26. From Queens to Paris: Storytelling, Branding, and Cultural Humility in a World of AI Translation with Lory Martinez

Speaker A: Hello, I'm Kevin Hong. I'm a partner at AH LYC Partners, an executive search and leadership advisory firm. I'm also the co founder of the Council, a private network for senior executives. And this is Leaders in Motion. Today's guest is someone who has been doing something quite remarkable for the decades. Building bridges between cultures, languages and communities through the power of story. Lori Martinez is a Colombian American brand strategist based in Paris. She's the founder of Maraia and brand consulting practice helping immigrants and first generation founders build global businesses they're proud of. Before that, she spent six years as CEO and founder of Studio Oenta, an award winning multilingual podcast company that produced over 100 shows in 25 plus languages, reached number one in 31 countries, and partnered with organization including UNESCO, OECD, Spotify and Audible. She's a review honoree. What strikes me the most about Lori's story is just the scale of what she built. It's the why behind it and a genuine belief that voices across cultures deserve to be heard and that brands rooted in real human experience are the ones that last. Laurie, welcome to Leaders in Motion.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Wow, what an introduction.

Speaker A: Thank you. No, I'm very, very happy to have you here on the show. I think uh, there are a lot of topics we can cover, but uh, first and foremost, like we do with all our guests, would be great to have a general understanding of also your background with your own words. And uh, I think this is quite of a unique story. So I, uh, would be interested to, to maybe hear uh, it from your own words and uh, from your perspective.

Speaker B: I'm um, Colombian American, grew up in New York City in Queens, one of the most diverse boroughs in all of New York City. 800 languages are spoken in Queens. Just so you know, it's like the most immigrant population, the highest, the biggest one. So I grew up with people from all over the world who always spoke more than one language. And so when you come from a place like that, it kind of shapes the way you see the world. Like for me, diversity is a given. For me, the way that you can work across cultures is completely natural. When I left New York, it was a shocker. It was very difficult for me to kind of grasp with, you know, monolingual, monocultural spaces. And I always kind of sought to bring, um, underrepresented voices into those spaces so that they could kind of see the beauty of diversity. And so even when I first became a journalist, all of the work that I did in my first years as a radio journalist, I was always kind of trying to think about how different communities could get their perspective seen, et cetera, et cetera. I worked at an NPR station in upstate New York and basically learned everything from A to Z as an engineer. Uh, I was a radio engineer, I was a host, I was a producer. I was there when they first put audio online for the first thing that could be potentially called a podcast. Like before, we didn't even put radio online. So that's how far back I was in the radio world. And most of my training was, yeah, it's around storytelling. But then it always had had this kind of thing behind it, which was let's make it so that underrepresented voices can be heard in these stories. And so because that was such a strong value to me, of course I wanted to leave and do it somewhere else. Left in 2015 to move to France to, uh, study global communications. I wanted to understand how to promote stories, not just tell them because there's a frustrating thing that happens when you tell a good story and it doesn't get the marketing it needs or it doesn't get the promotion it needs and then it just kind of disappears. So I wanted to have like the, that tool in my arsenal. So I have a global communications degree. I continued producing audio, became an uh, international journalist in the sense because I worked in Spain, the U.S. the U.K. and France, of course, because I'm based in Paris. And then slowly but surely developed enough of a client base to create OCENTA Studio. Studio ocenta, um, a, um, multilingual international company that basically focused on raising voices across cultures, as you said. And it was a wonderful adventure. It was truly, truly the dream of my life to create a space where we could imagine worlds that were no longer blocked by language, where translation basically allowed those stories to live in worlds where, yeah, you would never hear somebody speaking that language. Language or telling their story. So yes, we grew it to 27 languages. We grew it across Europe, Latam. We even did stories in Chinese each time with a very humble approach of. I'm curious to know how you do things locally. I'm curious to know how the audience will feel about this. How what exists already? How do I step in without feeling inauthentic and always kind of with this humility in terms of the approach of content creation. Each product that we released was a show, but also a community. So we created audience, um, engagement tools with, you know, in real life, theater, shows, et cetera, et cetera, events, merchandise, coloring Books. We did all kinds of different activations, but always kind of thinking about how the local audience would interact with whatever we were making. It makes sense. Then when I decided to end that adventure, that I would turn to brand marketing and strategy because it was always part of what I was doing. It was just finding the best way to tell a story to get to the right audience and sell, like, what you're trying to sell. So I wanted to keep the kind of values of ocenta, which is, you know, very much about diversity and representation, and bring it to Maravilla in the sense of working with people who really need the. The guidance that I didn't have as an immigrant entrepreneur. Someone who understands the challenges of trying to build something from scratch that has a multicultural identity or is. Is working across cultures already, uh, because you are. Because you are already multicultural or bicultural or whatever, and that you have to kind of make sure that you don't lose yourself in the messaging. Yeah. So I work with founders. That is my new adventure with Maravilla. And, um, most of the focus is really on helping these immigrant founders kind of see that their dreams are possible and also make it so that they can feel proud of what they do and that it represents them well. Voila. That was really long. I'm sorry.

