00:00:01.000Whether it's languages or business, you got to connect, you got to connect emotion while you're negotiating, in the evening, when you go out and have dinner with them, drink a beer with them.
00:00:12.280And language learning is all about enthusiasm, curiosity, enthusiasm, motivation.
00:00:16.800In fact, you need to get the language in you first through massive listening and reading so that then grammar explanations might start to make sense to you.
00:05:31.440So would you say in your career, you said you spoke nine languages before I think you said you retired or before you, you know, 60 years old.
00:05:40.720I think you said nine languages, 60 years old.
00:05:43.040So how did that help you advance in your career, the fact that you spoke multiple languages?
00:05:52.080Okay, you know, whether it's languages or business, you got to connect, you got to connect emotionally, right?
00:06:00.400You can have a contract, you can have a spec, you can have all kinds of, you know, details.
00:06:05.840However, you're still dealing with people.
00:06:08.000And so in Japan, which is where I lived for nine years and which was a big part of building my business, you know, often there were difficult problems, quality complaints, and we had to recover from having messed up.
00:06:22.080And the Japanese are very fussy, like they're very fussy, right?
00:06:25.680And so you're still you've still got to be able to connect with people while you're negotiating in the evening when you go out and have dinner with them or have, you know, drink a beer with them or whatever it might be.
00:06:37.600And there is no question that you can connect with people at a much more personal level.
00:06:44.480You know, get them to come your way a little better if you are able to speak their language and you understand them better.
00:06:51.120This was not only true in Japan, but it was even true in Sweden where everybody speaks English.
00:06:58.640But we had to get the sawmill workers to buy into Japanese quality requirements, which were different.
00:07:05.680And of course, the Swedes, like everybody, particularly with mill workers, the same in Canada.
00:07:22.560And so you got to get in there and explain to them somehow that actually know this is a different country.
00:07:28.000They have different cultural requirements, blah, blah, blah.
00:07:30.880And if you can communicate with them, even say in Sweden, in Swedish, you get a more sympathetic buy in.
00:07:38.720So so there's an emotional connection when they notice that you took time to want to learn their language.
00:07:45.760And then there is, hey, if this guy's willing to take the time to learn our language, maybe he's going to be more detailed about working with us.
00:12:49.040So obviously when you start in a new language, you know, nothing, you know, no words, nothing, zero.
00:12:55.920So you have to get some traction in the language.
00:12:58.480So for example, on our, in our system, we have a group, we have sort of 60, what we call mini stories.
00:13:05.920And in each mini story, and these mini stories, they use high frequency verbs, because verbs are very important.
00:13:12.800If you want to say anything, you're going to need verbs.
00:13:14.640And in each story, the vocabulary repeats four or five times in the story, because we tell the story in a certain tense or in a certain person, he, and then I, or you did, will do.
00:13:30.240And then we ask questions, not in the sense that we want you to try to remember the story, which is a bad idea.
00:13:36.000You know, comprehensive questions are a bad idea.
00:13:46.160And by dint of listening to these mini stories where there's already a lot of repetition within the story, and then you repeatedly listen to the story.
00:13:54.880And then you read the story on your iPad or iPhone or on your computer and any word you don't know, you look up.
00:14:02.240And of course, on our system, all the words you don't know initially are all highlighted in blue.
00:14:07.200And any blue word is a word you haven't seen before on the system.
00:14:10.560But you click on it and you get the meaning.
00:14:21.120You start to see that your page is getting lighter and lighter in color.
00:14:26.480A lot of these words, because they repeat in those mini stories, that word that has become yellow will show up
00:14:32.240again in yellow or in white within that story and also in the next story.
00:14:38.080Once you've moved a word or changed the status of the word, it stays that way.
00:14:42.640And so initially, say three months or so, there's a lot of repetitive listening and reading to basic content in order to get sort of a toehold in the language.
00:14:53.360Then you have to move to authentic content.
00:14:55.760And in the case of Farsi, for example, I found a lady, a woman in her 30s in Iran.
00:15:03.280And she has created using the same principle of the sort of circling questions, 26 episodes on the history of Iran in Farsi with these questions.
00:15:14.880She's gone and interviewed a bunch of people.
00:15:16.720And we have a course there called the Iranians.
00:16:26.560And so there's a whole bunch of statistics that develop flashcards.
00:16:31.280I mean, it's hard to describe in one breath, but what it does is the basic process of learning
00:16:37.280is based on a lot of listening and reading in an organized way.
