In part 2 of our interview with Jan Hinrichs from LocLunch, we talked about sailing and annoying LSPs.
We also got a bit more personal and talked about entrepreneurship, competition and corporations.
Andrej Zito
This is a great thing that you mentioned, local engine Beluga, because I was, for the last two-three minutes, I was trying to think about a way how to segue from LocLunch and start moving towards you, personally. And the next question that I had actually on the list was related to Beluga. So when Javi mentioned you to me, he said that Jan, the founder of LocLunch. So my question to you is, do you think right now people associate you more with LocLunch than Beluga? And, you know, we were talking about ego before. Do you sometimes feel like, like you would rather be seen as the guy who runs Beluga, rather than the LocLunch guy? I don’t like neither title, not anything, you know, I’m, I’m doing this LocLunch initiative, because I see it a huge opportunity for our company to see other people to get in the conversation with people before we might have not been able to talk to. I have met so many great people through LocLunch. And have had so many opportunities now, as a founder of LocLunch to present the community to be on screen right now with you. You know, people will watch this will listen say, hey, yeah, I agree, I don’t agree. Maybe you know, I propose something else, they reach out to me. This is enrichment of my personal life, but also my business life. So I don’t separate those things. I know perfectly well as the founder of of LocLunch. It’s my duty and it’s a huge risk if I wrongly only handle LocLunch, that it will you know, and reputation, social reputation, it takes time to earn, it takes seconds to live. For that that’s more true for somebody so visible like me, I’m definitely sending you a draft of our interview before it gets published. So you have full control over what -actually has happened to me twice that people cancelled after they listen to what they shared, because sometimes they shared something, either inappropriate, or something sometimes, like something sensitive, like above the Klan processes, you know, so that’s also basically to cover my ass so that I don’t spend all the time editing something that may not go out.
Jan Hinrichs
No, don’t worry, you know, I’m growing. I’m growing personally, as well. And, you know, I have loved building a community like this before. It started off, and I, I see the opportunity to build this community. And I’m, as mentioned before, I’m dedicating quite a lot of time to, you know, to visit LocLunches to be there, you know, to, to discuss with our ambassadors, you know, what works, what not work, to get them again, you know, get running, you know, it’s, it’s good for you, if you will see, don’t don’t, you know, you have just two people on your LocLunch, don’t give up, you know, motivate people. And, and this is, I mean, it takes tons of time. And my team sometimes was like, What is this guy actually doing? What the heck are you doing all day long?
Andrej Zito
Yeah.
Jan Hinrichs
But it’s a long time investment and personal growth investment.
Andrej Zito
That was one of the questions they actually had, like, how do you balance your time between the Beluga and LocLunch? Plus, you also have a family, by the way, do you how do you approach this thing? Work life balance, you know, as an entrepreneur, I think, you know, you don’t think in Monday to Friday, terms of Monday to Friday, just seven days a week. Your mind is always entwined between your professional life and your business life. So your personal life and your professional life. And I tried to cope as good as possible. You know, it’s sometimes it’s a little bit crazy. The other day I was several LocLunches a day to attend, which is very intense. And then you have to, you know, step down and say, Okay, what have I learned here? What is new, but I guarantee you I input from LocLunches into Beluga every week, you know, there’s stuff I learned every week. And it’s for free. It’s just, they’re just compensation. I’m learning, you know about people, I’m learning about the approaches, about hiring, about sales, about tools about, you know, all this stuff. And, and you’re in your, in your right to ask your question at a lunch. So you’re a translator, and you wonder, you know, what pricing? That sucks, you know, why, why do I not earn as much as a lawyer? You know, and what can we do? What is your approach to that? Or why a company hires an LSP and not another LSP? You know, sometimes people open up and say, yeah, you know, because we here have this and that requirements in our hiring process. And, you know, it’s not about me, it’s about some rules we have here. You know, so, I have to go to this, this and that one, you know, and there’s no alternative, because we have the small checkbox in our procurement, which nobody else can fulfill, you know, shows like this. And so you can get prepared, you can prepare ISO certification, you can market market entry strategies. The other day, we discussed, you know, the content management on social platforms, for example, it’s a huge thing. Machine Translation is the topic all the time, you know, how to approach it? What is the latest one of books, you can read about, you know, all this fluent? And I think this is like, everybody talks about ongoing, ongoing learning, lifelong learning. Go to LocLunch, man. It’s free. There, you have a lot of questions you can ask. Okay. Jan Hinrichs, what are you curious about right now? So what we’re developing in Beluga, and what is really, I think, a major step forward by industry, this use of of data and language generation. So this is a thought I, you know, I was infected by for, not for some some time now, when the first neural machine translation engines came out in 2017. That was the the Google paper around machine translation. But machine translation for me is not, it’s not so interesting, because it’s, it’s a place where a lot of big companies working, you know, you need huge amounts of, you know, engine needs to make it up. But the soft problem is not resolved a machine. The problem of our industry is how do you and I communicate if we do not have this common language. So suddenly, we invent the translator and now we professionalize the translator to go on scale with machine translation. Okay, so great, yeah, maybe I can skip the translator at some point. But I still generate source content, which then I protest through this professional way to reach you in another target language. Now, natural language processing and natural language generation is about creating content from scratch based on your data point. So your behavior, what your interactions are with the systems and so on. Now, suddenly, you can imagine a world where you and I can help you communicate as a brand. With 1 million people in their local dialect, you can reach my grand father in the northern part of Germany, speaking cartilage, you know, and in the right cultural fit for for him to understand you tend to have this one to one conversation with him, even if it’s automated, you know, machine generated, but still, you know, in some sort, you can have always triggered to say, okay, hey, by the way, you know, I’m a boss, you know, don’t worry, I’m not not a human, but if you need to speak to somebody human, I can put you in place. But the conversations and notifications of this stuff can suddenly be generated from Are you in your language without any source so you do not have any baggage cultural baggage from German Germany, you know, when you translate German as a fourth language into English, you always feel that there’s a German mindset behind. If you translate from English into German, you will have a much more easygoing German. Then if you translate from German into Spanish, and you will read, if you go to Spanish, you know from English or from German, you will notice a difference in the translator because of the baggage they have from the fourth language. And natural language generation GDP three, which is a open AI system is out there is super interesting. It is very early stage because not right for going, you know, for the public, but but I think, you know, these opportunities I love to see is technology, I love to play around I we have to we’re developing like small features where we can use it for our clients. And 2021 is for us the year to launch product at the Lucas health service service language services on the one hand product specific for certain use cases for our clients, marketing based on these technologies. I’ve had projects here So there was a professional within the localization industry and very techie. So what are you curious about outside of localization? Outside of business, maybe outside of tech?