Speaker A: In terms of identity today, how do you feel? Have so many, uh, so much back, so many different backgrounds. Latin American, Colombian American. Now you've been living in Europe, in Paris, for quite a long time. So, uh, where are you from?

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. You know, it's funny because tomorrow I have my citizenship interview to become French. So I am going to become French, and I will have to present myself as a French citizen one day. Uh, I hope. I hope, you know, that's the goal. It's hard to explain because I used to say I'm Colombian American. That was the way I presented myself. But I've been in France long enough. I have a French son. I have a French husband. I live French, if you will. So that part of my identity is big. It's big. It's not something that can be ignored. I definitely live in French, so I don't know how I'm going to present myself when I become French and say, am I Franco, Colombian American? I guess because, you know, where are you from? Is it your roots or is it what. What built you? Is it what you grew up in? I think I have to stay true to being the three of them because they've shaped me in different ways. I grew up going to my Grandmother's house in Bogota.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: I grew up speaking Spanish at home, but I also went to American schools and got an American college degree and taugh in American universities. Most of my work is in English and Spanish. And then when I worked in France, I worked with French brands, so it's difficult to answer that question. Yeah, but I'm. I guess I would say I'm, um. I grew up in New York and now I live in Paris. If you want the. The geographical location.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is. It is usually a very difficult question for all multicultural people, let's say, um, how do you see that? How do you see culture impacting business? Maybe you have some stories on why you believe this is so important.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. We worked a lot with brands during the time of Studio center, so I'll give a few examples of audience targeting, which I think is a huge part of sales for anyone who is trying to sell to a specific target audience. Understanding the difference between working with a global team and a local team. When a global campaign is sold to market a product, the localization of that campaign is super important. And a lot of the time there's kind of a disconnect between global and local teams. So sometimes you'd work with a global brand in whatever sector, uh, let's say the hotel sector, and they would give. They would create a strategy. We'd work with them on creative, and then. Then they would say, oh, it'll trickle down to the local, and we'll just give them the files. And it doesn't work that way. It doesn't end up being so simple for the local team to localize it, but also kind of understand what the point is. Um, and so we did step in quite a few times to kind of arbitrate this kind of disconnect to make sure that it's clear, okay, this is the benefit of this, this kind of content. How can we make it local for you? How can we make it work for the way that your audience communicates? Because sometimes my best learning is this, is that in every country, people consume content in a different way. Not Everybody is on TikTok all the time. Not everybody is listening to podcasts by themselves. One of the things that we learned from marketing different shows in different countries, so we did a show launch in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, et cetera. In each country, there was always, like, a little activation that we would do, and sometimes the. The numbers would show tell a different story than what we were hearing from people on the ground. So we would have an example of a show that would launch in the US and you'd have very clear download numbers. Okay, we know that this show is there. We can take it to a brand and they will sponsor it because it has 100,000 listens or whatever. But in Spanish, there was always a disconnect. We're like, but this show is like number one in Spanish. But the numbers are smaller. Is it because the population is smaller or is it because there's a different listening habit? And so one thing we learned was that one Spanish listen, at least in Latin, is equal to at least 10 listens. Because people listen with their friends so they'll have a listening club or they're like played in the car. So that's four people. That's not one person listening. That's four people. But they're not counted as a digital listen, if that makes sense. So there's also kind of like seeing how people consume content locally is super important because when you're trying to sell something, you always need to see, okay, well, how are they going to see my ad, how are they going to see my product or whatever and how are they going to interact with it? Do they like advertising? My favorite thing that I love to tell French clients is, listen, in the States we love ads. Ads are our culture. The super bowl is an ad culture, like extravaganza. But French people don't like ads. So when you try to insert ads or try to, you know, hard sell somebody in France, people don't like it. So there is a, a, uh, desire for more authenticity from French brands or there's like the caliber of luxury which is like, it's so high up that has to feel unattainable and so is uh, an aspirational thing. But that's shifting too. Around the world. People don't care about luxury in the same way anymore. Mid tier brands are growing. These kind of like, you know, local trends that are also reflecting global trends is something that I pay a lot of attention to. So across both businesses now, I'm seeing very interesting trends happening in different countries. And how they're applied is how I recommend things to my clients as well.

