Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Besides that differentiator, how do you acquire customers?

Kristin Quinlan: A lot of our growth has been through outreach from our sales team as well as from leveraging the relationships with one entity and being recommended to others. We are really good at what we do and we have got an exceedingly strong reputation for being the best. We also have companies white-labeling our service. We put a lot of language companies into the business of on-demand or over-the-phone interpreting services by being their back office. It’s about 20% to 25% of our overall revenue.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of language services businesses are these that tend to white-label a back-end from you?

Kristin Quinlan: Anybody providing any range of language services other than on-demand interpreting. Generally speaking, those in the document translation, localization, and globalization sphere.

Sramana Mitra: You also have a language translation business?

Kristin Quinlan: Yes, companies who do anything in the language sphere other than on-demand interpreting.

Sramana Mitra: What are you providing them with? Translation services with interpretation services?

Kristin Quinlan: We’re providing them with over-the-phone interpreting services, which is our core competency.

Sramana Mitra: These are companies who are looking for interpretation on a case-by-case basis and that’s the need that you’re providing for them.

Kristin Quinlan: No, not on a case-by-case basis. Let’s say Acme Translation Company has a relatively large client base where they do document translation or website localization. They also provide on-site interpreters. What they’re missing and what their clients are looking for is over-the-phone interpreting. The barrier to entry in our sphere is pretty significant, because it’s heavily leveraged on proprietary technology. What they will do is contact us and we will then provide them with a toll-free number. They will have their account set up onto our system. Their calls come in to Certified Languages but they’re answered with, “Thank you for calling Acme Translation Services.” We provide interpreting services to their clients. We turn a whole bunch of other language companies into exactly what we do.

Sramana Mitra: When did you start that part of the business?

Kristin Quinlan: Probably 2008.

Sramana Mitra: What was your revenue level in 2008 when you started that diversification?

Kristin Quinlan: Probably around $6 million.

Sramana Mitra: That’s one strategic move that you made that created a new stream of revenue. Are there any other such initiatives inside the company?

Kristin Quinlan: No other diversification as far as services. We actually have, over the course of the years, reduced some of our service offerings and focused more exclusively on on-demand or over-the-phone interpreting services. For example at one time, we were really putting a lot of energy into a our document translation department, but we didn’t really know what we were doing.

At one point, we decided that our energy was not best spent in growing our document translation. The competition was pretty stiff. The barriers to entry into the language document translation arena are relatively few whereas over-the-phone interpreting arena’s barriers to entry and competition is pretty narrow. It leveraged a huge amount of technology to do what we do well. We decided to reduce our emphasis on document translation, reduce our strength on on-site interpreting, and focused heartily on over-the-phone interpreting.

We talked consistently about, “In a perfect world, what could our systems do that would make us stand out better?” That’s been our motto. We’re consistently developing and fine-tuning. There’s not a roadmap. There’s not a plan that we are specifically following. Our growth has been leveraged in being better all the time at what we do and, organically, acquiring customers.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International
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