00:16:41.360So it enables you to use whatever, A, we have in our libraries, which is a lot,
00:16:47.200and B, stuff that you can find on the Internet so that you can start, you know, getting this language in you.
00:16:54.160And then you can look up grammar explanations.
00:16:58.000Some of our some of our dictionaries, like the dictionary I use for Arabic, they have verb conjugation there.
00:17:04.720So if I click on a verb and I'm not sure what form of the verb it is, I go to context reversal conjugator and it tells me.
00:17:12.080So there's a whole bunch of resources like the Internet is full of resources like this.
00:17:17.120And we kind of bring them together in in one package.
00:17:20.320And ultimately, you can talk with one of our tutors if you want to eventually start, you know, using the language.
00:17:25.760And even there, what I do with my Farsi tutor, my Turkish tutor, all of our lessons, like my tutor will give me like 10 or 15 or more phrases that I had trouble with.
00:17:36.800And she'll record them. And I keep these as lessons. So I have a record going back one year or however long it's been.
00:17:43.520And I can always review the discussions that we had.
00:17:47.280One of the things I realized there is that I make the same mistake every week.
00:17:50.880That's one of the constants in language learning is how we continue to make the same mistakes.
00:17:56.080So when I get these reports from my tutors, which is basically a report of our lesson, which is a conversation, most of my lessons are just conversations.
00:18:06.000But of course, I make mistakes and I struggle to look for words and phrases.
00:18:10.320So my tutor typically sends me a list of 10 or 15 or 20 of these words and phrases and she records them.
00:18:16.560And this then becomes a lesson that I study.
00:18:19.280But I can study it not only immediately after the lesson, but six months, 12 months later, I have all of these conversation reports that I can go back to.
00:18:28.960I'm reminded of that conversation. I'm reminded of the mistakes that I've made.
00:18:33.360One of the interesting things is that even when you're corrected, you continue to make the same mistake again.
00:18:38.880Mistakes are a big part of language learning.
00:18:40.800You will make mistakes many, many times before you start saying things correctly, but you eventually do.
00:18:47.040So, yeah, by the way, I mean, listen, if there was an information about a business product, you just did a phenomenal job sharing what your product does.
00:18:54.800Now, here's a question about your company. Yes.
00:18:57.200How well are you guys doing? You know, how how how well is the business doing?
00:19:01.200OK, it's started to do well. Certainly we had to pick up with with the covid.
00:19:07.040But we went through a long period where I was financing it basically with my lumber business because my main business has been in in lumber major activities.
00:19:17.360We bring lumber. We used to export a lot to Japan. Now we bring wood in from Europe to the U.S. East Coast.
00:19:23.200But now it's at a point where it's it's self-sufficient. It's financially, you know, doing fine.
00:19:28.480And we're continuing to grow to the point where we recently decided that we were going to add, you know, another few developers because we're you know, we're constantly trying to improve it.
00:19:40.080We've got this link 5.0 coming out and the deadline keeps on receding and receding.
00:19:45.680And we said this is we can't do this. We better get some help in there.
00:19:49.200So it's a good problem to have. Good problem to have.
00:19:52.240I know the problem personally, and it's both a good problem to have and it can be annoying.
00:19:59.600Now, the only reason I asked the question is because I do believe there is a ton of value in learning new languages.
00:20:08.400I remember I was looking at some stats earlier. It said four biggest perks of being bilingual.
00:20:14.800Number one, higher salary. Bilingues make seven thousand dollars more per year and their peers, more job opportunities.
00:20:22.880The third one was a little bit confusing, but the more I looked at it, I said, OK, that could make sense.
00:20:27.120You'll live longer and healthier. They said bilingual showed Alzheimer's symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language.
00:20:37.040Interesting. And then the last one was smarty pants.
00:20:40.320Children who grew up learning to speak two languages are better at switching between tasks than children who learn to speak only one language.
00:20:47.440What are some benefits you would say of speaking?
00:20:50.240OK, obviously, if we are learning as an adult, it's too late to go back and take advantage of those advantages for children.
00:20:58.800So I've always I've often said, you know, I speak all these languages, but I think the biggest thing about speaking languages is that more opportunities are going to come your way.
00:21:08.800I think, you know, I think, you know, in business, you know, even if you only speak one language, you have to perform.
00:21:14.000Right. Like if you're going to be a successful business person, you've got to do what you say you're going to do.
00:21:18.800You've got to be creative. You've got to provide, you know, a benefit to your business partners.
00:21:24.080But if you have more languages, more potential opportunities are going to come your way.