Speaker A: So yeah, I really like, um, how you um, bring like a very daily habit, uh, very mundane situation. And that also, if this is not properly understood, do you maybe see that the more minorities or the small countries are all a bit more open and adaptable when it comes to culture?

Speaker B: I will say that I've noticed two different shifts. So the first one is definitely there is more of an interest in the local opinion. I find that more and more people are thinking, okay, so how do people interact with things in this country? So there's already kind of a desire to have a cultural strategist or a brand strategist to like think about those local questions. There's more of that, um, AI gets in the way of that sometimes because there's this kind of like feeling that we should be able to automate. Automate translation. But it hasn't been very successful for a lot of people who have tested that without having human interaction. So you do need to understand local culture. So that is cool. It's a cool shift because people are understanding that we don't have as many barriers. But the second thing that's happening, which I think is going to change a lot of the ways in which people target audiences and who's the audience you're thinking about is you have a lot of first generations or even immigrant or expat communities that shift that perspective for international brands, because you're no longer just targeting locals, but you're also targeting the Americans in Spain, you're targeting the Americans in Mexico, you're targeting the Africans, uh, immigrants in France. You know, you're looking at these immigrant populations that are kind of subsets and um, those hyper niche audiences are way more effective in terms of sales because they're smaller, more insular. When you target them more directly, it's way simpler to kind of get into the discourse around their community, et cetera, et cetera. So I think understanding that there are these micro communities that have a huge impact, the way that the American expat population that's leaving the US right now is like affecting countries in the global south is huge. And we won't see the benefit, we won't see any kind of analysis of that for the next five years. But any brand that kind of jumps into that is going to, is going to be in the forefront of changing populations and like target and being the brand that is there for those brands for those people. So yeah, thinking about immigrant populations is going to be, I think, a trend that is going to change the way that we communicate. Because you're not just making it in Spanish for locals, you're making it also for the person who is bilingual. And that changes everything because you're already coming to it from a global aspect from the beginning.

Speaker A: I see that the trend we grew up with used to be if you're an immigrant, usually when you expatriate yourself potentially in the country of your parents, then you bring with you the education of the US Of Europe or France. And actually you do have uh, in a way a competitive advantage locally because you bring like uh, some sort of a quote unquote, higher education, et cetera. But I see that these days things have been shifting and uh, now it's, it's a little bit also reversed. Do you also see something like this and how does it translate into business?

Speaker B: I mean the returnees, like we don't talk about that enough. The fact that people are going back to the countries that their parents immigrated from, that is a huge thing. They're coming and bringing back their education and they're stepping in, into a uh, space that needs development and they're bringing all of the learnings from whatever country they were living in and going back and building schools and building brand new businesses that will be beneficial to the population locally but also for other people who are going back. And so there's this kind of refining of roots that's happening, which is right now a small trend. But I think it's one of the, it speaks to what we were just talking about of like the expat communities in these smaller communities that are going to be making an impact in terms of what actually sells because these people have more money, because they have more, some of them are working remotely, they have different buying power. And so things that would sell to a Spaniard who is from Spain versus someone who is, you know, coming from another country is not the same. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's interesting because it's, it's almost anthropological as an analysis or like as a note. But these kinds of small trends are what shape society later. So the brands that are on top of these kind of smaller questions or trends are going to be the ones that win because they won't just be on the. Yeah. On the main standard of selling. They're going to be looking at these niche communities.

