How This First-Gen Somali American Turned His Knack for Languages Into a Go-To Enterprise Service

Since childhood, Mohamed Hussein, the oldest of eight kids who grew up in a packed household in Northern Virginia, has been honing his skills as an interpreter and anentrepreneur. After teaching English and facilitating livestock deals in Saudi Arabia, he founded Piedmont Global Language Solutions. It is a $60.5 billion industry that provides translation, interpretation, and related services for people who speak more than 200 languages. To think that he was close to becoming a doctor.

I've always believed in entrepreneurship. I was selling candy out of his locker when I was younger. After my freshman year I decided to go to Yemen to study Arabic for a year. I spent five years in Saudi Arabia studying Arabic, religion and philosophy at a university. I knew language services as an industry and a path for me.

I started teaching English while I was looking for a job. A lot of money was being spent on English teachers in Saudi Arabia. I traveled around the country to teach English as a private tutor. Around $30 an hour was what I was making at that time.

I started getting offers to work on all types of projects once I started making contacts in the language industry. I worked with some major cattle importers in Saudi Arabia to help broker deals for sheep and goats to be sacrificed in order to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.

I didn't think I wanted to be a doctor when I returned to the States. I just got married and was finishing up my degree as well as running an e-commerce platforming company and flipping real estate. On the side, I continued to translate. I founded the company as an limited liability company after a friend of mine told me about the contract work.

I didn't think there was anything here until two years later. I'm going to double down and watch what happens. The business began to grow. I decided to give up most of my other commitments so that I could focus on growth. I was able to hire my first employee because I had been hiring contractors to handle translation work that I didn't know anything about.

We went from making $34,000 to $500,000 in 2015. We had steady growth from 2016 to 2020 because we focused on winning government contracts. We won a lot of federal contracts and acquired a local language training company, which resulted in our best year ever, in 2021.

Our mission is to help organizations thrive in a global, multilanguage environment, so we work on everything from marketing materials to training manuals and website copy, but we also help government agencies translate foreign documents. Knowing who to assign a project to is important. If we're working for a health care company, the translator needs to be aware of the terminology. Our people are so impressive because they find a mix of language mastery and knowledge.

I keep myself busy with side hustles, but mostly as a minority shareholder. I'm trying to learn a new language. I want to have at least five languages in my back pocket, so I'm working on learning Spanish and American Sign Language, which will be a major focus for us going forward. Being able to talk directly with a client can help strengthen relationships.