educational components so that they understand what is that we do and how we do in this. And so they can relate to our strategy and the plan. Because if they don't, then, you know, it's going to be a lot harder for us to explain why do we see this results versus this results and so on. So there's, there's an educational component on both hands.
Michael Bernzweig (25:10.351)
So if you can kind of walk our listeners through what are the components of that onboarding and traditional, you know, period where you're learning and doing that intake of a new account.
Ivan Vislavskiy (25:27.31)
Sure, I can speak of our process and maybe other agencies will probably have their own process, but usually what we do is we have a very thorough discovery process. We prepare for kickoff from our end. We collect all kinds of questions. We analyze their competition. There's a questionnaire that the client has to fill out in order to give us as much information as possible so we can prepare. So we analyze the competition. We analyze...
Michael Bernzweig (25:29.539)
Yeah, no, no, exactly.
Ivan Vislavskiy (25:54.35)
their weaknesses, we're doing their SWOT analysis in part. We'll look at things like what have they done on the marketing side of things previously? What worked, what didn't work? If they know their stats, what those stats are and so on. So we'll prepare discovery, we'll have to kick off a meeting and we'll share all of our findings and our clients will provide feedback.
Sometimes they'll add additional details to it. Maybe we haven't seen the entire picture. So they'll add that component as well. And then we'll discuss the future. What the future looks like for a company. Are they looking to expand geographically or are they looking to add any additional service lines and so on so we can be also mindful, aware of that. And how are they looking to grow or by what percentage are they looking to grow rather?
in the next 12, 24, 36 months. We want some targets so that we can understand how aggressive our marketing package should be. so with that, we built a package that's correlated with their growth pattern. And we give them usually a couple options. We give them normal speed or the most aggressive speed so they can choose and they can control how quickly do they want to arrive to certain, to this point.
and, and that's pretty much it. Once we get all the information from them, we, we obviously, we also do a various interviews of their key employees, key stakeholders in the company, to understand how they, you know, do the production operations sales and so on. Once we collect all the information, we're ready to go. And, know, we built the campaigns and run them.
Michael Bernzweig (27:36.773)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (27:48.269)
Now, when you're getting up and running with a new client, obviously they've, you know, unless it's obviously a brand new practice, you know, they've had some other experiences. So is it very important, obviously you have many different tools in your toolbox. Is it important to explore what they've done before that's worked and not worked and to get feedback on the onboarding?
Ivan Vislavskiy (28:12.494)
100 % Absolutely, absolutely. let's say, paid search worked for them pretty well in the past, that would be initial beginning, initial place to start with because there might be some low hanging fruit. We can double down on that to ensure that it delivers more results almost instantaneously. We also to understand
Michael Bernzweig (28:37.233)
Yeah.
makes a lot of sense too.
Ivan Vislavskiy (28:42.73)
Yeah, if they tried to do something and it didn't work, why? Like we're trying to drill down. Sometimes they'll tell us, well, we paid for the SEO campaign, but it didn't really work. Well, how many months or years did you run the SEO campaign for? Three months. Well, yeah, there's a reason why it didn't work. You need to invest for a long duration of time per se.
Michael Bernzweig (29:02.929)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (29:09.741)
And do you find a lot of times clients come to you with campaigns and things that they've run and done but were never properly analyzed and there's lots of data and statistics that just has to be gone through?
Ivan Vislavskiy (29:23.21)
All the time. They actually, in many cases, they require us to run audits on what they've done in the past or what they've done internally to analyze that they've done it properly or not. And sometimes we'll turn into something that we can turn around pretty quickly with just a few additions, a few setting changes, or sometimes it's just so far off from...
You know, what, will work that we'll have to start from scratch.
Michael Bernzweig (29:55.513)
Makes a lot of sense. Now, as far as, you know, when you're getting up and running with, with new clients, what, what are the different tools in your toolbox in terms of, generating some of the results that they're looking for? What are the different platforms and different kinds of, you know, areas that, you're helping them focus on to generate the results they're looking for.
Ivan Vislavskiy (30:19.198)
So besides, there's an SEO aspect, right? Like that's one of the tools that we have and you can split it in two sort of separate tools. One is local SEO, which is very, important. Google My Business and Google Maps. So you've probably seen that when you search for a local provider, you'll usually see like the first screen right under paid search results.
that has various local results. So that generates really good ROI. And that's usually what we start with when we begin working with our clients. Then there's the rest of organic results. That takes a lot longer to generate results for. On the paid search side of things, it's, on the industry, there are local service ads that are very, very quick to set up. And that generates results. But mostly we see that it doesn't really generate
high enough quality leads. So we usually set up paid search on Google, now Bing started to work as well. then social media channels, depending on the industry. So for legal, for instance, social does not work as well as for home services. For home services, Facebook works really well. In some instances, Instagram works and so on.