Speaker A: How do you operationalize on this, uh, on this trend? As a business?

Speaker B: I always talk to my brands, clients and my founders because they're immigrant founders. They're always going to be talking to two audiences. So talking to them very earnestly about which is the community you think is going to convert first, what is the messaging you think is going to work for them better because they're you. And the difference between targeting an immigrant who just got here versus an immigrant who arrived 20 years ago is not the same. And so thinking about the kinds of communications that you would do, the activations you would do, do you target. For example, I was working with a brand who's A Franco Chinese. Do you target the Chinese community in France or are you more looking to get kind of the elitist kind of, um, I would say luxury market of a Bon Marche. And so your brand stays Asian and has the Chinese identity, but is more luxury. And the way that you present it, you're not going to be in Freireton, for example, which is like a super big Chinese supermarket. This choice is a choice that is very active for sales. And the people that she activates for her community is going to be dependent on the way where those people are. Like where are you selling to who? Um, and a very comfortable thing that can happen when you're doing that is that you can have a different product. You can target a product for one audience and the other audience and you have two products. It's the same thing, but you're marketing it differently. So you have double the sales with the same thing, if that makes sense. You can think of it like that. It's more of like seeing the multifacets of your brand. That's how I operationalize it. It's like you don't. You're not just selling jam, you're selling jam to this person and you're selling jam to this person. How can we change the way you sell it to each one? But you still sell the same product. You just brand it differently, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's um, very interesting. And do you feel that, um, I want to come back to uh, the um, let's say, do you feel like you're coming from us and sometime we, we feel that uh, the view of the US and the world is very American centric and doesn't take into a perspective a lot of diversity. How do you navigate different bias?

Speaker B: I think it depends on where you are. I think it's about knowing where you're, you're selling your product and who's going to stand by your product. You wouldn't necessarily decide to launch a brand that's hyper authentic and very much rooted in the community in a place that's not where the community is. I'll take an example. There's this brand called no Palera, which is um, a Mexican American brand that is using these old techniques for hair care from Mexico. Her brand is all over the US it is, but her beginnings were in Latin American communities. And I think it's uh, it's about like where you decide to create your strategy first. Who are going to be the first winning sales? Who are going to be the ones who are going to root for you? First and then you get to be all over the place. So this is the, this is the way that, what I've seen, at least when it comes to an immigrant community, starting a business or anything that has your identity in it, you first go to your people and then you go to everyone else. It's the best combination because you will already have super fans. And then you go. This. I can talk about a ton of Latino American brands that have done this in the States because that's the, that's the best way to do it. You already have your built in family, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker A: Where would you put the role of language when it comes to connecting people? Uh, today, but most likely tomorrow. Like I hear people say that might be pointless to learn new languages.

Speaker B: I know there's a lot of new technology coming about. I always dreamed that people would, you know, be able to understand each other once again. Like, uh, you know, like in the old story of the Tower of Babel where everybody spoke the same language and then God decided, no, it's too easy. And so he separated everyone. This is the story from the Bible. This is the idea, you know, that today we are moving towards this kind of, we actually understand what everyone is saying. With this new AI tech of translation. I think it's a good thing. I do think that there still needs to be this kind of cultural exchange that happens from human to human, because one thing is translating text. When you're a tourist in Japan and you want to order at a restaurant. Okay. The other thing is becoming friends with the host that lives in your, that is giving you part of his apartment and going to dinner with that person and like hanging out with them and like having a real life experience. That is what's more valuable, especially right now when people are talking more about wanting more experiential experiences. People are not just going on tourism like in the way that they used to. You're not going to see all the monuments. You also want to learn how to make pasta from a local Italian. You want cultural experience. And the products you buy are also about experience. And so I think these new technologies that are being integrated into communications are good, but they also have to remember that the real thing, that the value thing that people buy is irl. They want analog, they want old interactions human to human. That's why, maybe why the podcast, uh, visuals are so popular also. People want to see somebody talking. They want to see the voice that comes with it. They don't want to just hear it. So I think there's something very Human in that. And so there is a nice balance, I think, that's going to be found between tech translation and actually being, you know, friends with or connecting with the culture or the people, et cetera.

