Numerous components go into satisfaction on both sides of the deal involving your invention or product

A good publicist will set forth an action plan with a very specific list of tactics upon which both parties agree.

BY ALYSON DUTCH

Public relations, one of many marketing methodologies a startup can use to launch a product, is often the first and least-expensive choice for the most exposure.

For inventors who have decided to build their own brands, there’s so much to learn about creating a company that is sustainable and profitable. Chief among them is hiring, and the art of checking expectations of those you hire.

Our PR company works with so many different kinds of people and varied products. For those who are new to hiring a PR agency, we’ve learned to become very flexible in providing services that mean something to each client. Being in the service business, we’ve learned that the expectations of each customer are very different.

To a publicity professional, PR means something very specific:   getting a product or service reported about in the media that is read, seen or heard by your particular customer. There are other things that a publicist, PR firm or public relations person will do to create awareness, but getting “placements” in the media is the defining service.

Achieving the right fit

I bring up the subject of expectations because PR seems to be one of those amorphous activities that some may describe as “free advertising” or simply “getting awareness.”

Some clients are only interested in being on TV; some are interested in entrepreneurial profiles only; some are interested in product reviews only. Some may wish for awards or speaking opportunities.

These are all activities that a publicist provides for a client, but a good publicist will choose what kind of publicity will help move the needle for your business.

For example, if you have invented a new consultancy service, entrepreneurial profiles would be best to demonstrate your ability to consult. If you have a product that is sold to 12-16-year-olds, TikTok would be a good place to create awareness and would be chosen over another social platform such as Facebook that appeals to a much older audience.

If you have a product and a big celebrity attached to it, as our company recently had for a product with Shaquille O’Neal, you can expect the national morning show producers to take the story. Alternatively, if you have a medical device product with no clinical trials, no doctor or a celebrity attached, those same producers will not book you.

Publicity is an effort-driven marketing method. You should expect that your publicist gets you placements in places that mean something to your business. This should be spelled out in detail in advance, so you know what to expect and the PR outfit is held accountable.

Ask for proven tactics

Your publicist should do a deep dive into your customer profile first, then create press lists that match. He or she should also engineer press releases and pitches that appeal to the reporters whose attention they want to get. The lion’s share of what a publicist does is a constant pitching to reporters that makes the best sense for your product or service.

A good publicist will also set forth an action plan with a very specific list of tactics upon which both parties agree.

Market your invention through PR that ties in to current events

Great publicists will always be looking for things in the news that make your product or invention reportable. 

BY ALYSON DUTCH

Many people know that a lumberjack is a fashion inspiration for men’s flannel shirts, and the flapjack is a Sunday morning favorite with a good cup ’o Joe. But if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve never heard of a newsjack, it’s worth exploring.

In April, the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences graced the film “Sound of Metal” with six Oscar nominations. The movie, about a rock ‘n’ roll drummer who loses his hearing, was a reason to connect Fardad Zabetian’s (Inventors Digest cover story, April 2021) multilingual SaaS KUDO videoconferencing that features a drop-down menu of 147 sign languages to news stories after the Oscar telecast.

So before the Sunday cultural celebration, our company prepared a pitch featuring a list of “did you know” factoids about how many Americans and global citizens are deaf, how many sign languages there are in the world, and how KUDO was helping to change the face of global business for deaf people. We sent it to all the journalists who write about global business and to the entertainment press we knew would be covering the Oscars.

What happened?

One of the reporters I know who does entertainment reporting for the Los Angeles NBC-TV station wrote back, thanking us for facts he could use in his pre- and post-Oscar reporting. He then introduced me to Marlee Marlin’s executive producer. For those of you who don’t know, she’s a famous deaf actress who was on the Oscar telecast signing for all the “Sound of Metal” nominations.

It turned out that KUDO was looking for a community leader to expand its sign language services, so we were pleased to connect the company with Marlee.

That’s called a newsjack!

Commercial vs. newsworthy

Newsjacking.com defines the process as “the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story so you and your ideas get noticed.” In 2017, newsjacking was one of Oxford Dictionaries’  “Words of the Year.”

Good newsjacking begins with understanding what’s newsworthy—and what’s not.

A product is a commercial entity, something the press will not naturally report about because it is, well, not a story.

To a reporter, a product is something that should be marketed with advertising (read: banner ads, TV, radio, influencer buys—placements that are guaranteed because you pay for them). But when you find something in the news as a tie-in, that is when your product becomes relevant and reportable in an unbiased, objective way.

