[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Welcome to Localization Today where we explore how language, technology and communities converge to unlock ideas for everyone everywhere. I'm Eddie Arrieta, CEO at Multilingual Media. Today we're gonna talk about what happens when localization is treated not as a back office function, but as a growth engine. We'll explore how operational excellence, market strategy and applied AI can reshape how companies expand globally, especially in fast moving sectors like software and fintech. Our guest is Matt Grotzenstein, Vice President of North America at GTE Locklies and editor in chief of Locreset, GTE's new North American go to market growth engine. With more than two decades of experience helping global brands enter and scale in new markets, and Matt brings a grounded, field tested perspective on what's actually working in localization today. Matt, welcome. Thanks for joining us.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Thanks, Eddie, for having me and thank you so much.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: I'm so excited to get to know more about what you're doing and of course, your new acquire podcast experience that you've been having.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. I appreciate that, Matt.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: And you of course have been in the industry for much longer than I've been in the industry, and I know our audience would really appreciate if you could describe what you do.
Or rather, how would you describe what you do for those of us that don't know you as much as others do?
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So what I do is I talk to buyers and providers all day long.
My official title is VP of North America for GTE Localize. My mandate is to grow the business and that means sales in the us but the approach I take is probably about three or four years ago I just stopped selling. I just started having conversations and talking to people and having genuine conversations with people on both sides of the table.
And if a commercial opportunity comes out of that, great. If it doesn't, we just have great conversations and guests and topics to join the podcast.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Thank you for that perspective. Of course, you've been in the industry for quite some time. Things have been changing for the past three years. We're including artificial intelligence localization for many of us. When I got in the industry, I didn't even know what it was. I didn't know all the acronyms and all of it. And you're saying you stopped selling, you started to have more conversation?
Are patterns or things that buyers are looking for changing? Are your conversations changing? Are they the same? What are some expectations that you see?
[00:03:03] Speaker A: That's a great question. I think conversations are changing rapidly, certainly since 2024.
And it's interesting. I didn't think about this till now, but I mostly use Google Meets for calls and Gemini is a note taker and even that form of AI can analyze the calls I'm in to tell me if there's patterns and tell me if there's a shift in thinking and the way people are responding. But you know, overall I think buyers aren't looking for a relationship solely anymore. They're looking for execution and a get it done attitude.
I had a buyer who worked for a three and a half trillion dollar company, a fruit company. I won't mention the name of it but. And he would tell me that he looks for partners that would just walk through a brick wall when they needed them to.
And I also think the cost of things is shifting. Looking in reverse, it took a lot of time and resources to rip and replace a TMS with new technology but you know, AI is shifting that paradigm and people can move in and out of platforms with much less operational friction.
And then there's the actual cost of translation. So when I started in the industry at CLS Communication 20 years ago, which was eventually bought by LIONBRIDGE, it was 90% human translation, 10% machine translation. And then that has definitely shifted to.
And I'm just making this up more like 90% machine translation or AI based translation and 10% human translation. So the cost dynamics have really shift.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: And Matt, just, just to jump on what you just said about you know, cost and what has happened historically. Do you think responsibility still it's mainly on the human. I mean sure the machines are doing more, but the responsibility is on the person who operates the machine and hits the translate funct.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Well that's a great question. I think, you know, the responsibility of governance and risk management I think is going to be hard to pinpoint, right? Is it the company that makes the LLM or the engine? Is it the person at the end user that deploys it?
But I think it really comes down to what does your governance and risk model look like and are you having some sort of, and I hate this name, we've got to as an industry come up with a new name for it. But human in the loop to be able to analyze at least a subset of the total content being translated and come up with some sort of quality score so that an organization A knows how to retrain the engine to make it better and less risky moving forward, but B to catch hallucinations and issues with the translated content.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: And I think you've made a really good point. It really depends on each of the companies, even the cultural context.
And jumping on gte. This is probably where it makes a huge difference to have a company that has experience that GTE has. So GTE Localized began in Vietnam, has grown into a global lsp. You've got hubs now in the us, North America, uk, Singapore, Hanoi. How do you think that helps in any way to do what you do today?
