Choice Translating
Charlotte, NC
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Charlotte, NC
In the mid 1990s, Michelle Menard was a college student at UNC Charlotte when she decided to start a translation business out of her family’s living room. With some help from her mother, she got the business off the ground and made $20 thousand in sales their first year. Pretty soon, Choice Translating was ready for an office upgrade. “When we moved to the office at the Ben Craig Center, that was fantastic,” Menard said. “I felt like it reflected the professionalism that I wanted. I had this perception at the time that everyone on the team had to be in the same physical space.”
Coincidentally, the SBTDC was one of Menard’s new office neighbors. The connection, as it turns out, was serendipitous. Menard credits the SBTDC with helping her think bigger for her company from the beginning. They guided her to set the foundations to scale in a healthy way, helping her secure financing and start incorporating government contracting into her business strategy.
But after years of bootstrapping, Menard had trouble stepping out of the day-to-day of the business to focus on its development. “I thought it was normal to work fifteen-hour days all the time. In the entrepreneur world, it’s very common that folks are super driven, but the reality is that for most people it’s not sustainable.”
In 2022, she hired a Managing Director, Chantal Luhr, to run the company’s operations while she focused on the bigger picture. She and Luhr attended an SBTDC Charlotte business model accelerator pilot program, which brought local entrepreneurs together to grow and learn from each other. The program “gives more awareness to issues that other business owners are dealing with–issues and opportunities–so that not only are you getting feedback from SBTDC staff who have a huge wealth of knowledge, but also feedback from other SBTDC clients who are like-minded in this belief in continuous improvement.”
“Sometimes entrepreneurship is lonely; businesses may grow in a silo. SBTDC brings perspective from a large client base.”
Michelle Menard
Since its beginnings, Choice Translating has grown to nearly $4m in revenue with the expectation to surpass $5m in the next couple of years. They employ fifteen people full time, with staff all over the world. Menard and her business have been recognized with numerous awards over the years: SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2000), Women in Business Achievement Award (2007), Woman Business Enterprise of the Year (2015), and Charlotte Region’s Best Places to Work (2014, 2015).
In 2016, Choice Translating became ROWE® Certified (Results-Only Work Environment®) and transitioned to fully remote in 2017. “We don’t want to lose staff because of a geographic location,” Menard said. “We want to have the best talent wherever they are located.”
In addition to her support of remote work, Menard has cultivated a flexible and supportive environment for her staff. She said her company’s core values emphasize a commitment to excellence, including “open communication, feedback, supporting the whole person.”
For the future, Menard plans to continue growing Choice Translating and its sister company, TravelingBrand, along with husband and business partner Vernon Menard. She’s also launching a new venture focused on wellness for business leaders. “Over time, you can work yourself to death,” she said. “We don’t want that for our people, but that was OK for us. That doesn’t make sense. We all deserve balance and to strive for that.” She wants to guide entrepreneurs toward a new perspective on their energy, help them release stress, cultivate greater peace and love, and embrace their best lives. “I’m happy that we’re still here, still going strong. I thought that when you get to a certain point, nothing can break you. But there’s always a new challenge . . . If I can help others, then that helps their families, their businesses, and their teams.”