If you do not have a budget for a PR agency, learning how to do this is probably some of the best advice I could give you. If you have budgeted for an agency, now you know how to interview to find the right one. Great publicists will always be looking for things in the news that make your product or invention reportable.

Keep up with the news

Here’s another example.

For a company called Beam (formerly Envision Solar, led by November 2019 Inventors Digest cover subject Desmond Wheatley, which makes solar-powered EV chargers), one of the most important pieces of marketing now is the fact that the Biden Administration is focused on clean energy initiatives. In fact, the White House has been specifically and publicly talking about supporting EV charging technology.

When Beam connects its product to this initiative, every bit of marketing it does—from sales to publicity—is provided with the borrowed credibility of presidential preference. For the press, Beam’s products are suddenly natural to include in its reporting.

Now, that is powerful (pardon the pun).

As product launch specialists, our company works with entrepreneurs. For the companies we introduce to our little black book of reporters through a matchmaking service we call Consumer Product Events, we help them to newsjack their products before we make those introductions.

The best way to find newsjacks is, of course, to read the news. The larger story it is, the better chance you have of tying it together in a way that’s truly newsworthy.

What if you don’t fit?

What if your product does not fit into these larger news stories?

Start looking for holidays, and what I call “months du jour.” Examples of this might be that you make ties or cufflinks, which are traditional Father’s Day gifts, so June Dad’s Day gift guides make it newsworthy.

If you make sparkling wine, champagne, Italian prosecco or a brachetto, New Year’s celebrations are the No. 1 newsworthy time for that type of product, followed by Christmas and Thanksgiving.

It may be that you make a handmade luxury ceramic pet dish, so National Pet Month in May is a time to be looking for publicity. You sweeten the publicity angle with anything cause-related, so if you connect your pet dish product to the Guide Dog Foundation to raise money for it, as Kym Gold (January 2021 Inventors Digest cover) of Style Union Home did, you’re off to a great start!

Another way to create a newsjack is to look for studies, trends and statistics that make it relevant.

For a client who made a product called Pillpanion that organized pills for elderly people, our company suggested that she find statistics about the dangers of elderly people accidentally overmedicating. We bolstered that story by finding statistics about how many older people there are in the United States and how overwhelming of an issue it could become.

Maybe the best way to know whether something is newsworthy is to notice what is being talked about—which includes hashtags on social media.

Newsjacking is an important skill to master. Learn it. Do it. Become an instant master publicist.

Despite the technological innovations of the past 20 years and living in a time now unimaginable without the internet, public relations (PR) has not aged. Rather, it has been supercharged. How we consume information has changed so radically, so why has PR remained a mainstay marketing method?

The answer will likely surprise anyone under the age of 25 who mostly never knew a world without “online” being a thing. Some in the publicity community may not agree with me, noting the onslaught of non-biased editorial being replaced with biased paid media, yet I bring an illuminating realization — and some history.

First, let me define PR. It can be many things, but its very essence is when a third party expresses a non-biased opinion, such as a reporter through a media outlet or any regular person in a Google or Yelp review.

In 2002, when the internet was just a blip on our radar and we were dazzled by AOL chat rooms, a book called The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR trumpeted that big brands like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Red Bull exploded without the use of any paid advertising. Bill Gates famously quipped: “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on PR.” The Pew Research Center also released “The Role of the Internet,” announcing that 80% of Americans only had 3 years of internet experience. Ha, can you imagine?

The internet was dawning as a news source when George Bush Jr. was elected to his second term. That same Pew research report noted “the internet was perhaps a more valuable means of gathering political information” (than traditional media), with 85% of Americans getting political information on television, 40% from newspapers, 15% on radio, 3% in magazines and, hilariously, the internet as a source was listed as “N/A.”

That year, I was running a business on dial-up. We had easily procured a 4-letter URL and email was still so novel that I remember feeling guilty about spending so many hours of my business day using it. Today 59.5% of the global population is online, and in 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that 8 in 10 get their news on a mobile device, 68% from TV, 50% on radio and 32% in print publications (newspapers and magazines). For me, now, email is my main source of business communication and is quickly being replaced by social.

The way I see technology is like a boat, a fast, streamlined, clandestine, smart and gorgeous one; it’s just another tool we have to reach consumers. Marketers need to not be blinded by the shiniest new bauble tech but uber focused on generating something I call the “oh yeah, I’ve heard of that” response. Learning how to create this is explained by human biology and can be seen this very minute in any online reviews from Google, LinkedIn, Yelp and other online communities.