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Well, that's a good question. I mean, the answer is simple. Brian Dow, our CEO has spent the last nine years building GTE Localize.
Intentionally different than most LSPs.
I like to call what he's developed and operationally disciplined. Disciplined, having trouble with words today. And operationally disciplined, culturally humble and obsessively client focused organization.
You know, that foundation is exactly why our North American enterprise and mid market clients get a partner who understands both the pressure of global scale and the reality on the ground. In markets like Vietnam, Singapore and the uk we're not just another, you know, LSP logo in their, in their sort of cadre of vendor partners.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Matt, if you might repeat for us the way in which you frame GTE localize, I'd love to dig a little deeper into each of those, if that's possible.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah. So I hope I get this right again.
Operationally disciplined, culturally humble and obsessively client focused.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Yes, and that sounds fantastic. Of course I get the operationally discipline. Tell me a little bit about the cultural humility, culturally humb.
How do you think about that?
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great point. I mean for me as an American going, I spent a couple of weeks in Vietnam towards the beginning of my tenure at GTE Localize and just the warmth and the cultural richness that I experienced in Vietnam.
And really throughout my career I've traveled to all over the world and I'm constantly personally humbled when I visit Asia at how kind the people are. I'll give you an example and, and when my friends have asked me or my family has asked me, you know, what was it like going to Vietnam and spending two weeks in Vietnam? I give this example. I went with one 40 pound suitcase and I came home with three 70 pound suitcases.
Every single person at the company had a gift for me, for my wife, for my children.
Not individually, cumulatively. Meaning? Meaning. Well, individually, not cumulatively, they had a gift for each of us.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: And that's really great. Of course you also mention obsessively client focus. And it is tough. Some entrepreneurs historically have said clients don't know what they want. Some clients think they really know what they want. And you know, you could be doing a disservice sometimes by just doing everything clients want.
How do you approach that in your practice?
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question and I think it's best answered with something that, you know, personally I experienced when I met Brian and when I first started to get to know GTE first started to review their approach to marketing and sales and operations. And what I found was something that, you know, personally I thought was potentially risky. And for anyone else, I would likely advise against it.
But you know, Brian has decided to give a 100% guarantee on the work we do in perpetuity.
And what that means is that we have to be obsessively client focused on getting it right the first time because the cost of doing it a second, third, fourth, fifth time into perpetuity gets awful risky awful quickly.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: And of course that now it's translated into your new Strategy, launching the first office in the U.S. tell us a little bit about GTE localizes strategy in North America, the U.S. a little bit of the history. How did it all happen?
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Yeah, another great question.
I like to think of our US launch as not just a nice to have address that looks good on our letterhead and our website, but really a surgical approach.
Brian and I are really building GTE to be an operating system for global brands and not a traditional lsp.
In addition, we share a vision to build Lok Reset as a sounding board for those brands to drive growth.
And I like to say our US launch pairs Vietnamese muscle with with American Hustle. Vietnamese muscle with American Hustle.
I coined that myself. T shirts
[email protected] no, our goal really isn't enterprise domination. It's to serve the much ignored middle market where the giant LSPs and language technology providers are simply ghosting buyers. I mean as, as they consolidate and get bigger. And this was has been my past companies is the cost of doing business or the cost of entry to work with one of those organizations is getting higher and higher.
And for us the calculus was really simple. As more and more providers become purely profit driven, they move further and further away from the buyer spending, you know, around $150,000 a year.
And that's where we come in. That's our, that's our sweet spot.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: And you know, I'm going to be expecting some of that swag. I don't know which colors they come, but I do expect some of those.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: I'm going to have to get the made. I'm honestly, you know, everyone asks for them when I give them that analogy. So I'm probably going to have to get them made. I don't know if Brian's going to be too happy about that, but I
[00:12:42] Speaker B: think, I think, I think is really powerful thought. So I think, I think you should make them make them for sure.