And then there are also all kinds of different directories, like best law firms or best roofing companies and so on, you know, by sponsoring those, by figuring out what to sponsor, what to advertise, you we can also generate some leads from there. So it's, it's always, you know, a combination of different tools, depending on the budget, depending on the goals, depending on the size of company.
Michael Bernzweig (32:10.137)
Now, where do you find most organizations are at in terms of their, you know, the final site or landing pages or what have you in terms of how sophisticated they are and how much work needs to be done on that end of things?
Ivan Vislavskiy (32:28.741)
Probably 70 % of clients that come to us require a complete rebuild. So they're not, their websites or the landing pages are not sufficient. They're not built for conversion. They don't have the proper funnel, sales funnel set up. So we have to rebuild everything from scratch. And then there are 30 % that already have, you know, decent work done maybe by another agency or...
They may even have their own say in how the website was built. And it looks really good and it's built with the proper funnels and so on. And all we have to do is sometimes just polish it. But mostly it's, they're not good.
Michael Bernzweig (33:10.745)
Makes sense, makes sense. And are there some things that you're seeing, you know, obviously you sit in a really unique space within the industry and you've been doing this for quite a while. you definitely have seen the journey from the old days when there was a lot you could do to get to the top of the rankings in SEO and today, you know, a lot of...
Ivan Vislavskiy (33:24.397)
Yeah.
Ivan Vislavskiy (33:34.442)
was fun time, yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (33:37.175)
organizations are finding it's not the same space and everyone's just trying to scream louder than everyone else. Are there things that you see coming down the pike that are particularly exciting and you think are something that a lot of organizations need to get ahead of?
Ivan Vislavskiy (33:59.61)
One word that comes to mind is AI. Absolutely. You can ignore it and you have to figure out how to implement it in the industry if you haven't. We've been implementing AI since, let me see, probably 2021, even before chat GPT came around. We started building some of the automations internally.
and now we have a entire proprietary system that uses AI for some of the marketing techniques, some of the marketing, production activities that we do for our clients. I think everything will change with AI. We don't know exactly how, it's too early to speculate on, you know, on that. but one thing is certain,
user behavior will change with AI for sure, with the emergence of perplexity and search GPT and various other AI tools. And then the way how we do work will also change. So as organizations, think, especially
us in marketing, we understand that we have to be in forefront of this. We have to implement AI as quickly as possible and help our clients implement AI in their work as well so they can be more efficient as business, they can become more efficient as businesses.
Michael Bernzweig (35:38.213)
Yeah, and I think it's exciting and a little bit scary all at the same time. think one of the stats I read recently is that traditional search is declining year over year, whereas search that begin with AI are on the increase. And I think a lot of organizations, if they're not figuring out how to get ahead of AI search, whether it's Gemini or Graf,
or perplexity or chat GPT or whatever it is, know, figuring out how to show up when people are searching on these platforms. I think they're gonna get left behind.
Ivan Vislavskiy (36:20.378)
And we already see that, Michael, we we measure the impact of AI on our clients. And so far it's still pretty minimal. It's like single digits percentage wise, traffic wise and lead wise that we see, but you do write about the fact that there's going to be less and less searches on search engines like Google or Bing.
Michael Bernzweig (36:44.815)
Yeah. And I think it's, you know, it's interesting and also a little bit crazy because it's absolutely growing, you know, at a very, very quick rate. And I think a lot of organizations, you know, at the point where they start to take note of this, it might be too late, but you know, one of the tools we use internally is refs. I'm sure a lot of organizations do. They quite a volume of data to say the least.
Ivan Vislavskiy (37:11.876)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (37:12.721)
In fact, I think I read somewhere that they have, they're only second to Google in terms of the amount of crawling that they do on the internet. So, but one of the things that I noted recently in Ahrefs is that they now track AI search results. And that is something that not many organizations have the bandwidth or volume to track, but they're doing it.
Ivan Vislavskiy (37:28.666)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (37:39.119)
Yeah, the other thing that's kind of interesting, if you think about it, Google is by and far the leader in terms of paid search. But there's a lot of other competitors creeping into that space over the last few years. But when you look at it, they're not the clear leader in AI search.
And all of these different search engines are fighting for market share at this point. And they're not even focused on charging for search results. So for that reason, I think it's an amazing opportunity for a lot of organizations.
Ivan Vislavskiy (38:02.244)
Mm-hmm.
Ivan Vislavskiy (38:14.649)
Yeah, they're trying to acquire the market at the fastest rate possible because they know Google's model was very similar to it too. They acquired a lot of the market, a lot of the users and only then they started to promote their paid search and they started to basically increase the space that it takes for paid sponsored spots. And now it's like
The first screen that you see when you Google something, paid spots, only paid. It wasn't like that when they just started out. But with AI, think that they probably have the same ideas, very similar methodology. They'll probably acquire as many users as they can. And then they'll start introducing various model to monetize.