Consumers buy things after others they respect signal that it’s an accepted thing. “Repetition of message” or “signaling theory” is needed to get a customer through the awareness cycle to purchase. Have you ever noticed when you see something new that it seems to pop up everywhere around you? Today, this has been replicated into an advertising product used online called “retargeting,” but it’s simply your brain’s perception of the frequency of something that’s been there all along called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This means one needs to be exposed to something before being convinced it’s something good to buy. You may argue that pay-per-click sales get a consumer to purchase after the first exposure, but allow me to continue to explain the reason why I believe humans pull the trigger on getting out their credit card.

Biologically, we are social animals with an intrinsic fear of rejection and spend a lot of energy looking for approval — an unconscious reflex. This is a boon for marketers to understand and shows you how PR just up-leveled your reputation with a great Google review, inclusion on a stranger’s Pinterest board or mention of something on a friend’s Instagram feed. This, paired with media reporting about you can perk up consumers’ ears and get them closer to the purchasing finish line. Do you remember last week when your friend told you all about that extra crunchy, umami spicy mayo and tuna roll at the local sushi bar? That, too, is PR and the best marketing that a sushi bar could ever hope for.

Our evolutionary roots explain why influencers have become a thing, the impossible-to-ignore attraction of social media and why anything online has a viral potential that never existed in history. As described in the Stanford study “The Science of What Makes People Care,” “people engage and consume information that affirms their identities and aligns with their deeply held values and worldview; (we) avoid or reject information that challenges or threatens (us).”

Culture is an even quicker change agent and explains the lure of social media and why we are influenced in this way. Some researchers have been studying how culture is now a stronger driver than our genetics. In a 2021 study at the University of Maine, authors noted that factors like conformity, social identity, shared norms and institutions are at the heart of group-oriented cultural evolution.

The biggest change in the PR industry has been the blurring of lines between what is an objective, editorial opinion and a paid subjective expression, but this matters only for certain customers. The breaking down of these “church and state” silos has been debated for a long time (with this history from the Center of Journalism and Ethics being particularly interesting “Breaking Down the Wall”).

This forces one to wonder: Who is influencing you? Does it come from objectivity or prejudice? The bigger question now is: Does it matter, and to whom does it matter?

For a Baby Boomer, they can sense the difference between non-biased editorial versus someone being paid to say something nice. Generation Alpha has no problem with buying products from someone who was paid to say something. The only question marketers should be asking themselves is: Who is my customer and whose opinion matters most to them? 

I consider myself an optimist. After all, if I have the choice to ruminate on anything, why not make it something forward-facing? There are plenty who want to focus on, fight and lament the past, but there is so much to create, so I choose to look to the future.

Every business leader faces this choice daily, and from my perspective, leaders should prioritize optimism not only for themselves but also for their entire team.

As the child of a Holocaust survivor and Lithuanians forced by Russians onto cattle trains to Siberia in winter, I grew up hearing a lot about hardship. Yet, my family came to America and earned PhDs, started businesses, bought real estate, created entirely new realities and one even became a Hollywood actress. To me, that’s motivation that I can use in my business every day.

As often as possible, I pull myself out of the muck of the minute and look at things from a 10,000-foot perspective. I believe this is not only a coping technique but also a necessity to evolve and help a business grow. The biggest shakeups in our lives are the moments from which some of the best things hatch; we either learn from them or go down the rabbit hole of fear. We have a choice, and no one can do it for us. Staying optimistic is an inside job.

The pandemic was one of those shakeups and gave rise to what some have called the “Covid-preneur,” as new business applications “hit historic highs” in 2020 in the U.S., the World Economic Forum reported. In July 2020 alone, there were more than 550,000 new business applications filed, a 95% increase from the same time a year before, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. To me, that is half a million courageous people stepping into a new reality of taking full responsibility for their success or failure and not relying on someone else to give them a job.

When starting or leading a business during challenging times, entrepreneurs need to keep their eyes on the horizon. I’ve found it’s also critical to keep the company of those who are better, smarter and faster than ourselves. For me, this meant using the pandemic downtime to earn a mini MBA. I also got my business certified by an organization that brings together women-run suppliers with enterprise businesses that are mandated to hire a certain percentage of minority-owned products and services. Those environments were a bastion of inspiration, and a majority of the entrepreneurs I encountered were pivoting to meet the needs of the pandemic. No one was standing still.

For example, one female engineer I met recently noticed a technology gap in the manufacturing industry, so she created a piece of tech to help fill that gap. Her concept was so brilliant that her solution was acquired by a multi-billion-dollar industrial company within a year. Another entrepreneur I encountered was an immigrant aiming to solve multilingual challenges of global business by bringing together interpreters on a video-type platform. This person created gig work for those interpreters, who might have otherwise been out of work while global travel was at a standstill.

Examples like this show me that many entrepreneurs are filled with more moxie than the average bear — and they are consistently fueled with gargantuan amounts of tenacity. From my perspective, a key ingredient for tapping into this moxie and tenacity is optimism.

Embracing An Optimistic Mindset

I applaud the people who are starting and leading their own businesses right now and am driven by the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in his famed essay “Self-Reliance” said: “Man is his own star; and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man commands all light, all influence, all fate; nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts, our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Being an optimist is not just an attitude; it’s a key skill to sharpen if you want to create a legacy and, in the meantime, create fulfillment for yourself and your team. To develop more optimism in your organization, start by watching your thoughts. If you find yourself ruminating about issues, shift your focus to the potential exciting opportunities that are coming your way.

Express gratitude as well. I find that the only way to truly embrace an optimistic mindset is by focusing on being thankful for all the good things in your life and business. It works.

This gratitude should also extend toward your employees. Your team can never get enough encouragement. Don’t hold back, and tell them when they’ve done a great job. Take them to lunch, send gift certificates for coffee and don’t forget their birthdays and work anniversaries. In other words, go out of your way to rally the troops. When an employee has a win, no matter how small, share it with the team so everyone can help bolster a job well done.

Finally, look at your struggles as steps toward your evolution. I believe that’s how life and business works — and why adaptation is king.

Marketing. Public relations. Influencers. Guerrilla tactics. Social media marketing. What does it all mean, and which businesses should use which tactic?

After 30 years of bringing new products to market, I have only one answer: It depends upon the profile of your customer. If you are even slightly flummoxed by marketing, do this: Stop listening to what everyone is talking about, and take a deep dive into the reasons why customers buy your stuff. This is not based on who they are (their demographic characteristics like sex, age, location, education level, salary, etc.), but rather their psychographic characteristics (the attitudes and proclivities that drive them). At the top of that heap are pain points that make someone, or a company, really need what you have to offer. According to sales guru David Sandler, humans buy things based on emotions — their frustrations, upsets, disappointments, worries, annoyances, concerns, anxieties and struggles. This applies to everything from original equipment manufacturer technologies and hydraulic oil to glitzy skincare lines and Jimmy Choo shoes. I’ll add to that and say that humans buy things they have heard about from others, something I call the, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that” response.

To prove my point, think about the last time you were looking for a great new restaurant. You probably googled it or asked a friend for a recommendation. When you saw two or three mentions of the same restaurant, I bet you said to yourself, or aloud, “Oh, this looks like it’s good.”

There are three parts of any business, no matter what industry or whether it offers a consumer or business-to-business product/service.

1. Product: everything it takes to get a product ready for sale.

2. Operations: the sales methodology, systems, money and people required to make it a business.

3. Marketing: any maneuver used to get the product into the hands of the end customer, who is inspired to buy it (and quickly).

I call these the POM principles, and they are the three pillars necessary for any business to launch, grow and be sustained for years to come. They apply to massive corporations and to startups. If any of these three pillars is not very well developed, a product is likely to fail (sorry for the harsh reality check).

Here’s a secret: As you develop a product, start with a picture and list of the attributes of your customer. Do not take one more step, or spend another dime, until you are exceedingly clear on this. Over the past 30 years, I have worked with more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, many of whom are so in love with their own ideas that they overlook the needs of the customers whose purchases make their idea into a true business.

There are so many faces of marketing; influencers, social media and online marketing may not be part of your marketing mix. How can that be in today’s climate?

Well, imagine that your customer rides the bus every day, they don’t own a computer and they are paid in paper checks every week. Buying ads on buses, on bus benches and at depots and partnering with check-cashing services would provide direct access to them. If you sell a glitter filter for selfies and videos, you have a good chance of reaching your customer on TikTok or Instagram. If you make a human resources technology built for human resources professionals in manufacturing, you need to get to the decision makers who buy that kind of tech. Why would you waste your money trying to reach them where they are not going to be?

Did you know that 80% of the global workforce don’t sit at a desk to do their jobs? Think about the size of that 80% and what kinds of opportunities exist there. As two of my favorite authors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, wrote in Blue Ocean Strategy, “In today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody ‘red ocean’ of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool.” So why thrash about in bloody red waters of competition when there’s a huge blue ocean out there?