Of course there is, there is a conceptual change here. You're not simply scaling your existing offering. You are really going into go to market, rethinking go to market. And when your experience, you're going into that. Why is it so important to do that for you at gte? Localize.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Oh God. Wow. Trying to scale with the old playbook, I mean to me is a recipe for disaster in 2026.
So much has changed in the last year, let alone the last five years. AI puts more and more downward pressure on translation.
So we went back to the lab and came out optimized for outcomes. Hybrid MT options, Vertical Playbooks, Directional Defining audits, insights from LOC Reset.
You know, plus our go to Matt, our go to market is laser focused on mid market brands craving speed, ROI and real support over volume.
I'll land the plane here and say nonlinear growth requires strategic bets on what's going to happen next, not what's happening now. And when you can use your experience to see around corners your customers thrive, not just survive.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: That's a really good thought. And there is always an element of risk there and experience really plays a role in here. You have mentioned, and I want to go back to something you mentioned, you mentioned lock reset and I've said I really love to talk about log log reset. Why did you position it as the North American growth engine? What is it all about?
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. And honestly I get asked it 10 times a day and it comes with an answer that's constantly evolving.
I like to say Loke Reset is a melting pot for LO rebels.
It's a place where buyers and sellers, what I call providers who had conferences like Gala and Loke World and today you've got the AI think tank thoughtcon I think it's called. You know, they really avoid each other like they have different strands of the same disease.
And I built Loke Reset along with Brian and GTE to meet in the middle of the table and dive headfirst into honest debate.
You know, in over 20 years in the industry, I've always wanted to start a thought leadership series that took enterprise experiences, both successes and failures and used them to help educate the middle market.
When I was at Eclairo, I was one of the founders and it was of LOK Life, some of you may remember, and that tried to achieve something similar.
It's defunct now, but I kind of picked up the torch.
And to put a bow on this, we're. We're not another webinar, we're not another podcast.
We're really what I want to be is a weapon for brands to kick their global growth strategies into high gear.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: And of course, growth strategies are changing.
I got really confused in the beginning of the year, to be very honest. I was like, is the world getting smaller or now all of a sudden it's getting bigger? Like, do I now need more resources to go out there? Do I need less resources? And navigating that becomes really difficult.
Is it. And you've mentioned, you know, there is an element of experience, you've also mentioned there is an element of the bet for the future and trying to look at what is there. Who are you hoping and not specifically, but what sort of characters, what sort of experiences would you want to bring to the log reset that you think are really going to help people think about, you know, globalization and what we are aiming for here?
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah, Eddie, like I mentioned, I'd like to bring. And we're doing this. I mean, we've got the next four or five episodes mapped out with guests and with topics.
And my goal, and this is coming to fruition is really to bring enterprise buyers, people who have, who don't or were experienced enough that they're not looking to their vendors for advice. You know, they know what they're doing, they know their objective, they know the tools they want to use, they know the partners they want to use. Once you get to that sort of enterprise level, you're pretty, I wouldn't say set in your ways because you're always, at least the leaders that I talk to are always open to change. But you're pretty much set in your approach.
Let's say what I found is that mid market buyers, the guy spending or the girl spending or the person spending, you know, 50 to $150,000 a year on a website localization or a software translation or some multimedia content is really, you know, does a little bit of searching, talks to a vendor or two and their entire perspective is driven by that vendor.
My goal is to really create a environment, a room, a place, a conversation between enterprise experts and provider experts. And what I mean by that is people who like technologists.
I'll give you an example. The next episode is Pablo Lareda From Roku, Ryan McConnell from Lyft notion and Medium fame. Tim Arada. Who spent, and I'm going to give away who I meant in my first response, who spent I think 15 years or so at Apple back when the iPhone was just released.
But those are the type of people I want to bring together. Use their experience, use the mistakes they've made, use the successes they've had and really educate the middle market from a non biased perspective.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Thank you for sharing and of course I can't wait to gain that perspective. Where can we find locreset? Where is it going to be available?