Jan Hinrichs
How do I get on the boat on the sailing boat? Because I guess you know, that I have-
Andrej Zito
-I saw one picture on LinkedIn of you on a boat My smiling face was Yeah, I get my license. Right. So yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m really you know, eager to, to, to go on sea right to explore the seas with my family and and to get back to something I have lost when I when I went to university because then I go in inland and separated myself quite a lot from water. But I used to sail a lot I used to sail on recovers and so on so races, and I’m right now I’m very, you know, hooked in the world round the world race. One hand one round the world race, which taking place right now 70 days around the world sailing 20 boats with incredible speed. Just one person on board. Huge, huge sailing boats. top tech not party technology, and a real quest for you know all sailor men who are their personality personal and, and in terms of, you know, navigation tactics. And this is something I’m falling prey. That’s and we have a new pattern at home. So I’m teaching I’m asked for a new teaching serious and at home. How to get our puppy in line. That’s my ginger. Should I stop now?
Jan Hinrichs
I don’t know. No, no, go ahead.
Andrej Zito
I was like, he’s going to be careful. And when we say by that we all say ginger, ginger, ginger, ginger, and then we stopped but you will stop as
Jan Hinrichs
We are not on that podcast. It’s okay.
Andrej Zito
Right. But you know, that is that is a moment where it just pedal. No, but yeah, just you know, that’s, that’s the name of our dog. And it’s, it’s very, it’s always great. So they do it even if the guest says it by accident, right. That’s the rule. Yeah, that’s the word of edits. Just cut cut off. There’s no Bye bye. No, no every everything it’s it’s a very funny moment. I mean, you know that. And some podcasts are running eight hours. Yeah, we can release like two versions. And do the ginger. And if you guys want to hear the rest, please subscribe. Yeah, hey, that would be a nice hook. No, but it’s uh, you know, it’s a funny, funny way of, you know, they are eating they have dinner they have wine Then LocLunch
Jan Hinrichs
Yes. They are LocLunching. Exactly. So. So it is it happened so long is that at some point you say, Oh gosh, I can’t talk anymore. Now I say the magic word and-
Andrej Zito
You know I want to ask you is about the selling? Like, Has it always been in your family? or How did you get into selling in the first place?
Jan Hinrichs
Yeah, it has, has been a family sport on my mother’s side. So always, you know, Hamburg is a port city, we have the river alpha, we have the North Sea very close to 50 kilometers, that’s the North Sea, we have the Eastern Sea, arctic sea in as well. 5000 kilometers away. So water is everywhere. And I think Hamburg as port city has always is, you know, this flavor with sailor men and we have to leave our band, which is so famous for for the Beatles, when they started off, The Beatles started off becoming big in the stock clapping on the record and in Hamburg on the river bond. It’s not a sport for everybody, of course, because it’s, it’s not that inexpensive. But you can go on sailing with without having any budget, because there’s tons of clubs, there’s tons of opportunities to, you know, join, join boats, and going on certain boats for young people, you know, to get trained and so on. So it’s not an Eli board. And I was living next door to the river, you know, and it was a very clear sign, you know, my parents were sailing and I liked very much like the racing stuff. I I raced for six years or seven years, I took from different categories and regional racing, it’s a lovely experience, no water, the winds and natural environments. And, and I think also for, you know, to come down to set business aside to think about other things, you know, everybody needs to have their own routines, you can’t be with business all the time. So these kind of you know, and then a very important stuff is when you go out on the on the sheet, suddenly your internet connection is away. Your mobile phone coverage is away and you’re just you and the radio system. You listen to the radio. Oh, cool. You know, this is back to the roots.
Andrej Zito
But if I’m not mistaking Madrid is also inland right. So do you have to travel to this?
Jan Hinrichs
Yeah, totally. The next closest sea is the Mediterranean and Valencia three hours away. It’s more for me, for chartering chartering into some vacation with a family it’s a very different thing to be on a boat, approaching a beach, or to be on the beach and approaching the sea. So yeah, and I, I did all this, a lot of licenses you need to do this was as long lasting project took me three years to go through all the different licenses I have to do. But you know, again, this is like, personal achievement. And I was very happy when I could publish photos. Hey, yeah, cool. I’m now able to, you know, target both and, and get a lot of sales happening in Barcelona or wherever.
Andrej Zito
I still want to stick with one question with your childhood. You know, like you mentioned, you talked about your brother, he’s an entrepreneur, you also turn out to be an entrepreneur. Do you think like your family raised you in a certain way? Or do you think it was the environment or hot Why do you think that both of you turned out to be entrepreneurs?
