How It All Started

Thao Basik, the founder of Beacon InWord, shares his journey of starting the business and the services they offer, such as podcast transcriptions, audio descriptions, and audio books. He discusses the challenges he faced, including the pandemic and finding clients. Thao also expresses his gratitude to his team and the influence of Mr. David Branscombe. He talks about his future plans for the company and how people can access their services. Are you interested to know about branding, accounting, business marketing and other methods? This is the show for you. I'm your host, Lina Lama. This is Basic Podcast. Sometimes you only need passion to get started with great achievements. Attesting to this statement is Thao Basik, who today is my guest. After completing his education in 2021, he began studying ways to provide products and services to individuals and companies. Out of that goal, Beacon InWord was born. It provides a number of services including transcriptions, podcast productions such as this one. It also provides audio descriptions and more. Welcome to the show, Mr. Thao Basik. Thank you very much, Laila. I appreciate it. First of all, why the name Beacon InWord and what does this mean? How I came up with this name is, you know, I was trying to communicate that since I'm blind, I rely on what I hear with my ears. I rely on feedback from speech synthesizers or from what I'm being told by somebody else. So the word vision in Word is more like I see with my ears or I see with what I hear. That's how I came up with the name. Oh, wow. How did it all start? It first started in 2019. There was a startup where we had to come and pitch our ideas. So I wanted to create a mirror that would help blind people to examine themselves before they can leave an area. And I also wanted to create a game which I called Mind Mold, which would help kids with dyslexia. It would also help kids who are blind and all other kids, whether living with disability or not. And I also had an idea of creating what I called the TMT or Tell Me Time Watch, which would be a clock that would tell blind people what's the time. So that's how it came. And I registered for that startup where I got to win an award with the idea of a smart mirror. Wow. Okay. Why haven't you implemented those ideas? That's a very good question. But I must say I had a lot of issues implementing the ideas because following that year, we know what happened. COVID hit, the pandemic, and I had partnered with some people that I had met at the pitching of the idea so we could develop this smart mirror together. But it never worked out well. So the partnership didn't go far. And I didn't pursue the idea going forward. But still, I wanted to keep my brand of vision in word, and I thought I could do something different with it. And hopefully someday I'll carry on with my ideas of the smart mirror, the watch, the game, and so forth. Okay. What products and services do you offer? Currently, Vision in Word is more focused on offering services. I can say we are an online market. We offer podcast transcriptions. We also do podcast production. We do audio descriptions to videos. And this means adding a voiceover track to the video that will describe the scenes or the nonverbal scenes to blind people, which otherwise they could miss because they can't see the screen. That's how audio descriptions work. We also do audio books. We teach Braille literacy. We offer quite a number of services, that's what I can say. But those are the main, main, main core, with the transcription one being at the top of the list. And we have managed to secure clients in countries like the United States. We've had a client in the UK. And yeah, we're still trying to expand the business here and there. Wow. Okay. How do you find new clients and retain the already existing ones? Finding new clients, I use various methods. One is really advertising on social media. I use LinkedIn to network with people and tell them about my business. I also do attend events, whether in person or virtual, and I make sure that whoever that I'm networking with, I'm telling them about Vision in Word. I'm inviting them to go and explore the website, see what services Vision in Word has to offer. And yeah, about retaining them, if you go to the services page on our website, you'd realize that we pride ourselves to be professionalism, timeliness, and of course, responsiveness. So that's our drive. So we take everything professional. We do provide services in a timely manner, and we also respond to our clients as soon as possible. That's the mission at Vision in Word. That's the goal. And our clients appreciate that. They love that. So that's how we keep them. Okay. Great. Have you learned... What have you learned since you started this business? Quite a lot of things, really. I have learned a lot of things, especially with the transcription service, because you get to deal with different podcasts. So for me, I always say it's getting information for free, because they come with rich information. I've learned to network. I've learned how to grow my personal brand. I've learned really quite a lot of things. I've learned communicating with clients. I've learned consistency. I have really learned a lot. Okay. What have been some of your biggest challenges? How do you overcome them? I started this business in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, where really many people were at home, where sales were not easy to make. And I started with one client. We started back in September of 2021. And finding clients was a real challenge. I wasn't a business person, so I also had a challenge of price tagging. I didn't know how much I could charge for the service. And even when I tried to look up sources on the Internet, asking people within my area, they didn't know much about transcription. So it was really a challenge to provide pricing. And as well, having