[00:19:15] Speaker A: That's a great, great question and I appreciate the opportunity to mention it. I would tell people to go to locreset.com I would tell them to look on Spotify and Apple podcasts and I would tell them to look up locreset on, on YouTube and if you add a comment or like, I will personally send you one of those Vietnamese muscle American Hustle T shirts that I'm going to have to have made up.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. Thank you. And while we have our audience here, you've heard it here, go to logreset.com and start gaining some perspective. Maybe we'll also find a way to get those T shirts to you. You as well. And Matt, I know we're coming to an end on our conversation. We're very grateful to have you here. And before we go, I'd love to dig a little deeper into that conversation around client expectations.
And those have changed, we've said past three, four years, I should say now things have changed significantly. I get plenty of guests in here talking about how those expectations have shifted from your perspective. Perspective. How have those expectations around speed, accountability and outcomes changed in the last few years?
[00:20:41] Speaker A: That's a great question. Well, first I'll start by addressing the T shirt thing.
I think I'm just going to have them made up and pay for them personally and just distribute, share them with friends, trade them, share them, make the bed.
Exactly, exactly.
But to come back to your question, how have those things shifted?
You know, I think AI has really changed, changed the calculus. It's changed everything.
But you know, at the end of the day, when properly deployed, I think AI human hybrid solutions and outcomes will eventually beat out all of the AI based hype that's out there.
And when it comes to speed, quality and costs, I think speed will increase.
Quality will become more of a risk based bet on the type of content you're translating and how much risk you're willing to have in the equation.
And costs, you know, I honestly think costs will remain somewhat the same, meaning per unit costs will go down, but the amount of content that's actually translated will go up. So and this is somewhat self serving and more of a hope and dream than maybe we'll see in reality. But I hope localization budgets don't shift because the opportunity to share more content with more people, more underserved markets, more types of content that can be shared, the better. And I think AI and the cost equation is really helping companies do that if they, you know, if they want to.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Absolutely, Matt. And thank you once again for the time you've spent with us today. Before we go, is there anything else you like to add, anything you'd like to mention to your future audience, those that are listening to localization today, going to go listen to log reset, any final messages or thoughts?
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Well, certainly reach out to, to me.
I'm, I'm not, I'm not hard to find, but please reach out to me if you're interested in having that conversation and if you've got those enterprise experiences either from a provider side or a buyer side, if you're a technology expert or services guru, I'd love to talk to you and see if there's a conversation that could be had.
I'll tell you, the next episode and I mentioned who would be on it will be out on April 14 and then the one after that that'll be out on May 4th.
And that's not coincidental. It's quite the holiday for Star wars fans here in the US but we'll have Carrie Fisher from Subway who has kindly agreed to yet let us use the fact that her name is very similar to the star of Star Wars.
And we're going to have some other guests on who are big Star wars fans. Apparently there's a lot in the localization industry.
Oh yes, a lot of Star wars fans in our industry, Eddie.
And several of them will be joining us for the, for the May 4 episode three launch.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: That is amazing.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to call it, it's really meant to be an opportunity for people who have taken a global brand from one market like the US or Europe or Asia into multiple markets. So you know, the one for many sort of thought and execution. But I'm thinking about calling it and Brian doesn't know this yet so he's going to learn about it when listening to this to this podcast. But I'm thinking of calling it from a single star system to a galaxy far, far away.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Oh, wonderful. And you heard it first here localization today. Matt, thank you so much for the exclusive.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me, Eddie. It was truly a pleasure. I appreciate it
[00:24:47] Speaker B: and it is great to you, Matt, of course. I want to thank everyone who has listened to our conversation here in Localization today. A big thank you to Matt Grottenstein for helping us unpack how localization, when done deliberately and grounded in real world execution, can become a powerful driver of global growth. Catch new episodes of Localization today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Subscribe, rate and share so that others can see these conversations. I'm Eddie Arrieta with Multilingual Media. Thanks for joining us and we will see you next time. Goodbye Matt everyone.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Thanks Daddy.