Jan Hinrichs
Yeah, I I strongly believe that there’s a family culture thing you know, and, and then the printed family topics around the dinner table always. It’s very likely that you see your dad you know, my kids, I have two daughters. We’re talking quite a lot. You know, I’m sharing my day to day you know, and we’re talking about Latinos I’m trying to explain to you they know perfectly well when they see all the screen pull up of people. Yeah, this is a lot less right. So why the heck are you not hanging out? With those people, you know, and then I explained that, you know, this is cost of that, and that and, and, yeah, this is something you inherit. And I think people are from my grandfather built up a bakery in Hamburg, a very successful bakery, which scaled up to 200 people. My, my dad has his own company as well, he ran a company for 20 years and or 25 years, and my brother started was always super enterpreneur. And started to be very successful, very early soldiers companies saying, at the age of, I don’t know, 2028, or something like that, or maybe around that made tons of difference, you know, and when we started, when he approached me to start seeing open bc in that time in Madrid, it was like, of course, you know, let’s, let’s do it. Let’s see what happens. And we introduced in, in Spain at that moment, it was very interesting, because social networking didn’t exist, you know, we there was no term for, for contact us online, to make contacts online business, and you say, you know, people were looking at me like, I you guys. Have you ever seen how business is working here in Spain? There are you called lunching, you know, you go out to have lunch with people, three hours, and you build up a relationship, because, and this is undoubtfully a very strong, strong thing for me that, you know, I took him to LocLunch, you know, this built up relationship, calm down, stop for a moment, one and a half hours, enjoy your lunch, I think, you know, our current society around goals and objective, you know, how we press for, for our KPIs, and so on, makes up, automate everything. And at the, at the very end, you know, you suddenly discover, okay, cool, my job is actually replaced by the machine. Great, you know, I suffered eight hours a day, had to 30 minutes lunch break. And, by the way, this is not counted in my salary. So if I have 15 minutes more than it’s get rested from my, you know, and personally, I think it’s absolutely wrong way. It’s not fulfilling any, any human aspect. It’s just like, industrialization of human kind. And is, it’s nothing I want to support. So for LocLunch, was, you know, take time, enjoy your meal have compensation. And Spain, you know, you have sobremesa, you enjoy the meal and family sit together another two hours. Just have conversations, build up relationships, understand each other, create empathy, understand who is the reference all that that’s
Andrej Zito
One thing that I’m curious about, because you said this twice that your brother came to you and asked you to start something? If he hadn’t done that, what would be like, the free choice of Jan Hinrichs, like when you were younger, like what would you be doing?
Jan Hinrichs
I think I really, very early on, you know, with 18 I lost my mother to counter. So was 18 years. I, I was like, Whoa, cool. This is life. Right? Okay. Then I started to take decision of my future and where I wanted to go, you know, what, what, what did I wanted to be and what feels good. And so I I felt, you know, I want to work internationally, because I like International. And I like working with people internationally. I don’t like small groups, close groups with close matches. I like open groups. You know, fluid compensation and growth, munching we can change the world, you know, so let’s change it. And today’s a good day to start with. Then, you know, I took a BA in Business Administration, not in a German University, but in bilingual do a great university program from Spanish and German. institution because it was two years in Germany and two years in Spain, and I wanted to be with my wife, she wanted to be back in Madrid and I liked Madrid. So I said, Okay, I need to find, you know, a trade off. And, and also there, it was a very international mixed program, one of the purest programs in Europe to establish these cross border relations between academia. So we share our curses with people who were in England, and France, and Spain. German, you know, and, and all these four universities, were trading their people each term for every six months, you change the place. So that was just brutal. And that was really International. And I really enjoyed working on this International Auto Show. And then, you know, that opportunity with tech came in a lot the, you know, the bikes of startup grow something new. Of course, my brother was completely like, a future you go for it. And, yeah, and, and this is, you know, that I’m not, I was not a tech guy, I told you before, I was failing a lot with an outside sports guy that I skated my whole youth, I was a skater, you know, I haven’t had a computer, I think, you know, till university, I was just looking at a computer like, Oh, my gosh, my brother is there, you know, he’s, and he’s so boring. And then it came all that, you know, okay, so what do you want to be in life? Where’d you know, where’s things going? This is an opportunity from an intrapreneur background, so let’s do it, you know, and then when we launched it, we saw this opportunity to outsource ourselves and build up a business, you know, having a client already. So they covered our costs or our salaries, and we manage everything. And then we could, you know, this was cool, but it’s way cooler, if you can get the knowledge from different projects, different enterprises that are in the same striving, you know, growth mindset, and get all this knowledge back and share it with between the project get get better, you know, and this is probably my racing background that competition has always been thought of being there. You know, I played hockey, field hockey as well. It’s always competition racing was competition. Gaming was thought of competition without any leaks. But yeah, I think that is part of my DNA.
Andrej Zito
That’s it. I just actually wanted to ask you, but no, like now that you brought up the word competition? Do you think it’s DNA? Or it’s just like the parenting that you got when you were younger? Indeed, and do you think it’s like healthy? It’s maybe like a very stupid question. But I don’t know. Like, like, like, I know that a lot of entrepreneurs who actually make it big, they are very competitive in their nature. But we also talk about, you know, like, ego, like, basically competitiveness. For some people, it’s like, I’m better than the other people. You know, so I’m not sure where I’m going with this question. I don’t know. Like, do you think it’s healthy to be competitive? Or is there like a healthy level of competitiveness? Where it’s not about your ego?