00:21:30.080That's the big thing. I do. It's possible like here I am.
00:21:33.680I'm seventy five. I'm alert. I'm, you know, I'm enjoying life and I attribute that to language learning and wine every evening.
00:21:39.440OK, every red wine, every, every evening, my wife makes a gourmet meal every evening, balance, lots of veggies, a little bit of red wine and keeping active physically.
00:21:48.720But no, I think the big thing with it, I described earlier how it makes it easier to communicate with people, to persuade people, to establish relationships with people.
00:21:59.240And we all know that in business, communications, relationships are extremely important, so you can have a broader range of communications, a better quality of communications.
00:22:11.000It's it's still you can't just rely on your languages, whatever business you're in.
00:22:15.800You've got to be good at what you do. But but if you speak languages, you're going to have more opportunities.
00:22:21.080And I think you can you can power up. Yeah, very cool.
00:22:24.800So Link found about you and your son. How many languages does your son speak? I'm curious.
00:22:30.080OK, so my son speaks five. OK, and of course, when we had two boys and when they were young, my wife and I, my wife speaks five languages.
00:22:38.720We tried to get them to learn at least French in Canada, and they were very resistant to all of our efforts. Right.
00:22:46.160But my son, Mark, who works with me on Link, he ended up playing professional hockey.
00:22:51.760He, you know, he went to Yale for four years. He did very well. He was leading scorer at Yale.
00:22:56.800He was in the States to have a thing called the Hobie Baker Award for the best college hockey player.
00:23:02.720So he was a Kobe, Hobie Baker finalist in hockey.
00:23:07.200And then he went and played. It wasn't very big. He went and played in Europe.
00:23:10.000And all of a sudden he's you know, he's in Italy and everyone's speaking Italian and he's in Austria and everybody's speaking German and Switzerland and then Japan.
00:23:18.480So he suddenly realized just how beneficial and how much more pleasant life is when you can speak the languages that people around you are speaking.
00:23:28.880So now he speaks five languages. But as a kid, we couldn't get them. We couldn't get them.
00:23:33.040You know, it's very difficult. Parents have to be very careful. Don't push too hard or the kids will just push right back.
00:23:39.520There's no question about that, Steve. I've really enjoyed having you.
00:23:42.640And I think in a world of business where we are ourselves nowadays, you know, it almost seems like the schools we go to, the direction they're taking is, hey, you got to learn Mandarin.
00:23:54.400You got to learn this. You got to learn that from your take before we wrap this up.
00:23:58.740And this will be the final topic we'll talk about. If you were to say, you know, I think if there's three languages you ought to learn today or, you know,
00:24:07.140somehow encourage your kids to learn today, what would you say? I mean, take English out.
00:24:12.080What would you say are the top three languages today to learn for business?
00:24:16.240You know, I think it's very important to let the kids choose the language that they're most interested in.
00:24:21.320Once because the most difficult language is the first language.
00:24:24.640So once someone has learned another language, it then becomes much easier to learn other languages.
00:24:30.120So I wouldn't force people. But in terms of importance, obviously, if you live in the United States, Spanish.
00:24:35.880I mean, there's no question. And so Spanish is a big one, obviously, potentially Chinese, but only if you're going to be doing business there.
00:24:44.940But the big thing is so much of language learning depends on your motivation.
00:24:48.900So if you can at least allow kids to discover a language, one that they're interested in, it might be it might be, you know, K-pop and Korean or it doesn't really matter what it is.
00:25:00.600I would encourage kids to get interested in a language and focus on comprehension.
00:25:07.500Don't focus on them producing the language correctly. Focus on them enjoying the language, whichever language.
00:25:14.160And once they get started on the voyage, the journey of language learning, they will continue.
00:25:19.440Well, Steve, I really enjoy listening to you. Where can people find you, by the way?
00:25:25.920Well, you can find me on YouTube. I have a channel there, well over 300,000 subscribers.
00:25:32.520And I call myself Lingo Steve on YouTube.
00:25:35.580But certainly come to LingQ, L-I-N-G-Q dot com, which is where I learn languages and I think people would find it, you know, helpful, a pleasant kind of environment.
00:25:48.660So those were the two would be the two places that I'm on Twitter.
00:25:52.080But Lingo Steve, if you look for Lingo Steve, you're going to find me and come to LingQ.
00:25:56.040We're going to put both links below for people to go out there and find you, subscribe to his channel, go visit his website to find out more about what they're doing.
00:26:04.380And with that being said, Steve, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainer.