Corinne Bot

Paris-born Corinne Bot came to Australia over twenty-five years ago with her partner, but not much else. She had no plans, and no preconceived ideas about her future, but through her personal challenges she has created a successful global business, all started as a brand new mother working from her kitchen table.

Corinne’s success is a story of open-mindedness, and an open-armed embracement of a brand new country and culture.

Corinne is a Polyglotter, in fact she’s the Chief Polyglotter and now leads a worldwide team of over ninety Polyglotters working directly for her.

“It wasn’t a planned thing, to call ourselves Polyglotters,” Corinne notes, “it just happened.”

Like most entrepreneurs, Corinne was looking for a company name which would stand out from the crowd, but would still be relevant to what she does. In this case, “Polyglot just seemed to fit.”

The dictionary defines polyglot when used as an adjective as knowing or using several languages, for example, ‘a polyglot career woman’. As a noun, polyglot means a person who knows and is able to use several languages.

While ‘Polyglotter’ doesn’t appear in the dictionary, it’s become a colloquial description of those who speak several languages – make sense? It’s almost as if the word was invented just for Corinne, because it describes perfectly what she does.

As Corinne explains, “It’s part of our DNA. All together, the ninety Polyglotters in the company speak just short of forty languages.

“We’re not a language service provider as such: we explain culture, and explaining culture is easier when you speak the language, or when you are from a different culture.

“There’s nothing wrong or right in culture, but setting up a business in another country will be more successful when you can communicate properly and be more culturally aware.”

Corinne is the founder and CEO of the Polyglot Group, an organisation assisting other companies to set up business across borders. Essentially, “we’re a growth partner and assist businesses and individuals within companies with everything in relation to setting up their business in another country, ” said Corinne.

That can involve anything from assisting with immigration, sourcing staff and supplying payroll outsourcing. Polyglot Group also helps with the creation and administration of policies and other procedural requirements, such as employment contracts, and generally assisting them get set up, even doing their bookkeeping.

In short, “we’re a one-stop shop, assisting them expand from one country into others.”

It’s not the type of business you dream of doing when you’re a child. ‘I want to be a polyglotter when I grow-up’ isn’t something you’d shout out in the playground. It doesn’t sound anywhere near as exciting as ‘I want to be a singer’ or ‘I want to be a fireman’.

“Actually I wanted to be a hairdresser”, Corinne reveals.

As a child growing up in Paris, Corinne would spend much of her spare time in her mother’s hair salon, and as soon as she had completed the equivalent of the HSC she went into hairdressing. But there was one major drawback: “I found out I was allergic to ammonia.”

That was back in the ‘bad old days’ when ammonia was used as a matter of course in hair dyes and perms. Corinne probably wouldn’t have been just a hairdresser. Given her ambition levels, she would most likely have owned a string of hairdressing salons, rather than just one shop in a local mall.

In retrospect, the attraction of hairdressing for Corinne was more about being her own boss. That was something she had wanted, from as early as she can remember.

When that was not going to be the case, Corinne turned her sights on other ambitions. “Initially I was devastated because my plan to be independent seemed shattered. I went back to school, studied human resources at university and it really wasn’t fun.

“I had to work my way through uni, and there was very little time for anything else.”

However, Corinne discovered something which really changed her thinking, something that made her realise she could still achieve that dream of being her own boss.

Although it may seem strange, Corinne found “there’s not a lot of difference between being a hairdresser and being in the HR industry. It’s all about relationships.

“In a hairdressing salon you create a unique bond with your clients; you need to listen and understand the needs of your clients. Really, it’s about emotional intelligence, which is also the same in HR,” said Corinne about the parallels between the two professions.

Corinne firmly believes “growing up with a mother who had her own salon, and my time involved with her, plus my brief experience working on my own, all helped me develop those EQ skills.”

As motivated as she was to be her own boss, Corinne never thought about being an entrepreneur. There was no great inner drive to create anything like Polyglot Group. It took an injection of romance in the ‘City of Love’ to push her in the right direction.

Love changed the course of Corinne Bot’s life forever.

“At the time, I was dating the man who would become my husband and he was doing his national service, which was compulsory then. He was given the choice of working for the French Government overseas rather than go into the army. That’s how we ended up in Australia.

“It was not a dream to come here, I hardly knew where it was. I couldn’t place Perth, Melbourne or Sydney and I think that’s why it worked because I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about the country.”

The young couple simply “hopped on a plane and flew here and we fell in love with the country. We got married here and decided to stay; that was almost thirty years ago.”

The path to creating Polyglot Group began when Corinne started looking for a job in her adopted country.

She was looking for work in the HR area because that’s what she knew and liked but, aged twenty-six and with a baby, she found out it was challenging at that time.

Noting that “while nothing was actually said, I was made to feel extremely guilty for wanting to work after having a child. On one occasion I was asked, ‘can’t your husband provide for you?’ It made me angry.

“I decided I wasn’t going to lie about having a daughter, especially as I wanted another baby as well, so I set up my own business. I was a sole trader, and the plan was to work three days a week. The idea of being independent, being able to organise my own time and the flexibility that came with that, seemed ideal,” said Corinne of her determination to return to the workforce.

Very quickly Corinne realised that she got one thing wrong though: “I never worked just three days a week.”

Welcome to the world of self-determined independence!

Looking back, Corinne admits, “I never had a business plan; my plan was to just work, then after a year of being a sole trader and the business growing, my accountant advised me to do the ‘proprietary limited’ thing. As he said ‘otherwise it’s going to kill you with tax’.”