When you know who your customer is, and whether they’ll pay for your product, and have set an operational basis of business, it’s time to build a marketing mix. I use a simple Excel sheet with a row of the 12 months of the year and a column of different modalities. I get costs for the methods that appeal to the customer, choose the ones for which there is a budget and then execute. Here is a list of some options to put into your vertical axis.

• Advertising (online, print, broadcast, trade).

• Affiliate marketing.

• Ambassador marketing.

• Association marketing.

• Awards.

• Branding.

• Cause marketing.

• Corporate communications.

• Demand generation.

• Digital KPI-driven marketing.

• Direct mail.

• Email marketing.

• Guerrilla tactics.

• Influencer marketing.

• Networking.

• Online marketing.

• Packaging.

• Partner marketing.

• Pay per click.

• Promotions.

• Public relations (a.k.a. publicity).

• Referral programs.

• Retail coop marketing.

• Sampling.

• Search engine optimization.

• Social media marketing.

• Special events.

• Sponsorships.

• Trade shows.

• Viral marketing.

• Word of mouth.

And the list goes on.

To make it easiest, think about this as reverse engineering. Deciding which marketing method to use requires thinking backward from the customers’ needs first and how you want to present your product second. Why? Well, if you don’t sell your stuff, you don’t have a business. It’s not rocket science, but it’s incredibly practical.

Few people speak and think in several languages while building a career in the highly specialized industry of interpreting. Fardad Zabetian has innovated the technology that allows presidents, princes and parliaments worldwide to be able to speak with one another.

Zabetian has built a multilingual conference infrastructure through his videoconference and real-time interpretation platform, KUDO. Launched in 2017, the company has paved the way for enterprising businesses to globally interact.

The concentrated amount of highly influential people, dialogues, debates and arguments he has witnessed—and made possible—is staggering. The engagements and storied institutions involved include world and nuclear summits.

Most interesting, he has innovated how this occurs in a completely disruptive manner that has evolved this ultra-niche industry through the eons of its existence.

Ancient origins

The fascinating history of interpreting provides crucial context for appreciating the significant contributions Zabetian has made.

In days of old, kings kept interpreters by their side to whisper in their ear. Explorers brought interpreters with them to communicate with people they encountered and with whom they wished to trade.

But in 1945, when World War II ended, an extraordinary reconciliation process began with the Nuremberg trials. This birthed the world of multilingualism that is at the crux of Zabetian’s world.

During this series of interactions, former Nazi leaders were tried as war criminals in the International Military Tribunal. As the Nazis took over many countries during the war, victims who spoke many languages were brought to the table and interpreters were needed to make the connection.

For the linguistic industry, this was a heyday for those who spoke the needed languages. They were flown in from all over the world to do globally weighty work.

This time was an important evolution of international diplomacy within the United Nations. Its interpretation service was created to provide interpretation from and into many languages in the UN’s New York City headquarters, and throughout the world for meetings such as the Nuremberg trials.

Shunning AI

“Interpreters are an incredibly intelligent and interesting group of polyglots,” says Zabetian, who speaks English, Farsi and some German. (Editor’s note: Polyglots? See sidebar.)

“At first this profession grew naturally as a result of revolutions and wars moving people around the world. But today, they (interpreters) are specialized academics and highly trained specifically, usually for very high-level global interactions.

“Interpreters can simultaneously translate in real time, which is a very special gift. I have spent my career providing the equipment they use and most recently, a huge change has occurred in the need for physicality, being replaced by video conference technology.”

What Zabetian has done has technologized this industry in an unprecedented way. More important, he has created a business model that includes the real-time interpreting skills of these actual talents— without artificial intelligence.

This was intentional.

“This is a time in history when one might expect AI to be the technology that does the actual interpretation,” he explains. “From my 20 years being up-close and personal with this process, in highly significant situations, I have learned that the human cognitive skill of making split-second determinations is crucial for success.

“Any institution or enterprise organization that conducts global business cannot afford the mistakes that could happen without a professional who can quickly determine considerations we call legality, fidelity and neutrality.”

Another thing AI cannot do is provide nuances of communication such as tone and body language. Zabetian built his company with this in mind.

“Researchers agree that in many situations, non-verbal cues can affect a vast majority of what’s communicated,” he says.

“On video, we can obtain visual cues from a person’s body language. This was missing in the booth infrastructure, where the interpreters were most often in another room and only connected by cables and earphones.”

