Planning for a Pivot From 8,000 Miles Away With Liziana Carter

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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an original transcript–edited for sense, length, and clarity.  If you have any questions or concerns, please email our host, Doria Lavagnino, at doria@sheventurespodcast.com.

00:00.00

Doria Lavagnino

00:02.97

Doria Lavagnino:

Romanian born and highly educated with two Master’s degrees in business & forestry engineering, and a Master’s in accounting, she started working for her family forestry business in Romania for nine years. She pivoted not only career but country, landing on the Gold Coast of Australia working various gigs, including her own fitness business, a brief stint at Microsoft where she got in with no experience by making calls to 600 Microsoft Partners in 30 days — if you want to talk about what entrepreneurship takes — while she honed in on her business idea, which is conversational, AI-driven chatbots. She’s here to talk about pivots, entrepreneurship, and how she plans to scale her company Grow AI. Liziana Carter, welcome to SheVentures. 

01:21.92

Liziana Carter:

Hi Doria, thanks for having me.

Doria:

It is amazing technology that I am in Brooklyn, New York, and you are in Australia.

01:30.59

Liziana:

It is. It’s awesome.

01:34.95

Doria:

I have not had a guest from Romania before. Describe to listeners what it was like to grow up there.

01:43.00

Liziana:

It was really nice. I had a beautiful childhood with amazing parents. I have a brother. There was nothing out of the ordinary in my childhood. I guess I was a good child, followed through on what I was supposed to. One of the earlier lessons that I learned back while I was in high school was that I realized I wasn’t as smart as I wanted to be, or I thought I wanted to be, and that was at the point where I almost failed chemistry. In Romania we have a different grading system, it starts at one and goes up to 10, obviously 10 is the best. So I got a few threes and fours in chemistry, and I realized I need to put in more work if I want to catch up with everybody else. So I started waking up early, 4 to 5 a.m., put in extra hours to learn and study because it wasn’t sticking to me as fast as he was sticking to everybody else. Then I started getting nines and eights and 10s. So I realized that perseverance and hard work usually gets you further than just being brilliant. That’s something that stuck with me over the years. I just followed through on this small trick, where I just put in the hard work in whatever I had to do, whatever I wanted to achieve.

03:18.93

Doria:

That’s no small trick, right? Working hard is something that you’ve mentioned that you do and it’s something you take very seriously. But many people, I don’t want to say that they’re lazy — well some of them, frankly, are if we’re going to be truthful, — but to follow through, I think, is not as easy as you make it seem for many.

03:42.94

Liziana:

Well, you know what? I think the most powerful story is actually the one that we tell ourselves because at the end of the day we are the easiest person to lie to or fool. I always try to see the world as it is, not as I’d want it to be and that helps a lot because it’s like that: You either put in the work and you get it or you can keep lying to yourself and you’re probably not going to get it.

04:13.67

Doria:

It’s very realistic and pragmatic. What was the catalyst for you to want to leave?

04:22.76

Liziana:

I think when I hit 30, I kind of went into a crisis. I had hit a ceiling, I suppose, professionally speaking, personally as well, and I just wanted something better. I wanted a different type of society, particularly for my daughter but for myself as well, because I thought if I reached this point in my career, there was actually nowhere else to go, obviously there’s always options, but I wanted more. So I thought if I reached this point by the time I was 30, what’s going to happen to my daughter because she’s gonna live in a totally different world where now you just have to learn new skills every few years and keep up with everything. So I want her to live in a society that’s going to give her a foundation from the get-go of where she starts to see things and live her life.

05:22.92

Doria:

What fascinates me, it can’t be this simple, but you went through a two-year process to get a working visa, which sounds horrible and very bureaucratic, but then I’ve heard you say on other podcasts that you were watching a fitness trainer at Surfers Paradise and you saw the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, in a video and you decided that is where I want to be from Romania, so is that how it happened?

05:59.78

Liziana:

It’s kind of how it happened; it just took a very long time. The reality is I chase the challenge, and when I find a challenge I just get fanatical about it. I was following Emily Skye who actually lives very close to where I live now. One day she posted from the airplane a photo of Surfers Paradise and when I saw it, Romania is very cold for usually half a year you’re freezing to death, the weather is not that nice either. So I looked up Gold Coast Australia. I saw a photo of Surfers Paradise and I was like, “Oh my god. I just have to live there.” Sixty-five days of rain all year, everything else is sunny, it was just a dream.