to learn by myself how to be best at transcribing was yet another challenge which I had to deal with. But with the determination, I made sure that I'm learning it. And I would send out surveys to my clients to see if they're happy with what I'm offering. And I would also calculate the cost to see if the pricing that I had given them helps me. And yeah, until I was in a position whereby I could say, now I understand what I'm doing, the position where I could now address my clients with confidence. Yes. Do you have any people helping you run your business? Or do you do it by yourself? Yeah, I do have people helping me. And I'm so much thankful to you especially, as well as my friend David Brunscombe for all the things that you do for me, from transcribing to putting stuff on the website to talking to clients and more. That is really something that I appreciate because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do all those things on my own. And the feedback that I get from my clients appreciating the transcripts they get from Vision & Word, the feedback I get from people appreciating how great the website looks, it's all made possible by your efforts and also the efforts of those who are watching the video. And I'm so thankful for that feedback because it is feedback that helps us improve on a daily basis. Wow. Tell us about Seeing Without Sight blog. So, it is designed to really give comfort to blind people, those who may have lost hope in life. And it is also designed to help the mainstream society appreciate us and see how they can help us. You know, it provides practical suggestions and it is designed to help people see what the blog does. So, I make sure that every week on a Saturday, there is a new article, a new post that goes on the blog page and I share that on my Facebook platform as well as on my LinkedIn platform. So, if people go to visionandword.com.blog, then they will be able to get access to Seeing Without Sight blog. And for now, we have more than 20 articles already there and there is still more to come. What would you say to a 16-year-old tarball? Know what you want in life. Be clear with your goals. Because when I was 16, I didn't know what I wanted in my life. I knew nothing about transcription. But now I know that my passion is in typing and because of that, I know what I want. I enjoy transcribing podcasts. I enjoy listening to videos that have audio described content. So, really, it's you knowing what you want in life and working to achieve that. Wow, that's nice. Great. Okay, tell us about your business in just 30 seconds, Mr. Tarball. At Vision and Word, we are focused on professionalism, timeliness and responsiveness. All our services are tailored to meet the needs of the client in a way they want them exactly. And we are customizable, adaptable and ready to work with you out of the box. So, try us now. Whether it's transcription, audio descriptions, audio books or any other service that we offer, we are here for you. What's the future of Vision and Word? The future of Vision and Word. My plan is to see it having more clients. My plan is to see it securing the market in different countries. My plan is to see it one day inventing all the technologies that I spoke about earlier on, be it the token watch, be it the mirror, the mind mold game. I would like for Vision and Word to launch all these products someday. I should say to people that they should look forward to a transcription software that's designed for Vision and Word specifically and they can use it to have automated transcriptions by the best company in the world. Wow, I love it. Who has the biggest influence in your establishment, establishing this business? Well, I cannot stop thanking Mr. David Branscombe for all that he has done for me. If I should just take you and the audience through the history of us, we started connecting back in 2016 and he would always help me with Microsoft Office. Since then until now, 2022 or whatever year that someone might be watching this podcast and we've been talking since then, he has been helping me. He's even the one who contributed to me learning a computer. He even offered to pay for my certificate when I completed the computer course from a blindness perspective. So he has been a source of great support. When I finished my schooling in 2021, I reached out to him and said, hey, could you help me find some work? And I remember he said to me, what kind of work do you want? And then he clearly mentioned it that I shouldn't say any kind of work, which is usually the mentality of students. So we had to figure out how to do that. And then he gave me a love, which of course he realized that it was typing and he connected me with my first client, whom even now I'm still providing the transcription service to. So really, David Branscombe has done a lot for me and I appreciate him. He is the biggest influence of this company now is managing the Vision in Word website and he does the administration work for the business on the technology side of things. Thank you, Mr. David. OK, where and how can people access your services? Well, it's very easy. They can go to our website, visioninword.com, and there is the contact page. They can fill out a form, which we will then get to see whatever comments they have, questions they have, or they can also send an email to services at visioninword.com. It will still reach me. Or they can directly contact me at visioninword.com. That's T-H-A-B-O at visioninword.com. And also, we are on Facebook. We are on YouTube channel Vision in Word. So, yes, and they can find me on LinkedIn as well, Tau Vasili. Thank you, Tau Vasili, for joining us today. Thanks. It's been a pleasure talking to you. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please like, comment, and share with others. If you'd like us to cover any subject, send us an email to visioninword.com. Once again, I'm your host, Leila Naroli.