Jan Hinrichs
I think everybody has competitiveness, you have to rate it from zero to whatever five or 10 and you have to set yourself where do you feel you are? You know, and I think my competitiveness is somewhere on a seven eight level you know, so seven eight, what does that mean for me? When I see myself for Latinos, for example, I could have a very entrepreneurial spirits here and say, business business business get rich get prominent, get whatever, you know, but this sucks. So I don’t know I maybe this is what would I have different to what I’m where I’m different to other people. You’ll see that drive for you know, results and somebody has to post my first million, you know, from very early on and richness is something important. You know, I’m getting there being part of this. And I think that’s not my driver missing my driver is more, you know, have a positive impact the time we have You’re learning how to make an impact and and let it be as positive as possible possible. You know? And it’s, I think that’s, that’s, that’s the thing, competitiveness. I, I’m married to two to somebody who’s from a teacher background. So the whole family, like most of the brothers and sisters from my, my wife, I suppose, are educators. So they’re in the teaching public teaching environment, you know, and we see that all these famines, you know, all these, pushing for results, destroys so much creativity is something that on the long run, you destroy more than you gain. If you’re, I’m a firm believer in, make a case for yourself, be good to yourself, improve yourself. But, Greg, everybody with, you know, not about you and your race, but going together will benefit you, and will benefit. So when when I do LocLunch, I’m doing it. Because I believe that this is something that makes sense for us, personally. But at the same time, it’s so open, and everybody has exactly the same possibility, like me. You know, so I do, I hope I do a bigger good to the whole ecosystem, by helping myself as well. What do you think about that? How would you rate your competitiveness? If I can ask this question to the host?
Andrej Zito
On a scale of zero to 10, I don’t know. I feel like I maybe have it similar to you that like, in some cases, I wouldn’t be like really like 10 nine, especially when it comes to my vision of the world. And I feel like let’s say, let’s say if you’re like Elon Musk, like to me, like if you have a strong vision of something. To me, it’s like, I don’t tolerate anything else. Because if I tolerate something else, I’m not that driven and committing to shaping the world the way I see it, for example, so then I would be like, if you have a different opinion on like, goodbye. Like, it’s not there, because it’s like, you know, it’s like, I don’t know, well, you run a company, you know, like some, in some cases, you want to be like, hey, I want to hear your opinion. Maybe sometimes you say, okay, most of my employees think this, so I’ll give in but, but sometimes, if you’re sitting on top of the world, you have vision into everything, you know, so you have a like a better understanding of the bigger picture. And in some cases, I think, personally, you just have to be like, Okay, I know that this is the right way for us, like you are not very democratic about it. Like, in some cases, you need to be real, like, Okay, this is the way I see. And I think like, like people who have like a very strong opinion, and very strong vision of something that strong vision and drive can actually get them to, to deliver on those things. And to me, it’s like, like, if I see like, maybe I can explain to you later, because I’m do something about education, like I see, like the education system, the way it is, it’s very flawed. And I’m trying to do something about it. Because I think that universities don’t have a place in the society in today’s world, especially if young people need to take loans for that, because I don’t think you need a degree in today’s world to do a lot of things. So I’m very strong in this opinion. So everybody who says and things like, okay, universities, they’re there for a reason or something like that. I’m like, No, no, like, I’m like, very, very hardcore on this, you know, because it’s how I see the world and, you know, like, just this, this laser focus on how I see the world basically doesn’t like, the noise, my my actions, you know, like, I don’t take out of things like I see this as the way and I just focus on it. So if you are on board with the vision, that’s great, because we see the world the same way, but if not, like, Get out of my way kind of look. Interesting. So the question here is, you know, how do you nutrish your mind and your ideas, because nutrition of ideas is what comes through our compensation, right?
Jan Hinrichs
And sometimes we are right and sometimes we are wrong, you know, and so, this is balanced. I see everybody has to take especially when you’re driving for something, driving for company driving, you know, an idea or whatever, I think is something interesting and helpful.
Andrej Zito
Did you read it from my profile? From you analyze it? No, no, but I know people, you know, who are just very little, they have a very clear idea about what they want to do. And they proceed. And, and they success as they, they make it. But here again, we have two table thing. You know, sometimes it’s just too far. On your one sided point of view. I think I, I don’t I like in this kind of, I don’t like to, you know, I’m more often conversation part and I believe, not so much in leadership. So, you know, single, single genius kind of people. But in organizations and, and I’ve read a ton earlier, you know, this is this is just an anecdote, but I’m a an end lover, you know, and, like ants. And- oh, yeah, yeah, me too. Me too. Yes.
Jan Hinrichs
The little animal.
Andrej Zito
Yes. Yes.
Jan Hinrichs
Now, in behavior studies, super interesting, you know, how they organize themselves, how an ant colony works, how they distribute work, how they communicate, swarm identity, what comes worse individual, what is the swarm and you will see, they do not have the Shirky we have adopted as humans, to see our company needs to know and this boss has a very great idea. You know, he is just a mind blowing guy. He You know, he changes every Jeff Jeff. I think this is a very simplistic way of viewing our our planet, our society to think and believe that a single person can change the world. If it is a very easy patch, it’s very easy to digest to say Bill Gates is the one and only you know, he is the one who, who knows everything about Coronavirus, who, on the other side might have created or Coronavirus, you know, depending on who you ask. And all the good ambassadors because of him. You know, this is a very simplistic view on six. And now, if you see a billion people on earth, with 1000s of inputs, every single second happens millions of inputs, every single second have has on life, and how we, we we interact with each other. You know, this is this is not about genius or not. This is about group behavior. It’s about you know, what happened to your loved ones, you know, to yours enough to change most of our idea of you know, hey, by the way, you can access knowledge. Yeah, and you can speak to Jeff B BD. of Nutella, meet him on a monthly LocLunch here. And, and and the same is true for him to say, oh, gosh, you know, I’m I’m here, but I’m isolated. I just see my two peers of my industry and they have always the best ideas and, you know, and, you know, so now she suddenly just have an open conversation with other with a translator, who has a strong opinion about, you know, what is the value of his work within the chain or what he hates, of being part of a super agency, you know, what is his feeling as a number cruncher, you know, in, in a super agency where there’s like, here’s a content creator, and there’s, you know, somewhere down here, you know, is he and how valuable is his contribution to the overall product. So, if we want to get rid of, you know, these, these kind of more systems that we have created because of efficiency, industrialization, and so on. We need to have compensation and this compensation doesn’t come from here. Learn from your brain, that it comes from a collective brain. And this collective mind shift is generated by crop.