06:49.73

Doria:

You chased that dream, and it took you two years. 

06:54.48

Liziana:

Actually it was lucky that I even got it. I mean, not lucky because I was backed.

06:58.76

Doria:

I know what you mean, though. I hear about this in the U.S., as well. Getting work visas is quite difficult but I don’t know the process in Australia.

07:12.40

Liziana:

Australia just makes it very hard. They make a business out of all of this. They just want to have the best people possible contributing to their society. First of all, you have to pay a lot to get here. You have to meet all sorts of requirements in terms of studies and work experience. You have to really know your English and all of these sorts of things that for most people just take forever and they never get the visa.

07:38.26

Doria:

Do you need to be sponsored by a company?

07:43.47

Liziana:

It depends. There are all sorts of visas. I didn’t want to go for any sort of visa that would tie me to a company or a specific place in Australia, because I could have gotten it much easier if I had accepted to live in South Australia for two years. So I just went for the independent visa, I just wanted the top of the top and I got it.

08:09.79

Doria:

Good for you. Two years later, so now you’ve moved your daughter and yourself, presumably, to Australia. This is a bit off topic, but lately Australia has been on my radar a lot. I use Canva a lot, and I’ve been more and more aware of the startup scene in Australia and was wondering what is it like for you there? Do you feel that there is a scene?

08:29.25

Liziana:

Yes, there is definitely. They support you to put in action what you believe is going to work business-wise, and not just business-wise, but Australia does keep up very well in terms of encouraging small and young entrepreneurs to launch their small businesses. In my first year, I didn’t pay any taxes. You get all sorts of deductions, so it’s really good.

09:16.25

Doria:

Yes, that is nice. You recently became a citizen, is that correct?

09:24.84

Liziana:

Yes, that’s correct. So my daughter and I have been living here for close to five years now, and in July we became citizens. I think that was the last milestone in terms of Australia and now I don’t know what’s next in terms of personal.

09:42.30

Doria:

I guess some good-looking Crocodile Dundee type, maybe I don’t know. 

09:51.58

Liziana:

Probably that would be next, yes.

10:02.18

Doria:

In all seriousness though, your first foray into chatbots was your own fitness company where you used Facebook Messenger. My understanding is that then you branched out into helping med spas and gyms pre-COVID. What drew you to chatbots initially? How did it go and just how did you identify a gap in the market?

10:26.44

Liziana:

That’s actually a bit of a long story because in the middle of all of this — so, what you said, that my fitness business with the chatbots, and then the med spa, and the chatbot agency that I now have — there was Microsoft where I pivoted and I just went for something more stable, I would say. I spend a lot of time and money, as well, on courses and Masterminds. So at that time I had joined a Mastermind, a one-year Mastermind, and the guy who was running it just told me one day, “Liz, go sign up for ManyChat, learn automation, start building chatbots, and run ads to your fitness business.” Nobody really taught me anything around this, I just figured things out, and I was doing it at a very basic level, that was just the reality. But the actual building and the creativity behind it and all the things that you could do spiked something. I just loved spending time and geeking out on all of this stuff. After I quit my Microsoft job, I started doing this. I guess I didn’t nail it with the niche that I was going after. I wasn’t really passionate about gyms or med spas, it was just I love the chatbot part but I had to nail the niche. It turned out it didn’t work out. I mean, it was a really good thing for me. So at the point where COVID hit, all of my contracts on everything that had just kicked off, I was back at the drawing board. I think it was in six years I’d failed for the fourth time. The good thing is that failure never really broke me. It scared me to an extent but eventually it built me. I think that’s where most people just lack focus to keep going. They don’t lack motivation, they just lack focus because if you divide your attention, you try doing this, this, and this — then that slows you down. 

They say multitasking, but it’s really like you need to keep your focus and just do one thing. When COVID hit, I found out about School of Bots and I joined their course. I realized that my chatbot skills actually sucked, sorry for the language. So they actually have a course that teaches you advanced bot building and they had also mentioned in their course which AI worked with Facebook Messenger chatbots. They weren’t teaching it, but they had mentioned it. So I went out and I started teaching myself and playing around with dialogue flow which is Google’s AI. Then because I didn’t have a niche anymore, everybody was out of business, I also saw a potential in online businesses, which had already blown up due to COVID. What School of Bots actually teaches as a business model is to get very good at one thing that makes you special — which was, in my case, AI-assisted chatbots on Facebook Messenger — and only do that one thing for one type of business, say no to everything else. So that resonated with me a lot and that’s what I did.