Speaker A: Do you think navigating different cultures has a strong impact on how you lead and uh, how you connect with your team and how you connect different shareholders?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I definitely have experience as a leader across borders because I had an international team with ocenta. Half of our team was in Europe, half of it was in latam. So there was already a multicultural aspect of. We had one team member who spoke fluent English and Italian but not Spanish, but she was working on Spanish and our meetings were in English. All of the Spanish speaking team members were coming from different parts of Latin America. So some of them, they were all in Bogota, but they were, you know, Mexican, Argentinian, Colombian. The jokes and the ways that we interact as a team were already kind of international, but there was always kind of coming to the place of, oh, I've never heard that expression before or I don't understand that. And so you always come to it with a humility when you're leading like this because your international team is going to teach you more than you can teach them in these cases of like the cross cultural questions. Like, you know, I used to have so many meetings with people who are all across languages every day. So much so that one person actually ended up learning Spanish because we had so many meetings in Spanish and she understood Spanish but she couldn't speak it. And then she learned to speak it because she was in enough meetings. Um, we would always have like a debrief afterwards in English, but she would attend the meetings because she really wanted to be a part of that first initial like ideation period, uh, for some projects. And this kind of, you know, being a leader that allows that to happen even though there's no like benefit for anyone except for her, is also important because, you know, you're considering how that person can bring a different perspective to something that is hyperlocal as well. Bring a global angle as well. And to also feel like they can, yeah, integrate the team even though they're not that that's not their primary language. So on the leadership side, that, that is something that I definitely put forward within my team. And yeah, this humility thing, I mean when, whenever we worked around any project and we worked with local people in translating or adapting or adapting, we always came to it with a humility. And I think leadership never, never tells you be a humble leader, but I think this is the most Zen recommendation I have for all leaders is that you don't know everything you have as a CEO, you're not, you're not supposed to know everything. I mean, you have to know your business, you have to understand your brand and your story, but you have your team to rely on. So in the same way that you don't necessarily know how things work in Mexico, because you're not from Mexico, but you've been there. You speak Spanish, but you don't know Mexico, maybe talk to the person knows Mexico, you know, and just come to it, like, please tell me more about Mexico kind of thing and really rely on that local expertise, you know, come to it with a, uh, I don't know everything, I'm ready to learn from you. And then there's a really good collaboration that can come from that because there's a real exchange that is almost as equals, where you learn something, they learn something. You as a leader are uh, bringing expertise in your own way, but they are also bringing their cultural expertise or whatever their expertise is. And outside of languages, it can apply in every, every part of the business is like, let people show you what they can do.

Speaker A: Yeah, really like this. And do you have that were not following this humility? What do you think could be the consequence, the consequences of not being too humble, being a bit too stiff with, with a team or different shareholders?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I had one case when I was a freelancer where the client and this was way, way before I was, I was in the very beginning of my career. Like I didn't know anything about like power Dynamics or anything like that, but I had um, particular experience of being a native English speaker working with French brands, trying to tackle American English audiences. So I understood the French message, I was bringing it to the US or English or whatever. And so I was working with this agency that was working on a data strategy. And it wasn't even like a out for outward facing strategy. So it didn't need to be perfect English either. It just wanted to be presented right to the, the, the marketing manager who is American. And so the problem with that is, is that I'm not the person who created the product or the data report. I'm just there to help facilitate the presentation of the thing in English. And so the way that the power dynamics happen in that case is this kind of like blind trust of the native speaker, which can be difficult because there's kind of like a disconnect, uh, between who does the actual work and also who is the One who really knows what they're doing, but just kind of blocked by the barrier of language. And this is why, you know, when I talk about tech translation, and I'm not completely against it, because I think this can help in these situations where like, the expertise can be really, truly presented properly. And this person who was the marketing manager at the time was, he was very full of hubris, very thought, much thought that his way was the only way and wanted to throw in way more scope than was needed for what was bought. And I didn't understand the scope of the project. So I was just like, yeah, okay, we can do that. Because it was just the way that it was. And so as a, uh, as someone who didn't, you know, understand or grasp like, the level to which this person was kind of crossing a boundary and not understanding, the French company that was hired to do this was hired to do only one thing. And you are just asking for way more than is necessary. And, and then this person who is saying, you know, clearly don't understand anything because you're French. This kind of like, cultural, like, clashing can happen all the time when you don't have this humility, when you don't come to the meeting saying, like, okay, I don't know, maybe we might have a, you know, there might be a translation problem or I'm not sure that's what we need. And the other person not being comfortable enough to argue for themselves. And this happens all the time when it comes to the C suite and, you know, interactions between people who are different levels but who aren't necessarily primarily language speakers. There might be like a, you know, that's not, not, um, power report. That is not just. That doesn't work. And so, yeah, it's this one learning from, from a long time ago and I've since always kept that in mind because I say I don't ever want to be that marketing manager.