Andrej Zito
Yeah,
Jan Hinrichs
My idea
Andrej Zito
Maybe I gave the impression that I want to, like completely compete with everyone. But to me, it was always about about us against the world. So like you said, it’s not about the individual, like, maybe I can contribute with something. And and where I am right now with the initiative is because of collaborative effort with other people, like I talked to a lot of people, like what they think about it, you know, like, I’m pretty sure you know, about like Lean Startup methodology, you know, like, you start not with creating product, but you start talking to the people and seeing if there’s a problem that’s worth solving, right? First of all, right? So it’s not like, like, you live in a bubble. But it’s like, like, if you see a group of people who, let’s say, identify the same problem, they think that the education system is flawed, and then it’s you who are competing against the rest of the world who steal things that universities are good. It’s, for example, like, Oh, yeah, for example, like, let’s see machine translation, right? When machine translation was a novelty, there were a group of people who were like pushing, because they’re like, Hey, this is the future. And then there were people who were like, No, no, no, no, no. So then the people who are trying to bring the innovation and make it mainstream, because of different things, they’re competing against the people who are still like, let’s say, living in the past, right? very innovative person, so you must know what I’m talking about. So that’s what I meant. Like, it’s like competing, but you compete with the people that see the world the same way that you compete, which basically, technically not means that you’re competing, but you’re just trying to show them how the world could look like better, right. So.
Jan Hinrichs
So this is all persuasion, persuasion. strategies, you know, is, you know, one one of the things I like to I like to think and try to remember all the time is, you know, ask the why question. So, five times Why, why are people having university? Yeah, because they want to study, you know, why? Why do they want to study? Yeah, because they want to find a place in the workforce? Why do they find they want to try to find a place in the workforce? Because they need to earn money, you know, and why do I need to earn money, blah, blah, blah, you can go this way. And then you got got to the root cause, when you get to the root cause, then you can propose, why is this happening? Now the university is just like mushy, trusses, just for me, it’s a consequence of industrialization, efficiency. And then at the root cause is because you and I, I can’t afford to write individually to millions of clients all over the world, one to one, because I can’t build up the system with humans. But this is a technical problem. You know, we haven’t get the sod around know how creative brief we have memorized. No, sorry, not memorize the idea of the creative brief as a source source for copywriting teams. Right? We have seen it in our industry lately, there are a lot of advocates for these kinds of No, we create content from scratch for our audience, which is cool. And this is where we have to go. But it takes a long time. And it’s it’s costly. And what happens, you know, if your people you have trained people to get in this, suddenly are dropping out. This is scalable. No, it’s not. You know, maybe it’s not, can Google do the same on millions and millions of work? Some maybe not, you know, what takes it to, to, to deliver you. So why do I write you a support entry Support Center entry can be caught, you have a problem, you know, and well, I should, you know, you have this problem, I should detect it. And instead of giving an agent to you and say, Hey, you know, your problem is here, and you know, why don’t know, let’s help serve, Support Center answer, you know, you get your answer for yourself. It’s free and I put it out there and you can find it. Now, this is not ideal. The ideal thing is I understand your your case, and give you the guidance, not to read the full article and ask you what is helpful. Yeah, no, come on. You know, you’re you’re you’re laughing because you know that you Motion? This is not the answer this is we find a solution for something, which is, which is there and it’s next door. Okay, it’s scalable. It will solve 80% of all people’s problems. But isn’t a good user experience? Hell? No. Because I have to go to Google, I have to use the right seo keyword in order to find that question answer. And then suddenly, it’s just half of my answer, you know, so rethinking the whole thing. That is what I’m very interesting. And this is where I think, you know, ask the why question, to get to the root. And then, you know, let’s build something new. And if you say, you know, academia is not connected. Okay, so true. And we have this discussion at LocLunch. And it’s again, and again, the discussion, what can we do that it became more relevant? How can we help people? What is the curriculum for people to study is a four year study and then go into work? the right approach, you mentioned before, you’re going to know,
Andrej Zito
It’s not very lean.
Jan Hinrichs
Exactly, because you’re missing out on opportunities to test your knowledge, immediately. So now, what is needed to have to immediate color, color relation between academia and practice? Now, how do you train your people to do certificates, LinkedIn, some business, you know, micro certificate, certificate, I think this is great. If it goes in the right direction. You know, and I’m, I’m like you, you know, I’m an advocate for we’re learning all the time. Now, I need a special skill, make it easy to continue. I’m not here for two years. MBA in keinen. If I just want to know how to make up my balance sheet now I read my balance sheet. Give me a two hours Kurth introduction, if you’d like to learn more, can I interact with his learning? And my reality? So how do I teach graph a trainer that can teach me that? Again, you know, opportunity for language services? Text generation, you have a need. I have a system. And if I could, I would train you individually. One to One training. Can I’m stopping here because I’m getting emotional.
Andrej Zito
That’s good. That’s good. Because you know, like you said the word bullshit. So maybe when I promote this episode, I will always say, I got Jan Hinrichs to say bullshit. To me. You seem like a very nice and polite guy that usually doesn’t swear much right. Dude.
No, I don’t I try. I’m very tempered. I’m a German man. I’m German. I’m not yet Enya. And he called me Juanito. You know, so almost I Spanish nationality as well. Many people believe that I’m already way more Spaniard than German. In many and the good and the bad. And, and vice versa, you know, but still, yeah. I’m tempered. I’m from Germany, from Northern Germany, from Hamburg, were tempered people.