14:11.60

Doria:

The one type of business is just ecommerce in general?

14:19.53

Liziana:

Yes, ecommerce and I’m actually zoning into beauty and fitness and health, that side because that appeals a lot to me as a woman and the sense of psychology behind buying it and I’m just selling to myself.

14:39.89

Doria:

Going back for a second, you’ve mentioned a Mastermind group and I hear a lot about different kinds of Mastermind groups. Do you recommend them? Were they helpful to you?

14:54.97

Liziana:

It depends. Define helpful because helpful is even when you fail and you learn that that thing is not working. But, yes, at the end of the day they were. That Mastermind in particular, that helped me, that taught me a lot of things. But I think that what usually looks like success to people when you see success is usually just patience and doing the obvious thing that you need to do that nobody wants to do for a long period of time. I was in many courses where I was never the success story, the case study. I was in intenses and 10s and not even in that Mastermind I wasn’t. Where I became the success story was in the School of Bots course because I had done so many things and this just resonated with me. It was the right time and I had all of the skills that I could merge together into making myself one of their success stories.

16:03.92

Doria:

Right. And that is so true when someone describes their entrepreneurial journey it’s not often that right off the bat you hit a gold mine and it’s usually a bit of product market fit and trying to figure out where your niche is that everyone has to go through and a lot of people end up giving up somewhere on that road, but you did not.

16:36.50

Liziana:

Yes, exactly. It’s micro action every day and just macro patience with the long term. Everybody has big goals and wants all sorts of things but that’s where you need the macro patience and understand it’s going to take a long time, usually years.

16:57.32

Doria:

How do you keep yourself patient?

17:01.17

Liziana:

That’s a tricky question because with the little things I am very impatient. With the long-term things, I can’t really say, I guess I just realized that the bigger the dream the longer it is going to take for me to achieve it. And because I’ve done it a few times, I’ve achieved goals that have taken years to achieve, now it’s much easier to do it.

17:34.87

Doria:

Yep, that makes sense and you see the result of it. The business model, as I understand it, it’s not SaaS based but highly consultative. You go in and speak to businesses, is that correct? Firstly I just want to make sure I understand that.

17:52.14

Liziana:

It’s actually a done-for-you service. We work on a month-to-month basis with clients. My first client is actually my longest client but he’s been with me for 14 months. We go in and implement all of this. First of all, we build the infrastructure of the chatbot with all the integrations, we add AI, we add everything to it, and then month-to-month we, or together with the client’s team, come up with new campaigns or use cases that they want to focus on to bring in either new revenue, new leads, automate more of their customer support, just deliver better in their experiences to their audience through their DMs.

18:39.10

Doria:

Got it. So if a business is working with you in that way — because on your site I can’t tell what your pricing model is like — so for small businesses are you an option? Or are you really looking at larger businesses? 

19:01.21

Liziana:

I’m not. I’m only looking at larger businesses that have a specific revenue per month that can use something like this and immediately see results. The type of business that has already nailed down their marketing strategy, that has marketing that converts, they just add this extra touch, and through this we’re able to deliver to their audience an unusual level of attention and personalization that they’re not used to. So that’s how it happens, they just respond very well.

19:36.70

Doria:

Based on the one customer, and I know you have others, that you’ve had for 14 months, I’m sure you have some metrics at this point that they had success at the beginning anyway, but then use your chatbot and what increase in revenue or customers or awareness, are there any metrics that you can provide?

20:03.13

Liziana:

We’ve generated through all of our chatbot campaigns close to $4 million for them just through chatbot campaigns built on Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, and then we also build omnichannel experiences. Omnichannel means when we have a large subscriber base on Messenger, Instagram, SMS, and email then we re-engage those people on the channel that they are most engaged with with the brand. So to avoid spamming them and just delivering them the experience that they want to without hammering them on all channels, if that makes sense.

20:41.70

Doria:

It makes a lot of sense. So to repeat, it’s Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp? 

20:50.62

Liziana:

Yes, correct. So we’re just talking about DMs, one-on-one conversations with the brand. So WhatsApp is now in beta but it will open up to the public. We are in beta with it, but sometime this year it will be available to the general public. Just like Instagram DM automation was in beta early last year and then Facebook opened it to the public in August.

21:13.76

Doria:

Got it and you’ve bootstrapped your business to date. How many clients do you have?