Speaker A: Did you face also, like a lot of situation like this with, um, different, uh, cultures, uh, and that potentially they thought that you were a little bit, you were coming across a little bit too demanding, but maybe it was like a miscommunication or just a culture difference?

Speaker B: Yeah, this is really funny and this is absolutely not influential at all where big, grand scheme of things is very small. But I hired a new social media manager and I had been working with my team for the last six years and this person just joined, um, the last four years and then this person just joined the team. So they were new. And we have conversations on Slack all the Time. This is how we communicate. It's very fast. I have a thing when I type in slack that I don't really care if it's capital or lowercase. When I send a message, I'm like, hey, how you doing? It could be. It could be in any capsule. This person, Colombian, did not understand that I wasn't yelling at her, so she thought I was yelling at her with all of the messages. In fact, she messaged someone else in the group to say, like, is Lori mad at me? And then my other team member, who had been with me for many years, she was like, no, no, no, don't worry. Lori is just, you know, that's when she texts. She's like that. It's not at all, like, the tone, it's just the message. And, uh, she came to me afterwards about it and we had a conversation, and I was like, what is it? What happened? Why do you feel that I'm yelling at you? I'm not mad at you. Um, and she said, no, no, it's just because in Colombia, like, when you text, like, even your friends, like, caps are important. And because, you know, I. I'm Colombian American, but I didn't grow up in Colombia. I don't have this text culture in the same way. Right. I have American text culture, which is very, you know, whatever goes. And so when she told me that, I was like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Um, and this is the kind of thing that can happen when you're not really thinking about, you know, you're coming with the dominant, like, version of whatever your culture is and mine in this. And this is the American way of writing. And I've always done it. No one ever said anything to me. And then this one person says, well, actually, you really, you know, like, somebody could take that wrong. And so now I'm very, very cautious about my caps.

Speaker A: This is very. This is a very funny story. You also see that the in person or the audio helps when it comes to conflict. Uh, uh, um, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: So anytime there were any issues, we'd always hop on calls. I had an international team, so. And this is also why, with Maravilla, I'm very much working with people in real life. Like, I'm meeting people for coffee and we're talking in person. It's not as much online, very hyper local in the sense of working with immigrants in Paris, because I did miss that connection. I did go back to Bogota, uh, a couple of times while I was working on different projects, and I worked with my team in person and it was completely different and it was exciting to do it, but it was also like, I really wish I had had that from the beginning with you guys. Go to lunch together, go out for drinks after work. You know, this kind of culture of like, you know. Yeah. Having an interaction with your team in this non digital way. I guess because everything was remote. My entire business was remote. And so now in my, in my new business, I'm definitely prioritizing in real life interactions for that. But a call doesn't hurt. That is if you can't, you know, get the remote part out of your business and do hop on a call. And also being, um, creating an environment in which people are comfortable talking to each other. I think what was good about that experience was that the team member didn't feel uncomfortable mentioning this to someone else and like, didn't like sit with it by herself. She was like, are you sure this is how she does this? You know, she had a doubt and she was one, gave me the benefit of the doubt. So that was also something that I was very proud that happened because she had enough of an interaction with me on video and everything that she felt like there was a disconnect that didn't make sense. And so she gave me the benefit of the doubt and asked someone else. And then when we talked about it, it was a really silly thing, but she felt comfortable asking and sharing. The other person also was able to be like, no, that's how it is. So there's, um, there's camaraderie. There's like a sense that, you know, you can depend on the other person and that you won't be judged for asking a question which was, you know, something that I really wanted to put forward in my team. And it happened regardless of whether someone was on the phone or not. If that makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker A: Do you feel there are some cultures that are more sensitive or they share, uh, a stronger appetite for face to face interaction than others?

