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Michele explains how she invented time travel using only a fax machine. She talks about early success in her translation business and how she had to eventually fire herself from translating to protect her family life. To be continued...
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
And we're back to another podcast episode of essential dynamics. Derek Hudson's perspective on business and how it works and also life. I'm Reed McColm, your very handsome host. And today, I have in the studio mister Derek Hudson himself, the guru. Derek, welcome to the program.
Derek:Reed, it's, great to be here. Even though you keeps calling me a guru and I'm not, but, it's great to be here and excited about our guest today and the conversation which we anticipate will blow everyone away.
Reed:Well, who is our guest?
Derek:Our our guest is Michele Hecken, and I'm gonna get, in fact, we're gonna have a good conversation about Michele's, story, because it's super cool.
Reed:Okay.
Derek:But Michele right now is, is an executive coach. And so she helps, entrepreneurs, high performing entrepreneurs perform even higher. And she probably has a better way of describing it than that. So first of all, Michele, welcome.
Michele:Thank you, Derek. It's an honor to be here, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation together today.
Derek:Well, it's, it's great to have you, and I hope that you, studied up on the reading material on essential dynamics because there will be a test later on. But but first, we wanna hear about your personal journey. Because I know that, you've got some really interesting twists and turns in your story that, that resulted in you being a business leader here in Edmonton. Maybe, maybe like, maybe we could just get started with, how did you, first of all, get interested in being in business at all?
Michele:Great question, Derek. Well, I was born in Toronto to a mom that was Canadian and a dad who was German. And that's relevant because I grew up with both languages, English and German fluently. And also my parents couldn't really decide where they wanted to live permanently, so we also moved back and forth between Germany and Canada. So not only did I grew up with two different languages, but I also grew up in two different cultures.
Michele:So throughout, that path, I was always told, oh, you're gonna be a great you should be an interpreter, or you should be a translator, and and all of that. And and I wanted to have nothing to do with it. I I wanted to be a journalist and an artist, and I did not wanna be a translator at all. However, low and behold, when I was in university studying languages and law, I met this fellow who was translating books for a publishing house, and he was making quite a bit of money. And I thought, well, that would be fun.
Michele:I can do that. So that's how I got my my feet wet in translation was at university in Germany where I translated a book called Quantum Leap, if you guys still remember that Yes. That came out in the eighties. I translated that book into German.
Derek:Okay. So you may not know that Reid at that time was in Hollywood. You probably know some of those people, Reid.
Reed:Well, I I touch I touch shoulders with some of those people. Yes. But I never worked on Quantum Leap. I would have liked to.
Derek:That's super cool. Super cool.
Reed:Yeah. But had I known the translator was going to be a guest here, I may have I may have pushed harder to be working on that show.
Michele:It was just the book. It wasn't the show. It was just the book. So, yeah, basically, the the German broadcast network brought the show to Germany, and then obviously the book sales went along with that, and I translated the book. So that was my first foray into translating and
Derek:Super cool. The
Michele:yay.
Reed:So what do you do now, Michelle? I we've just met here in the studio. I'm wondering, who are you? What is your quest? What how did how did you become Michelle?
Michele:How did I become Michelle? Well, you know, I'm still becoming Michelle as we all are still becoming the best version of ourselves. And, but how did I become Michelle? You know? I feel like the journey was really what made it interesting for me.
Michele:When I started my business, I was 22 years old. I 22 years old. I had two children under two. And, I was doing these translations, and I'll I'll get to your question
Reed:Yes.
Michele:As to what what do I do now.
Reed:I trust you. I'm interested.
Michele:Actually, I, I could easily start with that. Right now I'm an executive coach and I'm writing a book. My passion is helping successful entrepreneurs create more value in their business while living their life of their dreams without burning out. So that is my purpose and my path right now to use their knowledge.
Derek:I'm just going to stop you right there Michelle because, your business model is built on purpose X and purpose Y. Yeah. Purpose X being good business, purpose Y being good life.
Michele:Exactly.
Derek:Yeah. So I find that fascinating, and we'll get to that, but I just wanted to, you know,
Reed:my question first.
Derek:Okay. So that's
Michele:that's what I'm doing now. And, the path, has led me here because as I built my company, I started it, with a fax machine basically and a very old computer. We moved back here from Germany in 1993, with my two kids. By that time they were like one and two. And I had one client in Germany, that was a car manufacturer and I did translations for them.
Michele:And they were really upset when I told them I wanted to move back to Canada. And I I read this article about a lady, a translator in Australia, and she would go play at the beach and surf, whatever, all day long until 03:00 when her clients in The US would wake up. And that's when she would start translating. I'm like, wow, wait a minute. I'm moving to Alberta.
Michele:That's eight hours behind Germany. So what that means is when my client goes home at 05:00, it is eight or 9AM for me. So I can do all the work and have it back to them when they go back to work the next day. And so that's what I offered. And I offered it through this beautiful invention called APAC machine, which was so exciting in 1993 and '94.