21:20.71

Liziana:

At this point, I have under 10 and looking to grow. But it’s not as easy to grow in terms of limitations that I have due to my team. It’s complicated to find good team members that are also good chatbot builders, who understand logic, who can learn or pick up AI. At this point, I create the strategy for all of my clients because at the end of the day it’s actually 70 percent strategy. The reality is that I won’t be able to scale a lot unless I figure out a way to duplicate myself in terms of strategy.

22:08.16

Doria:

That’s what I was thinking when I had mentioned before the consultative nature of what you’re doing, that it’s you. So what I wondered was, for example, if you are more interested now in the beauty niche because of the psychology and whatnot, is it possible that you might decide to build more of a SaaS kind of “rinse, wash, repeat, off the shelf” option?

22:38.10

Liziana:

Yes, I have options that I’m migrating toward right now. I just wanted to work with more and more clients, although current clients stay with me for many many months. In order to bring in new clients, I would have to somehow hand over what we’ve built so far to the current clients. So what I’m looking into is training their team to be able to maintain and build basic new campaigns based on what we’ve built so far. So we’ve built the entire infrastructure, they already have many use cases running across the bot and then whatever they want to do moving forward it’s the option of us training — or me training — their internal team to continue with this. There’s also the option of moving forward and offering simply just training the client’s team from the beginning, so just running a one-to-three-month contract where we build everything with their team, train them at the same time, and then hand over.

23:46.98

Doria:

And hand it over then be done with it and be able to move on. Absolutely.

23:53.72

Liziana:

That could allow me to scale further because all of this training can simply be recorded. I’ve recorded training courses before so it could be, and I think that’s going to be the next step.

24:05.89

Doria:

It seems logical only in that if you want to scale, there have to be way processes that you can implement again and again without you having to be there. That’s exciting. What tips can you give listeners about prospecting new clients for a business? What has worked for you and what has not worked for you?

24:31.10

Liziana:

I’ve done so much prospecting from the very worst that you can imagine, the cold prospecting was just blasting thousands and thousands of emails, to what I do now. What works for people — especially large CEOs, which I target directly right now, I don’t even bother with trying to speak to their marketing team or anybody else, I go straight to the top — is putting in the effort to research them, really research them, learn about what they’ve done in the business, how has their business progressed, even in their personal life, although that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and then emailing them something very personalized that makes sense to them and potentially adding a short Loom video introducing myself or simply dropping a few tips of where they’re leaving money on the table. Have a look at their website, at their Instagram, or their Facebook, just open the conversation. That’s working for me at the moment.

25:41.97

Doria:

Fascinating. How long is your video?

25:46.58

Liziana:

Five minutes, 10 max. 

25:50.27

Doria:

Is it the same video you send everyone or do you customize it?

Liziana: 

I record a specific video for every person that I approach.

26:03.22

Doria:

Wow, that’s a lot of work but I can see how it pays off because you hit the people that are really interested.

26:11.53

Liziana:

Yes, so I go in and really pinpoint exactly how they could be delivering, what I mentioned before, this unusual level of personalization and attention. Because most of them, if they are a big brand, nobody even responds to their DMs and people just DM because they have questions, they just want to ask a question and they’ll buy. If there’s nobody there to answer the question, then they might not buy, they might buy for somebody else.

26:44.85

Doria:

That is true and the first generation of chatbots I feel were very much about just that. You can tell, and I think you’ve said you’re required to say that you’re speaking to a chatbot, I can tell. So they are very useful in that way, but for AI to work in a chatbot, my understanding is it needs an incredible amount of data.

27:19.60

Liziana:

Not necessarily. We start off with some data that we collect over the first 30 days because that’s just the best starting point. We start to collect whatever people are coming into the bot and asking and the bot cannot handle, we store that into a Google sheet and then based on that, 30 days later, we split it into what we call intents, which are topics. One topic can be “What can this product do?” Another topic can be “How much is shipping?” Another topic issue, “What’s the price?” So we usually collect about 10 to 20 topics by the end of the first 30 days. We build those topics into the AI and then add new training phrases every day to allow it to understand that topic better when it’s being asked inside the chat bot.

28:13.90

Doria:

And so that’s the magic behind this very highly contextual, relevant experience. It’s honing in more and more on what customers are asking or needing.