Andrej Zito
That’s a good segue to my next question. And we’ll start working up soon. What is actually something that people seem to misunderstand about you?
Jan Hinrichs
I dont know what they, they think about me, you know, maybe they just think that I’m a crazy guy. Jan’s just a crazy guy on LinkedIn publishing all the time and sharing this LocLunch thing. And, you know, what is his goal? I don’t know, I don’t know what others believe, I hope you know, the world is full of opportunities, and you can work with people and you can not work with people, you know, type of people you like, and work with them. You know, sometimes something comes out sometimes. You know, but I try not to close any any doors. And so I have one agency, I have closed my doors on LinkedIn because to several approaches to connect and then you know, hi, how are you doing? Yeah, yeah, by the way, this is awful. Service list, you know, of people I use, it’s nice, but you know, we’re not working with lsps. And so we’re not outsourcing Oh, that’s nice. But you know, here’s my services. And just a minute after or the next day, somebody else for the same team contact me again, you know, Hey guy. Yeah, I see, you know, how’s this my services? And have you seen your peers? You know, in Salesforce or whatever you attract your encounters? No. So yeah, sorry, sorry. Sorry. Next day again. Okay.
Andrej Zito
Is it an Asian company by any chance?
Jan Hinrichs
It’s a four letter Asian company.
Andrej Zito
I know exactly. I had the same experience with them. Oh, my God.
Jan Hinrichs
Yeah. And I, I decided, and this is really the one and only, you know, company I company, I block. I not accept any requests? Because they’re just not getting it.
Andrej Zito
Yeah. So it seems like they’re still doing it. You know, it’s funny, because I even actually tracked down the CEO of the company. And I’m like, hey, do you know that your team is actually doing this? But no response. Because, you know, sometimes the people, the people on the top, they don’t even know. So I feel like I’m doing them a favor by liking him, though. But he didn’t even bother to reply or anything. So
Jan Hinrichs
Please, listener, this is a call to the company. You right? This is a call to the company. This is, you know, your opportunity in the comments, please. Have you been in touch with this company? And have you reached out to somebody explaining them? Why it’s not so great to be contacted all the time? With the same approach? No. Anyway, I say yeah, we’re not alone in this world. It’s a big agency. It’s a very big player out there. And it’s completely understandable how with tools, social tools, they have access to Salesforce is there, you know HubSpot is there you have all these tools at hand. Don’t Don’t risk your social reputation. And you will, I mean, you can fool one time, you can fool maybe two times, but not three times, not all the time.
Andrej Zito
My notorious question, and I’m curious what you’re going to say? How do they kind of know your personality? What do you think is wrong with our industry?
Jan Hinrichs
Think, you know, we talked about that before. When people feel that they have no growth possibilities, because they are stuck in a model, which is determined by the number of words you can produce. And the only way out is to buy technology to be more efficient, to increase slightly, your possibilities. I’m talking about the price per word, or price per hour or whatever. You know, I think that is, it is a huge problem. For huge problem of our industry, it causes a lot of stress, which is not good. I don’t just like suffering from cows, you know, I’m not a fan of, of animal suffering, as a whole. So and I’m not a fan of human suffering as a whole. I think we have a tendency, and this is this is history part, you know, where this industry came from? And the players who ramp up the industry, the industry, we’re talking about the industry, you know, industry is how can I optimize my workflow? How can I optimize my resource? how, you know, processes, resources, timestamping, price per word, competition, getting lower rates using machine translation. It creates too much suffering creates too much stress. It creates a negative negative as a whole. And it’s not in favor of the project. We’re working at Beluga. We’re not outsourcing to other lsps because we want to keep the distance between content creator and content, right? And content, not translators, in this case, as close as possible. Now, our translators, what I want them to do is take responsibility for their work. So it’s not it’s not compatible with an industrialized workflow where they have to You know, here’s my application is my contribution to work type work. You know, this is, this is a myth, respect for intellect and reduces their opportunities for a better future. So I think this is what happened, I think there are many people out there who understood this problem and who are working on solving it, not easy. We have still this problem of massive content creator, and how to translate conflate, again, you know, these massive amounts of, of content into other translate and other languages today, and not tomorrow. So the stress on the whole system is huge. Then we have academia who says, Well, you know, I love you know, the, the, you know, we want to have translators, we want to have culture. Yeah, but reality is giving us a factory worker. So you’re creating factory workers who are tailored, you know, top technology translators. Yeah, I can use this technology is that, but it’s still the same, he has a limit, an industry set limit of his output, based on his work rate, per month, word output per month. Can I think this is? Yeah, you asked about the, you know, the one single biggest flaw I think this is an industrial problem. And if you look away from our industry, and you look, you know, bakeries, take bakeries, in our case, we have industrialized bakeries. But right now, look, look, the city, suddenly you have this boutique, you know, bakery on the corner, this boutique coffee shop, and people line up, you know, because this guy is just marvelous. He cooks the best coffee in the whole city. No, but this cooking experience is not so scalable. So now we come in with technology and seeing Okay, so why do people queue up for a bakery? Can I bakery is because maybe you meet people, and you’re just alone, you could make your coffee at home. So what hinders here, but then you’re alone? It’s not fun. Now maybe queuing for this one coffee cappuccino and you know, all the hard stuff on that and, and, you know, all the fancy stuff. It’s just the experience they want to feel so that they’re they feel that their life is not nonsense. Because that gets a little bit philosophical. And And really, the please don’t listeners Don’t Don’t take me wrong is not a, you know, no critics on on that, but I on translation workflows as a whole. Now what we do, I think somebody who choose to be a translator is a cultural ambassador. And he bridges understanding from one