Michael Bernzweig (39:06.594)
Yeah, and I think the only one that I've seen even experimenting or testing with any kind of ideas around monetization is perplexity so far. But obviously we'll start to see some of this in the year to come.
Ivan Vislavskiy (39:23.556)
I think we'll see different models. I don't think they quite figured that out yet, but it'll happen.
Michael Bernzweig (39:27.821)
I don't think so either. So it's really interesting. yeah, no, I really appreciate the deep dive. Obviously, it sounds like a lot of exciting things going on over there at Comrad Digital. Any other actionable tips for some of the individuals listening to this episode that have stuck with us this far in our conversation that you think will help them as they're, you
Ivan Vislavskiy (39:54.746)
E.
Michael Bernzweig (39:57.627)
charting their course over 2025.
Ivan Vislavskiy (40:00.662)
Yeah, absolutely. I have a couple more ideas, but I'll just stick to one. It's sort of short on time and I to respect the time. I think not having the proper USP, Unique Selling Proposition is what we see in a lot of companies. At this point, like, I do this service, I don't know how I'm different from others. Well, you still need to define what's your point of view, what's your differentiation.
Michael Bernzweig (40:08.123)
Sure.
Ivan Vislavskiy (40:29.38)
factor. Because if you don't, then you're not you're truly not a specialist, you just the provider. And if you're provider, you can charge the premium dollars, right? And if even if we'll market you, then the marketing is going to be very similar to many other marketing companies. But if you have a unique twist, if let's say you're the best in the market, because you provide the biggest warranty, or because you provide money back guarantee, or
Whatever else might be that different, you know separates you from the rest of the pack then it's a lot easier for you to stand out So that would be that's something that you know when we come to our clients and we ask them like what is your USP there? You're often like, huh USP. Well, which is good That's not enough to win the market You'd be you need to be great figure out what what it means to be great
Michael Bernzweig (41:17.201)
That's not enough. You needed to find that and then we'll have another meeting. Yeah.
Ivan Vislavskiy (41:26.612)
That's one other item.
Michael Bernzweig (41:28.407)
I love it. love it. Well, for anyone that's listening, we're going to leave a link in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out. Once again, Ivan Vislavsky over at ComRed Digital. Thank you for the deep dive and joining us on the consulting spotlight this week. For anybody that's tuning in for the first time, we also have two other podcasts, the Career Spotlight.
and Software Spotlight, both on Apple and Spotify. And you can also sign up for our weekly newsletter at softwareoasis.com backslash subscribe to keep in the know on everything going on over here at Software Oasis. So once again, Ivan, thanks for joining us on the podcast this week.
Ivan Vislavskiy (42:12.3)
Michael, thank you so much. really enjoyed our conversation.
I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Consulting Spotlight. I am your host, Michael Bernsweig, the founder of Software Oasis. And this week, we're actually fortunate to be joined live by Jason Willis-Lee. He's the founder of the Entrepreneurial Translator. And with that, Jason, welcome to the podcast.
Jason Willis-Lee (00:27.694)
Thank for having me Michael, it's very kind of you.
Michael Bernzweig (00:30.118)
Yeah, no, fantastic. And I can tell by some of the questions that came in before the episode that there's a lot of interest in this topic as we're covering some of the details of AI in the language services industry. with that, I was hoping for any of our listeners that may not be familiar with either yourself or the entrepreneurial translator, can you give us a little bit of your backstory and your
along the way as well as a little bit about what's going on over there at the Entrepreneurial Translator and what you do.
Jason Willis-Lee (01:06.7)
Yeah, of course. Thank you. So my name is Jason Willis-Lee. I'm based in Madrid, Spain, although I originally huck from the UK. I grew up in Birmingham, the second city of the UK. I originally started training as a doctor, Michael. So I got to year four of a medical training before I thought, you know what, I really want to go into applied linguistics. So I did. And I became a scientific translator, translating medicine from Spanish and French to English.
My niches are clinical trials, medical reports and research for academic journals. And here at the Entrepreneurial Translator, I diversify the little bit. You mentioned AI. AI has really taken my industry by storm. A lot of industries, yours as well. So we're heavily impacted by AI. And I just started diversifying and I'm creating a niche for myself in linguistic validation.
which is it's kind of cognitive debriefing. It's all the clinical trials, questionnaires that go into different languages for a clinical trial. Most trials are oncology these days, which is cancer. And that's what I'm doing, creating a space for myself there and trying to use AI and leverage it. And we talked a bit before before hitting record about customizable GPTs and how how that kind of thing can be.
can be leveraged to work smarter not harder. I'm all about squeezing the maximum amount of juice, Michael, from the business orange.
Michael Bernzweig (02:33.572)
Sure. how does, I guess, probably one of the biggest questions that a lot of people are wondering is, how does the word entrepreneurial wrap itself around all of the focus of translation and where does that come into the equation?
