The Story Behind the Strategic Localization Course (aka early lessons in solopreneurship)
Some of you may already know that I embarked on a career change earlier this year. After 20+ years working at large technology companies (Microsoft, Nitro, Dropbox), I decided to make the leap into the unknown and start my own international growth business, Global10x.
I wanted to take the experiences and lessons I learned building products and growing them internationally, and help many more companies on their journey to grow market share and revenue globally.
Over the past 5 months, I’ve spoken with dozens of CEOs, Marketing Leaders and Localization Leaders. Across my conversation, the same themes and challenges keep emerging:
International expansion inevitable for any ambitious SaaS company, but most embark on it too late, only to realize that their platform is not globalized
Most SaaS companies take a copy & paste approach to their go-to-market motions internationally, rather than understand the nuances of their target markets
True market prioritization is rare, and when it happens, is frequently inconsistent across departments
The relatively low cost of localization encourages companies to expand to multiple languages without understanding their potential or adapt their Marketing and Growth strategy
Localization ROI remains an elusive concept for so many teams
The first step on a localization journey is frequently handed to a Product Manager or Marketing Manager with very little background or expertise
For so many companies, international expansion starts and ends with website and product localization - leading to confusion when growth doesn’t meet expectations
Localization buyers and suppliers have not yet figured out the most compelling use cases for AI
The localization technology industry has matured significantly, yet true personalization at scale and ubiquitous localization remains an aspiration
Localization teams are typically categorized as cost centers and find it difficult to evolve and contribute more
The last point is key: in my opinion, localization teams are one of the most under-utilized assets in an organization. They already possess the insights, expertise and passion for international customers. What they lack is the mandate and playbook to make the transition to a growth-focused team.
During my career, I've seen localization teams strive to deliver excellent world-ready products that delight customers around the world. I've always been inspired by the dedication and care that localization teams take to meet incredibly tight deadlines, balance stakeholder demands, make continuous efficiency improvements and ensure linguistic quality is paramount.
I've witnessed first-hand the difficulty in demonstrating the value of localization to business leaders. So many localization teams have limited visibility, despite their outsize contribution and untapped potential to contribute more.
At Microsoft, Nitro and Dropbox, I learned the hard way how to influence senior leaders and make international growth a top priority for the company. I helped make the shift from measuring operational output to measuring value-added growth. And from negotiating turnaround times to influencing market expansion strategy.
I spoke with my good friend, and localization industry expert, Pavel Soukenik, and we both recognized the need to help localization teams increase their impact, influence and operate as growth drivers. We aimed to design a course that offers the practical tools you can use to shift towards a strategic localization operating model.
We agreed that live, cohort-based learning would be best. So much value comes from sharing challenges, working through ideas and solutions and gaining new perspectives from peers in the industry.
We chose Maven.com as our platform and ran our introductory cohort in May.
We're really proud of the excellent feedback we received from our first cohort, which included leaders from Nike, Asana, GoFundMe, and more.
For the upcoming July cohort, we've arranged the entire course across a single weekend, for maximum learning efficiency. Based on feedback, we also decided to augment the course and offer all participants two free consulting sessions with Pavel or me.
If you are interested in joining our July or September cohort, or would like to organize an in-house workshop for your own Localization or Marketing team, please get in touch; I’d love to talk!