By then Corinne already had four staff working for her and over the next few years the business grew quickly. “It was tripling every year and I had a decision to make: ‘I can either stay small and become a slave to my business or I can make a plan to grow it’.”

Corinne decided on growing the business.

One of the big selling points when a city bids for the Olympic Games is the financial flow-on effect the Games will attract. The benefits flow into infrastructure, the community and to local business. Outside of the money spent on sporting facilities and public transport, the impact on business can be significant.

If it wasn’t for the Sydney Olympic Games in the Year 2000, Polyglot Group could very well have stayed a small business. The Olympics came along at just the right time to really accelerate Corinne’s decision to grow her business.

Polyglot Group had six or seven staff at that stage and, “we’d decided we wanted to grow so I put in a bid to look after the French and German delegations for the duration of the Games.

“And when I say delegation I mean everyone, from the journalists to the team officials, their VIPs and the athletes. It meant organising their visas, their accommodation, drivers, translators, hostesses, everything to make their stay in Sydney run smoothly.

“And we won both bids. I still don’t know how we did it, but we did. We pushed ourselves to another level.”

Corinne and Polyglot Group did such a great job that some of her clients, particularly those from France, wanted to get involved in her business.

People wanted to invest in Polyglot Group.

Corinne comments that “they weren’t entrepreneurs, just businessmen who said they wanted to have shares in my company. I was shocked and confused and that’s when I met a man who became a true mentor for me.

“Pierre was an engineer and the CEO of a water treatment company that won the bid to work with Sydney Water. He was one of my first clients and I asked for his advice.”

It was a surprising situation for Corinne: she was in her late twenties, and had people saying they wanted to invest money in her business. However, they weren’t just businessmen but her clients too, and she didn’t know what to do.

The conversation which shaped the future of Corinne’s business was driven by Pierre’s comment of “do whatever you want, but if one day you want that convertible you keep talking about, my advice would be to go and see your bank.” As Corinne was reluctant to give up control of her company she followed Pierre’s advice.

Most importantly, “that whole experience gave me the confidence to believe what I was doing was of interest.”

The convertible never arrived in the garage – Corinne realised it was a passing fad – but the company grew and along came clients like Linkedin, Mastercard and Uber. The explosion in companies operating from a digital platform took Polyglot Group to a new level.

“American companies in particular that are going global are in the digital and hi-tech fields. A lot of American companies expand abroad, so the companies going global are in hi-tech, IT, renewable energy; the new business model companies that need to go global straight away.”

Currently ninety-five percent of the business is foreign companies setting up in Australia, but the business is addressing that by setting up their own Polyglot Group offices overseas.

Corinne delayed the move overseas until the second of her two children had finished school, and international expansion could have happened much earlier but “it didn’t fit my personal goals or priorities at the time. I knew it would involve a lot of travel and I wasn’t ready for that while he was still at school.

“The sacrifice would have been too big and it wasn’t a trade-off I was prepared to make.”

In the last four years Polyglot Group has set up offices in the United States, Europe and South Africa, and the five percent of the business – where Australian companies are crossing borders – is starting to grow. At today’s date ten percent of the Polyglot Group turnover is generated from its foreign subsidiaries.

Despite the success Corinne is having since making the global move, there are no regrets around the delay; it’s all about priorities and setting the right example for everyone who looks to you for advice and guidance.

This is very much a reflection of the credo by which Corinne lives: “If you live by your values and you are showing everybody there are things you will not tolerate, you set the culture – it’s as simple as that.

“A company culture comes from the top, and when you’re growing as we are, the hardest part is to find the same DNA in your management. So when I set personal priorities, part of that is to ensure a balance.

“Getting the balance right creates a happy work environment, if the balance is wrong, happiness gets lost. You are either in a vicious cycle or a virtuous cycle.”

There’s definitely a virtuous cycle happening at Polyglot Group, if gaining recognition from others is any guide. Polyglot has won many awards, including ‘Best Employer’, and is ranked in the top three happiest companies in the country.

Corinne believes “If you’re happy at work, usually you’re happy at home and vice versa.

“Being happy is a state of mind. It’s being fulfilled, it’s being able to evolve, it’s being respected for who you are, irrelevant of your gender, your age, your colour, your religion or your sexual orientation.”

Corinne Bot is not only the chief Polyglotter, she’s also the happiest Polyglotter.

ADVICE

Corinne might stun you with her advice on setting up your own business, but given her success it can’t be ignored: “Money shouldn’t be your aim.”

It’s not that she’s averse to making money – in fact, quite the opposite – she just doesn’t believe money should be the focus.

“My personal advice is that there is no sense in doing a business only for money. Yes, you need to make money, but money doesn’t make you happy.”

Corinne wonders what you’ll do when your business isn’t making money, if that’s the sole driving force for you being in business. She believes there needs to be a more substantial reason.

“So start with a solid reason and never lose sight of why you started your business. Obviously the first KPI should be about making a profit because otherwise you can’t develop and grow, but it shouldn’t only be financially result-orientated. You’re doing this for a reason and the reason needs to be valid and sustainable.”

There will be tough times, and that’s when you’ll need to seek advice, and Corinne warns against taking advice from just anyone.

Her suggestion is to “find someone who is genuinely interested in you and your business, and has no personal agenda.”

Corinne found such a person in Pierre when her business hit a crossroads right after the Sydney Olympics.

She had luckily found “a true mentor” as Corinne reflects, “He was an engineer, so we had nothing in common in terms of background or training, but he helped me gain confidence and I knew I could trust his judgement.

“He didn’t tell me what to do – that’s not what a true mentor does. He listened to me and didn’t give me solutions, but advised different avenues and options for me. He helped me think more clearly about what I should do.”