Jason Willis-Lee (02:51.074)
That's a great question. Yeah, it's a really great question. The answer is that most service providers don't think of themselves as entrepreneurs, Michael. So what I find is that people struggle with entrepreneurship. You know, they think about the supply side of the business and being a great translator or a great editor or a great copy editor. They don't really build demand for the business. If you're not building demand, it's very difficult to have a successful business. It's this idea of like a busy hot dog stand.
after a football match in a corner of a stadium. So I took my friends a years ago to see Seville play Barcelona. And we had, there was a hot dog stand at the end and you know, that kind of business is just going to sell out because you're serving a hungry crowd, right? So even if the hot dogs are substandard, mean, suppose those that day was, they were pretty good. That business is going to be fine. The airline business, for example, a lot of how many times have you flown on a flight that's half empty?
Michael Bernzweig (03:27.707)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (03:50.253)
I mean, they have to fly the planes, but these profit margins, think airlines make about 3%. It's not great. The profit margin. you really, you really want to turn your business into an oversubscribed business where demand exceeds supply. And it's like a busy summer ice cream truck. Michael, you've got this long queue of people waiting for an ice cream and the boy that goes up and says, can I have two flakes for one? Well, that day he's going to be disappointed because there's just so much demand. So I kind of try. Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (04:17.118)
Yeah, and I'll say to you, absolutely, you, Jason, when you say the word entrepreneurship, you're absolutely calling my name because at the end of the day, lot of, just like you said, mean, the fundamentals of business are.
Jason Willis-Lee (04:20.183)
Exactly.
Michael Bernzweig (04:33.694)
so key no matter what you're doing. It really touches every aspect of our society and where we are just outside of Boston. Obviously we have a lot of universities and a lot of entrepreneurship. Actually my former alma mater, Babson College, one of the top entrepreneurship schools in the US and a lot of different entrepreneurs have.
come out of that institution for all types of different businesses that we know and love. So I guess the other question, as far as your medical and life sciences background, what made you focus on the whole concept of translation? how did your background kind of point you in that direction as to an opportunity or a challenge to solve?
Jason Willis-Lee (05:32.013)
Yeah, that's another great question, Michael. There's a little story behind that. When I was an Erasmus student in Strasbourg in 1996, I did a period of three months in Strasbourg. I was studying orthopedics, geriatrics and rheumatology. And I met a rheumatology professor who would basically kind of use me to write his articles in English. He'd give me snippets of the article each day, clearly just cut it down into phrases.
And I realized very quickly I had the medicine, I had the English skills to help him. And I thought, well, could I do this as a living? Could I be a scientific translator? So that's when I kind of left clinical medicine. I went into clinical research. And then shortly after that, I went into applied linguistics. So that's how I kind of the first seed planted in my mind was when in my early 20s, I think I was 21, 2021 and that Erasmus year. So
I later wrote to that French rheumatology professor to offer my services. Unfortunately, he didn't answer. But I wanted him to know that he was quite an important landmark for me, a milestone in my journey.
Michael Bernzweig (06:35.816)
Yeah, and it's interesting because obviously, you know, AI is revolutionizing a lot of industries, as you mentioned earlier. Translation is as well. And I know translation is literally just a component of localization, which is something that
every single organization needs to get their hands around if they're moving to different markets, different countries, and it's one important component. I think especially for organizations that have highly technical solutions that they're bringing to market in different countries, having somebody with an entrepreneurial understanding and this type of background.
is absolutely key because it's not just a matter of plugging something into your, you know, chat GPT or perplexity or cloud or grok or whatever AI tool of choice you're using. It's really, I think something higher, higher in level, think.
prompting is an important component. I I think at the end of the day, AI is just a tool. It's just another tool in your tool belt, maybe a more modern tool. Maybe you look at it that way, but what do they say? Measure twice and cut once, right? The best on the hands of somebody that doesn't know what they're doing is worth us.
Jason Willis-Lee (08:09.688)
Mmm.
Michael Bernzweig (08:14.514)
I think wielding the tool wisely is very important. So that's really interesting. So as far as maybe specific tools that you see translators using today, or as far as different components to these tools that you think are important to be effective, what do you see there?
Jason Willis-Lee (08:42.57)
Yeah, so in our industry, have DeepL, obviously, DeepL is a powerful translation engine. We have a very interesting tool on the market created by a Belgian entrepreneur, and it's called WordScope. And WordScope is the first CAP tool. CAP stands for Computer Aided Translation or Computer Assisted Translation. And what WordScope does is just integrate the ChartGBT interface and DeepL. And obviously, it's using the pro licenses of these tools.
Michael Bernzweig (08:54.888)
Thank
Jason Willis-Lee (09:12.666)
It just integrates it with the cat tool. you're effectively, know, most translation these days, Michael, it's not so much translation per se, it's more editing and supervision of the AI output. So you still need a human in the process, in the workflow. You can't just rely on the machine, but we do leverage these tools. So I use, I use Wordscope, I use ChatGPD a lot. I'm a paid...
