In 2021, We Hit $6.5M And Grew Our Team To 35 Employees

Cédric Sigoire

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Published: December 2nd, 2022

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Cédric Sigoire

Founder, DEMAN Übersetzungen

$550K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

DEMAN Übersetzungen

deman-uebersetzungen.com

from Düsseldorf, Germany

started May 2015

$550,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

MailChimp

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GoDaddy

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payments

Paypal

blog

WordPress

Discover what books Cédric recommends to grow your business!

The One Minute Manager Kenneth Blanchard Ph.D.

📗

Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill

Want more updates on DEMAN Übersetzungen ? Check out these stories:

1. Buying A Translation Company And Growing It To $4M/Year (2021) ➜

This is a follow up story for DEMAN Übersetzungen . If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hello, my name is Cédric Sigoire and I am the owner of the DEMAN Translations group.

We are a translation agency specializing in high-quality translations for business customers.

We cover all types of translations, technical, legal, marketing, and IT as well as interpreting.

We are a young team of 35 amazing team members in Germany, France, and South Korea! We are not backed by private equity and grew only with our financing.

I took over the company on May 1st, 2015, exactly 7 years ago, with 6 employees and a turnover of 1.5 million euros.

Since our previous interview, we’ve grown into a 6.5M euros business and built a team of 35 employees.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

I followed my buy and build a strategy in the year 2021: in addition to Easytrans24.com, Lemoine, A4 Traduction, Bangard, Visavis and MediaMate. I acquired Teedeo, Ursula Gruber, Locsoft, Textklinik, Arobase Traduction as well as Traducteo in France and Accent Mondial in South Korea.

I concentrate on high-quality multilingual B2B customers to scale and reach synergies between the different agencies. At the moment, each unit is still working independently under its brand.

We reached 6,5 million euros in the year 2021 and my target for 2022 is 10 million euros! We just closed two deals and added 1M€ turnover. I am in contact with more translation agencies to reach the goal of 10M€ ;-)

We invested in SEO and are starting to see positive results, even if it is a long-term investment. We mainly invested in content creation to extend existing pages and targetting new keywords as well as a little bit of net linking. We had a good result at the beginning, but now I see that we need to re-concentrate and create more content. I am looking for a marketing manager to manage the SEO of all my websites and centralize our communication on LinkedIn.

Think long-term: SEO and sales are long-term investments. You need to have a clear strategy for it. I regret that we did not start to invest in SEO earlier because our results would be much better today.

We did some PR and got some coverage from industry insiders which helped us to increase our brand awareness and get some nice backlinks for SEO ;-)

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

The pandemic impacted us, but our regular customers are coming back step by step. Our customers being mostly industrial producers, are affected by the shortage in piece goods and increasing inflation.

Since most of our customers are still in their home offices (as are our project managers), it is harder to reach them and we need to find new ways to keep the relationship going.

We used to “hunt” customers at exhibitions, but we are changing this strategy and are now “hunting” them on LinkedIn. We are posting twice a week to reach more potential customers and improve our brand awareness.

With this article, I got more than 7.000 views and increased our brand awareness in my industry.

My recommendation: the more you post, the more it becomes a habit, and the easiest it is 🙂

Regarding team growth, we have some open positions for translators, which are getting more and more difficult to recruit due to the talent shortage in Germany.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

“The worst does not always happen”: we thought that the pandemic would hit us hard, but we got through it well, because we have a great team and a light and flexible structure.

“Think long-term”: SEO and sales are long-term investments. You need to have a clear strategy for it. I regret that we did not start to invest in SEO earlier because our results would be much better today.

“Mens sana in corpore sano”: think about your health: since I started waking up at 5.00 AM and doing (or trying to do) 30 mins of exercise every morning, I never had so much energy. Don´t push your body too much, or you will pay for it in the future.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

We aim to reach a 10M€ turnover in 2022 and want to double it in the next 3 years. At the moment, we are concentrating on France and Germany, but we will look at good opportunities elsewhere in Europe too.

For this, we need to adapt our structure and our management levels. This is my main thought at the moment: how to put a structure in place to be able to scale the business in the coming years WITHOUT having the company rely only on me! This is true in all domains: production, HR, finance, sales,...

Machine translation is becoming better and it will change the way we work. We need to find the best way to introduce it in our processes in the next years to stay innovative. This is related to data security and GDPR. It will be a big challenge and the small agencies will suffer if they cannot solve this issue.

I often speak with start-up owners, who don´t like to sell. THIS IS WRONG! Even if you have the best product in the world, you need to sell.

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

I strongly recommend:

Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins: it shows you how to control your thoughts and not let your thoughts influence you.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: I still read a chapter once in a while, and I learn something new every time. It is a must for personal development.

I also listen to podcasts every morning in the car at a speed of 1,5. It helps me to start the day on a positive note.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their businesses?

Create a place for opportunities: don´t only stay in your (home) office: go out, meet other start-ups, get out of your comfort zone, and exchange ideas with others.

One example: I helped Cabasus and Soleil pour tous, two of the start-ups in which I invested, to exhibit at a trade fair. They got good feedback and contacts in some industries that they had never thought of! It was extremely worth it to exhibit, even if it was a lot of work.

It may sound obvious but post on LinkedIn at least twice a week. Even if you are on B2C. It will help you to be seen as a specialist in your domain and it will create opportunities. After 4,500 contacts, you will see the traction and you will start to get leads.

Be a salesman: I often speak with start-up owners, who don´t like to sell. THIS IS WRONG! Even if you have the best product in the world, you need to sell. Mark Zuckerberg did a lot of communication training to be as confident as he is today.