culture to another, you know, and now the problem is we just realized him and use him. Because we have he figured out to use a machine yet. But I don’t think that the translator with cultural and human aspect has to compete with a machine. It’s just that the workflow we’re designing for a certain goal makes no sense to have somebody human in such an industrial project. But I think we will see a shift towards a human way smaller scale operation, even on scale, because, you know, there’s a problem why Google’s taking for big agencies to do this is because I don’t want to take responsibility to for a huge network of collaborators, they just say, Okay, I have enough trouble in house. Yeah, I want to have four people I can cut their heads. If something goes wrong, you know, you sent me an invoice and that’s it, and I just have to do it. But you know, I I think it is not in the, in the idea of next generation managers and Gen Z, millennials. We’re all the same, you know, where we be, well, you value the human touch. The human interaction is important. And it’s much more fun. You know, it’s not fun to be somebody in the belt. And doing the same stuff every day and feeling like shit at the end of the day? Because, you know, and then the time comes, yeah, but I would have translated way better, you know? Okay, tomorrow’s another day, you know, time I go to sleep, I have my cup of tea now in the line IQ. And you know, so. So yeah, I think this is a problem of management of organization, how do we help us work? I think there are solutions for this, people are getting used to manage more, we see buyers are getting more and more the in house approach, you know, I manage in house, I have my own team and I create the content creators and thought auger are not scalable. And into the one and only question i everybody should ask themselves, is this my core business? is managing conflation for my company, a core business? The sound says, Yeah, go for this. You know, this, the answer is? Well, partly, you know, five part solution. Yeah, we know, we all know we need to be global and global can be the way to to riches, richness, you know, but I use developing your software, or are you developing translation process behind that? And what does it take to manage 80 people for translation review? Our QA standard? What are we doing? Not hyperlocal? You know, being, hiring the right people beat 365 days, 24/7 available? Or have the resource, build up the team? keep them motivated, keep them involved? Have some, you know, why do we all do this? I think Renato was at Renata bin annatto, who famously say, you know, then why do we do quality assurance. This is bullshit, you know, who needs quality assurance if we can get it right in the first place. But the problem is, I’m using an industrial process. And this industrial process needs reviewing. And because the one contributor is not empowered enough, and not familiar enough, or has a soloed salary, you know, that he rushes his day to get this 2000 words done. Job done, you know, and he commits error. So he’s faded out. Again, it’s a management problem. I think it’s something people start realizing and unpacking too much. But this is this is I think, the problem.
Andrej Zito
So two things that came to my mind, first of all, shout out to your dog. But I want to say shout out to your web designer, or whoever created your Beluga’s website, I was telling you, you know, like, when you were talking about the boutique bakery or coffee shop, that’s what I thought when I saw your website for the very first time that it really was different. And it stood out. So good job on that. But like when we talk about this, you know, like global scalability and this block of boutique things that people need to start to, like more, my first thought was, okay, Starbucks, where is this? Like, I don’t know, moms and pops coffee shop, that they just start. What do you think about this? Because many people swear and live by Starbucks. It’s still loved, but they made it work on a global scale.
Jan Hinrichs
Exactly. I’m thinking now out of the box, no, okay. So Starbucks was cool, because they create a place where you can enjoy a cup of coffee, coffee outside of home. And it was not a takeaway coffee, you know, you could sit down and they offered you internet access. There was nothing like that on scale. You know, and they saw the opportunity they, they created this lovely environment inside the store. And a huge is a huge scale effects in, you know, running operations and adding more value to users, author stores now, after 10 years of working, you know, Hey, you know what, yeah, maybe you drive into a Starbucks. But maybe you think now I’m here in Milan. And the last thing I want to do is to go to a store Because this is what I can do every single day just next to my house, you know? So now, Starbucks, maybe you you need to, to understand the dynamics of what people like to do. So they need a new experience, they want to see our authentic, you know, coffee drinking, you know, how can you convert a Starbucks, which is one size fits all, into a boutique network of, you know, of coffee shop, and leverage on scale operations to make their life easier. Maybe it’s not about you know, operating a store, it’s about logistics, it is about, you know, financing. Maybe it’s about, you know, driving culture. And, and maybe it’s travel, you know, it’s you who defined, what is your business? What’s the framework of your business, and maybe they just need to reset. And I think it’s a good moment, because at least if you need travel is now so I won’t say boring now. But. But if you go to Madrid, High Street, you go to London, High Street, and you go to hammer High Street, and you find that exact same offering from the exact same brand, and the accent. Where’s this mom and dad shop? Where’s this authentic Mama, who sells your book, recommendation, you find my parents found and brought it home. And I was reading and I had this experience that this is from that place. And we’ve lost it completely. And I think this is over. And this is not what you know, the next generation is looking.
Andrej Zito
You’re saying the right words, like it always segues perfectly. Next question. But I’ll still pause here because you know, when you talk about like, if you go to Milan, like you don’t want to go to Starbucks, because it will be the same experience. So kind of like to tied to localization, maybe the Starbucks in Milan, should have a Milan feel to it, that maybe the product would be the same because you still want to have the same piece of coffee that you like, but maybe the ambiance would be different, or it would like, look like a Italian Starbucks, you know, different from the Spanish one, it’s kind of similar to like, what McDonald’s does with their, you know, like, sometimes they have like, in Japan, you might have like a very special burger, you know, just in the Japanese market. So you might have still that incentive to go visit the Japanese McDonald’s once you’re there.