I think it's a plus license that I have, so $20 a month. I have a customized GBD for my space, linguistic validation. I think all companies should have a sales GBD, a marketing GBD. You can have just five GBDs. I was at a conference two weeks ago and one of the best talks on SEO actually told me that of a team of 20, he'd fired three people.
Michael Bernzweig (09:43.914)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (10:06.22)
and he'd leverage the AI tools to do the jobs of three people. Now that's sad for those three people and their families. They need to find other work, but it's just very interesting what this entrepreneur could do. Swiss entrepreneur based in Colorado, talking about personal branding and SEO for four companies. So I think for me, the tool is about working smarter, not harder, Michael. I think we need to just use these tools.
Michael Bernzweig (10:32.181)
Thank
Jason Willis-Lee (10:35.17)
Yeah, tech is part of our life whether we like it or not. So if you're the attitude, the tech is taking my work and just running away and being afraid of it, you've already failed. If you don't even show up to try, you've already failed. So those of you listening who may be a little reticent about using the tools, my advice, my tip is just grab the bull by the horns, just lean into the AI, use it for productivity. You still have an expertise. Each and every one of us are a personal brand.
Michael Bernzweig (11:02.402)
Okay.
Jason Willis-Lee (11:03.98)
Software Oasis is your personal brand, the entrepreneurial translator is mine. It's founder-centric in our lives and what we've done in our lives. So think if we use it as standalone personal branding in consulting and service provision, it doesn't matter if it's services or products, then success is guaranteed, Michael.
Michael Bernzweig (11:24.264)
Yeah, and I would agree with you. And I think a lot of, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of these AI agents are really, you know, important components of, you know, figuring out that next step and very specialized capabilities that these AI solutions can, you know, tasks that they can actually perform. You know, it's not.
really replacing individuals as much as augmenting a lot of the capabilities. And at the end of the day, mean, not naive, I understand that some, you know, tasks will be replaced by AI. And I think everybody understands that, but I think...
you know, if you look at a lot of, hey, you know, if you look at, in the early days of publishing, you know, there were people that actually, you know, loaded lead type into a type setting machine to run the offset presses. And, you know, then things generate, went from there to desktop publishing and from desktop publishing to.
digital publishing and then, think we've had all of these evolutions and, you know, paradigm shifts and in tech. And, think it's the same thing now. think it's, just like you said, something to grab hold of, learn about, be at the forefront of to make sure you're going to, be relevant in the years to come. So something else that I noticed in, in, in what you're doing, I know you're
working with a lot of founders and your focus is on helping some of these six figure founders scale to seven figures and beyond using AI and all of that. So can you kind of bullet point for our listeners maybe some of the details of your approach and some of the strategies that you employ to help these founders?
Michael Bernzweig (13:31.358)
get from where they are to where they would hope to be.
Jason Willis-Lee (13:35.309)
Yeah, sure. So we are discussing, we are in discussions with a multi-sex founder. This prospect makes $700,000. No marketing, just word of mouth. He has a linguistic validation company, Cognitive Debriefing, based in Calgary. The founder is Pakistani, but lives in Riyadh. And we basically adopt an approach to help them scale by teaching them to be a KPI, which is a key person of influence.
KPI can also mean key performance indicator. But KPI, it's all about getting the five P's. You've got to have your elevator pitch down very nicely. You've got to be publishing content. If you want to build an authority-based business, you have to be an authority yourself. So you have to position yourself as the go-to expert or what I call the shoulder-tapped expert. Make sure you're the one whose shoulder is tapped and not your competitor.
Michael Bernzweig (14:07.806)
Thank
Jason Willis-Lee (14:31.054)
And just being very consistent in publishing your content, Michael, you've got to get out on video. There's got to be a KPI on video who's usually the founder. I've seen some businesses where the founder is not too happy about going out on video. And I myself don't like speaking to camera, but it's just something you have to do. We're speaking to camera now, although I believe this is just an audio podcast, but at least we can see each other and we're showing up.
Michael Bernzweig (14:49.47)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (14:58.51)
to do this, to produce this asset. And then another thing is we teach them how to build business assets such as a quiz. So you can use quiz software, for example, ScoreApp is a very popular software, Lietuch, iBuckets by Rand-Levesque has just been sold to ScoreApp. That's a big deal that went down just recently. So we give our clients the opportunity of just building assets that they can just pull out of their sleeve.
And when not immediately, you don't sort of meet a prospect and immediately hit them with a quiz. But that's more middle of funnel content. You know, after the conversation is just a little bit, a little warm and you're getting closer to a sales closing a sale. An email list is a huge asset. I mean, you and I both have email lists. I know we did a newsletter swap quite recently and just leveraging other people's audiences. You know, you can you can buy other people's that you can buy traffic.