Speaker B: I think it really depends on who you're talking to. But, uh, with COVID it's hard to say because after that period, everyone really got comfortable with being on the phone. Visually though, I think now in the last couple of months, I'm really seeing a shift from clients even to say, like, I would rather meet you for coffee or I'd rather see you in person. Maybe it's because I'm pushing that forward into the universe and I want that, but I think it's also because, yeah, there is a desire to connect and like, shake the person's Hand, go to the conference in person and talk to the people that you've been texting or seeing, you know, working with for all these years, but you've never met them. Now that we can, there is a feeling that it's more valuable to meet someone there. And I think it translates to how we activate brands in business. So when your brand is coming to, you know, try to meet a person, they're not just meeting them via a video on TikTok, they're meeting them also via an event. They're meeting them via print club, you know, physical things that can, you know, feel real tangible. So there's these new trends that are coming out that are new ways for brands to interact with, with their audiences that aren't necessarily online. And I think whether you're talking about C suite dealing with an international team, or you're talking about even a brand trying to sell a product, thinking about the IRL human interaction is the best way to get started, if you will.

Speaker A: I think it resonates as well. Um, uh, um, with AI and what you mentioned a little bit before, there are a lot of, um, people saying that actually AI, uh is pushing all of us, uh, to have a stronger interest in meeting in person. Do you feel that AI is also pushing us more to be more human?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I think it's pushing us to be more human in every aspect of our lives, whether it's in our content consumption, in the things we buy, in the things we do with our free time. It's shaping, it's reshaping society. Yes. On the work side, it's changing a lot of things when it comes to work. But I think in the way that humans spend their time, it's affecting, this rejection of. It is actually shaping culture in a very unique way. And I think there will be books written about this kind of AI shift and what it does to what humans actually value and how they want to spend their time, how they want to spend their money. Because the AI thing is just one part of a larger story of where we're going as humans in progress around the world. What do we do when the AI, uh does everything else? What do we do with our time? And I think this is the great question of our time of, like, what happens afterwards? Like, the solutions are found. What do we do next? What problems are we going to solve next? I'm excited about seeing how, what brands are going to emerge from that questioning of how do we fill our days when we don't have to do silly tasks anymore or when the Questions that plagued us before are no longer a big issue because AI has solved them. You know, it may not be in our lifetime, maybe it's a hundred years from now, but this is where we're going. So it's maybe utopian, but I think just this kind of thinking is, is the beginning, it's the beginning of that. And so all the brands and businesses that start right now, or people who are, you know, leading teams have to think about how your team doesn't want to be working all the day. They don't want to be, they don't want to be in meetings all the time. Maybe they want to optimize their work, their workday in a different way. It's not, um, just about remote, it's maybe about how they output to society. They're already reflecting about a different way to fill their days. So any leader right now who is kind of wondering, what do I do with the work shift? Or how do I, uh, train my team during this kind of cultural shift in how people view time? You have to think about how your team wants to spend their day also. Like, do they want to be spending all their day in meetings? Maybe not. Maybe you change the way you interact, maybe you change the way that you build. And those are the questions that leaders right now have to ask themselves. Like, what are we, how are we going to build businesses that people actually want to work in and create?

Speaker A: Have you experienced that? And, um, and how did you accommodate if you encountered these situations?