Jan Hinrichs
They’re trying, exactly. But you know, I think the root cause you know, why somebody might go to Burger King, or might go to McDonald’s, and myself to do so. So is this the same thing? Like, oh, yeah, and it is not about the product itself is about the corporate behind it. You know, and I think and this is, this is where, again, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m, I might be biased. Definitely. And I’m a community guy. So I think in terms of, you know, I do his contribution and I, I might focus, the view, somehow in a different direction, and the whole thing moves slightly more this way. So this is my contribution, but I’m not leaving anything here is just one point. And I’m driving it unlimited conscious consciously and driving it in one direction. Now, the corporate and especially, you know, the big one is they are not getting human again. And this is you know, lock world lock. We’re pre Madonna don’t know if you have seen the video from the keynote or lock world. It is a girl talking about humanisation self as it is the big trends, you know, if it was experience, you know, it was a gift, the user journey, experience and so on. But we were living in the hyper transparent world. So you can know everything about everybody, almost. And you know everything about the big brands. Still, you can influence millions of people when you say is a new burger. Of course, you can. But it’s like you know, I think are attention span is going down our tolerance for Okay, so my dad also went to McDonald’s. So I go to McDonald’s. If you’re not introducing any kind of dicta, which, I don’t know, but, you know, that people back to your product, and I’m, you know, we’re talking about burgers, but Facebook is doing the same or social networks are, you know, working your psyche. And, and, and dealing with us as, like rats in a laboratory to feed our conscious with stimulus, come back, come back, you know, Lincoln, like, like, like engagement? Yeah. Okay. And we know it, and we come back. And, and, you know, we’re driven by that. So, you know, there’s a tipping point in society, and I firmly believe that the big corpse have reached this tipping point, in, that they need to reset, rethink what they’re doing, what is the overall impact they want to have on society, because their society player, some are bigger, some are smaller, but you know, everybody has an impact. And this impact must be in line with values. And these values need to cater to the audience. It’s not about your product, it’s about, you know, what, what kind of values we feel are acceptable. So if we all feel, you know, that the mum and dad shop, are acceptable, and, you know, we feel it’s that shit if my dad runs out of business, just because we have Amazon everywhere. And it’s convenient. And maybe Amazon would have a good drive for the next 10 years. But then suddenly, you feel okay, maybe we are completely dependent on Amazon, you know, and there’s no alternative of our convenience store, and we’re totally hooked. In that it was the same time we do not have any alternatives more, from this moment. You want as an Amazon, you want to buy I think, you know, give back and feel okay, so maybe now’s the moment to enrich everybody’s life, not only my life, but everybody is life. And then you know, we grow together. And I’m okay with that being a driving force and still making a lot of money. Because I can do things that are the comp. I don’t know if this, this gets to the point. But it’s, I think we’re in a change moment. And that’s what I’m reading on later. Maybe it’s my bubble.
Andrej Zito
Well, the LinkedIn survesy what you liked writing with you comment on
Jan Hinrichs
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So maybe I’m completely in my own bubble.
Andrej Zito
Yes, speaking about change. Like I said, you always serve it so nicely for me. Speaking about change, I always have this question where ask the guests about things they change their mind about? But I’m not going to ask you that exactly. I’m going to actually personalize the question just for you. Because I know you told me that you you’re an avid reader. So I would like to know, what is the book that actually made you change your mind about something? Let’s see something fundamental, like, until you read the book, you were like, okay, the world looks and functions this way. Then you read the book, and you’re like, Oh, shit.
Jan Hinrichs
I think you know, habit. Habit was one of these books way before the social dilemma came up. And I have it was the first book published on on social networks and the trigger, they they caught and people strive for creating habits for people to create addiction. Now, and that book was sort of like, this is reality. You know, and, and is a best seller. So you know, you know, it’s read by many people and many people feel like this is this is the way to go. That one was important, as you know, this kind of eye opener, but Okay, so you mentioned before our website, you know, you are the Luca linguistics website is a one pager So no, no, no, you know, no list of services no context for what we have somewhere contact for my sake, but you know, so this there’s one One part, which is the answer to the question to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. So this question comes from the famous book from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to galaxy tacular setup, you know, so when reading this book, and I read it, when I was young, sailing there on vacation trip, I started starting reading the book on Douglas Adams, the anti voyage through galaxy, you know, with all these crazy stuff in there. Listen, other things like the Babel fish, you know. And I reread it like, two years ago, or three years ago, actually, before we started, you know, redesigning our website and so on. I noticed somebody, whoa, these guys like Elon Musk, and, you know, these Google founders. They are all in the status, atoms. Page, they have all read the stories from Arthur Dent who’s traveling, you know, from Earth, to the universe, and have 10,000 of crazy encounters with people think, tools, and so on the towels and so on. And, you know, and when you look, in reality, you’re seeing how they, harder fiction became for these kind of crazy guys to develop the current state of work who have made it, their aspiration, to realize fiction, and to make fiction become truth. And so they did dedicate huge amount of money of, of time of people into just building what they love to see as a, you know, in in this fictional sites. And so, you know, this reading, this is why we have 42 in our website. It is just, it is this kind of relationship building, the mind ship, you know, everything is possible. Just you have to write it down, you have to imagine it. And, you know, go for it. And suddenly, we have this kind of fatal fist for you and I can talk tend to be able to translate, and maybe it’s implanted in our brain, a hammer book, I can only recommend it. international sales will grow back at least from this podcast. But it is. Yeah, that is a good one.
Andrej Zito
We’re getting close to two hours and 30 minutes after after a long time. This was probably one of my longest interviews, but I enjoyed every minute of it. So thank you very much for that. final words from jan Hinrichs. If you could speak to the minds of the people in the industry, what would you tell them?
Jan Hinrichs
Keep pushing.
Andrej Zito
Keep pushing. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. We can end with that. Thank you once again. short, short and sweet, sir. Thanks again, Jan.
Jan Hinrichs
Leave your comments in this podcast and comment what means please keep pushing for you. And I’m very happy to continue the conversation.
Andrej Zito
Great. Thank you very much again, and I guess it’s time for ginger.
Jan Hinrichs
Thanks a lot. Andrej ’twas great to talk to you.