Michael Bernzweig (15:50.098)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (15:56.985)
doing paid ads, can borrow another person just doing these little flips and leveraging someone else's audience. You have a very aligned audience, a different industry in tech and a minor's language provision. you know, it's an ideal swap for a partnership is that we don't compete in the same space. So we can help each other. So we teach people how to build an MLS, which is through magnets. A quiz is a magnet.
a downloadable PDF, an ebook, a guide, a how to guide. I published a book last year on how to find more direct clients. That's a little low cost magnet that I use to attract customers. just networking, Michael, you just have to go to the events. You need to put in the time and just go. is tiring putting in the time and travel, but the connections I've made at in-person events, just...
Michael Bernzweig (16:43.124)
Okay.
Jason Willis-Lee (16:52.118)
It's just gold dust, Michael, the conversations you have and you know this.
Michael Bernzweig (16:53.49)
Yeah. And I had a hearing with you, think just getting out there and, know, face to face meeting with people and developing relationships is so important. I think, you know, just like you mentioned, obviously, you know, our community and your community very different, but, you know, we can both add value to one another's community. And I think at the end of the day, even, even if just one person listens to this podcast and
Jason Willis-Lee (17:04.717)
It is.
Michael Bernzweig (17:23.634)
walks away with something that's going to help propel their business forward, goal accomplished. mean, I think that that is the, that's what it's all about. And, you know, really, really exciting stuff. So now I know you also, I believe host a podcast. Can you tell our audience, just a little bit of a shameless plug, can you tell our audience a little bit about your podcast and the types of...
Jason Willis-Lee (17:31.141)
sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (17:43.896)
I
Michael Bernzweig (17:52.522)
topics that you cover and what they might learn by tuning in.
Jason Willis-Lee (17:56.611)
Yes, that's very kind. So my, my podcast is called a freelancer training on how to find more direct clients. That title is a reference to most language service providers. like to work with agencies for starters, and then you have to kind of graduate to the, to the, to the upper end, which is direct clients and cutting out the middle line. So we discuss entrepreneurship. we discuss a marketing strategy, such as quiz marketing, email marketing.
Michael Bernzweig (18:09.777)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (18:21.774)
building magnets, building an option on your website. We discuss SEO, homepage SEO, indexing your website on Google, forcing traffic and eyeballs. So any aspect of online business, if you're interested in, hopefully you will be doing a guest episode soon and sharing your expertise very soon. And that's what we talk about. Yeah, I'm on Spotify, I'm on Apple podcasts, I'm on Google podcasts as well. So I think it's easy to...
Michael Bernzweig (18:40.327)
Absolutely.
Jason Willis-Lee (18:50.058)
easy to find me and know, podcasting is a great way to meet business partners as we've met through this podcast and you know, it's just a very nice contact to have and you know, whenever you write to me, I know who you are. We've spoken online and we haven't met in person, but hopefully one day we will. And it's just a great strategy.
Michael Bernzweig (19:08.296)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it is, it is so interesting from, from whence, podcasting, or from where it came, you know, obviously in the early days, Apple was podcasting and, know, Spotify hit the scene and, and, grew the, the whole ecosystem. Obviously Google,
being Google jumped in and we've seen some amazing things there and I think at the end of the day it helps to expand the whole ecosystem which is only great for everyone. we actually, and I'll be upfront with you, you mentioned earlier, sometimes it's jumping a little bit outside of your comfort zone and finding different things that you can do that can
how your business forward that you may not typically do that really helped to get you to where you want to get to. you know, when, when I launched the podcast a few years back, I mean, I had quite honestly never done any type of,
public speaking, any type of radio, TV, anything like that. And I said to myself, I'm gonna do this and I guess I need a microphone. So that was really the beginning and here we are close to 150 episodes later and it's been a great experience. if anyone out there has that idea in the back of their head that
Jason Willis-Lee (20:28.469)
Hahaha
Michael Bernzweig (20:46.154)
podcasting may be something you want to want to explore it absolutely is a fantastic fantastic way to grow your business so you mentioned a bunch of different things there as to different ways and different strategies and tips and techniques for growing businesses that you share on your podcast could could you bullet point just a few as to what you see as some of the most effective
techniques that you like to start with is kind of like the lowest hanging fruit that might provide some actionable ideas for some of the people listening to this episode.
Jason Willis-Lee (21:27.02)
Yeah, thank you. So I think the lowest hanging fruit is probably a lead magnet. So if you have a website, you don't have an opt-in. Now, the first thing I look for on a website is an opt-in above the fold, which is before I have to scroll downwards. So I like to see a hero image, maybe on the left, and then an opt-in and email capture box on the right. And I like to be offered the chance of giving my email in exchange for something of value. You just solve a quick win for me and...
If I'm looking at software Oasis, I would want to get a quick solution. Something that moves me a little bit along. I'm not a natural techie, so I'd be interested in that kind of solution. Another strategy I've had a lot of success, Michael, is building quizzes for clients. This is essentially market research. It's essentially talking to your audience and trying to work out what the pain points are, what the pillar problems are, what keeps people up at night.