Michele:So Sure. Yeah.
Derek:So you invented time travel is what you're saying?
Michele:Pretty much. Yeah. She
Reed:did a quantum leap.
Derek:Instantaneous translation. I,
Michele:I, I
Derek:was gonna say, I put it in my email, but I was, I worked in, I was working in the eighties and the nineties. Stack it up on that fax machine, hope all the pages go through.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:And come back the next morning and hope there's a an equivalent pile in English. Is that right?
Michele:Yep. Pretty much. Exactly. And, you know, I I remember one night, waiting, like, it's 02:00. I'm working yet another twenty hour day.
Michele:I should be really happy because these rolls of thermal paper facts are coming in. And so business is rolling in, But I've now had months and months of twenty hour days, and and I knew that that meant I I wouldn't see my kids, you know, I wouldn't play my with my kids at night, and it was another night of takeout. And and and, I remember that at the end when I finished all the translations, I actually had to fax them back and I couldn't go to bed because I needed to wait for that confirmation that everything went through. And sometimes it didn't. So So sometimes that was an extra hour, right?
Michele:Just waiting for everything to go
Reed:through.
Derek:Oh my. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the hardships we went through with faxes, I was a consultant, and we would send reports by fax or proposals. And, yeah, if that confirmation didn't come back, it didn't go.
Michele:Exactly,
Derek:exactly. So how did you break that, that log jam of I mean, I'm assuming you hired someone, but, I'm sure that was a big decision.
Michele:You know, it was actually one of those nights when I stayed up till 02:00 waiting for the confirmation, and I'm listening to my answering machine, just, you know, waiting so I can finally go to bed. And the first message on my answering machine is my nail tag. And she's like, Hi Michelle, you have not showed up for your third appointment in a row. We can no longer have you as a client unless you pay us upfront. I'm like, oh my goodness.
Michele:Okay. Listen to the next message. Beep. Hi. This is your doctor's office calling.
Michele:You have missed your health checkup today. Please be advised that we have a wait list for our for new, new patients. I'm like, oh my goodness. And then the last one was my friend who I hadn't seen in weeks telling me that, you know, she misses me and she hadn't seen me. And and I realized that I was getting fired from my own life.
Derek:Wow.
Michele:I was getting fired from my own life. And I went upstairs and, you know, I looked at my my girls and little angels sleeping in their beds. I just lost it. Like, I just broke down, and I, I realized that if I don't stop doing this, they might one day fire me from their lives. And I didn't want that to happen.
Michele:So Derek, to answer your question, that's when I decided the next day that I was going to hire translators, I was gonna hire proofreaders, and I was gonna change this cycle. And so within a year, I had fully off boarded myself from doing translations and proofreading myself.
Derek:So that was in the mid nineties. Have you done any translating since?
Reed:Nope. Really?
Michele:Really.
Reed:Wow. So what did you focus on then? Did you just focus on being the manager?
Michele:No. I focused on bringing in business for all of these translators and proofreaders that I had trained, who were freelancers, but had turned down full time jobs Yeah. In order to keep working for me. So it was my responsibility to make sure that they had enough words to translate and and that they could keep going. And of course, my mission was to grow my business.
Reed:Which you did. I did.
Derek:So so one of the, I don't know, I'll use our terms, but one of the drivers then, at one point anyway, was the sense of responsibility you had to your translators.
Michele:Mhmm.
Derek:Because they're they made a bet on you.
Michele:They did.
Derek:And you need to feed their families.
Michele:Yep. Right? And obviously feed mine as well. Right? But Yeah.
Michele:You're absolutely right. I remember, like, the translator, and and I believe she still works for the company today after I've sold it, but she was with us for like the entire lifespan of of our company, one of many. And I had just finished training her. I I recruited her. I trained her.
Michele:We worked together, and and she got a job offer. And I remember begging her to please not take it. So I felt that really strong responsibility, Derek, that I had to keep up my end on the
Derek:bargain. You know what? I find it interesting, you know, I'm I'm trained as an accountant, and account accounting gets you to the bottom line. And I remember one of our early conversations, Reid, one of the very first podcasts you're, you know, asking me if it's is it always about the money? Yeah.
Derek:And you know, for the most part, it's never about the money, as long as you have enough.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:But the money is only ever really about the people. And, so, I mean, there are people in business just to make money. But when you get in to serve customers, then you get all these other responsibilities, including to your employees and their families. And, and then it's a bigger system than you are. And Michelle, what was it like when you moved from burning the candle, just trying to produce the product, to being the overseer and the business generator?
Derek:Was that liberating for you?
Michele:Yes. Of course. It it was liberating for me, but of course, it also wasn't a linear journey. Right?
Derek:No. No.
Michele:Yeah. I I remember I had said I'm I'm not gonna I trained the translators. I trained the proofreaders. And I remember I I had my gym bag over my shoulder and I was finally gonna get to the gym and and you know I was gonna get, I think my nails done and meet up with my friend because I was like you know rehiring me into my life, into my own life. And and I walked into the office and my project manager says, like, hey, I have three lines here just to proofread.
