Small Business Today Magazine JUN 2014 MASTERWORD SERVICES INC | Page 9

the founder and co-chairman of the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship (WCE). A successful entrepreneur in his
own right and alumnus of the University of Houston, Mr. Sherrill’s
vision was to organize, expand, and promote the knowledge and
practice of entrepreneurship. It was his desire to prepare students to assume leadership roles in the business world and teach
them how to run their own business from the inception of an idea
through its implementation
Many people had scoffed at Bill Sherrill’s idea of offering a program in entrepreneurship but it was so well-received and successful that, in 1994, Mr. Sherrill won the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award for his advancements
in education and by 1995, the Texas State Committee for Higher
Education established it as a Major in Entrepreneurship under the
Bachelor of Business Administration Degree.
One of the first assignments given to Ms. Golovine for her Entrepreneurship class was to write a business plan and figure out how
to run a business. Trying to come up with an idea for a business,
Ludmila knew languages so she wrote a business plan on starting
a language company. She came up with the name MasterWord
Services and completed her business paper for the class. “That
business paper ended up being my life,” expounded Ludmila. Ultimately, not only did Ludmila take this class, she stayed for the
entire program and graduated with a double major in Finance and
Entrepreneurship.
At the time of her first class, Ludmila had no idea of all of the diversity in Houston but the more she studied and discovered things
about Houston, the more she became excited about her business
idea. According to one recent Rice University study, the U.S. Census data shows that Houston has now surpassed New York City as
the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse metropolis. More
than 90 languages are spoken throughout the Houston area and
92 countries have consular offices in Houston.
Ms. Golovine reflected, “What is interesting is that today, when
we think about working internationally, it doesn’t necessarily mean
going overseas. We can be working internationally when we are
right here in the city. Not only are our domestic clients international, our domestic workforce is international as well. So it is extremely important for us to learn to embrace each other’s cultures
and differences when we try to communicate with our customers
both internationally and domestically.”
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, it goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his own language, it goes to his heart.”
-Nelson Mandela
While still enrolled in the Entrepreneurship Program, Ludmila decided to take her idea and put it into action. So in 1993, MasterWord
Services, Inc. was founded by Ms. Golovine where she took on the
role of CEO and President. “The program was truly amazing because not only did we have the teachers but they invited entrepre-

neurs and business owners to come and talk about the issues and
challenges of running a business, things to do, things not to do, etc.,”
recalled Ms. Golovine. “The company was my project. At first, I was
the only employee, and then the business grew little by little. We
kept adding languages and, today, we support our clients in over 250
languages and we support clients based in over 50 countries.
Ludmila didn’t start out with a marketing budget, so after reading
the book, “Guerrilla Marketing” (about doing marketing without a
budget), she learned that the best way to market is by doing an
excellent job and always exceeding the clients’ expectations every
step of the way. Ms. Golovine elaborated,“When you do an excellent job for your clients, they will spread the word and also return
when they need your services again. My very first client was a
geophysical company from Russia that hired me as an interpreter.
I met them at a conference that was hosted at the University of
Houston. The very first contract I signed was with the largest petroleum company in the world. Next, we worked with Pennzoil
and NASA. After that, the rest is history.”
“There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with
the world.We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what
we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.”
-Dale Carnegie
Little by little, MasterWord Services grew. Eventually, they started
working with hospitals and doctors in the medical center. All the
while, Ludmila did everything she could to make connections including attending professional conferences, networking events, and
anything that had the word “international” in it. The challenge at
the time was that she was a “one-woman-show” and was also
running everywhere to do the interpretations. As a result, Ms.
Golovine was working 18 to 20 hours a day. Initially, afraid to hire
her first employee, when Ludmila did finally hire someone, the employee would come for her paycheck at the end of every workday
because she had so little of confidence that they would still be in
business the next day!
As her business grew, Ms. Golovine partnered up with another small translation company but after a couple of years bought
them out. Throughout the time that MasterWord Services was
growing, Ms. Golovine continued being coached by the great
people at the Entrepreneurship Center. She is most appreciative
of mentors Bill Sherrill, founder and Co-Chairman of the Wolff
Center for Entrepreneurship; Frank W. Kelley, Associate Dean for
Undergraduate Studies in the Bauer College of Business who at
one point worked as the COO at MasterWord Services; Ken
Jones, Associate Director of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship at the C.T. Bauer College of Business; Dave Cook, Director of
Mentoring Programs for the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship
at the C.T. Bauer College of Business; and Linda McIngvale, owner
of Westside Tennis & Fitness.
It was Linda McIngvale who introduced Ludmila to the Deming
Method that helped her to create and install the systems in her
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