100-plus languages

KUDO’s interpreters speak in more than 100 different languages. Zabetian provided another feature benefit created through KUDO: access to 147 sign languages.

Though nothing can replace the value of a physical meeting, Zabetian’s video conferencing platform has vertical drop-down menus from Albanian to Chinese, French to German. This year, he launched a self-serve scheduling platform called KUDO Marketplace that made it even easier to access the thousands of KUDO Pro Certified interpreters.

KUDO features instant feedback, screen sharing, document sharing, and live polls to make web conferences more efficient.

The company is headquartered in New York City, with other offices in London, Brussels and Geneva. Among its clients are the United Nations, World Bank, Council of Europe and myriad major enterprise companies that do business globally.

Although its clients in America, Europe, Asia and South America are mostly governmental institutions and enterprise business concerns, Zabetian says “now startups can afford to think globally from the very beginning, as it no longer requires full-time multilingual salespeople or product managers on staff and expensive travel to overcome language barriers.”

Due to the global reliance and acceptance of video conference technology, accelerated during the pandemic, KUDO’s staff exploded in 2020 from 10 to more than 100. In a three-month span last year, the company’s usage increased from 16,000 minutes per month to about 500,000.

An engineer by education, Zabetian is a masterful “people person” with a talent for team building. “I know that ideas are only as good as the people who make them manifest.”

One of KUDO’s cofounders is a former chief interpreter of the United Nations, Ewandro Magalhães. He and Zabetian worked together in cities all over the world, with Zabetian setting up the equipment and Magalhães sourcing and assembling teams of qualified interpreters to do the work. Magalhães left the UN to pursue this startup.

KUDO’s other cofounder, Parham Akhavan, is a Silicon Valley engineering savant. Ironically for a technology architect, he thinks from the standpoint of product innovation—a coveted quality for any startup.

No competitors—yet

KUDO is a lone wolf in a very specific niche, with no direct competitors. This is exciting for Zabetian, but he is also well aware that this opens the door for others to come in with new tweaks and more money. As such he felt it was important to invest, grow and—most important—continue to innovate.

“At KUDO, we truly value each team member’s input, and we foster the approach of letting the best idea win,” he says. “It’s also important to consider how this idea sets KUDO apart from others.

“I am passionate about breaking down language barriers. I believe that the smartest and most talented potential hires, greatest customers to acquire, and those lifelong business partners don’t necessarily need to speak my language.

“Every day, we serve as a connector for people worldwide. When businesses, thought leaders, innovators and creatives are able to develop ideas through collaboration, true progress happens. This means that our efforts make others’ dreams and opportunities limitless. I feel good about that.”

Fardad Zabetian
Occupation: Cofounder and CEO, KUDO, Inc.

Born: Tehran, Iran

Home: New York City

Hobbies: Persian calligraphy, soccer, skiing, cycling, whatever sparks my children’s interest

Favorite book: “Monetizing Innovation,” by Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke

Favorite quote: “Hearing ‘no’ is the beginning of a negotiation.”

****************************

Notable Polyglots
Sigh. We wanted to define polyglot before providing you five A-Listers, but the world can’t seem to agree on what a polyglot is.

The first definition we saw was, “a person who knows and is able to use several languages.” Ilanguages.org says a polyglot is “a person who speaks more than two languages, but used often for four languages or more.” Huh?

There is also a definition of a polyglot as someone who speaks five or more languages (about 1 percent of the world’s population). We’ll stick with that one because it’s easier and more impressive.

J.K. Rowling: We’re cheating already; the heralded “Harry Potter” author speaks four languages. Her mother was half French, so Joanne Kathleen spoke that language as a child. She picked up English and German in school and Portuguese during her travels to Portugal, also marrying a Portuguese man.

Roger Federer: The tennis star speaks Swiss French, Swiss German and Italian as a part of being a Swiss national. He also learned Swedish, as well as English because of all of his travels to America.

Audrey Hepburn: The late silver screen icon spent much of her childhood in the Netherlands, speaking English at home and Dutch everywhere else. She learned Spanish to help her acting career, later moving to Switzerland where she learned French and Italian.

Shakira: Born in Colombia where she learned her native Spanish, the superstar singer’s travels enabled her to also learn English, French, Italian, Arabic and Portuguese. Many of her social media posts are written in different languages.

Natalie Portman: The Academy Award-winning actress was born in Jerusalem. Acting in foreign-language films has played a role (no pun intended) in her learning Japanese, Spanish, German and Arabic, adding to English and her native Hebrew.—Reid Creager