Michael Bernzweig (22:11.924)
Okay.
Jason Willis-Lee (22:21.868)
And then you position yourself. Hopefully you have a signature solution that comes in and solves a lot of those problems. So a quiz can be free on tools such as Tally. Tally.so is a free little bit of software. You can attach a low cost offer to that. And then you have more paid options such as ScoreApp. Another tool is Leetooke. I worked with a lady who
dislike score up intensely and just prefer to use Leetook. I quite like score up and I'm an affiliate marketer for them, an affiliate business partner. So I think you can have a quiz running on the banner of your website and just be attracting prospects to you or you can pull it out mid conversation when you've had an initial contact or maybe you go to a sales meeting and you say, well, hey, just tell me a bit more about yourself with this quiz. And ultimately I want to know who you are.
who you serve and what the outcome of your service is. So it's really outcomes based selling. If I'm selling you a mattress, I won't sell you the mattress, I'll be selling you a good night's sleep, which is the outcome of buying the mattress. that's basically a couple of things. An email list, I think, is a wonderful asset because you have the opportunity of talking to your audience daily. And I know your email list is larger than mine. It's a bit
Michael Bernzweig (23:30.42)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (23:45.986)
fantastic asset to have and it's something you build up over a number of years.
Michael Bernzweig (23:50.6)
Yeah, and it's something that happens one subscriber at a time and it's not, it's not a destination. It's a, it's a journey. So, and I think at the end of the day with, with email marketing, obviously, or an email list, it's every single individual, every single interaction that you have with other organizations. think if you think of it this way, most people that you're interacting with may know about you. They may.
Jason Willis-Lee (23:54.786)
Yeah.
Jason Willis-Lee (23:59.085)
It's a very slow journey, yeah, for sure.
Michael Bernzweig (24:20.604)
be interested in what you're doing but they may not need your product or service today and by keeping in touch you know providing valuable content to everyone that's on your list at the point where they do need whatever it is that you're offering well guess what they already know you you've been in front of them for days weeks years and when they're ready to pull the trigger hopefully you're the one that they
they decide to move forward with because you're establishing a relationship with someone. So it's very, very important.
Jason Willis-Lee (24:58.594)
Yeah, that's very true. As you say, email marketing is a gradual process. You need to offer things for free in return. And it's gradually nurturing, as you say, until the person is happy to buy from you. I I'm in the process of pivoting my audience, Michael. I'm moving away from online language service providers to this new space, linguistic validation, cognitive debriefing. So I'm in the process of...
pivoting my business assets to what I think is the space for me in the next few years. I'm turning 50 this year, so I still need to be rolling five, 10, five, 10, thank you, five, 10, possibly 15 years or more. So it's important to stay relevant and competitive. We use a tool called ActiveCampaign, which is one of the tools on the market. I know there are others. Kit is another one. Possibly we'll move over to Kit at some point.
Michael Bernzweig (25:36.81)
Congratulations.
Jason Willis-Lee (25:57.079)
And these programs charge you based on the number of contacts you're allowed to use. It's typically, you know, per a thousand or two thousand contacts. And I run a lot of lists. Even my service provision business, I use this to keep in touch with those customers I haven't spoken to in a while. And it's just a very nice feeling that you have the option of talking to a one to many situation and the fields just populate. The name field is typically percentage name percentage, and then that just auto populates.
And it does look as if you are speaking personally to the person when you receive the email with your name on it. that's a wonderful piece of tech and whoever invented that I'm sure deserves to make a lot of money.
Michael Bernzweig (26:40.264)
Yeah, and I know Active Campaign, well, they've actually participated in some of our webinars in the past, Casey Hill over at Active Campaign, and I think at one point, Zhao Fang over at Active Campaign was on one of our podcasts. they have a tremendous product, and you picked a great platform there. And I think...
One of the interesting things about ActiveCampaign or any of these email, ActiveCampaign is obviously more than just an email marketing platform, but any of these channels, it's an owned channel. It's something that no one can ever take away from you. And if you think about it as a creator, you know, at the end of the day, any of these other channels, Facebook, YouTube,
Instagram, TikTok, you whatever may be popular today or not popular. You you think back to some of the channels like MySpace and some of the other, you know, places like that, that they're not only aren't around but don't exist anymore. You know, you can build up a tremendous following on some of these platforms only to wake up and find out that
hey, the government just outlawed your platform or hey, this platform doesn't exist anymore. They did an IPO and it didn't go so well. So with your email marketing list, it's yours, it's your content, you own it for as long as you're running your business, you can always market to the same individuals. So I think always keep in mind that all of these other channels are great.
doorway or a great opportunity to bring people into your ecosystem. But at the end of the day, you don't own any of these channels and I think you always have to keep that in mind.