Speaker B: I mean, personally, I was the CEO of a company that had a very traditional work structure of, you know, every day we were working, I was working around 60 hour weeks because I was the CEO. Of course, we had production schedules that were very tight. People were working crazy hours, they were stuck to their computers all day. We were in production all the time. Um, and you know, creative wasn't a big part of the work that we were doing. It was more just kind of filling and filling orders. And so there wasn't as much fun, if you will. And that was, you know, it wasn't as much fun, but there was also less inhuman interaction. And so I decided to leave my industry. I mean, I switched careers. And this is something that's going to happen to a lot of people. They're going to switch careers because they don't want to do that kind of work anymore anymore. So I think for me, I changed my shift, I shifted, and I decided to shape my career to be more offline. But I think for anybody who has a business right now, who's dealing with questions around, uh, you know, I, I, I would really like to split my time. You know, that might be a request that somebody might be getting from their, a longtime employee because they don't they have a kid or because they're about to have a kid or they want to do a side project or they want to work with. I had one, um, one team member who wanted to work with refugees. So she was like, can I work four days a week and on Fridays I'm going to work at this refugee center? I'm like, if you do all your work in four days, which I think is absolutely possible, with the other team members doing whatever we do, then you can have your Fridays off to do whatever you want. You know, the four day work week is a way that people have, you know, found the solution. Some people are now working three days a week. Finding ways to kind of give people back their time is going to be the solution I think, I think because your whole life shouldn't be work. And I think more and more people are realizing this. And so the leaders of tomorrow that are going to be really successful are going to be the ones who understand that and who make people want to work whatever hours that they do work. But like really give the whole a hundred percent during those hours, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: You're mentioning that leaders need to consider also a little bit more about outputs and outcomes as opposed to in exchange. So a salary.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I remember I was just reading an article about someone who was saying that they, they were working, you know, I don't know, 80 hour weeks and they were making a great salary but they didn't have any time to spend it. What is the point of making a great salary if you don't have any time to spend it because you're working all the time. I think that's like the thing, this old, old view of your work is your life, which is very American, but it's also very global north. I think though it's changed in recent years and in France it's always been, you know, 35 hour week. But even the 35 hour week people are like, no, I don't want to do 35 hours. Which is crazy because in the States it's like, are you kidding? 35 hours. But it's all about perspective, right? Culturally, you know, the French have always been work to live, not live to work. And so I think more people in the world are going to be work to live in the next, in the coming years. And that, uh, that is going to change. A lot of things about the workplace.

Speaker A: I'm being asked, uh, as a Frenchman, I'm being asked a lot as well about this question. How do you feel that France, or this way of, um, of thinking, of relating to work can remain competitive in a global market where countries all compete against one another? How would you say, see that Surviving.

Speaker B: I think it is absolutely possible to create wonderful things without working the way that we've been working. Humanity advanced. And I'll go to the past to find the answer to this question for me, because I've been a little bit, um, A hobby of mine is reading utopian books. I'm actually writing a substack about looking for utopia. So I love this topic. But one of my learnings from reading all of these books around, like Finding a Perfect Society, has been that in the past, humanity solved problems with way less hours, um, less, less hours in the day because they had to spend more time looking for food. And they still solved and created inventions that advanced society to the point where we are no longer having the same infant mortality rate, to the point where we have cars, where we have computers that advance and may even surpass us in terms of intelligence. We did so without the crazy hours. Um, at one point, we did have crazy hours during the Industrial Revolution, but we reduced them because they dreamed that they would be reduced and then we reduced them. Why not dream that they can be reduced again? I mean, they can. It's just kind of like, I think right now the discourse is feeling like we have to stay the same, that the way that we work, the way that we create has to stay the same or we're all going to lose our jobs. Like, that's, that can't happen. That can't be the only option. So I think right now my own thinking is that we have to just kind of reimagine work, reimagine the way we build and output, like you said. And the societies that are able to kind of really think about that question are going to be the ones that succeed. And it won't put us behind because we work less hours. We work less hours because we're, uh, it will make us more efficient. Like Denmark has really long maternity leave. Does that mean that their society isn't very advanced in tech? For example, Denmark startups are, you know, the Danish startups are really big. They, they have a good output and they make things that are making impact in the world. So it's, it's just a matter of like, finding a balance and we'll stay competitive. Competitive is relative to what you actually want to put out into the world. So if it means you want to put out good things and be happy, then, yeah, we'll be competitive in France. Like, let's eat cheese and have bread and have our afternoons off.

Speaker A: Right. Um, Lori, that was very nice to have you today on a show. And, uh, thank you for, for sharing all your insights.

Speaker B: Happy to, Happy to chat also with anybody who is asking themselves questions around cross cultural communication. And also if now you're suddenly hopeful for a positive future. I have a substack. That's where it starts the conversation. So, yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you. Rory, Thank you for listening to Leaders in Motion. And if you want to go further, join the Leaders in Motion Academy, our executive program. The first step is simple. Subscribe to our newsletter in the show notes and you get access to our exclusive insights and all the details about the academy. This podcast is produced by Melanie Hong, who helps leaders and organizations create strategic podcasts. I'm Kevin Hong, and see you next time.