28:26.90

Liziana:

Exactly and then it’s if you want to dive-deep into context then you’ll add context to it. For example, somebody asks a question about a specific lipstick, you set the context and then the next question they ask, “Do you have it in beige?” or whatever and that’s just picking the context from the previous question they asked and then continuing based on that. It’s a bit of a work when implemented, that’s why I say that when we work with a client our work usually consists in building all of this foundation and framework over the first two to three months and then the client’s team can easily pick it up and just run marketing campaigns, contests, product launches, flash sales through the bot without having to do much work with AI.

29:23.47

Doria:

That makes sense. What I keep coming back to, and it could be that I’m not understanding it, but going back again to the beauty business, have you considered an AI bot where you have a myriad of scripts that you’ve created already and just have it in the bot and not even necessarily have to train people. Maybe bots are not that simple at this point, I don’t know.

29:53.78

Liziana:

I know, you’re saying with options, with the option that people click on right? That is the very basic use case that we built. That’s how it all starts where there’s an entire structure to the bot that develops into options. So people can just tap, the bot can welcome them and say, “Hey, what are you looking for? Lipsticks, skincare, or haircare?” And they tap on the button and then the conversation just continues back and forth. Past this point, there are many people that just come into the bot that have specific questions, so AI is basically the next level. That’s where we implement AI. So we’re able to capture even those random questions that people just come into the bot and ask.

30:45.58

Doria:

Understood. The technology has to be implemented, it’s not that you have a bot on a shelf, so to speak, that you could sell. 

30:58.37

Liziana:

No, we don’t.

31:05.56

Doria:

So it integrates with Facebook and the other bots out there, is that correct?

31:06.85

Liziana:

Correct. So we build the entire backend and then when we push it live it will work through their Facebook page whenever somebody DMs the page for the first time. Or they want a Facebook ad and people click on the ad and they are taken to Messenger and start the conversation. That’s how it works. It’s built custom for each client.

31:36.64

Doria:

Has it been the case that one platform — Facebook, Instagram — converts more than the other or does it depend on the type of product?

31:48.25

Liziana:

It’s hard to say because Instagram was literally just open to the public in August, but at this point Messenger converts much better because Messenger supports AI well, and there’s a bit more functionality to Messenger just because Messenger automation has been around since 2016 and it just has more functionality than Instagram. Instagram will catch up I’m sure.

32:11.91

Doria:

Yeah, it makes sense and I think a lot of people are more accustomed to Facebook Messenger, they just know about it. There are so many big players in this field, people think of IBM Watson, even HubSpot has conversational chat that’s AI based. How are you different? What will make you stand out in this space?

32:36.28

Liziana:

A result. In the market that I’m in, you will quickly realize that most bot builders, to say so, are only familiar with building customer support chatbots or something like this, which is usually a website with no traffic. It’s not going to do much. Where we stand out, we build specific use cases that are geared toward sales and marketing and customer support. So they all work together, but the main focus is to generate more sales through the bot, generate more leads because we’re also collecting phone numbers, emails, and all user data. What’s very awesome, I would say, about Messenger chatbots is that we’re able to store all of this data of people just back and forth with the chat bot. They tell us they’re looking to reduce wrinkles, get better hair, and then creating future campaigns that re-engage these same users, because we have their user profile, when they come back into the bot, we can just welcome them and tell them, “Hey last time we chatted, you told me you were looking to reduce wrinkles. I can see in the meantime that you’ve also purchased our collagen. I have something very special for you today.” Something like that.

34:06.15

Doria:

Exactly. So it’s segmentation and you’re pushing people down a funnel but in a way that they don’t necessarily feel that they’re being pushed on a funnel.

34:08.98

Liziana:

Exactly. So all of our campaigns are very customer-centric oriented and we ask a lot of questions. If you’re anything like me or anybody else, when somebody asks you about yourself, you’re just going to start talking. So we ask questions to people, we build one product recommendation quiz where we asked them eight questions in a row and we had 96 percent of people answer the very last question and we have a thousand conversations started with this product recommendation. It is just awesome when you see where you just kept asking them, “What about this? But would you like this? What about this? What do you think of this?” You just ask them and the answer. They stay there and you capture their attention for five, 10 minutes at a time, even more. 

35:09.11

Doria:

Which, in this day and age, five or 10 minutes of engagement is a long time. What advice do you have for any women who want to become tech founders or who want to start a business of any sort?

35:24.99

Liziana:

Execute. In my experience along the years, I’ve learned that execution usually beats most things. Even if you execute and you don’t get it right, you continue to execute — consistency. So execution and consistency toward what you feel is going to allow you to hit your goal. When we talk about women, especially in AI automation because there’s not a lot of women and I think there should be more women because there’s definitely it can be done, I think courage. They should have more courage in getting into things that they want to do and they feel they can do.