Jason Willis-Lee (28:43.246)
Yeah, I think the moral of the story just very quickly, Michael, is don't build a business on rented land, what you just said. TikTok was closed down just the other day. Trump reopened it a day later. If you're building a business on these channels and they're closed down or outflowed, as you said, your business could go up in smoke. One of my business mentors, Amazon, closed down his book sales. And luckily, he was selling the book off his website as well. So he was okay.
Michael Bernzweig (28:49.524)
Yeah.
Jason Willis-Lee (29:11.263)
He was dependent on Amazon there for a while and he's actually the one who told me don't build your business on rented land.
Michael Bernzweig (29:18.794)
Yeah, and I think, you know, what's so interesting is, you know, maybe some of this is a hard lesson to learn. But sometimes it's hard to learn some of these lessons from others, you know, you really need to, to discover on your own and entrepreneurship is, as you shared, is a journey. It's something that you iterate over many years to get to where you're going to and not something that just
happens overnight at the end of the day. So if, you know, obviously you sit in a really unique position based on your background and the segment of the industry that you're in and heading towards, but are there some trends that really excite you that kind of pointed you in this direction that you see happening over the next several years that you think are going to impact our world?
Jason Willis-Lee (30:17.87)
Well, think we will see more tech and not less tech. So if we can leverage the tech, then we should do so. But I think we will always see, I'm very interested in the bridge between the machine and the human. I I'd like to do further work on this bridge between machine translation, for example, and human customer service. I think that's a very interesting hybrid business model.
That's what we're seeing in the online language services industry. And the people doing best, actually, Michael, in my space are those that look upon this with an entrepreneurial mindset. There will always be opportunities for multilingual communicative people with a business mindset. And less so if you think of this time for money working and...
I try and get people out of this time for money mindset and just think about the outcome of what they're selling. I'm very much in favor of lifestyle businesses and five or six hours a day. I don't like burnout. I don't like hustle and grind. I'm all about wellness and a nice healthy work-life balance, family time, those kinds of things. So I think the trend will be hopefully more of that and more...
we could call that a lifestyle business sweet spot, guess, which for me is five or six hours a day. mean, we're just coming up to four o'clock at the end of our conversation. And that's a pretty good day for me. I started at eight, eight thirty and ready for something else. I'm ready to switch off and recharge for tomorrow. So, know, this hustle and grind culture and I see a lot of influences peddling that. And I really raise my eyebrows about and it.
It's not all about hustle and grind. And I think age is also a factor, Michael. I mean, you and I are up towards the latter end of our careers and not 20-year-olds starting out. So it's not the same energy levels you're having. I'm talking to entrepreneurs my age. think they, especially in the tech space, they do feel the pinch from younger colleagues. App development, for example, there's plenty of 20-year-olds just bringing out apps very...
Michael Bernzweig (32:14.484)
Sure.
Jason Willis-Lee (32:33.292)
very quickly and it's a very changing world. it's constantly changing. SEO, for example, is very difficult to find an expert in SEO because it's changing from week to week. So I always raise my eyebrows when someone supposedly calls themselves an expert in SEO. It's a very difficult, fast moving space. So I think those are the trends. I'd like to see more hybrid, more people talking about the human.
leveraging the AI tool. And I remember Seth Godin talking about a tool that could mimic his voice to the point where his wife couldn't, I don't remember the name of the tool, but his wife couldn't tell the difference between his real voice and the AI voice. So yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (33:17.692)
Yeah, I think maybe 11 labs that you're thinking about. Yeah, they put out an amazing tool. And on the SEO front, what's interesting is, and I think this is a telling fact, over this past year, we've seen traditional organic search on the decline.
Jason Willis-Lee (33:21.358)
11 labs, that's the one, that's exactly that's the one.
Michael Bernzweig (33:45.832)
you know, literally annually traditional organic searches declining by 25%. And on the flip side of that, we're seeing searches that begin with AI assessed. So, you know, starting with Gemini or Grok or Perplexity or whatever your favorite tool is, you know, most of us are using some sort of AI to start our days and
AI assisted search is growing by 35 % annually. So it's just a staggering fact and organizations like, you know, for anybody that's familiar with HubSpot, they've literally lost, I believe in the last two months, 50 % of their organic traffic.
So, you know, through traditional search. that's a number that, you know, people need to get in front of. And one of the reasons we actually put out all kinds of courses on tech trends and things like that. We just launched a new course, you know, kind of a...
focusing on some of the strategies we've used here to get ahead of AI search and all of that. So anyways, Jason Willis-Ling, really a great deep dive on a lot of some very interesting topics in AI and language services. I really appreciate it. And thanks for joining us from the Entrepreneurial Translator today on the Consulting Spotlight.
Jason Willis-Lee (35:21.646)
Thank you very much for having me, Michael. It's my pleasure.
Michael Bernzweig (35:24.326)
And we'll leave in the show notes a link for anybody that would like to reach out to Jason and figure out some different opportunities to help grow your organization through some of the techniques that they're using over there that are helping others get to where they want to get to. So thank you for joining us tonight.