Michele:Can you just proofread them? Because otherwise I have to send them to the to the proofreader and open a PO and la la la. It's gonna be way quicker for you to do it. And I said no. And that was really hard because it made no sense.
Michele:I felt so guilty. And, you know, it's like, oh, it's only gonna take you five minutes to do this. It's gonna take me longer. And what I said, but those five minutes are gonna hold me back and hold us back from from growing the business. And of course, nobody really understood that at that point but me.
Michele:True. Yeah. But what I realized though, where the liberation set in, Derek, is when I reframed it for my team. So I actually changed my job description. It it it takes time for the human brain to get used to change.
Michele:Yeah. And and the brain has to rehearse certain things. And until we've rehearsed it, we react the same way that we always react. Right? Every conversation sets the expectation for the next conversation.
Michele:So the expectation from my team is that I was a translator. I was a proofreader. So I had to reframe that expectation, and I basically said I have a new job. I fired myself from being a translator. My job is now I'm the chief revenue officer.
Michele:That is my job. And once I changed the job description and I explained why I was off boarding myself, it was a lot easier.
Derek:So that's, that's profound. Now after you be after you became good at being chief revenue officer, did that frustrate people because they never ever got to the bottom of their inbox?
Michele:No. I I think more so it liberated them too because I was gone most of the time visiting clients. So, yeah, I I think it really came with that sense of liberation. And for us early on, because we were working across time zones and into the future and into the past, people had to make their own decisions very quickly without asking me. So I don't think they missed me that much after a while.
Derek:Oh. So I want to ask you, we're gonna probably have to go to another episode to get to the the story of the business, but I I wanna go back to the this other client base that you're retired, this other employer, I guess, you talked about, which is your daughters. And you said you were concerned that they might fire you. So having liberated yourself from, firing yourself from being a translator. Yeah.
Derek:How did how did that work on the home front, and and what's, what's come of that?
Michele:Yeah. That's a great question, actually. Thanks, Derek. Nobody's actually ever asked me that. It it was really liberating.
Michele:I mean, it took time. Right? It didn't happen overnight, but I could give myself permission to say no to certain things and and say yes to other things. Right? When we think about freedom from our business, freedom from the the things that we don't wanna be doing, it's also important to think about freedom too.
Michele:And for me, that freedom from my business, freedom from translating meant freedom to take my kids to the park. Freedom to take my children on a vacation. Freedom to just sit and watch a show with them and and enjoy dinner and and have time with them. And, yes, did I still travel? Did I still go to Europe to see my clients?
Michele:Was they still away from my girls? Of course. But it became more my control versus let's see how much work comes in today to see how much time I get to spend with my kids. So I I flipped it from me serving the business to the business serving me.
Reed:Which was brilliant. That's such good advice. Derek, we need to have this lady on again.
Derek:We sure do. Just can I just follow-up with one more question then? And that is, how old are your daughters now? And you can give general terms if you don't want to be too specific.
Michele:I don't know. I'm always sharing their age, or maybe they're kind of getting to a point now where I should stop doing that because they're 30 and 31 now. So I I think I have a limited runway where I get to share how old they are.
Derek:Well, those are fine ages to share. Yeah. And, I'm sure that they're, delightful adults. Are they involved in entrepreneurship in any way at this point?
Michele:They are and they aren't. Like, they're both actually gainfully employed, very successful. My youngest daughter lives in Vancouver and my eldest daughter lives, they actually just moved to New York, New York. They've been through a fun journey but they're both very driven, very successful and and and happy individuals. So I feel like I haven't hurt them too badly by being away and being an entrepreneur.
Derek:Well, it sounds like a proud mama speaking, which is, which is awesome. I I don't know that, you know, anyone can have it all, but I really like where you have made those choices about
Reed:I I think you have most of it. You may not have it all, but you have most of it. Michelle, if people wanna get ahold of you, where can they find you on the Internet?
Michele:They can find me at michellehekin dot com. Just as my name is spelled, Michelle with one l. And if anyone wants to reach out to me and ask questions, michelle@michellehacking.com.
Reed:Derek, the same question goes to you if somebody wants to get hold of you.
Derek:It's almost the same answer. It's it's it's derek hudson dot c a, though.
Reed:I see.
Derek:Because I am a chartered accountant, so that's why that's what the CA stands for.
Reed:I am I am delighted. I am glad that you both, both have places we can reach you, but don't ask Michelle to translate. I'm the translator now, and I will translate anything you send to me into Klingon. So until next time, for Brin Skriff is in the studio, Derek Hudson as our ever our mentor and student of essential dynamics. Did I get that right, Derek?
Reed:I think I did. Sure. And, and our guest, Michelle Hecken. We're very grateful to have you here today. I'm Reid McCollum, your very handsome host saying consider your quest.