36:26.74

Doria:

Do you think it’s a level playing field? Do you think that men and women have the same opportunities?

36:39.92

Liziana:

It’s a long debate here with men and women. In my experience, I have never felt that I didn’t have an equal shot versus a man. It just goes back to my early years. I just felt that if something can be done, I can do it. It doesn’t matter if a man’s done it, I don’t think so, it’s just a matter of mentality. 

37:09.70

Doria:

A mindset, absolutely. So can you name both your biggest win and your biggest challenge to date? Personal, professional, just what comes to mind.

37:24.26

Liziana:

Professional must be the fact that I really wanted to have my own thing, something that made a difference, and that made me special, and I have it now but it took seven years.

37:40.12

Doria:

People see the success and they don’t realize all the work.

37:43.38

Liziana:

Exactly. So when I started my own online fitness business I was like, “Yes I’m going to do this and I feel like this is it. I’m just going to go all in.” Now when I think back at it, I don’t want to think back at it. And personal must be the fact that as a Romanian immigrant I managed to rebuild my life from scratch 50,000 kilometers away from my home country with my daughter and just living the life that 10 years ago was just a dream. Literally just a dream. We’re going back to courage. I think courage is the only trait that you can’t fake. You either have it or you don’t.

38:31.72

Doria:

Absolutely and do you have any advice for people who are thinking of moving across the world?

38:44.59

Liziana:

Well, it will depend if they have a shot at doing this because when I first thought about it, yes I wanted it, but I contacted a migration agent and he did an assessment and he told me straight up what my chances were. You can either take the long way or you can take the very long way. But I had a shot just because of my education and my work experience. So if you don’t at least meet some of these, you probably won’t make it because if you start to do your education now then you’ll lose points with age and a bunch of other stuff. It’s just like a roller coaster. But if it can be done, if somebody assesses it and it can be done, then absolutely just go for it and keep going.

39:40.96

Doria:

I’m just trying to envision this, you just got on a plane and you went with your daughter after two years?

39:49.11

Liziana:

Correct. At that point, I was with my ex-husband as well. So all three of us moved here. But then we separated and he lives back in Romania now. 

39:58.61

Doria:

Can you have dual citizenship with Romania? 

40:08.76

Liziana:

I do. I have it now, yes.

Doria:

Very cool. You’ve got your EU passport and your Australian passport, very nice. Where do you see your company three years from now?

40:14.92

Liziana:

I see myself working a lot over the next two or three years but I think I will go into investments and other areas that can be scalable. I just need to gather enough capital for me to actually move into something else. 

40:38.92

Doria:

And what would the something else be?

40:51.78

Liziana:

Right now, and what’s been in my head for quite a few years, is real estate, especially here on the Gold Coast because the Gold Coast is exploding. 

40:53.62

Doria:

It’s a good time to buy or has the time passed? 

Liziana:

It is, yes. 

Doria: 

If there’s one thing that you could do differently with your business based on what you know today, what would that be?

41:05.42

Liziana:

I think I would have looked to hire better people earlier. But I’m still early, so we’re talking not even two years of being in this particular business. But I feel that not having the right people has slowed me down, and if I don’t get on to this as soon as possible it will continue to slow me down. So looking for the right attitudes and mindsets that I can hold on to and build something for the next three to five years.

41:55.70

Doria:

Last question, just curious, with the idea of mindset are you willing to look internationally or do you want to work with people locally?

42:10.39

Liziana:

There is nobody in Australia, not from my team, not client based. So all of my clients are U.S.based, first of all. My team is South America, America, and Europe.

42:29.30

Doria:

I’ve heard that a lot of tech talent is coming from South America now.

42:31.35

Liziana:

Yes, one of my lead bot builders is based in Columbia and he’s really good.

42:39.24

Doria:

How do you find people?

42:41.94

Liziana:

From word of mouth, I know a lot of people, I’ve made a lot of connections over the last few years just talking to people. Word of mouth, Upwork. 

42:53.37

Doria:

Where can listeners learn more about Grow AI if they have any questions?

43:04.87

Liziana:

You can go to www.getgrowai.com, that is our main website. Or connect with me on LinkedIn, if you look up Liziana Carter it’s probably going to be just one of me there.

43:18.41

Doria:

It has been such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for coming on.

43:22.40

Liziana:

Thanks so much for having me.